001good evening at this time i'd like to call this regular meeting in the dysart unified school district governing board to order let the record reflect that all board members are present please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge under allegiance indivisible with liberty and justice for all right we'll go ahead and start tonight with uh recognitions and celebrations band performance dr kulas thank you madam president members of the board of members of cabinet dr dean will introduce this item good evening madam president members of the governing board dr callus members of cabinet and our community this evening under the direction of lauren's treater we present to you the ashton ranch middle school 7th and 8th grade band the mustang band recently earned a rating of excellent at the arizona music educator association junior high
002band festival this is the first time that any dysart middle school has participated in the festival and we are proud to have had such an extraordinary representation mistreater the floor is yours so uh [Music] um [Music] foreign [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] okay [Music] [Applause] what a wonderful performance thank you so much and congratulations on your excellent rating what what goes into receiving an excellent rating what would you tell another group that's preparing for the same festival what did you do i think a lot of it is music selection trying to make sure that you pick the right selection for the size of the group and their ability level um and especially if they want to work on advancing since this is advanced band we tried finding selections that were also
003a little bit harder to push them and a lot of it really goes with the kids and their work ethic like they make everything happen i just kind of sit there and i wave this little stick but there are endless amounts of practicing and them coming before school especially them practicing home parent support really helps and um we meet every single day and we just go and uh destroy the day every day but i can't thank them enough i can't thank their parents enough and your guys's support means absolutely the world so we thank you well you're being very modest but i think you probably had a pretty big part in it so thank you for all you do as well and you all were wonderful thanks for sharing your talent with us tonight next
004we'll move on to item b2 recognition and appreciation of community supporters and organization of the dysart festival of the arts dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet on march 26th a saturday morning and afternoon we had an extraordinary event at the valley vista high school where we hosted the where valley vista hosted the district festival of the arts and interestingly this was our second annual held over four years that's because we had to have a little hiatus due to covet but we were super excited to have the event happen again and it was bigger better and bolder than the first one and really sets the standard for future ones we anticipated that there were over 7 000 people who attended which made it the main event in the
005west valley we had students from every single school in every art division including theater dance choir 2d 3d all the arts were represented so huge kudos to all the students who performed all of as you mentioned it goes without saying that they have excellent instructors parents who supported them but for four hours there were non-stop stages performed with performances happening and a gallery of visual arts on display inside the lobby there were some notable contributors who would like to recognize mccarthy building companies surprise arts and cultural advisory commission the dysart education foundation ottawa university orca winslow saguaro screen printing core construction elevate design group sunwest credit union the hidden dojo renewal by anderson yumtum snack house and the arizona commission on the arts who provided a grant all of this was under the extraordinary supervision
006and leadership of denae marinelli i'd like to invite the governing board to step forward to present mrs marinelli who was the chief organizer of the entire event with a very special recognition of an extraordinary pin thank you denae right while the pictures being taken we might add that we were going to recognize the hidden dojo as well but we couldn't find them tonight madam president with your consent we'll move to item three on the agenda and that is uh high school athletic state and national champions as the board will recall at the last meeting we were very excited to present a large number of our high school winter athletic teams who were region champs and tonight were excited to recognize our winter sports teams that were state and national champs and so tonight we're going
007to start with the shatter ridge high school spirit line i know they're somewhere because i saw him outside hold your applause till i finish so the shadow ridge high school spirit line the cheer squad coached by coach day smalley is the 2022 arizona aia state champions give him a round of applause all right so as you go through the line then we're going to need you to scooch back up again for a picture and somebody has to get thrown up in the air to the ceiling before you leave oh hold on we've got mom's taking pictures too congratulations state champions [Applause] so continuing on this evening in the world of spirit line we'd like to recognize and say congratulations to the willow canyon high school cheer squad who is the 2022 aia state runners-up and
008the 2022 national champion so come on down coach felicia yeager and the team and i apologize for not uh recognizing they are back-to-back national champions [Music] [Applause] one more congratulations wildcats [Applause] and our final athletic recognition of the evening comes from the world of girls basketball and we would like to recognize valley vista high school's girls basketball team come on down coach rachel matakis and her squad have now won three consecutive aia state championships and five out of the last six years so congratulations girls and as coach matejka said to us they are loaded again next year so rydo and i always like to point out to the crowd they look like such nice girls they'll rip your face off on the basketball court if you haven't seen them play it's worth taking the time
009congratulations ladies [Applause] madam president that concludes our athletic recognitions for the evening oh christmas okay definitely a lot of talent in our district next we will move to item c um audience with individuals superintendent governing board updates it's my understanding we don't have a student update tonight so we'll move to superintendent update dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet um last week was the national assistant principals week and would like to recognize all of our assistant principals throughout the district and the extraordinary job that they do it's a labor of love and it makes a big difference on a site when you have effective assistant principles and we have a whole district full of effective assistant principles which means we have a lot of awesome schools coming up
010next week is our dysert heroes event we are going to be hosting it in the vista and the board received some tickets this evening you don't have to have a ticket to get in but it's an honorary ticket so we invite all of our community to attend and recognize our dice heroes employees and volunteers it's an amazing event it's one of the highlights of the year to be able to recognize the individuals in our district who represent many in the extraordinary work that they do also had the opportunity uh recently to talk to the folks from around the country in the world of technology and it was very um nice to be able to be to proudly speak to people from around the country who are dealing with technology issues that we've already dealt with
011who are trying to put into place systems that we already have in place who are trying to solve problems that we have already solved and we can congratulate all of our technology employees and the supports that they provide to the schools and we extend our appreciation to dianna hawari who does an awesome job of leading that department and that concludes my report thank you next we'll move to governing board update i will go ahead and start i i know we already in a previous item talked about the arts festival but um definitely want to thank um danae marinelli and all the staff teachers students everyone who made that possible um it was just amazing especially to think that we took a year off seemed like it was longer than that but to come up two
012years to come up and running like as strong as we did and it just to see the students i mean not only obviously doing the performing um and displaying their art but then also saw a lot of students in the leadership roles the leadership and organizational part of the festival as well which is really nice to see so we're developing our own young leaders and i feel like it's it's not just a school function it's actually a community event it's almost like a staple i believe it's just it's just wonderful and it's amazing that it's it's um as large as it is and just so well run so again thank you so much to nay um it's you're incredible in your leadership and everyone that helped made that possible so thank you it was a
013wonderful day i also on the 30th of march had an opportunity to tour some schools with our ess director and a couple of fellow board members so i won't say too much about it because i'm sure someone might see some extras um but just want to say social thank you to ashton ranch kingswood countryside for allowing us to visit their classrooms and take a sneak peek into their specialized programs i'm definitely impressed about how engaged the students were in their lesson um they were sometimes i've been in classrooms in the past and you know a little stage fright you know and or you'll have to go and ask them what they're doing and and sometimes they're not necessarily able to articulate it again totally understandable they don't know who i am and some weird person
014in their classroom but just so impressed that in these classrooms i was just led by the hand over to and they showed me what they were doing and were totally engaged in conversation they knew their objectives which was which was wonderful and i think all of us did like our heads turned like 360 when one student meant like had a word like he he he used a word that was like literally i learned it in a communications class in college like i was just a floored and it was i can't i wish i could remember what the word was either introspection or some juicy word i don't know but it was just amazing how articulate they were and the depth of knowledge that they're learning um also uh with some of our more severe mentally
015fragile medically fragile students like despite their challenges i was really impressed at how our teachers and staff really included them and had specialized plans that they were still able to get their academics on a level that was meaningful for them everyone being included and then also just my experience in the past with our pbis classrooms they can be challenging at times and i'll have to say that the classroom we visited was probably in the top two best classrooms i've seen in regard to just how well run it was especially during points and when students learned that they have either chosen to earn or not chosen earn their points for the period sometimes that gets a little bit intense and it was just smooth sailing so there's just a lot of good things that are happening
016in our ess classrooms um and i was just very thankful to be invited in the classrooms and for miss montana to take the time out of her day to do that for us so that's my report and definitely look forward to seeing our desert heroes next week anyone else oh i will i'll beat tracy because i always end up following tracy and it looks like i'm stalking tracy but i'm not um i also attended the festival of the arts and i have to say that so many community members came up to me and said they had no idea how talented the students are in the dysart school district and that they saw so many pieces of art that they thought was better than in some of the local galleries so that's saying a lot to
017our teachers out there and so we're going to get them on display in some more places in the community i hope i also attended the mayor's state of the city um that was really interesting there's a lot of growth going on i mean we all live in our little areas that we travel around and i had no idea how big surprise was and is about to become and there is so much happening it was it was pretty amazing um canyon ridge stem festival was a lot of fun and very interesting i also did several cip hearings i'm sorry i couldn't do i haven't been able to do more but they're always interesting and again thank you miss pritchard talked about the tour but thank you to dr montano for the very informative tour of the
018ess specialized program that was that was eye eye-opening so thank you okay tracy uh okay uh my update is uh first off thank you to the assistant principals just like dr keller said for assistant principals week you guys have a hard job i wouldn't want your job but we thank you for doing uh what you do day in and day out and for the past many years i attended a barbecue at kingswood back on march 10th the kiddos enjoyed it they just ran and had a grand old time as they were eating hot dogs and hamburgers and they were just enjoying that day so thank you miss tim brooks also that day i helped out helped hand out the ib t-shirts that was over at willow canyon and so thank you dr schwartz and all
019the counselors and this was to get future students interested in the ib program attended and assisted with the dysarts arts festival miss marinelli you outdid yourself and everybody that helped out with that spent hours upon hours planning and getting everything off the ground so it was a great successful event so thank you to the students and the art instructors you really outdid yourselves i also attended uh the nsba conference in san diego it was an exceptional one and it was well planned especially after being not being able to have an actual conference for the past two years because of the pandemic and i am so glad i went the foundation of the conference is the most important factor we all have students who need our attention and our passion for public education and although we
020have differences across the nation the end goal is still the same that we have the power to make that difference in the students lives and providing them the best educational experience possible just a couple of the sessions that i attended one was really really awesome it was a career development approach to advancing literacy growth and so when i first saw this session i immediately thought of jen grace haber so i can't seem to get jim out of my my brain there but um i think he would have really enjoyed it and it was applying that literacy even to um uh different positions that you want to have our students go into so it was an awesome awesome experience and finally i had shared this with mr hicks just moments ago we had received some devastating
021news in the arizona education world and for those who knew nancy konitzer she was the deputy associate superintendent down at ade this woman knew title one funding like the back of her hand like we could pick up a magazine and we knew what was in it and she recently just passed away very knowledgeable and a champion for public education back when i was director of grants and compliance in another district you could literally rely upon anything that nancy had to say she was highly regarded in arizona and nationally and she even served on the board of directors for title 1 funding in washington d.c you know when you find those types of people and the knowledge that she has she always made you feel as if you knew everything about title one and she could
022she could share any type of experience so it is a loss for the state of arizona and for nationally but i had learned so much from her regarding grant funding and title one and everything so she is one lady that will dare to dearly be missed so thank you that's my report i also attended the dysart festival of the arts it was a lot of fun just the amount of people there there was so much energy on the campus and that was awesome there was great attendance and i just truly loved all of the performance that i was able to attend i also attended the ess specialized tour with dr montano and it was really just nice to see our incredible staff working so hard and creatively to meet the uniquely abled students needs next
