001this time i'd like to call this regular meeting of the dysart governing board to order let the record reflect that all board members are present please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all we'll go ahead and move to item b1 choir performance dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet we're very excited this evening to hear some of the extraordinary talented students and dr pauline will introduce this group thank you dr kels madam president members of the board and cabinet it's my pleasure to introduce the sunset hills choir and they are led by mr randall badsgaard take it away
002[Applause] you won't believe it strange [Music] i see it i you [Music] black and white is [Music] magic [Music] who cares what they say over [Music] i see it i swear [Music] so what a beautiful job you all did thank you so much for coming so how many grades do we have represented right here there's uh three grades this is our sixth through eighth grade uh what we call our elite choir this is our after little wire beautiful job how often do you guys practice [Laughter] i can tell you work hard thank you so much for coming he did a great job this song is a part of our spring show which is actually entitled extraordinary magic that was magic uh and show is called extraordinary magic and uh uh that word is used very
003frequently in our district and uh we thought it was very fitting as we come back uh full force with choir this year to uh find the extraordinary magic within ourselves so that's the journey that we do musically with them this year with their show and that we are going to perform on the 30th of april in the disneyland resort trip there this year so thank you all very much for being supportive of that effort we're very excited about getting back there wow exciting have a wonderful time and do well [Applause] he does he does a great job oh man yeah because it was just on a second ago so i did that before and it went on but then just went off so i don't know i can go to the next item and maybe
004someone need to look at it see it still says it's low i think it's the battery's just going up i'm gonna get you up so the docking station is supposed to be charging and it's not right so let's look if we just take this out and stick it okay next we'll move to item b2 national board certified teachers dr kulas thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet we're super thrilled with some of our extraordinary employees who have gone to extraordinary efforts to get their national board certification and dr plain will introduce these individuals thank you dr kellis madam president members of the board and cabinet it's my pleasure to introduce this awesome team of teachers and if i could have dr kelson the board come up to meet these folks
005and stay for a picture i will explain so the national board certification is the most respected professional certification available in education and provides many benefits to fellow teachers and the students they work with it was designed to develop retain and recognize accomplished teachers and to generate ongoing movement in schools nationwide national board certification is an advanced teaching credential that complements their state teachers license so at this time i'm proud to announce that kim perano from luke elementary is among the newest national board certified teachers in arizona come on up kim she earned the certification in december bringing the total count of national board certified teachers and dysart to 57 please stay for a picture that'd be great additionally for dysart teachers attained renewal of their certificate so with kristin barnett special education teacher at kingswood
006elementary school please come up [Applause] and cali cachette from marley elementary school and finally molly davis from el mirage elementary school [Applause] and and finally danielle edgerton an english language arts curriculum specialist [Applause] thank you all congratulations uh all right next we move to official gold steel of good health keeping renewal award dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet mr hicks will introduce this item thank you very much good evening madam president members of the board superintendent dr kellis colleagues and community members it is my pleasure to present two awards so i'll do the this one and the very next one combined tonight last month miss janis peel our wellness and benefits manager attended two events that presented dysart with awards the first one was the official gold
007seal of the good healthy keeping from the wellness council of arizona that's a state organization and the second is from the american heart association that's a national association so these are both renewals and so it just continues to show uh the support that we continue to put in the focus that we put on wellness and the quality health programs that are placed in the dysart school district and i do want to thank miss peel for her efforts for champion wellness um two just two recent events is uh an example of her efforts to con constantly always look at something we sent out an email to all staff about maybe doing something with bluescribe farms and having a basket a vegetable basket delivered here at the district office and see if anybody wanted to sign up
008we had almost 250 people sign up and show interest and purchasing some fruit from some farms or some vegetables from our farms here and so she's spearheading that so that's a great event um and um the other one is at this event she also earned or one out of a raffle we have a free blood pressure machine in our lobby right now and i used it uh this evening and so you can go and get free blood pressure checks and she has a blood pressure challenge going on so she's constantly looking at areas and efforts for us to continue to focus on our wellness and um our benefits and um uh she also um were piloting a little bit um this year just to end this year this is new we haven't set an email
009out so it's a little new to anybody to have time with health coaches and so we've seen and had some testimonials from other organizations that use health coaches and have seen some success with it so we're looking to carve out some time every single day for the rest of the year that somebody could call and have some personal health coaching online with uh to get through the rest of the year to see if it's worthwhile if we want to implement something like this for next year but that's just another example of her willingness to constantly always look for areas to help improve the wellness in of our district and our employees so i just want to thank her and the payroll staff for all their efforts and support and our constant focus on wellness so
010and that is all i have thank you [Applause] okay next we'll move to item b4 2021 gold level workplace health achievement index recognition oh thank you thank you that's it okay well she said you're combining them so i apologize my computer is fixed sorry about that little distraction there okay next we will move to item c1 audience with individuals chefin um we have two this evening we have larry leblanc adam president we could just thank you for allowing me mr leblanc if we could just take a second i apologize and if i could um ask miss hawari to come back up again perhaps more technical difficulties with the recording of the meeting we want to make sure that this is all captured for historical records so sorry follow the distraction um i'll go ahead and
011wait until um just to make sure it's all recording okay first jeans um all i'll read the statement and then i will invite mr leblanc up this is the time for the public to comment members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda pursuant to ars 38-431 action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling mat the matter for further consideration and decision at a later date in order to facilitate accomplishing the business of the district in a timely manner a time limit of three minutes will be imposed for each individual or group addressing the board when you approach the podium please state your name for the record mr leblanc good evening i'm