023i attended the freedom traditional open house briefly uh just the beginning piece of that but it was so well organized a lot of interested parents and learning about freedom that was nice i also attended the state of the city at city hall there was an amazing presentation by our mayor and council highlighting as joe said the enormous growth and exciting upcoming city projects i also attended the el mirage spring fair and it was just nice to see uh meet all the families that we represent there i also volunteered each weekend for the spring training games with many dedicated parents and extraordinary dysart teachers at the surprise stadium and just want to note that while my work is in supporting the marching band boosters there are so many opportunities with the stadium that and they generously
024support dysart arts sports boosters and even pta funding a lot of opportunities there that's all i have to report thank you all right i'll go last um i would just like to congratulate miss marinelli on her hard work for a successful festival of the arts and all of the art teachers including you know visual arts performing arts every single one not all of those teachers get paid for their extra work teachers are those teachers show up on a saturday without getting paid because they're fallen told by some most of them just volunteer because they love what they do and i just want to point out that we have some really dedicated teachers who care about the arts who care about their students care about the community and their leadership reflects that so ms marinelli and
025all of our arts teachers good job well done thank you next we'll move uh to item e motion to approve consent agenda items anyone want to make a motion i move the governing board approve consent agenda items as presented second motion made by tracy search sink bill seconded by joe grant motion carries next we move to information discussion item g1 school reports el mirage elementary and shadow ridge high school dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet um dr pulling will introduce this item yes thank you madam president members of the board cabinet and community members it's my pleasure to introduce stephanie davis principal at el mirage for her school report tonight good evening madam president members of the governing board dr kellis members of cabinet and community as
026dr polling said i am stephanie davis i am the principal of el mirage and i have been there completion at the end of this year five years i do want to recognize i've got a cheering crew here el mirage teaching and learning specialist connie ferguson a parapro the best recruiter you could ask for um mina munoz our assistant principal rick haney and current and former students my kids who are here as well um i do want to recognize assistant principal as well that assistant principal week i could not ask for a better assistant principal so i could not be the leader i am without all these people standing behind me okay so i've got the clicker here so we are the largest k4 in the district we have almost 800 students from pre-k to 4th
027grade our signature program is the health and wellness academy and this was developed by a group of stakeholders that included students parents classified and certified staff they wrote the vision which is to empower our staff students and community to build strong healthy minds and bodies also i do want to note i'm from detroit and i've been a tigers fan since birth so this was pretty appropriate every school has opportunities for growth and these are a few of ours we focused on our ela and math growth and proficiency in k through three three out of four grade levels grew and the other maintained proficiency in our reading rates from beginning of year to middle of the year on the dibble's reading test in fourth grade we departmentalized we knew with the k4 switch that our third
028and fourth grade are the grades that will give us our report card grade so we spent a lot of time looking at how we could best do that fourth grade included departmentalizing so our teachers could focus on their content and their specialized area that they would be experts in walk through feedback is something i'm personally and professionally proud of between mr haney and i we have done more than 800 documented walkthroughs of classrooms provided feedback to teachers of celebrations and of course areas of growth like we all have on our west ad walk throughs with tammy hall we have included teachers on those walkthroughs so they can see their other colleagues in action pbis is another opportunity that we had in merging dysart elementary and el mirage we needed to make sure our expectations were
029consistent and in doing that we had decreased our behavior referrals as well our report card grade in the last five years we have maintained a b status we continue that but are striving for an a and would like to apply for a plus status next year we feel our school is strong and that is an area of growth for us for next year as well an opportunity we in our action plan focused on increasing community partnerships we have strong relationships with our el mirage city council mayor alexis ermoscio the el mirage fire and police department and the el mirage library i do want to include that a big portion of our outreach is our social worker who has herself delivered more than 350 bags of groceries to our families most indeed like i said i
030can't do this without my whole team here so they're the ones that help make us successful all of those opportunities you could see celebrations but here's some more things we are proud of for our summer learning program we have more than 170 students enrolled who will be attending all day in the morning academics and in the afternoon enrichment with stem physical activity and other enriching areas we successfully transformed from a k-8 to a k-4 we are very proud of everything that we have accomplished it's not easy to merge two schools and we feel like it has gone very well our third grade benchmarks are another area of pride we were sixth in the district for math benchmark three and on pace for a 14 growth on aasa from azmerit last year to this year we
031were eighth in the district for third grade for ela benchmark three and on pace for a 27 growth from azmerit to aasa this year for family engagement i cannot believe the number of families that have come out to our events this year we have completely broken all records with our costume ball literacy night spring dance and our kinder roundup was 40 families that showed up which is five times the amount we've had in the past keeping with the support of our families our dysart community coalition is the parent organization and we had our most successful fundraisers ever our bookathon raised more than 21 000 in two weeks time i accidentally posted the link early and we had five thousand dollars in the first weekend so it was pretty incredible our book fair raised almost eight
032thousand dollars which is more than four times what we had made in previous years all of these funds go directly back to our students for field trips and assemblies 21st century we have a grant from the state we have about 150 students that attend our 12 classes and our before and after school sports are very successful one last point of pride our celebration our maricopa county superintendent steve watson visited the school read to our second grade and highlighted them on his social media so it was pretty neat to see that well i've given you a lot of areas of celebration but we have more work to do and some of these areas are continued growth for next year continuing to increase our proficiency and especially our growth for all students increasing our student voice we
033have espn which is our el mirage student broadcasting network and if you have never seen it go to our webpage and take a look because you will not believe that these are third and fourth graders producing high-end announcements as well as our student council that is deep into their fundraiser as well we'd like to maintain and strengthen our community partners such as the ymca and ottawa university who has now adopted one of our hallways our family involvement will continue we'd like to we've been focusing on events but next year we'd like to recruit more volunteers and put an emphasis on an emphasis on the tax credit donations those go to our arts our pe and we would love to raise more donations from the community that way and of course arts and athletics we have
034the art and choir club already our choir performed at the dysart festival of the arts and our art teacher actually gets to display the art at the el mirage public library so that's pretty neat so in conclusion i would like to thank so many people that have been very supportive of our arts academics and athletics to name a few dana who has been at our school multiple times amy providing us with so much data to help our teachers move forward danae helping us enrich our arts i couldn't ask for more adriel dr polling all of them have been there so many times so thank you so much thank you i could go on forever i know i can tell that's a good thing though i'm sitting here listening to you smiling and um you make
035me smile i mean your energy is just so positive and i'm thinking i'm you know this is the first time i we've i've spoken with you and um this is the impact that you have you're excited about what you do and i think that's contagious um it causes people around you to be excited and then in particular your students and your families based on what you've said it sounds like you have a lot of exciting things happening at your school that's building good community and a good sense of belonging for your students and families and i'm excited for you speaking of your growth definitely on the right track and sounds like you have a lot of good plans and supports in place to continue on that path so it was great listening to you talk
036about your school and all the pride that came through in your voice so thank you very much for sharing all that thank you i'm glad that pride came through because that is every single day tiger pride can tell thank you anyone else just one quick thing um i know part of your celebrations was uh the partnership with the arizona cardinals oh yes and uh you didn't get really into that but that's okay i was told to keep it you know not not 20 minutes so okay you go ahead tell everybody about that um our partnership with the arizona cardinals has been pretty great we have they have been to our school four times this year as the health and wellness academy it just fits um and just to give you a little bit of background
037the health and wellness academy we felt was really important because our needs need our students need to be physically active and moving so they came out for play 60 which our second graders got to participate in and ryan mcginley took some incredible photos so you can go to our website and see those students got to run obstacles and drills we did cookies and milk thank you joe and tracy were able to come out to that so i appreciate that where they the cheerleaders and former super bowl champ mark maddox with the new york giants but also a former cardinal came out and mark maddox was so excited by our students how respectful and excited they were about reading that he has come out twice and would like to come out again next year multiple times
038for donations awesome yeah i know you you have such great um uh city support yeah with the residents and everything so i just wanted to make sure that you had the chance to tell people about that because i know you were excited about it that day yes and i will tell you that one of mr haney's biggest like assets to the school is building those relationships he's really good at that he's got some charisma so if you have anything exciting reach out to him because he'll make it come true yes wonderful thank you anybody else thank you very much thank you thank you stephanie next we would like to ask dr dean to introduce our next goal madam president members of the governing board dr killus and members of cabinet this evening for the last
039time we present to you mr michael hawkins principal at shadowridge to provide a brief cip presentation for shadow ridge high school have a great evening we are all reminded of mr hawkins first graduation at shadow ridge which went two hours long and we would like to remind mr hawkins that we have more things on the agenda this evening than the shadow ridge cip take it away all right well the first thing i have to say is a great day to be a stallion [Music] thank you so much madam president governor board dr kellis and district administration um my name is mike hawkins principal at shadow ridge proud principal of shadow ridge high school and and i'm honored to be here this evening to be able to speak to you about our school and give you
040a little insight as far as where we're at and where we're hoping to arrive at so if you didn't know i have this knowledge already inside so i was able to have to go through on wikipedia or anything to find this but um we were established in 2009 our first graduating class that mr dean or dr dean so eloquently spoke about class about 2012 was our first graduating class current enrollment right now 2236. our first year we probably had about 550 students on our campus so huge numbers there um you can see our school colors mascots the stallions and our signature program is engineering so opportunities um i think you would be able to go to any high school um but especially now and look at the challenges that there lies with attendance and tardies
041um it has been one of those things that we continue to brainstorm about with our staff along with our students i truly believe that the attendance piece is so important when you look at that being the first step as far as with lifelong success and we're constantly working on that so that's a work in progress another thing you would not think that um it would be a challenge but it's a again opportunity for us to ensure that our plcs are working um constantly striving as far as i'm having those teachers work with each other on an everyday basis also with that it's being able to help and support our students our students have lots of needs when you look at what dr kellis has laid out for us with the three a's we constantly strive
042to be perfect in those areas and and to get better and then last but not least if you hurt haven't heard of rti which is response to intervention it is so important that that is taking place within the classroom i know a lot of times our teachers are working very hard out there as far as delivering instruction for the students but when you ask them to maybe come in let's say for after school tutoring or whatever once you have them as an audience within your classroom it's hard to get those students back and so we're really working with our teachers um to be able to further develop them with response to intervention within the classroom so tier one tier two tier three instruction celebrations um you know again i i'm gonna point out my assistant
043principles um after the ceremony i mean after after i speak after the ceremony uh after i speak but i really am proud of our dual enrollment numbers um we we have the most students that are enrolled in dual enrollment in the district but we also rival some of those other high schools in the west valley as far as our students and their um want wanting to take those classes and i truly believe when you start to look at what shadow ridge is all about um when we talk about home high expectations opportunities meaningful relationships and empowerment dual enrollment opens doors it's opportunities for everyone within our community um especially when you look at the high cost of college and university it helps really um decrease those costs and what parents have to pay significantly so
044that is a huge uh piece right there as far as with our our um students really being able to have that opportunity also um positive schools culture we always talk about stallion strong when there's a va when there's adversity we come together as a community to be stallion strong this year when we started to look at our students and some of the struggles that they had um again just being there you just try to think creatively what other opportunities can we provide for students to be able to be successful in their classes and so one of the things we we started this year was saturday academy um there were pictures that were taken we had our entire um commons um filled with students we had teachers that were there helping and really being able to
045get them on the right path again we're in an another we're in the technology age and so we need to make sure that we provide that access we're a community school so we need to be able to make sure that we provide all opportunities and access for our community you just met the young ladies tonight or the the students that were here as far as our chair state champions um we're so honored that's our first team championship um so hopefully um when um they come up next year back to back it'd be nice to buy those shirts for back-to-back champions with that and then um probably the programs that i am most um proud of has to be our cte computers and what our students are doing on the cte end mr greensaber has been
046a big support um and we really i appreciate him being a cheerleader for our teachers to again provide other opportunities for our students so focus for the year this is just information straight from our cip our first goal was to make sure that there's instruction that meets the needs of every student every single student in the school goal number two increase student achievement goal number three excellent customer service and last but not least goal number four implement stride advisory period um i would tell you when we start to look at our advisory period it was one of those things that we wanted to set the foundation because it has an opportunity to really be much more especially when we start to talk about remediation and intervention and i know speaking to our administrators our feature
047admin our future principal that's going to be there he's a believer in the advisory period and really making it work as far as providing that as an intervention for our students out there and before i finish up i just want i work with the best team um and i'm sure any principal that would come up would say the same thing but i truly feel i have the the best and so um my assistant principals um mr greenway um mr centeno miss logan and mr couple who's not here he's supporting his family they are truly the best and then i look at our tls april is just truly involved she just um breathes stallion pride every day and then um shantae wood sweeney who's our es ell special ess specialist sorry ess specialist i'm helping out
048so i'm blessed and proud to be able to be a part of this group and um shadow ridge is going to continue to soar even higher after i leave so i'm proud to be able to serve the district and have this opportunity with shadow ridge so thank you so much questions comments wow i i was sitting here listening to you and it's like you i was here when you came on came into dysart and and and now you're leaving us so but we're not old we don't age i think time just stood still and you did all these great things and here we are um it's really hard i mean you say questions i mean shadow ridge has always set the bar high and and been a standard um for us and i started academically
049the the home i've always loved home and that whole culture you've built there so you've done a lot of great things a lot of things work for your your culture your school your staff and i don't know it's going to be i don't think there's going to be a dry eye at graduation especially the last time you say it's a great day to be a stallion i mean it's just um appreciate all that you've contributed to our district and i'm not going to make this a goodbye thing right now um so as far as the cip i mean but truly i you guys have found found the secret you guys are doing a lot of good things and i'd say continue on that path and we're thankful for all that you've done there i appreciate
050those congress thank you so much madam president i'm not gonna cry please i'm not gonna cry um mr hawkins you and your team have done so much for shadow ridge and for the students and the teachers that have come into the school and i know one of the things that is your number two goal is to increase student achievement and you and your staff have done that and i know the students are reaping the rewards from everything that you guys have done we can't tear up the retirement papers dr croto can we we can okay no it's not going to work it's not going to work no um it's a great day to be a stallion every day every day every single day and just like i said i'm going to finish up um just
051saying every single day that i know with our team i still have time right i know every single day um i can truly save with myself and with my team we are the we carry the torch um i had dr waltman dr dean will know who that person is where he spoke about us especially administrators being those servant leaders but also along with that we carry that torch and the last two years have not been easy they have been very hard but i knew that i had people alongside me behind me all the way around and i couldn't have done what i was able to do we couldn't have moved our school and and really um serve our community without these individuals behind me so i'm thankful blessed and um again it's just it's been
052a great ride and um yeah always a great day to be a stallion thank you so much thank you [Applause] all right next we move to information information item g2 school monitoring of adopted policies section 11 school community relations dr kalis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet dr croto will introduce this item thank you dr kellis madam president members of the board superintendent kellis cabinet guest tonight we continue with our monitoring of board policy and we bring before you policy or sorry policy section 11 0.1 through 11.21 so um we stand for any questions we do not recommend any changes at this time but we will be glad actually dr dean will be glad to answer any questions on section 11. have any questions comments i do i have
053a question um so in policy 11.10 um it discusses that we will not con the board will not consider or act on anonymous complaints or complaints that have been not been explored at the appropriate administrative level so sometimes when we bring forth complaints to some administrators and they're not anonymous to us but they're anonymous to administrators so do we have a policy saying administration will not deal with anonymous complaints madam president miss chaffin the intent here is perhaps not described in the language here i think the intent is that if there are anonymous complaints that we don't act on those but that we truly have a desire to resolve any complaints and in order to do that in the most effective manner we need to know where the source of the complaint is and if
054the complaint is brought at the board level and the board has all the information but administration doesn't the administration is at the disadvantage of being able to resolve the complaint satisfactorily without that information so while you your question is i don't believe that there's a policy that differentiates the board from administration on the anonymity of complaints i would hope that the board would allow administration that information that answers my question okay um just to clarify though i mean there'd be some instances where let's say maybe it's an anonymous complaint or concern um but if we forward it to you if it's a to a level of concern you would still follow up if there was a concern regarding obviously safety or possible you know harm to anyone or anything egregious at all that would whether
055or not there's a name attached to it or not if administration is able to make a phone call visit a school just to ensure like i said either the safety of a staff or a child we would do that without that goes without saying madam president yes and just to exemplify your your comment there we have in place opportunities for what used to be called silent witness but if there are students or employees or community members who know of threats against student staff or a school that they can report those some of the high schools specifically have an app where a student can just text a potential threat to to the administration um so yes when those are situations are present we will take those seriously we take all threats seriously well what about not
056just threats but what if somebody says hey so we've got a situation where somebody called dcs and so dcs is going into investigate but dcs is saying that our staff is calling parents and letting them know that there's an investigation going on but that particular dcs worker that caseworker doesn't feel comfortable addressing it themselves if we were to bring that forward would it be within policy scope like wouldn't it be prudent to at least just look into it and say um i understand this is an anonymous complaint but it might there it might have merit it might not but it's a safety issue so maybe we should look into it just for a few minutes mata president chaffin um hypothetically if there was such a situation with a dcs co employee who had a complaint
057there are processes where dcs has in place for those kinds of conversations to be directed through appropriate channels to the school district and we have and will contact the appropriate administrative level if there are concerns to the level that it needs to be brought to a governing board member obviously that's very serious if dcs administration has no knowledge of that that's concerned to both dcs and the dysart school district that there is somebody who has information that's not willing to identify themselves to be able to allow us to have communication with that person and get the details necessary or that the dcs leadership would be able to appropriately follow their protocols when they have concerns or an employee of theirs has concerns are you is there something about the policy that you want to change
058i mean do you have a um no i don't know that i want to change i don't know that i want to change a policy i just wanted to ask for clarification because it says the board will not act on anonymous complaints but if we forward complaints and i understand that you want to know more details whoever it is whether it's cabinet or superintendent technically they're not anonymous to the board but they're anonymous to the administration i just wanted to clarify because sometimes we're told that hey somebody has reached out to this concern um you know and sometimes they haven't gone through the proper channels sometimes they have and so when i or anybody forwards a complaint it might be anonymous to cabinet but it's not anonymous to the board so i was just kind
059of clarifying i would say if the person's identified their name they're not anonymous so then that then forwarding it would not be in my opinion the way i would interpret it is it's not it's not an anonymous complaint because the person has identified themselves with whatever whoever board member that they forwarded it to right madam president if you're suggesting that if a person identifies themselves to the board member but the board member withholds that person's identity to administration it goes back to my first statement that that puts administration at a severe disadvantage to be able to appropriately address the concern okay so do you want to i guess i would just i would just ask us what we can do to make our employees feel more confident in identifying themselves to administration that they don't
060feel retaliated against because there are employees that have reached out to me and in the past couple of months i have referred them to dr croto and you know cc'd dr code on an email and saying i've been 100 guaranteed that there will be no retaliation on this and you know it's just trust is earned so i guess maybe for a later conversation what can we do to make sure our employees know that if they do have a valid complaint or a grievance that just bringing it forward they will be protected because most of them feel like they're going to get retaliated against and if there really is an issue then i feel like we need to take care of that because we don't want our teachers showing up every day just dreading making themselves
061sick with anxiety for um situation a or situation b we don't want our teachers showing up to work being completely miserable but yet afraid to say anything so maybe for a future conversation we can kind of think about those things sorry i don't mean to ignore you okay okay that's it for that okay thank you any other comments all right and i sorry i got one i think dr kells had something but um i just want to point out 11.11 eleven and eleven point eleven two um there is what uh it says i'm not sure if it's eleven eleven or eleven two but it quotes it says citizens request for reconsideration of instructional material so we have it into policy that if a parent it's on 11.12 if a parent comes across some materials that
062they deem object objectionable or questionable we have a policy to where they can fill this form out correct madam president chaplin if you refer to 11.12 there are procedures and yes there is a form that would be available for parents okay i just kind of wanted to highlight that because that might alleviate some some of the middle people that way if parents are aware of that whenever things do come then they can submit that and they've got an avenue can you clarify what the difference is between submitting the form about questionable you know material versus opting out or is that one and are we talking one and the same here madam president miss densmore any parent anytime can have access to the materials that are being taught in a classroom it's made available in multiple
063mediums if a parent has objection to what is planned to be taught or what is being taught then the parent can directly talk to that teacher and opt out of of that lesson and be provided with an alternative assignment or an alternative unit or to be excused from the class and be provided with an alternative place to to go during that particular lesson this form formalizes it and provides an opportunity for the parent to get into more specifics the assistance with the form it obviously would go to more more ears right okay and so that would allow more eyes on the problem and but at any time any parent can talk to the teacher about an objection interested thank you okay that's all i just wanted to highlight those things thank you all right then
064we'll move to g3 edition of policy 7.69 phased return retirement dr kalis thank you madam president members of the board of members of cabinet dr curtis will introduce this item thank you dr kellis uh madam president members of the board superintendent kellis cabinet and guests uh tonight we bring to you a policy on phase retirement under the discussion that was had in the february governing board meeting about phase retirement so tonight we present to you the brand new policy 7.69 along with a copy of the procedures that go with that 7.69 p1 and the phase retirement request form uh which is a form which will all be attached that anybody going on phase retirement would need to complete in order to do that i will mention too as we discussed we have eight individuals currently
065that are on phase retirement and and are coming back off phase retirement it is um the suggestion by our attorney that we continue uh with those eight under the rules that they came in under and the form and anybody moving forward tonight or when we finalize this this is the first read tonight but we can certainly move from tonight we have people waiting waiting right now we've told them to wait until we're done with this before the process starts so we're not accepting anymore right now but there are some out there that are ready to go so with that i want to bring that up and then any discussions you had about the new policy this has run by our legal team and they have approved it to bring to you tonight as a first
066read thank you very much for all your work on this i really appreciate it i know you put a lot of time into it um so just to clarify what you just said there's eight individuals who are already on page retirement this would not impact obviously right that is correct yeah okay i think they would be grandfathered in a sense in a sense correct because they went in under the old one they're coming back in the next few months makes sense okay any questions from the board thanks again for all your work appreciate it next we move to information discussion item four information on 2021 2022 academic data dr kellis thank you madam president thank you madam president members of the board of members of cabinet our research team has been very busy over the
067last several months collecting data on the student achievement specifically with our benchmark assessments and with dibbles and amy harchen director of research will present this information to the board good evening let's see oh good it works good evening madam president president sorry members of the board dr kellis and cabinet i'm here to share um dibbles and benchmark data from this year and kind of give you um our schools are kind of right in the middle of testing right now so this kind of gives you a summary of what was accomplished this year and hopefully um kind of gives us a good picture of where we will um kind of land for state testing um for this next year so i'm going to start with dibbles which is um of course our k-3 um reading indicators
068um for the um past couple of years you can see there are bands um 1920 of course was the year that we were here three quarters of the year and then left and went to covid last year um the students were online at the start and then of course this year we were able to um start and um so far this year hopefully and um have a full academic year in person so you can see that our um kindergarteners their grade level measure is first sound fluency so their ability to recognize those first letter sounds um they started the year below where they did both in 1920 and 2021 but they have recovered very well they're actually at a higher rate um middle of year which is december they don't actually start their end of