012larry leblanc and thank you for having me tonight the first amendment in the u.s constitution contains five of our most cherished freedoms the founding fathers believed as do i that these freedoms were given to us directly from god and the purpose of the first amendment was to make sure that our government could never take them away september 25 1789 congress adopted these following words and sent them to the state for ratification congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof the freedom of religion of speech press peaceful assembly and to petition our government where we address our grievances first we have the freedom of religion not the freedom from religion this means that we have the freedom to live our own choice of faith or no religion at
013all and we must respect the rights of our fellow americans to live out theirs as well second the freedom of speech which means we have the right to say whatever we want even if it's not popular at this time third our freedom of press means that we get to choose from a market competition of news outlets rather than having a controlled media from the state fourth like we are doing here tonight we have the right to assemble and speak out should we disagree in fifth we have the freedom of petition for our grievances should we disagree in a peaceful manner let us all commit to be able to live out our freedoms of religion speech press assembly and petition thank you next up we have miss mrs janet leblanc hi good evening my name is
014janet leblanc and i would like to challenge each of you to show us where in the constitution whereby the federal government has authority over our educational system let me help you there is none zero zip nada now that you know and are aware that any federal funds received by this district are illegally distributed and received you may not know it but each of you is following unconstitutional laws so let's work together on correcting this let's start tonight by making constitutional laws and show americans how it's supposed to work let's stop the receipt of unconstitutional funds and start following constitutional laws for the proper funding of our schools and i'd like to address regarding the january 12 2022 meeting follow-up questions i submitted to you via email on january 17th i would like to expand on
015several of the answers provided by mr kalas on january 19th however since i only have three minutes i will present the utmost important and submit the remainder via email to you on question 10 i provide i was asked about providing documents on the agenda or minutes as well as displaying them on screen during the meeting this question was not fully answered the excuse of waiting for supreme court decision about the biden vaccine mandate end quote is unconstitutional in and of itself first remember the federal government has no authority over our schools secondly the supreme court has no constitutional authority to make law they only uphold law so once again know you are running our schools unconstitutionally this is another area that must be corrected and brought back to constitutional law on questions 11 i ask
016why do principals need directors i disagree with the answers provided due to the district and all who are involved in the education of our children are following unconstitutional laws and funding as a taxpayer citizen of this school district i am requesting the board vote no on any of the reorganizational plans presented we do not need more top heavy executives we need more money in the classrooms and to the teachers this is where you board members can begin this transition into the following of constitutional laws as far as my suggestion to post a draft agenda one week prior to the next meeting you responded that it avoids confusion or frustration due to changes that might need to be made before the agenda is filed final that serves an insult to the public please do not insult
017our intelligence i am once again requesting that a draft agenda be posted one week prior to the next meeting and if you still believe this practice to not be advantageous to keep the public informed i would like your justification as to why thank you for your time thank you and we have one more but we will save that for age three and dr kellis can you follow up with ms leblanc so she understands we do not have a vaccine mandate in our district at a present yes we will follow up next we will move to item e1 motion to approve consent agenda i'm sorry update sorry d1 student update all right madame president we have no student update superintendent update thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet i would just
018again like to extend a huge thank you this has been a very trying and difficult week for school employees etc filling vacant positions trying to cover empty classrooms working to fill other employee vacancies due to illness the nation has seen a stark spike in active cases but our employees have done an extraordinary job of helping each other out where needed and i just would extend my thanks to everybody for giving up their own time to help another peer in need and we have many stories of staff from one school actually leaving their school don't go help out in where other another school is in need and that's not something that was directed that's just out of the goodness of their heart and we extend acknowledgement of these services and thank all of our employees for
019for what you're doing and that goes to administrators to teachers to classified staff and we even have volunteers who after seeing media recently have called and said we want to help and so we appreciate our community as well um great news coming up it's exciting to have the dicer festival of the arts coming again this spring and we're anticipating a lot of student talent like we saw this evening march 26th that's a saturday from 10 to two at valley vista high school we again anticipate a lot a lot a lot of student talent to be on display and that's all i have to report thank you this is governing board update there we go i'll go ahead and start um let's see a couple of things i did i visited shadow ridge school i met
020with mr hawkins and mr greenway had a nice visit it's always good to sit and chat with a couple of our administrators and just kind of let the hair down even though they don't have much hair is just like me so it's still good to let the hair down and just chat i also attended the certified staff administrative advisory council excuse me where we had several certified staff members attend and a great conversation led by dr kellis i am looking forward to i believe willow canyon's mousetrap presentation is tomorrow and friday thank you so it was bumped from last week to next this week so i'm looking forward to that on friday and i too want to echo uh dr kellis's sentiments of our admin and classified staff and all those have gone um even
021more than above and beyond so thank you it is a lot of hard work but they are doing what needs to be done and that is for the success of our students so thank you new hills next we'll move to motion to approve consent agenda items and i move that the governing board approved the consent agenda items as presented second motion made by christine pritchard seconded by tracy sorry sink bill motion carries next we move to action discussion items h1 recommendation to approve an update to the dysart unified school district logo dr kellis adam president my goodness i am like way ahead of myself what does that say just wants this meeting over information items g1 board monitoring of adopted policy section 9 instruction 9.0 to 9.24 dr kellis thank you madam president members of
022the 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 guest tonight we continue on our monitoring compliance with policies as as we go to policy nine so we do have two changes tonight with policy nine and to outline those changes uh dr pulling we'll outline the changes in those policies for you thank you dr croto madam president members of the board and 9.15 every so often the federal government updates education law and when they do that they change the name of it to a different name they like better so no child left behind is now called every student succeeds act although largely it's the same law and there were some modifications that are in there mostly around more specifics
023about family engagement and plans and student parent contact contacts and so those changes are noted as their had changed in the law secondly 9.16 there's a modification of state law and that adding local school superintendent must also sign a waiver for students parents opting out of english language learner classes so those two are the suggested changes i'll stand for any questions questions from the board for policy 9.15 can you walk us through that just a little bit is is this a requirement or a guideline from the federal government it's a requirement that title one principles um work on a parent family engagement plan and a school parent compact and um are distributed to parents and guardians thank you and then i also had a question on the 9.16 um not so much in regards to
024the policy for the bilingual instruction um and dr croto and i had a conversation about this offline but um there was a recent article i believe it was yesterday um and i think it may have been on the news as well in scottsdale unified school district they are having an opportunity presented to them where um afghan refugee children are being placed into their school district that is from the state level they're being housed nearby in a hotel are we having any um thing like that coming up for dysart that we know of uh no not that i'm aware of and we've not been contacted to my knowledge okay um if we did do we have the resources readily available to provide assistance for something of that magnitude it's a good question probably depend you know
025and how you know how many students are coming and what are the ramifications but certainly we have resources in our schools to support students who need second language learning okay thank you any other questions okay thank you you get to like nudge me you're like sure i'm on task uh g2 um school reports ashton ranch middle school and luke elementary school dr kellis thank you madam president dr pulling we'll introduce this item we're going to start with luke elementary school as um we'd like to postpone ashton ranch middle school uh if that's okay the principle of extending circumstances and so she's not here but it's my pleasure to introduce molly gillette principal of luke elementary school and she will present tonight cabinet i am molly gillett i am the principal of luke elementary school and
026this evening i am joined by miss jessica houg behind me as our dean of students we were very excited that miss piranha was honored tonight as our national board certified teacher this year and joining us up above is our tls marissa mulvey she could not be here tonight but she is watching so i have the privilege of sharing information about luke elementary and i will start with who we are um so a common phrase in our school that we often state is we are the jets um luke as you know is located next to luke air force base and the jets are just as much a part of our student body as our students are they fly overhead quite frequently during the day we currently have an enrollment of 546 k-8 students 40 additional students
027in our pre-k program our school colors are blue and yellow and our school mascot is the jets we have two structured teaching classrooms on our campus and our positive behavior acronym for our school is luke jets soar and we'll talk a little bit more about that so at luke we have some improvement opportunities and this year we're really focusing on our student achievement on increasing our enrollment and our partnership with luke air force base so i'll start with our student achievement we recently had a deep dive data dive with miss amy hartchen every teacher was focused on identifying five students that are in currently the minimally proficient range and we're focusing really intently on moving those students forward into the partially proficient we really want to close that achievement gap but we don't want to
028narrow it we want to keep our accelerated students moving and then bring the rest of the students up to meet them so that includes increasing our highly proficient students so we're looking at those opportunities as well teachers created goal setting sheets for each of the students that they identified that we felt that we could move who were close and just needed that additional support to push into the next level so they are doing weekly data monitoring right now and we're really highly focused on closing that gap over the last two years we have gone through two different re-boundaries and our enrollment has dipped from the 750 it was two years ago to approximately that 550 currently so we have a huge push on increasing that enrollment we have some great opportunities there we have new
029housing coming in across the street there's several different housing pods within that new neighborhood we've got luke landing marbella and some others that are going in thank you so one fun thing that we did this year um in this summer is we made these really cute swag bags that we took to all the builders um they have information on dysart high school and luke because we feed to dysart and they include some really cute gifts for our new families a sticker for their car some pens sticky notes and then a really fun little squishy jet for the kids to play with any new family that comes in we're enrolling them and welcoming them with our bag and we're really trying to promote to the new air force families that are moving in as they expand
030our air force men and women that luke is the premier school for the air force base so the next opportunity for us is working on our partnership with luke air force base um over the last two years dr kellis has done an excellent job partnering with then commander richardson who has now moved on and we have a new commander on base but we have expanded opportunities for transportation the district has purchased some additional white vans that we're going to use to support transporting luke air force base students from surrounding schools to the youth center which is their after-school program that accepts the air force credit so families are more apt to use those services on base so our district is helping those air force families with the extra opportunities for transportation we have a new
031school liaison from the air force base i meet with monthly and we're looking at all of her initiatives on base to connect more with our local school communities and then how luke can serve the air force families more effectively she has some initiatives that we're going to be partnering pretty closely with over the next few months and so those are really exciting i'll talk about those a little bit more in a minute um but right now we are working on a possible kinder recruitment event they have a child development center on the base that has several preschool classrooms and we are trying to bring dysart schools into those child development classrooms to inform parents on their opportunities within our fine schools in the district and then in april we have the month of the military
032child last year dr kellis dr poling joined myself our school liaison and the child development center staff as we celebrated all of the military children we took part in the parade with the child development center on base they came over to luke we all dressed in purple greeted our students as they walked through the gate we're planning a similar event this year we hope to include the child development center staff to come over see the school last year we gave away really cute purple bracelets and we applauded all the students in every single classroom and did a chant for military kids on our school and we wear purple every wednesday in april to celebrate the commitment that those families make to serve our country in the final partnership we started with this summer is the
033student-to-student military program our school social worker has been doing a lot of research and helping she's instrumental in this process it's a student leadership opportunity where we soften the transition for families who are being moved from base to base we have student leaders on our campus that welcome students introduce them to new friends help them acclimate to the new school community and really make that a soft landing for families as they're transitioning between service locations so some of the celebrations for us this year on our school report card last year we have been working very hard on our rti process our response to intervention identifying students who are in need of support and then providing additional resources to help them make academic gains we moved a very large percentage of our students who were struggling