069year testing until may so we don't have that data for you right now but you can see their middle middle of the year scores are actually um above pre-coded levels first second and third grade are obviously great areas of concern because those are students who either didn't get preschool didn't get a full year of kinder didn't get a full year of first grade so you can see those students are above where they were in first grade they're above where they were at the start of last year um but they have not quite recovered all the way to the level of where they were um pre pandemic um second grade are is oral reading fluency for both second and third grade and so that is their ability to read a passage and retell you information about
070that passage second grade is where that really starts to come together for the students it's really the first time they they fully embrace the all putting all together their foundational reading skills this year their start and middle of the year scores are the same um above where they were last year in both beginning and middle of the year but there hasn't been any progress um over the course of the year so hopefully our end of the year scores will be higher and we'll see progress there um the last one is third grade and of course um they are we're middle of the year where they were beginning of the year um but they did at least see some good growth between the start of the year and um the middle of the year so like
071i said they will do their um end of the year test in may so benchmarking um i'm going to give some context before we start this as we know we reconfigured schools this year so you're going to see the way i've presented benchmark is in the bands of the schools because that impacted how growth was measured by the different schools because of what grade levels test on those schools for each of the benchmark results we're going to see for reading and math there's really three measures of comparison there is last year's azm 2 scores so we can compare benchmark 3 to azm 2 last year because benchmark 3 is normally our predictor for azm2 there is benchmark 1 to benchmark three comparison and then that last column is growth and i'm going to explain because
072you look at it and you go 25 to 36 isn't 47. the last column is all about the kids scale score it's each individual students scale score growth from benchmark one to benchmark two or benchmark three um for elementary school and it has to do with um the psychometrics of when we have 30 items they're weighted and you get this large scale score number so the scale score actually moves over the course of the year so for example fourth grade reading this year um the scale score for benchmark one to be proficient was 9.35 they've learned new information so the benchmark the scale score for benchmark three was 959 so for fourth grade the growth score the expected growth was 24 points regardless of where you were that was i just gave you the indicator
073for proficiency so that's why these are each in different places because for k4 the reading growth was 36 but in our middle schools it was only 21. so i couldn't put them together because then the growth scores would look weird um for you so you'll see the on regular k8s on the next slide but you can see as our k-4s are um just only test for third and fourth grade they had great growth all of them exceeded the um reading growth score was el mirage was at 35 five so rounds to 36 all of them had growth between benchmark one and benchmark three and all of them are at or above where they were on azm2 last year so our k our k4s are doing a really great job in reading um we're seeing good
074growth and um the nice thing about the growth factor is it tells us although um for example countryside went from 25 of their students being proficient to 36. um where the growth helps us see the kids who are moving out of minimally proficient so maybe i'm still minimally proficient or i move from minimally to partially so i'm not showing as a proficient on the college two and three i'm not showing as a proficiency student but i've made great growth because they had 47 points of growth they're moving kids so that and that's what we want we want students to make growth from the beginning of the year to the end so that yes so i can understand a little better while you're explaining rather than absolutely so um so thank you for explaining how growth
075is is calculated but in general are you able to give us any idea of how much growth is expected or typical or comparative to maybe like state or how the test is designed where you would expect to see this much growth so we even know like even though all growth is great right um but are we accelerating and as at the speed that we should be correct so if you up on the top where it says reading growth k4 36 points 36 points is what the average for our k-4s should have been from benchmark one to benchmark um three and you can see the average growth at countryside was 47 so they exceeded that 36 points they had more growth than was was expected um el mirage was right at that 36. rancho gabriella was
076at 45 so well above that 36 and then western peaks also was at 44 well above that 36. and is this uh who do who determines that as far as ati galileo okay and it's based on how many instructional days we have from benchmark one to benchmark three um there's a formula they use and so we do the same thing from benchmark one to two i didn't include benchmark two because it was optional for all of our middle grades because of the new um they're doing final exams now so a lot of schools opted out so their data looks very different it wasn't consistent data to share with you okay thank you for explaining that yep um so you can see in the middle schools their growth is at 21. the average obviously third and
077fourth grade lots of more new learning by the time we get to middle school standards in reading they spiral a little bit more so the growth score actually drops as you get increasing grades um the higher the grade level the lower the expected growth is from one benchmark to the next um so the middle school one was 21. um they were all except for sonoran heights very close to that or above it um sonoran heights you can see from benchmark one to benchmark um three went backwards a little bit in their proficiency um and didn't have the growth that the other scores did everybody else was at or um very close to their proficiency from the other benchmarks all right and then our k eights so sorry i couldn't fit this all on one page
078for you but on the k8 so that would have been third fourth fifth sixth seventh and eighth grade testing their average growth score was 26 and um seven of the twelve schools met their growth um three more of them were within two points and then seven of them had benchmark scores that were higher than um their benchmark three proficiency was higher than benchmark one and many of the schools had really focused when they did goals this year on moving kids out of minimally proficient so that was one of the things we looked at is did we move kids out of that minimally proficient category to partially or proficient so um there was great growth from several schools and you've heard some of that during their presentations this year so for math um going back to
079our k4 middle school structures you can see the growth for math was 67 for the k-4s and everybody exceeded that some significantly exceeded that and all of them had significant um growth from benchmark one to benchmark three um and then for the middle schools the growth expectation was 45. um everybody had growth not everybody met that growth expectation but all of them had benchmark three scores higher than benchmark one and like i said everybody had growth um it just didn't quite meet that growth expectation and then for our k-8s um everybody all schools in all of the k-8 structure schools had growth from benchmark one to benchmark three um their scores were higher and um eight of the 12 schools met that growth expectation so you can see the growth expectation was 52 there were
080a couple that were really close to meeting that and then um some that were just a little bit below that um but they also um many of the schools when you look are much higher than last year's a.z merit scores as well so there was some good benchmark scores related to that when you compare those as well before we move to the high schools and and without speaking of any in particular necessarily but when you look at some of the scores some are some you'd expect some you wouldn't expect when they're when we're looking at some scores that maybe didn't meet the growth um are you finding that there was any like prevailing reason like a like a theme as to why some of this so some of them had to do with um there
081were a couple grade levels where um not to mention schools but like where the entire grade level was either long-term subs or teachers left during the year teachers were sick during the year so we had pockets of that in the district um you heard stephanie talk about that she realized fourth grade's really important in the k-8s or i mean in the k-4 structure so she changed her she said wait this isn't this isn't what's best for kids i'm going to departmentalize so some of them um are making changes and reflecting on that data to see like what do i do i have the right teacher teaching the right thing um to students and being able to use that data um but yes so there's sometimes it's there's campuses who had to pull interventionists out and
082put them in classrooms because of shortage so then kids aren't getting tier two and tier three instruction because it's better to have somebody doing tier one instruction than it is to have somebody you know a sub do tier one and have an interventionist for tier two or tier three so i'm sure every one of them could tell you the reasons why they maybe didn't get the growth that they were looking for but those are ones when i was out on campuses meeting with people um big grade levels of absences or teachers that were not um there the entire year um it makes a big difference okay thank you all right moving to high school benchmarks and of course the high school's only benchmarked twice um because of final exams so um theirs are listed as
083benchmark one and two instead of one and three um the growth for um ela so you have all five of our schools listed ela one two is ten we had really great ela one two benchmark scores this year um everybody had growth there was significant growth in all but one campus and then when you look at three four the negatives mean that they didn't meet that expectation they were actually less they were below or a negative growth score they all had increases in their test scores but they did not get the growth that was expected um when doctor and i acai and i talked one of our hunches about what happened is that english 3 4 is no longer the tested grade 9 and 11 are the tested grades so there might be some of
084that lack of motivation that this has always been a predictor for us and how kids are going to do on testing and we use that to help teachers plan and intervene and so the students may not have had the motivation that they normally have for the um test that they've had in the past but like i said everybody had growth they just didn't they increased their proficiencies but we didn't have growth that we were expecting and then when we look at math um there's a couple things i want to point out with math um in two of our campuses and i've marked them with asterisks for you because we test now in ninth and eleventh grade shadow ridge and willow canyon gave their geometry soft their freshman who are taking geometry the algebra 1 benchmark
085because that's more of what's tested on aspire than geometry so they had their kids take the 9th grade benchmark even though they're in geometry because they wanted to know how to intervene to have them be successful for aspire so their scores look a little bit different because all of their kids who are actually taking geometry are in the algebra benchmark scores so that just gives you that background um and we the geometry we're not i won't say we're not happy with ati but the benchmark that was given to us by ati both benchmark one and um the second benchmark covered lots of standards we had not yet taught even though we had we gave it in february and there was still i think um 25 percent of the test was standard so we still hadn't
086taught um in benchmark one the first 12 questions were all standards kids hadn't taught and what do kids do when i get 12 questions in a row that i don't know the answer to i shut down um so benchmark is concerning we have met with all of the um schools we we recognize you can see they all got growth they weren't um the growth scores that we were anticipating um dysart did exceed um the growth for the geometry benchmark but um with us moving to a new assessment platform and moving to a new math adoption we will be working with new companies to prepare students for the benchmarks and we're actually um with us moving to act for ninth and eleven we'll be using a pre-act test for that's part of our new assessment that
087you guys talked about at the last board meeting so the ninth and tenth graders will actually take pre-act benchmark style tests instead of content area benchmarks so that we can truly identify standards across the board that they need of course when you see dysart high school geometry they need like a pizza party or something i mean that's like incredible not only are they um just i mean their proficiency going up but then those growth points they exceeded oh okay i was looking at 26. still they still exceeded 34 points they got 35. but is there a way that and i'm sure you do this but i mean definitely this shows an opportunity that um you know what how can we how can our dysart people our dysert high school people help their friends over at
088some of the other schools because they've obviously tapped into the secret they've got something good going over there that was one of the things that um because dr couldn't be here tonight she kind of gave me some of her notes from things that when we've met with campuses but when you look at dysart high school a practice that miss rush has continued is we regularly meet with plcs on a weekly basis to talk data and they are the one school that all four areas algebra only missed it by two points or four points sorry and so i think that's a practice that we can see and um the other campuses have really started doing that this year it's a really important practice because they're they're important conversations that are had on a regular basis and
089not just when we get data at the end of a benchmark there are conversations you have ongoing so that the benchmark isn't a surprise because you're doing it after every unit test so those are really strong practices that um miss rush has continued um to do with her teachers this year maybe that needs to be an expectation i mean that's that's that's just too good of information to not be doing if we know that that's successful for students we should we should be doing like i said we've seen it lots um dr sai and i went to shadow ridge did it with their teachers on a regular basis this year um and um miss karenitz we attended one with her as well so it is definitely a practice that um at least the high school
090level has consistently been adding and the elementaries um the data specialist and tls do it um much more frequently than the high schools had in the past so thank you all right the last one oh there we go um is act so this year we have two programs that we're piloting and doing a program evaluation on um shadow ridge uses methodized test prep as their act practice one and um the other schools use chalk talk willow canyon actually has one content area using method and one doing um chalk talk both of them allow the kids to have two full-length practice tests which we did in august and then we did in february and the um with that is activities and lessons that the kids can do out throughout the year to prep um so these
091are the pre and post tests for each of the schools um that are that like i said they took in august and then again in um february and you can see everybody grew shadows stayed pretty um stagnant or consistent but again they used a different program than the other schools did so we'll be meeting with both companies um just to kind of talk about their predictors and their analytics um when in the next couple weeks so that we can kind of see what there's come how there's come back and then how they compare to our actual estate test when they come back and look at um which one really best serves our just our district and our students ms hart who did you say the other one was you said chalk talk and chuck talk