034and they made extreme growth we on our state report card we earned 50 out of the 50 points for that growth we're continuing those programs and it's a very strong partnership between our interventionists and our teachers to collaborate and focus on student growth and achievement another area of celebration for us is increased use of our professional learning communities on campus our grade level teams and at multiple grade levels partnerships so this summer we took 16 of our teacher leaders and attended a plc plus training over the summer those teachers then brought back their expertise onto campus our district has committed to really focusing on plc plus playbook this year so our teachers use their knowledge from the training and then the district provided supports this year and they've been rolling out professional development for our
035whole staff and then in their plc's really supporting uh the growth of of data and use to collaborate around instructional practices on our campus and then if anyone has had the opportunity our social media page has some of the highest activity in dysart we have really focused on opening our school doors to our community we know that our service men and women are busy during the day and our parents can't always be at our school events they can't always be in the classroom seeing what their kids are doing but there's such amazing things happening at luke so it's been a school-wide effort that every teacher is taking pictures of the amazing work that they're doing in classrooms and that we're sharing those on our social media account if you haven't yet checked that out please
036go to luke's facebook or instagram the kids are adorable and the learning is amazing we even had macy's respond to us when our kinders did a macy's day parade activity macy's commented on that so we're we're really excited about getting that recognition and getting even community to interact with us on the social platforms and then you will also see that um we had uh excuse me mayor skip hall and councilwoman ali klein take part um they are featured on our social media pages as well because our fourth grade students won the surprise literacy challenge so the mayor and councilwoman were out to read stories to our students they held our class gecko they served ice cream it was just a really fun event for our students and all those pictures are up on the website
037the focus for the year we are going to continue our work with our data-driven plcs teachers are learning every time we meet how to access more and more data and how to understand how to use that for instructional purposes we're really excited about the potential for growth for our most in need students making data-driven decisions our pbis program so our positive behavior interventions and support we are part of the koi grant this year and we're in year one even though we had a platform we had the foundation of a solid positive behavior program on our campus we are now refining and making that part of our school culture in a way that it hasn't been before and we've seen really positive effects with student behavior drops in discipline and kids really responding well we recognize
038when kids meet our expectations with what we call a jet tag and then every week we do a positive recognition drawing our ptsa comes in and they award students with books um as as their prize for winning um and meeting our expectations every week and then finally we're going to continue working on that expanded partnership with luke air force base there are some really great ideas that our school liaison is working on across the united states there are purple star schools that we're hoping that that becomes an item that we can apply for here in arizona the student-to-student program is a nationally recognized program and so we're hoping to be recognized as a student-to-student school and then a big push is to have more volunteers from the base be present on campus our military men
039and women receive accommodation when they do volunteer and so miss holland is working to build up a volunteer pool to have members of the air force base on campus i think i just turned it off sorry questions thank you very much for your presentation um just a quick question so you mentioned how each student has some goals developed for them are those goals teacher generated or do students take part in creating those goals that's an excellent question so for our third through eighth grade classrooms right now every student has a goal sheet they're doing student-led conferencing for the second round of conferences and the students are going to be reporting to their parents with the support of their teacher how they're performing on their individually set goals they have access to all of their data
040they've created their goal sheets with all that information for the data dive specific for the students that we've identified those are more intervention goals that would then partner with goals that students have already set for themselves okay so a little bit of both exactly yeah okay okay and then what would you say is your biggest challenge um academically and what interventions are you seeing some real promise with um our biggest challenges right now um we're working on we have two goals as a building and that's our third grade reading and our seventh and eighth grade math um we're really focusing on moving our third grade minimally proficient students into the proficient category we have done some work with ms dana k and the excellent supports from district every other week they come out we look
041at data together as a team and we talk about next steps best instructional practices but really getting those third graders in that transition from learning to read to reading to learn is a huge focus for us and the same at that seventh and eighth grade level looking at those math standards and seeing how we can get more of our 8th grade and 7th grade math students prepared for algebra and above once they get to high school so getting them to that proficient and highly proficient area okay thank you and i was just going to say i also like the swag bag idea i don't know that i've heard of any other school doing that maybe there there are other schools doing it but we'll leave this here for you guys so you can see all
042the cute things i think that's a great way a great opportunity to grow your school and um just engage your community so that's really an innovative idea i really like that and then just a lot of the other community outreach things that you're doing it sounds very positive so thank you thank you anyone else have any questions comments i do have uh just a couple of things thank you mr le for being here as a former military brat air force brat i know how it can be a little daunting on changing air force bases whether it's at one year's time or two years time and the most i had spent on one particular place is three years so it is um you know even though we may have the grades when we come into a
043new school or a new base there's still that hesitancy on interacting with the teachers or interacting with other students so i do appreciate everything that you're doing making the students feel welcome and getting with you said was the wing commander uh yeah so um there there are multiple players um so we work with different people in different capacities on the base and then i haven't been able to attend the cat team meetings lately but it even goes as far as the mental health services and the chapel services and everyone in a team and we share out what's going on at the school and how we can partner wow thank you very much and also i saw the the billboard on glendale avenue as i was driving one time and talking about luke and getting enrolled
044and getting involved and so thank you very much for that and also congratulations on your plc plus getting that information to everyone so thank you thank you okay thank you very much thank you next we'll move to g3 information on plan to add school resource officers at the middle school dr kellis 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 members of cabinet and guest this evening we want to share information with you as it relates to a plan to add school resource officers to the middle schools since our last governing board meeting and a request to discuss this item we have reached out and spoken with members from both the city of surprise and
045the city of el mirage we spoke with the city of surprise police chief the new police chief chief pena and addressed the notion of adding three school resource officers to the three middle schools that are in the city of surprise at the district's cost not the cost of the city um and chief pena's response was um you're telling me that you're giving me six months to provide you three resource officers and you're going to pay for them not a problem um and so he was very excited about that opportunity as a matter of fact jeff pena has a long history of working successfully with sro programs um in the city of peoria and so he's excited about not only adding the possibility of adding three sros to the three middle schools in surprise but also
046looking at and how we most effectively optimize the use of all of our school resource resource officers in addition to speaking with chief pena we've spoken with the city manager in el mirage i'm crystal dykes and el mirage is also on board with the thought of adding a school resolve resource officer to the middle school in el mirage and that's dysart middle school the plan at this point in time will be to continue conversations with both cities as we work to finalize igas and funding sources and then we would bring that information back to the governing board for approval and we are targeting uh the meeting in march to get to be able to bring that back and get that done and with that i'd be happy to answer any questions thank you so much
047um just out of curiosity what were some of the discussions regarding um how like what that would look like what would a what would an sro and a middle school look like did you talk about like specific areas of focus or responsibilities madam president first i have to tell you that our middle school principals are turning cartwheels with excitement about the the thought and the the possibility of adding a school resource officer it provides tremendous opportunities especially the city of surprise where they have extended their um programs down their their outreach programs they were looking to extend them to middle school with the sros as well and so this will provide opportunities for things like vaping education for things like extension of discipline consequences that that could lead to some city projects or city service
048those types of things with the opportunity to continue to build relationships with students with police officers at an early age with the end goal being to increase awareness and community support of police in the adulthood piece or adulthood level as they grow older we didn't get more specific than that but i will tell you that having seen chief pena's work with the sros at the high school level in peoria we're very excited to work with him at the middle school level as well i think it sounds like an amazing idea and just to reassure any community members pulling three officers from surprise or several officers at some point from el mirage this isn't going to impact obviously their protection of their cities or they'll probably replace those particular officers or add to their force madam
049president that was a concern that we had to address with the city and we wanted to make sure that it did not place them at any kind of hardship or jeopardize their service to the community and that did not seem to be a problem whatsoever as a matter of fact um i believe their plan will be to add officers to their to their um to their force and um you know when they're not working in our schools during the school year they return to the force and so actually it may be a benefit to the community as well thank you any other questions could you explain the funding for these officers madam president miss grant um those are conversations that we've just initially begun to have there are multiple opportunities in terms of funding sources
050for us for example we could use mips as the funding source for that and you know as as the governing board is aware mips is a ser is a fund that we receive for medicaid reimbursement for services that are provided to students and that fund continues to grow on a yearly basis and so that's just one possibility of a funding source we'll continue with mr hicks to explore the best funding opportunity for that but look forward to the opportunity to add officers is mips a permanent funding source madam president miss grant mips is a funding source that is generated every year i mean it's generated based upon service it is not what we would call hard funding um similar to mno funding that we received from the government or from the state excuse me however
051our mips our folks who work to provide reports to generate mips do a tremendous job and our mips ballot balance continues to increase each year and i know that the short time i've been on the board i've heard other things being funded by this so is there still money available to add to this or are we taking away from something else madam president miss grant not being the financial expert for the district that would be mr hicks however i will indicate that um it is our understanding that with the balance that this is a funding source that could be used over a course of a few years social workers come out of mips is that right i'll defer to mr hicks yes that's why i remember madam president members of the board you are correct
052social workers are funded from it's fun i want to thank you for um addressing this at my request um what you i know you said that you met with um with pena regarding that the three officers for surprise uh and that you met with dykes for the one com uh that would be in uh dysart in el mirage you didn't mention the i don't i unless i missed it i don't think you mentioned the funding for the el mirage madam president mrs densmore i apologize uh we would be looking at the same fund at this point in time we are we haven't had the opportunity to truly sit down and explore every funding option we'll do that in the next few weeks however the funding option would be the same for the city of el
053mirage officer we would look to use mips possibly for all four of those positions however we would also explore the opportunity to write grants um you know to possibly cover that as well okay thank you um and i apologize i cannot recall what the name of it is i know but i know that previously our school resource officer former school resource officer over at valley vista officer thomas he had implemented um a program for students to not necessarily get out of trouble but to help facilitate an easier way to to complete whatever that process looked like can you madam president mr dentamore i believe that you're speaking about a diversion program it's okay because earlier in the presentation it was escaping my mind as well and so part of what officer thomas had intended and
054is moving forward with is extending that diversion program to the middle school level in the city of surprise this will tie right into that conversation and provide a really good opportunity for students to learn other valuable lessons should they make some bad consequences in school that may not necessarily just be school consequences perfect and i assume that when you say middle school it would not just apply to our middle schools the four middle schools it would apply to our middle schoolers that are currently in k-8s as well madam president miss dinsmore we are exploring the the option of placing the school resource officers in the four middle schools right however the diversion program yes i'm sorry yes the diversion program yes they are working to to extend that to all of the schools in the