092and methodize nice okay okay thank you and then with that i will answer any additional questions so how indicative are these scores of the tests that they will take next year as far as because ninth grade's doing aspire right ninth grade just took a spire last week and the juniors took the act um yesterday and then so sophomores and seniors they still take benchmarks right but they're but they don't take more stick those shots take the benchmarks okay and then i guess we'll we'll get that data this summer is that correct yes so um we will yes we don't get so act this i don't know what the how they're going to do it the the response from the state says prior to june 23rd we don't have an exact um release date but it
093won't be no later than june 23rd that we get act back um that's the last one that we get back the others come in um may and early june you uh-huh sorry anyone else i do appreciate the format it's very easy to understand okay so thank you for doing that all right next we'll move to information discussion item 5 review of the little book of restorative justice and education dr kallis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet just for historical um reference several meetings ago this item was this book was on a voucher list and was a point of governing board discussion how the governing board approved the voucher with the exception of this purchase with this book so the book was essentially not approved for distribution in the district
094the governing board requested copies of it i believe each member of the board received a copy of it and at the request of a board member this item was added to the agenda so i will refer it back to the board for conversation thank you i'll start did anybody else get a chance to look at it i'm not okay so i don't know if you guys found what i found but i found troubling information on pretty much every single page um you know i i think the most concerning is it does contain a lot of elements from the crt on page 30 it's talking about privilege and the last paragraph and how certain students are more prone to discipline because of other people's privilege um page 34 it talks about wants to please me i'm
095sorry when you talk about paige could you tell us which because we have two books oh the little restorative and little book of restorative and just not the teaching tools okay yeah not the teaching tools you said page 30 page 30. the last paragraph it talks about privilege and how certain students are in trouble because of other people's privilege on page 34 it talks about a fix judging measuring a student's ability to read is not it wants to fix the judging system um instead of focusing on their ability to read their talk they want to focus on just the teaching capacity and the well-being which yeah that's important but we need our students to be able to read it's definitely a shift from individual behavior to group to everybody else's fault and page 46 it
096or page 45 it talks about the outcome of justice is related to the wholeness and healing rather than right and wrong um basically that's saying okay no more right and wrong we just want to talk about the wholeness of the child and then page 46 it talks about overcoming oppression justice creates a world where there is no need to fear one another um you know sometimes fear is a good thing i feared my dad's belt when i was out of line and i was not abused in any way shape or form but i feared a detention when i was a kid i didn't want to stay after school that kind of helped me you know um let's see page 47 it talks about oppressed minorities um let's see i've got all sorts of pages we
097could be here all night if we wanted to but um i'll just kind of highlight the last last little bit page 67 it suggests getting rid of behavior management i'm sorry what did you say page 67 right suggests get rid of behavior management page 69 individualism and narcissism can undermine meaningful relationships individualism doesn't really undermine meaningful relationships page 85 offenders are the ones who have experienced injustice that's the big one for me so basically if the student's acting out that student is a victim of injustice so those are some of the things that i found um i know for a fact that i've talked page 75 talking circles privilege climate change um i know parents in other districts who've had their children engaged in a talking circle and basically a talking circle is where everybody
098gets in a circle from what i understand and then they kind of air grievances toward one another and oh lil susie did this and then another student says little johnny did that then another since well this little kid you know had a bunch of people complaining about this little kid and so it ended up the talking circle ended up doing more harm than good so those are some of the things that i've found and i just want to say that when i pull these things yeah sometimes there is a reason for this and for us just to approve and rubber stamp everything i don't think that's always right so these are some of my findings i don't know if anybody found anything else i just have one question though before we go much further why
099are we talking about this this book wait this book was pulled it was a voucher book or on the voucher list it was pulled there's no books being distributed it was made very clear to cabinet etc that they're not and they came back and said they're not going to use this book so it's not being used so why are we talking about it i guess that's what my confusion is we are talking about it because we are constantly told there is none of this happening in our classrooms but materials such as this have been showing up on expense reports so we're i'm me personally i'm just trying to point out the fact that yes we continually bring this up and we are continually told this is not happening in our schools and this is proof
100that sometimes things are snuck through or tried to it's not snuck through it's in a document that's public but when you're talking i mean i okay let's go to page 47 that you talked about and i don't even remember what paragraph but it talks about two students get into a fight one's in for one reason and one student's his frustration is academics the other one is whatever so they get into a fight they were both treated equally they got suspended but what didn't happen was with the rest of the kids that were impacted by the fight so i'm i'm still very and then you brought up crt yet i think if we went around this room everybody would have a different opinion of what crt is so i don't think we can even use that
101as an example i just don't understand and you talk about there's material be and yet we still haven't i don't know of any other material that has been is of concern you said that there's more there is material on it consistent that i can't remember your words i'm sorry no that's okay i'm just pointing out the fact that i find these things on the expense report and then you know everybody you know is like well i'm not quite sure what is what's going on with that and so i'll do the research and yet i'm still called the book police well wasn't this book to be used as a tool to um to assist our gen our general education special education um more like i mean this was facilitator-led correct this was supposed to be a
102facilitator-led type book madam president miss sourcing bill yes this was an opportunity for the staff to understand what restorative justice is about as i explained at the previous board meeting restorative justice is a means to not replace consequences but to assist with in addition to consequences to right the wrongs meaning if there is a fight how does that get resolved research shows i mean we've been dealing with fights for many years in schools and research has shown that simple suspension does not resolve the conflict what happens when they come back and what happens to prevent future incidences with not only the students who are involved but with other students so restorative justice is being used by police departments all over the country and as i mentioned previously it's being used it was mentioned at the
103school safety summit that we attended just about a month ago so the intent of the book the title of it talks about restorative justice it was that very intent the intent was not to sneak in anything and i would reject that accusation the intent was to assist students with their behaviors so that we can correct wrong behavior inappropriate behavior and move forward the [Music] as i've explained in previous board meetings there are so many materials sources books conferences workshops seminars podcasts to avoid every single one that mentions privilege would be impossible we would not learn anything about restorative justice or many of the other valuable pedagogy and behavior management and safety and security and other responsibilities that we have as a district so as i've said before administration has received the message loud and clear
104of what your intent and what your expectations are that we are not going to be teaching about the many of the things you had on your list but that doesn't mean that just because it shows up in a book that we are underhandedly trying to sneak in a curriculum to students that the board has very clearly directed us not to do but there are gems of wisdom that can be gleaned from these sources of of text understanding what to reject and what to learn from is a very important and a very educated form of learning and education it's something actually that we are very intentional about with our students about when they review material whether it's online or in the media how to separate out fact from fiction and how to decipher information that is
105valuable versus what is rhetorical or what is is nonsensical and i think as we continue to have these conversations i appreciate the board's reminders but i would again state that it is not our intent to disavow the the board's directives we will continue to be vigilant about that i will guarantee you there are more books that we will have that will mention something that somebody is opposed to guaranteed and we will understandably um not promote the things that we understand we're not supposed to be promoting well i think that um when you're talking about this we need to also keep in mind that our hands have been tied with regards to students not being suspended in k through was it k through four and um so what means can we assist that child and to
106we'll help our administration and teachers um suspension is not the the end all beetle as far as trying to make sure that that student doesn't do it again so um i mean you suspend a child and then they come back and then they do it again then they didn't learn anything from it but this would be a tool to assist for those students to have the opportunity to learn what they did and what they did wrong and it's i i don't believe that our staff would be using it i think that the trigger words in there are social and justice and i don't believe that this is something that's a back door to crt i just don't think it um but again this was going to it wasn't we weren't going to be using the
107entire book but it was certain aspects to help our teachers to assist the students not for crt not for anything else like that i mean i don't know how else to describe it was this intended for reminding me was this intended for teachers or was it intended for the behavior text coach miss densboro this was a requested purchase through the ess department madam president and members of the board for behavior coaches in the uss department thank you my concern with the whole restorative justice is that the whole premise of restorative justice takes away a consequence and this what i am reading about restorative justice is not at all the diversion program described by ms densmore that's being used at valley vista all our high schools and all our high schools that was just one example
108you know a divergent program says we're going to give you the consequence and we're going to talk through that consequence with you we're not just going to give you a consequence and be like you're done we're going to talk to you yes you're going to serve that consequence but we're also going to use this as a teaching moment and we're going to talk through this and teach you that that is entirely different than saying um johnny started to fight so johnny experienced injustice but it talks about the kids were suspended they were both there was consequences so i and i don't know that wasn't the whole context but it talks about respect dignity and mutual concern healthy relations but students have to understand their what the consequences of their behavior you know and everybody needs
109to understand why they had a fight or because things happen at home they they may be mirroring behavior that they've learned at home on how to express their anger or whatever this is just a tool that's it it's not going to be a textbook but again i'm not sure why we're we're discussing it because it's not being used i my takeaway from this number one and i i really um maybe it's a leadership style for me but it's it's happened a couple times and just to address it now as far as you know asking a governing board member why are we talking about this and it can be you know for the next board president in january it might be a completely different style but for me board president doesn't have any more power authority
110than any other board member sitting here no one should trump anyone when it comes to a board member who did what they needed to do to get their name on the ballot to get elected in to bring something forward for discussion i even asked dr kellis have you talked to crystal about what this item is about so it didn't it didn't matter to me all the details of it it was a book that was pulled from an expense voucher that there was that one board member had concern about and she wanted to bring it forward for more discussion i don't ever want to have anyone feel like they don't have a right to bring it forward and have more discussion number one number two i understand her point in that yeah there were some references
111to book police and um this one and you know several conversations about crt and people saying it doesn't happen doesn't happen you say that well we're not using the book well we purchased the book though that's the takeaway from this the district purchased this book and had this not have been and and i'd be interested to hear from dr kellis i mean knowing knowing what's in this now and i understand you don't read every single book um would you would you feel comfortable with this being in our schools i mean now that we know what we know madam president i again would say that there are gems of knowledge that can be gleaned from that book would we purchase that given the board's opposition to it no obviously we would not well and then and
112so thank you for saying that because there are things in there where you know restorative justice you know people can say okay alternatives to certain consequences whatever but this particular book and people can think what they want but i'll tell you one of my biggest pet peeves is white privilege i absolutely hate it i feel like it perpetuates division and racism i hate it um and that's in that book so it's not like well what's the big deal we're not using it we bought it taxpayers bought that book and there's things in that book that i don't care if it was being sat in front of a student or if it was or a teacher had it i don't want us using a book like that that's going to reference some of the other things
113that crystal referenced being used because i feel like it perpetuates bad things there may there's probably another book another guide where we can help as tracy had mentioned you know with with our restrictions now with um suspensions we're going to have to find other ways to work with these students but i don't think this is the only book that you know i'm sorry white privilege does is like crt i mean it is along those same lines to where we sh that's that's the big deal that's why we're i feel like if if her point then and hearing her discussion was to say hey look this isn't just for nothing this is the reason why i'm bringing this forward this was a concern with the book i feel like after book police comments she should have
114that that time to explain herself and i have not read the book but knowing the white privilege piece that would be enough for me i just i think we have enough racism and division in this country and i don't want to be a part of approving something that would reference that so again let's just be respectful of each other and how we're all equal board members and if someone wants to bring something forward let's just hear them out and then move forward that's that's that's my response to some of the conversations said i appreciate you outlining this i'm glad we've pulled it um are there other comments or concerns oh dr collins and president i may just share what changes we have made administratively to assist us in assisting you in helping us okay um