055city of surprise perfect okay thank you and then uh how long do you think like we're looking at do we do we approve this first when it's presented to us do we approve it first or does city council need to approve that first madam president miss densmore just as we're having conversations uh those um that we spoke with in the city will have conversations as well as matter of fact i know that those have already started in each of the cities we anticipate we actually started a conversation today regarding igas intergovernmental agreements with uh the cities and drafting those to make sure that we have all that in place we will work to finalize funding finalize igas between attorney groups and our target is to bring in approval to to the governing board or recommendation
056for approval in the march meeting simultaneously that will happen with the cities as well it just depends to answer your question directly it depends on the order of meetings who has meetings when okay thank you go ahead oh i was just going to say thank you i really appreciate the effort to increase the sros on our campuses for our student safety it's just really important and not just for student safety but also that diversion program that you're talking about because i mean we both we all know middle schoolers you know they do things they don't even know why they do it and then sometimes they make a huge mistake and then they have really big consequences and maybe having that sro yeah you're going to get your consequence but let's kind of talk about it
057and let's you know come up with a really good consequence to where you it's a learning experience not just a bam so i love that and i just i thank you so much for the work that our district administration is doing to get those sros in the middle schools um i do have a question um eventually could we expand these to the k-8s madam president ms chaffin first of all i would extend the thanks back to the governing board for allowing the conversation and the opportunity to exist we believe that adding additional sros to our schools not only benefits our students but benefits our cities as well and those that live therein to answer your question that will just depend down the road on funding and the availability of of officers as well so but
058certainly we look forward to the to the potential success of having them in our middle schools as we currently have them in our high schools and they are tremendously successful in our high schools and we look forward to this being an opportunity and and we'll see what the future brings with that thank you and that's what i was actually going to ask as far as can this be um kind of almost like a pilot like we've done for other programs and with the possibility of expanding um if it goes well or if we continue to see a lot of benefit that our other schools could benefit from having an sro as well so i'm glad to hear that that's a possibility depending so any other questions i do have one quick one it may be
059a mr hicks question um school safety grants so even with the funding of possibly using mips and everything this is it's still a competitive grant or it's not going to stop us from applying for the school safety grant correct madam president members of the board the school safety grant was a two and a three year awards so i don't know that they've opened up a new opening i had kind of heard something some rumbling okay so um that was just rumbling so that's probably in the governor's budget in that sense so we'll see if that is and yes they are very competitive grants we applied from before we didn't get awarded any on the first go round but we did get on the second go round and so we would continue to explore these especially
060as a new program going down further than what was existing it's not replacing so it have a good advantage in that sense and like i said there were just rumblings that i'd heard and madam president member service think bill we would not um just handcuff ourselves for the state school safety grant we would explore other options possibly as well are the recipients of the school safety grants public madam president members of the board yes it's on the adu website okay i may ask you if i can't find it i heard grumblings as well on the school safety grants that anyone who had applied for the grants for school resource officers specifically were were not honored or approved is that your understanding no madam president members of the board they broke it up into two groups
061that they had counselors social workers on one side and school resource officers on the other side and split up the money to divvy up they haven't had a recent award in this this is we're talking about a year and a half ago or two years ago um and so yes they did okay i will look for that thank you thank you so much appreciate it all right now we will move to action discussion items h1 recommendation to approve an update to the dysart unified school district logo dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board dr dean will introduce this item madam president members of the governing board dr callus members of cabinet and guests the public relations team has been working for quite some time to refresh the dysart unified school district logo
062or i should say to update the dysart unified school district logo their process has been extensive and has been lengthy and this evening they will share with you not only their process and but we'll also ask for um approval of a new logo for the district to begin to be used this summer with that director of pr renee ryan thank you good evening madam president members of the board superintendent kellison cabinet in conjunction with the district centennial last year we were tasked with updating our district logo and tonight i get the pleasure of walking you through that process and showing you several options to vote on first i want you to know that we did the project completely in-house with our the expertise and talent in our communications department and at no cost and it
063will be rolled out starting in july for next school year and it will come out in conjunction with our new website which we are working also on in-house with our it team it will take several years to fully transition because we'll update items as needed when things get out of date or we're running out of something so it will take a it will be a gradual transition that will take a couple of years to fully see before i present the options i would like to walk you through the lengthy process that we went through so it started actually about a year ago in april we did a survey we emailed parents and staff and put out to the community and got a lot of great feedback that way we evaluated those responses we also did
064a lot of market research on current trends trends specific to education things like that and developed goals which i'll share in a moment then in august we started creating hundreds upon hundreds of logo iterations if you could think it we probably tried it and we worked very closely with cabinet throughout that process and refining that and then this month earlier this month we did some focus groups with parents staff and students and got feedback on that and made some further revisions on that that which you which you will see tonight and then as i mentioned earlier we will roll that out starting in july so something to keep in mind with logos is that they're very subjective and everyone has opinions when it comes to design so we could probably show 10 different people the
065same thing and they'd have 10 different opinions about that so in order to guide the process we developed goals to ensure the final design achieved the intended results so our goals we wanted to be community focused with a less corporate design and feel we wanted to maintain our brand awareness by keeping the three abstract figures and similar colors we did not want to lose the brand awareness that we've had for the last 12 years with the current logo especially with that gradual transition as well we wanted it to look more modern with a less boxy font design and to increase the usability in printing and enhance the branding by using less but more clear text for example in the current logo the unified school district portion that's under dice art gets small very fast as