115there will be many more books that show up on the expense voucher as single edition books as we review and read the books prior to ordering bulk quantities so we are committed to being vigilant as i have said and just so you understand what that translates to in action that we will be purchasing more books rather than going off of titles and summaries we will be purchasing more single copies or small numbers of three or four so multiple people can be reading them but um small quantity books not for general distribution but for review and even i appreciate that and even too if there's an opportunity to do a little research before you even purchase one book i mean some books can be a hundred dollars i mean i just if we can do that
116that'd be great if from based on the preliminary research hey it looks like a a book that's going to be okay order one like you're saying and then go from there but i'm assuming we do that we kind of check into a little bit before we even buy any book madam president yes it's not always just by title um as you just go on amazon you can see that there's a you can read the first five pages of a book a sample of it and often times that sounds great sometimes it's not reflective of the ensuing 10 chapters afterwards but by purchasing single copies or a small number of copies we will continue to be vigilant to your point miss pritchard racism is a big is a big issue and i appreciate you saying that
117you really hate the thing about white privilege and um you know i face it every day with regards to with a caucasian husband and um we get different looks we get different all different gamuts from both sides of the track um so i do appreciate what you have said but to the point of our hands being tied now with k4 no suspensions or anything we have to keep looking and keep looking for ways that we can assist our teachers and administration and if we have to purchase a book to find out if something's in it then we have to purchase a book to actually find out what we can and cannot use so i i do appreciate that um but i quite honestly i don't believe we are teaching crt and i just have to
118stay on track with that i i hope not yeah for sure i just want to mention one thing um you mentioned that i think it was joe that mentioned they might be mirroring what they have at home bringing that into the classroom maybe acting on some of the things that they're seeing at home but in those conversations with the the staff at the school no matter who that is i mean they're mandatory reporters so if they were to learn that there was abuse at home they would need to report that i i don't have a reasonable expectation for our staff to be able to fix the whole child i i just i don't have that expectation for any one of our staff members um it really does take a team it takes a lot of
119exactly it takes the schools it takes uh potentially law enforcement in some cases um i would just never place that on any purse any specific or you know individual in our in our schools um i i think that it's awesome that we that we want to help along that way and be part of that journey but i i i just don't ever want the expectation um to be there but that we are fully responsible um from beginning to end on that no but we do the best we can we and i don't want things to be made worse along the way either by enabling the behavior we don't want that behavior to continue right so they need the tools in order to help these children learn how to change that behavior it's got to be
120all on the school to do that when they're in the classroom part of it if they're disruptive in the classroom then that child will be well i guess they have they have to figure out how to get that child back in the classroom where they're not disruptive because when they're disruptive in the classroom the whole classroom is affected by that but you spoke to root cause though if there was a patient no i said that no i never used the word abuse okay i said that sometimes students are they could be mirroring behavior that they see at home i mean we don't we don't know what happens when they go home you know that's all i'm saying okay i mean especially like i'll just use an example of foul language you know mom or dad
121cusses a lot and all of a sudden they drop a pencil or make a mistake and they go oh you know and they do it a lot and then somebody tells them that's not appropriate but yet they learned it that's how mom and dad talk so that's what i'm talking about sometimes their behavior is mirrored by what happens when they go home but but as far as the child i mean we have to educate the whole child and we want them to be in the classroom but if they're disruptive the team it can't be the teacher can't deal with just that student they have the rest of the class they have to deal with so i don't know they just have they need tools and i just see this book on a lot of this
122stuff in here is a good just a tool to help them learn how to work with these students that's all i will say as a teacher though we have to have consequences we have to have consequences and every single day you know i i know teachers are giving out all right you got a warning all right you're moving your seat you're doing this you're doing that and if they continue that behavior they escalate and most teachers are taking the time if that student ex escalates they are taking the time to take that child out in the hall and have a ten minute talk not a ten minute like a sixty second talk with that child and say hey what's going on today you're not following my expectations this is happening this is happening what's going
123on with you and they're taking that time to talk to these children but there have to be consequences because if they don't have consequences nothing is going to change no matter how touchy feeling we talk to them and as far as educating the whole child again to miss dense more point do we want our teachers responsible for educating the whole child if i could just add to that i mean that would include their their morals their values right you know their entire lens um you want to talk about like their political lens even i mean we don't want to go down i just don't think we want to go down i'm not sure so go down so tying it back to the book though just because you have to be too careful um it sounds
124like there's there's need to find new ways to address behaviors in the classroom but this particular book um is not going to be an avenue for that um this particular book thank you yeah um but we'll continue to research other we have to methods and ways in which to address those issues in the classroom well especially when you talk about when you talk about consequences they cannot the k through four cannot even be suspended right that doesn't mean they can't have consequences well there are i know but that's what they're trying to find are other consequences to get keep them in the classroom especially at that age level so we'll find other books or other materials for that dutch house all right thank you so we will move to action discussion items h1 recommendation to
125approve the appointment of principals dr kalis thank you madam president members of the board members of the cabinet this is an exciting part of the board agenda and we are happy to reach this point and would like to thank our audience for their patience we have a lot of celebrating to do and dr credo will get us kicked off on this item thank you dr kellis madam president members of the board superintendent kellis uh cabinet and guests it is with great pleasure that we bring to you four candidates for principal ships in our district as you know and we've previously talked before uh these four people have gone through the gauntlet to be hired as principals in our district they go through a very very extensive process in that they must go through in-basket activities
126as i mentioned before so videos uh evaluating teachers in the classroom through a video they have they have to sit these four sat in a pretty daunting interview with 22 panel members to answer questions they sat in this room at a table in front of 22 people so they made it through that and then they have to sit with an interview with the cabinet and go through that the very next day so they have made it through that and these are our top candidates so i'm going to introduce them please stand and then we will let the governing board vote and then we will welcome you afterwards uh and they are here with their families too we want to acknowledge their family members that are here tonight so thank you for being here we appreciate
127the support all right so to lead it off we have mr andrew frazier who you know is currently the principal at sonoran heights middle school he is being recommended for the principalship at valley vista high school monica krenitz who you also know is currently assistant principal at willow canyon she is being recommended as a principal at dysart middle school and then two others you may or may not know they are not in our district but we are welcoming them to our district mr dustin hammond uh who is currently a principal in the peoria unified school district is being recommended to take mr frazier's place at sonoran heights middle school and last but not least miss debbie cruz who is currently also a principal and she is being recommended as the principal of mountain view elementary
128they have extensive backgrounds all of them and that's included for you and i will stand for any questions or await your vote you don't have to stand you can sit well with that i will make a motion before you do that i just want to point out that i have already called if we have any basketball two on two competitions mr hammond is on my team just want to point that out publicly all right it's noted i moved the board to prove the appointment of andrew frazier as high school principal monica krenitz dustin hammond and debbie cruz as principals for the 2022-2023 school year second motion made by christine pritchard second invite don densmore suspense what will they say did you refresh it is it are you guys waiting on me yeah oh yeah i
129didn't get a pop-up and now i just got blocked out too really i'll get back yeah earlier i did it i noticed it though okay yes are you using job's computer i know it's a sign congratulations to our new principals in the district so thank you very much we appreciate you welcome we will not make you speak so you can sit down and sigh a relief but thank you very much actually the governing board may want to say something or ask a question so if not we can congratulations congratulations congratulations everyone welcome dustin and debbie yep thank you yeah back in the day i used to he's andrew frasier used to be my boss he used to call him the boss man so you can feel sorry for him because it was an awful time
130for him i'm sure good to see you moving up in the ranks dolly's lucky to have you and welcome to the rest of you as well yes and i'm refreshing my computer so awesome that's gonna we're going to go ahead and take a five minute recess eligible certificated staff for the 2022-2023 school year dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet dr croto will introduce this item thank you dr kellis madam president members of the board superintendent kellis cabinet and remaining guests we bring to you the pay for performance chart tonight back about a year ago we brought a performance package to you that was approved and received some direction from the governing board that we would like to see a few different options in the student achievement piece
131in regards to is it possible to bring forward a plan that would have more individual accountability rather than state testing for all the teachers we've got the committee together that committee consists of teachers administrators a whole variety directors in our district and met several times to discuss this whole process with that i bring tonight to you three different plans so you have the first plan in front of you which is the current plan there are no changes to that plan that is the current plan we're operating under this is the performance plan for this year how teachers will receive their pay for this year that is one option we can stay with that plan the second plan option two is to take student achievement and tweak that to student success rates this will be based
132on grades and teachers classrooms that is one of the only measurements that we can have that every teacher controls and affects in their classroom that takes away the student achievement portion from the first plan of the state testing there is no state testing involved in that plan it's just straight across um if you receive if students in your class have grades of c or higher if 90 to 100 of all your students you will see 100 percent of that funding and you can see there 80 to 89 is and 70 to 79 is 50 if you have 69 percent or below of your students that that don't receive c's or better you're going to get zero percent of that funding again for the high schools it's taking classes in both semesters high schools and middle
133schools and then for our elementary schools it is just taking the combined yearly courses all other factors in this performance chart stay the same so your effectiveness classification your employee attendance and your achievement profile are staying the same option three comes to you with is which is a blended model between option one and option two it still has the student achievement piece in there with 30 percent and that still is estate testing so there are still accountability with our state testing system it has taken the effectiveness classification and split it if you look at the first plan these the effectiveness classification is forty percent of the total it has taken that forty and made it two twenties it has added the new piece of student success which i just uh outlined for you in option
1342 so it is using that model and using the effectiveness classification but has split that 40 percent into 220s so with that i'll be glad to answer any questions receive more direction again this is not for this year's payment this is for next year's payment so it is a plan that we need to adopt and let employees know before next year so with that i will stand for any questions or comments that you may have i just have a question when we talk about i guess it's in plan one and a and b um achievement profile and i'm not as a teacher i'm not going to get anything if i have a student that's a d or an f correct am i reading that correctly um madam president member grant for achievement profile that is
135letter grades of the school so that is not the grades the achievement profile piece is okay i'm sorry i meant student success so 69 and below is a zero percent if 69 of your class correct if 69 do not have c's or better you get zero funding so it looks at the class as a whole your students at a whole so 65 nine percent um or below if they do not have c's so if only fifty percent of your students in all your classes have c's or better you will get no funding in that category so if i've done everything i've offered tutoring i'm available on tuesdays i've called the parents i've i've done everything possible to bring those students offering them help and they're not they're not taking advantage of it is there a
136justification process that they can is there anything that um anybody else looks at for something in that i mean if they document that i've i'm there on i've offered these days i've even offered to come in on other days my lunch art whatever well you're gonna remember grant at this time there is no there is no process to document that again the research department and ms hartjen is responsible to collect all this data so that is a a process we look at she is part of this big committee because it is very very time consuming to collect all this data and collect it accurately um not to say that we couldn't do it but that was just a huge test we do not have that in here to answer your question at this time well
137also to think about this if your entire class if 69 of your class has below a c average then we need to look at other things and not just not just whether or not a student's doing the work yeah like your contract for next year you got other things to worry about yeah well i i personally i say thank you for coming back with these options um because i know as a teacher it is frustrating when my scores are based on somebody else's test scores i know that's difficult um and especially at our k4 schools for fourth grade bearing the brunt of the entire schools pay for performance that's that's not really fair to them um although you know it does bring up a concern i don't think many teachers would do this but would
138a teacher who was panicking be tempted to change a grade right great inflation certainly a big possibility in this possibility we don't know if they would do it like you said we hope they would not do it great inflation is definitely a possibility i mean i i do think it's a lot better than just basing everything on the student achievement on on the test scores my only concern with option three is the effectiveness classification goes down to 20 percent i mean is it possible to eliminate the achievement profile the school letter grade how do we feel about eliminating that from the 301 i would rather personally my opinion i would rather um take some maybe 10 10 out of the 20 based on the comment that was just made about concerns about grades 10 from
139the 20 of student success and add that to the effectiveness classification keeping the bulk of everything up in like the student achievement student success areas then i don't know about getting rid of the i mean because still the letter grade of the school i mean being a part of like some of those a plus the processes and things i know there's a lot of a lot of work and a lot of interventions and things that go into those achievement profiles and the school letter grades and things to where i think it does speak to a school's success so i think it's good information and it's only 10 anyway i mean that's just my personal opinion i think if we were gonna change anything maybe take some away from the the student success piece make that
14010 instead of 20 and add the 10 to the effectiveness classification just just curious with the achievement profile for the school letter grade um how long does that last because don't you have like the letter grade for like two years or something like that um the state has kind of taken a hiatus on school out of grades because of kovid but they're back at it and those will be coming annually so it's not normal that they're saying that correct okay all right um but it's still an application process that they would need to go through do we allow for every school to do an application every year um madam president stansberry just for clarification there's two a's that can be earned at a school and there's the a plus award which is through yes which
141is through the arizona education foundation and that's an application process and has multiple it's like a an accreditation visit there's a team that comes out and they do lots of visits and um the other is just 100 based on the state test and that is the school letter grade or the school performance label okay um could you explain why 20 goes for employee attendance well madam president remember grant um that is what was decided last year and has been in all past okay since i've been here uh to award attendance um for our employees the importance of attendance them being at school and at work and in the classroom teaching kids so well to that extent it doesn't it um stafford employee attendance four days of leave or most teachers go for this or activities
142must not be other compensated and ninety most teachers you know a lot of them use for less days just because they don't like they don't like it's easier to just show up than to try and take a day off and have a sub i mean if you're sick you can't avoid it some of that plan is cut off there's hours they can do yeah 15 hours it's cut off on this copy i think they were trying to fit on a page so it shrank it out of there but most most teachers just do this extra 15 hours i don't know that we neces i don't know that i feel we need to include that part of it the employee attendance because teachers typically show up to these things anyways like i always ended up with
143way more 301 hours than i needed just because i was there at events and functions i see the benefit though of if we know the ramifications of students ramifications on learning and student success if they have subs long term subs teachers isn't there so i would say them i can see the benefit of the attendance piece only because again if a teacher isn't there or misses a lot then their students aren't getting the same level of instruction they would if they had consistency so coming every day kind of ensures consistency for your students and you would hope that would be reflective in the students growth growth as we heard earlier that is reflective in some of the the growth points at some of our schools i guess i i think i would be okay i
144would be comfortable with reducing that a little if you wanted to increase it somewhere else i just wouldn't feel comfortable eliminating it well and looking at the student achievement my the whole reason that you came up with option b is because as a teacher like you know it's it's very frustrating to have my pay based on somebody else's class and um is there a better way to do the student achievement portions i i don't know because especially if the high schoolers 9th grade taking aspire and 11th graders taking acts the 12th grade teachers and the 10th grade teachers are basically at their mercy and when miss harton was doing her presentation she was saying that sometimes these other grade levels just say oh well it doesn't matter because our our data doesn't really reflect on
145the maybe not the teachers but the students it doesn't matter because our data doesn't reflect on anything so is there a better way to do the student achievement piece like i don't know keep the student success piece with the grades because i feel like that's a better reflection of everyday work but i understand that um sometimes the summative assessments are valuable i just i don't like basing i don't like basing more of my performance pay based on somebody else's scores those are my thoughts well does option three though at that hybrid kind of addressed that so what they're doing now it's it's all based on the the like the az merit testing and the standards based testing um or state level testing and then the third option is actually bringing in that classroom assessment piece
146with constructiveness because then we have to then consider like what you mentioned too concerned about hopefully just a very small percentage but we wouldn't ever want people to feel we wouldn't want we want grades to be reflective of a student's ability not linked to how much money somebody gets so there's that kind of i hate to give the student success area a lot more that's why i'm thinking um i thought three was a good hybrid of the two i agree i agree i like three and i like the student success i think it makes everybody have to work harder to make sure these kids graduate and are prepared for work or college or the next grade if we're talking first first grade never mind i'm trying to add here well yeah and i i really
147like the student success piece that is based on their grades i feel like that and the effectiveness classification combined would be 40 percent um that is 40 combining on the option three yeah is there any way we could add a little more to the effectiveness classification we feel like we have some what if we took the 10 away from the 20 for student success and added that to effectiveness classification so it'd be 30 10 30. well i like option three no matter how you slice it um i see what you're saying miss pritchard i do think that that would be a good idea so you said 30 30 10 and those first uh three no she was saying 30 10 30. oh did i have that backwards 30 10 30 10 30 okay because crystal
148is saying that she um as far as putting some extra into effect in this effectiveness classification i don't i don't want to pull any from student achievement personally um we just talked about how attendance is important for consistency for students and their learning and then i still feel there's even though it's still a little bit just ten percent i mean we can't really go much below that as far as that everything that goes into letter grades achievement profiles and what about the 10 make it 10 for the employee attendance and do the student success 30. my only concern about bringing student success up higher it for that classroom grade is because of i just don't want to worry about because there's a lot of there's there's been instances that um you know a student may
149have straight a's and then they take their state test and you'd think someone who's getting straight a's should exceed the standards and there's been instances where that doesn't they don't align and so then you wonder okay is the classroom grade really reflective of their ability are they really learning so i don't want to i don't want to build that up super high i mean i i think you know i totally get that the state's test is not should not be the bl end all we've always said it's a snapshot there's multiple measures we use so i get that it shouldn't be everything and i like the idea of adding this other piece in there so it's another measure but because it can be so subjective and some of those some of those concerns that i
150mentioned i don't know that i want to increase it what if we what if we split it 25 for student success and 25 for student achievement because i don't know that i want to go down on student achievement personally i mean that's just me but i just really don't want to student achievement from day one 2006 has always been my thing that's always been why i'm here i just i don't i don't ever want to scrump on it but i guess i didn't want the if you were talking about before um bringing that student's success down to you're putting more emphasis on the employee attendance no it was to take take the 10 from the 20 on student success and move it to effectiveness classification is what i suggested i would rather i would rather
151take 10 from employee attendance and i know bef i know 100 what you're saying that we need our teachers to show up we need them to show up every single day and if you still don't feel comfortable with that that's okay but most teachers as a teacher i didn't even know i didn't even know about this staff member used this for or if you were earned leave days yet that's on me it just wasn't made clear to me that um four days or fewer to me it was always make sure and get your 301 hours in so the teacher culture is most of them some of them are going to look at this document and be like oh i don't have to do the fact hours if i use 4 or less pto time most
152teachers are some teachers are going to look at that but as a teacher as a culture every single time i got back the fact hours were pushed so this was cut off so what is it because i maybe i don't know what it is activities must be otherwise compensated and 90 what madam president i'll read it to you um it says or activities must not be otherwise compensated and 90 of the time spent spent in these activities must occur inside of the regular school day a minimum of 15 hours including planning and implementation is required so how is the 15 hours documented or how is that tracked or what is that that is tracked at each school level by the principal and and the teachers and that planning that has to do with things like
153um like reviewing data or are you talking about like no that's student activities right student activities that is correct so as an employee to get my fac hours i showed up to a baseball game or i guess it was softball to get my faq hours i would show up to i could choose tutoring i could do an after-school club for 15 hours and that's how i got my attendance long-term it's not compensated you're not compensated you're not a coach or something right so as a choir teacher when i was stipend i would not get fak hours for that when i wasn't stipend i would get back hours so your employee attendance in your mind is not what happens in reality with this so you're saying and i completely understand that we need our employees to
154show up every single day we need to eliminate long-term subs we need to stop you know having these gaps in our data and you know if you still feel the way you do that's fine but i just want to communicate to you that the culture on the campuses is most people aren't aware that four or fewer earned leave days so you could technically be out for four leave days um but you're still gonna get your full points as long as you go to these activities yes so if as a staff member if i've got 10 pto days i can use every single one of those as long and still get my funding as long as i do my 15 hours of baseball games softball games um community fairs community carnivals as long as i do
155my activities i can use 10 12 20 whatever leave i have as long as i do those 15 hours i'm gonna get that money knowing that i would be comfortable with 30 20 30 10. are you saying eliminating employee attendance no i'm saying if we move it to 10 10 are we on option three option three option three so 30 student achievement 20 student success 30 effective cost effectiveness classification 10 employee attendance 10 achievement profile i would be fine with that if we can get a motion read that motion that way and also mention as i read the employee attendance since it got scrunched up and i didn't notice that just as i read as i read it that'll be good enough okay i moved the board approved the district's pay for performance plan for
156eligible certificated staff for the 2022-2023 school year referencing option three with the exception of increasing effectiveness classification to 30 reducing employee attendance to 10 and also to include dr croto's explanation of employee attendance and this is option three yes right i'll second motion made by christine pritchard seconded by tracy sorosinkbill not a president if i could just make a quick note that your emotion has been recorded but luisa couldn't type that fast but it will show up in the minutes and it will be accurate on the official record thank you motion carries thank you again dr croto for all of your hard work i know you've been working very hard on that for many months thank you to the committee too yes and committee thank you yes next we'll move to action discussion each discussion
157on dysert's covid protocol and mitigation plan dr kalis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet dr dean will introduce this item good evening madam president members of the governing board dr kellis and members of cabinet this evening we bring to you just a brief update and uh recommendation related to dysart's covet mitigation plan over the last month we have been averaging just a little under four cases reported each time we have made a report on our cova dashboard we do that twice a week on tuesday and friday and as i stated we are averaging just about four cases on each one of those reports that includes staff and students we are recommending this evening that we eliminate the use of the the continued use of the dashboard and move another
158step closer to returning to normal operations and would certainly be happy to answer any questions from the board or if the board wants to have further discussion may do that as well thank you any questions or comments from the board yes um while we're on the topic of the ovid protocol and mitigation i do want to bring up one of the one piece of the mitigation plan that has been in place is for the the water fountains at all of our campuses that they cannot be drank and drinking out of directly they're only to be used as water bottle refill stations um i would like to end that piece of the mitigation just because it is way too hot and these children don't always have a water bottle with them and i just don't want
159anything to happen while they're at recess or at play so i think that's really important i i am just so you know i'm i'm fully ready and on board to get rid of all medication but so if anyone wants to make a motion for that but i at least want to put the water bottles on there thank you my only question was are we still receiving information from maricopa county regarding our area and numbers madam president member of sorry sink bill the maricopa county department of health changed their protocols they are not reporting obviously on a daily basis any longer dr klaus correct me if i'm wrong but they're also not holding weekly webinars any longer governor ducey a few weeks ago ended all emergency actions related to covid that were undertaken so those are
160all now disbanded at uh from his office as well so we don't receive anything okay just want to make sure madame president sourcing bill just to correct dr dean as he asked i do they are doing it on a every other week and the topics as i've listened in on those don't talk about the protocols it just talks about trends nationally and state and brings up the delta cron and some of the other types of variances that are appearing around the world but they're no longer providing those regional reports as you mentioned okay and the focus has shifted so if the focus has shifted from protocol and mitigation to information do we still need our other protocol and mitigation well madam president member chaffin administration would recommend at some point in time in the upcoming
161meetings removing protocols to return completely to normal at some point in time we would make that recommendation what protocols are left besides the water fountains madam president member grant we still have our maintenance staff which is stretched very thin at this point in time with vacancies who more than once a day are going through the building and sanitizing all door handles which we know we know a lot more now about covet in terms of surface transmission than we did obviously initially so that's still happening teachers are still provided with cleaning supplies and material to wipe down desks throughout the day the water fountains are certainly part of our protocol the dashboard continues to be part of our protocol as well other than those major topics mr hicks correct me if i'm wrong most of our