066you reduce the size of the logo and is difficult to read so in order to achieve these goals one of the adjustments we are making is in the name that we will use for branding purposes our official name will of course still be dysart unified school district but we are looking at using dysart schools for purposes of branding and in the logo we believe that it is a better branding practice it simplifies things and it gets to the heart of what we do immediately we are schools we educate it is a more modern practice there are some examples locally of districts that have done this pv schools is one example gilbert public schools and there are others as well we do believe dysart schools has a more welcoming community feel it's less corporate sounding and
067it's easier to work with and apply in a variety of places because it is a shorter term as far as the initial design changes that we started as we did the iterations we went to a softer blue and green to match the community style and be more welcoming and friendly we have more rounded shapes and text to create a softer community focus we varied the size of the figures to represent preschool through high school and the shape of the figures to represent the uniqueness of the community we maintained the graduation cap to represent the end goal and we added an additional educational element to further visualize our purpose you have four logo options with very slight differences for your consideration in front of you and we'll get those on the screen in a moment for
068everyone else to see please note that each option has a horizontal and a vertical version that would both need to be used in different applications and i'll walk you through the minor differences in each version i know it's hard to see so with our top options they have the same graphical element um the three figures in the middle are centered more in the book that they're coming out of and you will notice a difference from left to right in color so the left one's a full color version the right one introduces a gray in the book and the the bottom ones if you'll notice the individuals in the center are tucked down into the binding of the book um a little bit more so those are the primary differences and then left to right one
069of the other differences is the why there are some some other minor differences in the in the text itself but the why is the primary difference um one of the primary differences there so i mentioned earlier that we got focus group feedback uh so we did fine-tune these a little bit after we met with the focus groups and what you're seeing is based on some of that feedback and but i do want to let you know that the feedback we got of course everyone had some specific opinions on little you know things here or there but overall it was very positive everybody actually felt we achieved our goals um they felt it was reflective of who we are and what we do they felt that it exhibited academics student focus and community which were actually
070the top three words used to describe dysart when we did our survey back in april they all felt the colors reflected a softer more welcoming community feel and all of the graphical elements were clear everybody saw a book everyone saw three figures representing the grade the different grade levels that we serve and everyone saw a graduate which sometimes people when the lo when our current logo is small people don't even realize actually that there's a graduate in it so the minor changes that we made based on that feedback for these versions that we're showing you was the we moved the tassel on the graduate actually which was actually a really good point so the individual is facing us and has graduated so the tassel is on their left so that was a very important choice
071there we also adjusted the thickness or the thinness of some of the words and then we straightened the tail of the y in some of those options based on some of the the students were very interested in the font so they gave us some interesting feedback um in terms of modernizing that a bit so that was good as far as overall preferences like i said they were very positive about all of the options they were shown but we did ask them if you had to pick one which one would it be so the option three in the bottom left was the majority preferred followed by option one in the top left corner and then our parent group actually preferred option two so as you can see we've put a whole lot of work um and
072effort into this project um and got a lot of feedback on this i do want to thank my team ryan doing all of those versions and um the rest of our team as well as a very collaborative process internally and then getting a lot of feedback from a lot of different groups throughout so i'd be happy to answer any questions you may have thank you very much well i was glad to hear um as you were speaking that what i'm looking at are our two designs per square because at first i was like oh i can't do that it's not aligned and it's like it was driving me i was thinking that was about that would bug me so i was glad to hear that um i liked i mean i definitely like the logo
073i appreciate all the hard work and everything that was put into it um i'm partial to unified school district only because we are unified and not all school districts are unified so i think that kind of defines us a little bit more those are just some of my initial thoughts but i'll open it up to everybody else too we did speak to some of the parents about that specific question and some of them were from out of state and that didn't mean anything to them i think depending on where you come from there's different ways that they name school districts so they didn't seem to think that was a problem they didn't really understand what unified meant versus elementary's a little more clear but there's unions which are just high schools and that sort of
074thing so but we just felt like it got to the heart of what we do immediately so i do personally agree with the parents i like that i like the gray in there a little bit but anybody else have any comments madam president i might recommend or right might remind the board just so that as you're thinking that we are looking this evening for a recommendation as to which logo we would move forward with so as you're having conversation just please keep that in the back of your mind i think they look amazing and i just want to say thank you to our team you guys are incredibly talented um to come up with all this i mean it's very thoughtful all the process that you went through just refining it and retuning it that's
075a lot of work and i mean they look wonderful so thank you thank you and i kind of like i kind of like option two also i think they all look great also and it's going to be very difficult to choose um i i do like it how the um the three students are are directly coming out of the book a little bit more um but they all look they all look good just curious how many before you got to these final four how many did you have i don't think we counted but we went through many many many options i don't know i mean ryan could probably give you a better idea but he it was a lot i mean different types of people different types of books different different colors different fonts uh
076it was a lot he's putting a thumbs up like there was several there was okay all right okay no i mean it's it's great work and um the fact that you didn't go outside to do it because we had the talent here inside so um [Music] that's i mean it's putting this one up here you know and um a little bit as to what miss um pritchard this is i i've been used to the unified school district that doesn't mean that we can't change um uh that's it's always been kind of drummed in our heads as far as the elementary district union um high school district but i'm i'm open to change um and it's gonna be difficult to choose one i'm i'm between two and three they're all good though i i absolutely love
077the logo and i i think it's when i look at it i think of like a pop-up book you know like um i i love it i'm i feel a little attacked because i'm really partial to option four but i'm sorry welcome to logos i know um i mean and i don't really i don't feel that strongly about it but i i do like the font in in four and two i i guess sorry i think for the thought the font on schools is a little thicker that's why i like it yeah i just like it bolder yeah i think they both look great yeah they do but we're still gonna we're still gonna be unified school district like we're not getting rid of madam president that is correct um the official name of the