162operations have returned to normal okay just a madam president miss grant to continue we will still tell students who submit positive tests that they stay home for 10 days we don't um that's still in place right we don't do the contact tracing like we used to but if a positive test is reported then that's that would be part of the protocol correct the ensuing months as the health officials are stating is that the omnicron is what the latest is is no longer at anywhere near the stages it was in january and it is becoming more like the flu so at some point as dr dean mentioned administration would recommend that we treat covid hard to believe as we would with any illness if you're sick you stay home until you're better and then you return
163so if we end the mitigation and protocol tonight are employees still going to be able to take that extra 10 days if they test positive madam president miss chaffin it is it is our understanding that that is through the remainder of the school year and that was a separate motion outside this was a separate item okay outside of this thank you i'll go ahead and make a motion i'll motion to end the reporting of active and confirmed coven 19 cases in the dysart unified school district um i'd also add to end restrictions on water fountain usage and to end the additional coveted precautionary cleanings the additional copic plannings what does that mean additional madam president mr stensmore i believe what i'm hearing you say is that your emotion would end the pieces the cleaning pieces
164that we put in place specifically for covid not our normal janitorial services correct so a custodian going and cleaning up a mess right so the those pieces would be the requirement for teachers to wipe down desks um with cleaning solution um in the classroom and the requirement that our maintenance staff uh sanitize uh door handles throughout the course of the day and you said like that was happening every hour right it's happening a couple of times during the day right so yeah it it typically is occurring before school starts and then at least once throughout the day you would still have those those cleaning supplies um available to anyone who wanted to for anyone who wanted to use them yes is there a reason why administration wasn't bringing that forward then you said at a
165future meeting madam president the the thought moving forward is that by the end of the year administration's recommendation would have been to eliminate all coveted protocols i feel like they were just kind of tapering off is that with the recommendations you were just recommending tapering off madame president miss chaffet i think that's a fair assessment okay so hold on because you still have emotion i'll say okay somebody's second i don't care okay now go i mean personally i don't know i don't know i don't mind people cleaning um for but motion carries next we move to action discussion 4 discussion on governing board meeting schedule and this was my request [Music] oops so [Music] um so i know like over the past couple years we've been asked about i've been asked about our meeting schedule
166and it's not perfect for everybody and everybody has their preferences but since we reviewed this in february um i've been presented with new reasons to consider our meeting day that i just wanted to discuss with the board and throw out there one of those things is that it conflicts with our ability to attend west met governing board meetings and because our partnership with westmec i can see would be beneficial for interested board members to attend some of those meetings and changing the date would allow attendance on both sides um and then it would also bring forth an opportunity to cultivate relationships with the west mech board who are fellow board members in our community as well and then also um i've had some discussion with some community members especially when i was at a recent
167el mirage event a couple weeks ago and learned that many parents would like to be more involved and attend our meetings but a lot of them also go to the city council meetings and both of our cities have their meetings on tuesdays and so some of these families are feeling like between their work home life balance to be gone two nights in a row with kids at home was just is just too tough so normally other than tonight our meetings aren't well attended anyway and i didn't know if maybe this was one reason why and if that would be um a way we could possibly bring more parents or more people to our meetings and then the other half of that was the frequency and i know in the past we've discussed summers and i
168kind of i can see both sides i have mixed feelings on on summers as far as are light agendas there's not a lot going on um so why do we have to have two a month although i do see it being as a an opportunity to take advantage of the slow months and maybe have some good study sessions or team buildings things like that um so as far as putting a second meeting day set in stone i don't really care one way or another just as long we can continue on if that's what the majority of the board wants to do and just set them as needed but my bigger concern is there's been months during the year where we don't adjust the calendar like for school breaks and things where we'll only have one
169per month and i feel like with the district this large and with as much as we have going on in our district having a meeting once a month in the midst of the school year is is not enough so i really feel like we should try to have two a month like for an example this last march the way the weeks fell out we could have adjusted the calendar accommodated spring break and still had two in there i think october might be another month um they're sporadic but they happen so just um wanting to see if the board wanted to consider that piece as well as it pertains to frequency what day are you suggesting we move to well i'm assuming no one would want a friday no obviously so that leaves that leaves monday
170or monday or thursday and monday would be the opposite of the council meetings on tuesdays would be the same way for those family members who are saying two in a row so i was thinking thursday i'm okay with thursday and i know that one of the the common themes i have heard is that um families have different um church groups that they attend on wednesday whether they're youth groups or um even just general you know church council meetings they they tend to be on wednesdays um i know that's been a big theme but i do wonder too if if moving it to a thursday would just maybe give administration a little bit more time to plan um you know instead of it you know you kind of you set the agenda the week prior maybe
171you could you know set it on monday or tuesday i don't know how that would look but i just wonder if it would give you guys more time to plan for that and then do you have a preference on um what does everybody think about like for example march we could have had two meetings in march or some of the other months with the exception of probably december because it's a really we take two usually it's two full weeks off in december anyway so i'm not suggesting a board meeting back to back or week to week but for the most part there's usually room to just flip-flop some of the weeks if we know we're going to have a week off and fit two win well if you remember years ago miss pritchard our meetings
172were on the first and third wednesdays of the month and at some point in time um i can't remember what year and it seemed that we kind of flipped and went to the second and fourth wednesdays and i i don't remember why but it just seemed to flip instead of from the first and the third so anyway i didn't know what you guys thought as far as moving it to a thursday and when would you want to start this that's my question definitely after this i mean finishing the school year everybody's all the administrators and teachers have planned their lives around again not that a lot of people come but they know we have board meetings um on wednesdays so like june madam president just as a reminder that the board has approved a a
173board meeting calendar for the next year we would bring back a revised calendar based on information so the action i think would be to bring that counter back to another board meeting for for action um given your feedback is there a reason why and just just curious so i can understand the procedure why wouldn't just because you'd want to approve a whole calendar rather than changing the dates and then going back and revising a calendar is that what you're saying correct and then we'd bring it back again for approval right because you'd be revising the calendar you could make a motion you could take action today but we'd still have to bring back the calendar because you the board um it's changing you're changing the count okay um and just for your information um on
174the the the months where there are week-long vacations and why there's not another one scheduled typically if there's a meeting and then there's a week of closed offices the following week and then there's another meeting to miss dennis moore's point there's it's difficult to put together an agenda when everybody's been off that week prior and not a lot has happened during that week um the other part is when we say it's the first or third or second or fourth we have been advised over the course of time to be as transparent and amenable as possible to our constituents to our community that they know board meetings are on these dates and when you start moving locations there was a time when today we're going to do it valley vista next week we're going to do
175it just when you start moving around locations and schedules then it can be confusing to the community who gets off the track of it's always on the second and fourth unless it's not but that's just information and it wouldn't be i mean obviously it'd be more the exception the rule just how we do now sometimes we'll we'll add in a we've had to swap out meeting dates or add or change our account we've changed our calendar before so i could understand you wouldn't want to do it last minute but if like you say when we bring it back it's going to be transparent it's going to be available um and then also for like i understand what you're saying as far as like anything um current nothing maybe would have happened the week we're on
176break but just knowing like when you go into march for an example we knew we had spring break so if we had a meeting that following week after spring break you would maybe already know in the beginning of the month okay so if that meeting we're going to talk about revision department policy monitoring on this policy or things that have to get done or school reports and those schools are going to be ready prior to that so little things like that not necessarily something that happened the previous week when it'd kind of be a moot point because nothing happened the previous week if that makes sense well couldn't we just adjust the day that month to where we either had that extra board meeting the week before a break or two weeks after a break
177does that make sense but that's what we that's what march would have looked like if we'd had that second meeting i don't think did we didn't we just have one meeting in march or did we have two meeting in march we had one right we had one meeting so if if we're meeting on the second and fourth and we've got spring break on the third week maybe we do a meeting on the first and the second instead of the second and the fourth because if we try and meet on the fourth everybody's off the week before does that make sense so like within reason if we really want two meetings in those months we can just adjust them accordingly that way we're not asking our staff to come in and work when yeah that's right
178yeah so it's planning ahead so for example there was five wednesdays in march so what i'm saying is theoretically we could have just when we look at the calendar we could just plan around that there's five there's there was five thursdays in march this year so same thing but we only had one meeting in the five weeks of school ish four and a half weeks so that's all i'm saying i think it's gonna take a little bit more planning or looking at and not gonna be able to approve anything tonight i'm going to make a motion for the thursday and we can talk about and we'll see how it goes but i we can talk about adding days or not for the rest of the calendar maybe when we bring it back but for me
179for tonight i do want to move that the governing board change their meeting date to thursdays effective june first madam president also just as a reminder we will bring this back again with the calendar because even changing it to thursday is the calendar change yes that's fine does she need to modify her motion if you're proposing to change it as a june 1st you would be changing two approved calendars the 2021 this school year calendar and next school year calendar so you want two calendars changed then okay yeah okay does she need to say that in her motion and that being said we can just as we didn't include columbus day last year we came back and we brought the calendar back and we approved it so we've done calendar changes after the fact before
180so this really isn't anything different i don't see the purpose in changing the day it's wednesday i mean if families want to come they can come but the beauty of now a technology they can watch this board meeting either at home or in another day i have not had one person complain to me i'm sorry i couldn't come to the board meeting because it's on a wednesday because i wanted to go to a council meeting and wes mc only meets once a month on the second wednesday of the month so if a board member wants to go to a westmec meeting they can but i just don't see this as a as a big deal i mean people know i mean we've been meeting on wednesdays for quite a while um i just don't see
181the purpose in changing it and like i said i've not heard from anybody to say i'm sorry i don't come because um i've got something else going on a lot of the a lot of that conversation for me personally was at an el mirage event a couple weeks ago i was just talking with a lot of families but i made a motion it can be seconded or not but the motion's out there i just wanted to clarify does she need to modify her motion or is she okay i did not catch a motion oh i said that i moved the governing board moved their meeting days to thursdays effective june 1st second motion made by christine pritchard seconded by dawn dunsmore i think what don was asking luisa was if i needed to include those
182calendars but i don't think so because yeah that's kind of what i was wondering okay i just to wanted clarification know you'll be presenting be presented with two people okay get ready to do that yeah i need to discuss it more okay motion carries next we have a request for future agenda items i have one um i would like to discuss the possibility of the board getting their own legal counsel and i would also like a discussion on how certif i guess how non non-teaching certificated employees are evaluated for 301 performance so i would like i guess i feel like their their evaluation should reflect their own job not a teacher's so if i'm a certificate an employee who's not a teacher my evaluation should be geared towards me not a teacher's evaluation okay so
183if i'm misunderstanding and that's already happening then the presentation you can just let me know so i did not get a chance to pull something earlier from consent so i would like import more information on the student fee schedule for the 2022-2023 school year and any details you guys look forward to luisa just to make sure she understands your 301 thing anybody else okay all right next we have executive session um i move that the board there's a call for executive session pursuant to ars 38-431.03 a5 for the purpose of discussing or consultations with designated representatives of the public body in order to consider its position and instruct its representatives regarding negotiations with employee organizations regarding the salaries salary schedules or compensations paid in the form of fringe benefits of employees of the public body
184and pursuant to ars 38-431.03 a1 for the purpose of discussion with and to provide direction to the superintendent regarding communication regarding contract of employment and community engagement wait a second motion made by christine pritchard seconded by tracy sawyer sinkhole that was a mouthful yeah i can't even spell my own name right we're at recess for executive session at this time we'll reconvene the regular meeting we do have an action discussion item on the agenda to provide direction to the superintendent um unless i'm hearing of any motions to provide any direction we do not have to take action anybody want to make a motion not hearing anything i move that we adjourn the meeting motion made by tracy singfel seconded by christine pritchard i don't know do i have any motion by tracy saw your sinkhole
185second by christine sure let me know yes yes yes okay so we're not even using this thank you