078dysart school district remains the dysart unified school district the intent in in the dysart schools piece is to revive to provide a a bit of branding opportunities and aligns with several market trends as well but yes you are correct that the official name of our school district is the dysart unified school district and we're going to keep our power in the preparation that's staying right if anything it's just the madam president yes this this conversation is solely related to a logo and i might add as well this is a good time um you've all said it and you've all been around it the amazing talent that we have in this department is on display this evening this is hundreds of hours of exceptional and i'll use the word because it's correct extraordinary work and you
079know we we joke a bit that ryan mcginley is um the current leader in the clubhouse for the number of extraordinary pins received by anybody in the school district but he's deserving of every single one and the effort that's been put forward by miss ryan to lead this project and and and mr mcginley's exceptional talent being displayed is just a testament to what we have in this school district so they deserve all of the accolades that you're giving them this evening madam president i would also add just for full disclosure that that is an abbreviated name of the district the actual name of the district is dicer unified school district number 89. um i i know that it seems to be the new thing like you mentioned like for gilbert mesa going by gps or
080mps i'm so glad that we're not doing dps so thank you for that i really don't want another acronym so and dps has different thoughts so i like two or four the best personally i'd lean towards two only because if that was the parent choice that yeah just i would lean towards that but um are there any other comments before emotions made i'm between two and four do you like four okay you like you like both i was for two or three that were my main it sounds like two things only is because of you know like i said it was coming further from the book um that's opened up it's just the three students are coming further from the book and so it's to me it has a greater impact although too does have
081it's like the springboard so bringing into the future spring in the future yeah okay well i'll go ahead and make a motion then i move to approve dicert logo option number two as presented second motion made by christine pritchard seconded by john densmore motion carries and thank you so much for all your hard work they're beautiful yes and madam president just a reminder that that will begin to be rolled out in july thank you all right next we'll move to action discussion item three recommendation to see i caught myself revision to school calendar for the 2022-2023 school year dr kalis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet dr dean will introduce this item madame president members of the governing board dr kellis members of cabinet and guests every five approximately
082five years in the cycle of a school calendar the school calendar pushes itself back by a week or it has to be pushed back by a week to accommodate dates and to make sure that that when you return from winter break that you don't return on january 1st or december 31st or what have you in my 17 years in the school district i believe this has happened three times already and this would be the fourth as we move as we move forward however um upon the the recent revision to the 22 23 school year some concerns arose from community members from parents from teachers and administrators that the current calendar has the last day of winter break being december 23rd which is christmas eve eve which creates a bit of a hardship for teachers who
083or staff who are leaving town because it really provides them only christmas eve to travel and that certainly is understandable so in looking for an option to solve this piece administration sought the input of um of several stakeholders and present to you this evening some minor changes for record for approval for the school year it's hard to believe that we're saying the 22-23 school year but that being said we are the changes are very minor and they are as follows in our current calendar school is scheduled to start on august 4th in the revision calendar we are recommending that school start on august the 3rd one day earlier nothing else changes on the calendar until you get to winter break currently the calendar has winter break or the last day of the semester being december
08423rd we are recommending that the last day of of the semester in the revised calendar be december the 20th and winter break would then begin on wednesday the 21st the full two-week break would be taken and we are recommending that school would resume for students on january the 5th in the next item for approval for the board for work calendars we are recommending that our teachers return two weeks after break begins on wednesday january 4th for a teacher work day that will be dedicated solely for them in preparation for the second semester so those are the recommendations that that we are looking to have approved this evening nothing else on the calendar changes fall break remains aligned to columbus day we continue to be able to have a week at at thanksgiving and the last
085day of school does not change nor does the graduation day so those are the recommendations that we are making this evening and i'd be happy to answer any questions the the half days um are those changed for the middle schools madam president miss densmore those are on the current calendar for this year our middle schools do take our middle school students take finals on the last two days of each semester and so that's currently in place it is okay yes do we normally have a teacher work day on the day after teachers come back from break madam president that would be a new addition to our to our calendar for this year and the reason for that is that we've heard um great success from other school districts that do that there are other districts
086that are close to us in proximity that do that it allows for what happens is we take one of the days that teachers normally have at the beginning of the school year so we bring all of our teachers back for four days prior to the school year starting we would bring them back for three days prior to the school year starting and then that fourth day would be the day before students return for the second semester and provides them the opportunity for any last minute pieces that need to be planned for plc's to gather again before the second semester begins when they return from break do we think that that's needed as much as giving them the extra days before the whole school year starts to take one of those days away madam president we
087believe that that it will be a very successful venture it is very successful for the school districts around us that use it and then are we um graduation this year is it on a wednesday madam president you're testing my memory um but i believe the answer is yes we're out of school i believe this year on a thursday i believe and graduation is the day before so that would be wednesday yes okay so i was just wondering um have we already so because this would bring graduation on a tuesday have we already like are we already in contract with that madam president the graduation date for 2023 is set with with the the venue yes all right i just thank you also for including columbus day our pleasure fall break any other questions just one
088dr dean how was this uh received by the teachers having that day after uh the christmas break madam president mrs orsinpo with applause with applause yes okay i can tell you that this would be a welcome change for teachers because the being back four days before the school year yeah it sounds great but usually those days are just jam-packed with pd so you got meeting meeting meeting meeting meeting and if you want to set up your classroom you got to come a week before to set up your classroom because and so you're working for free for a week so my question to dr dean is are we going to have pd's on this day on january 4th or is it actually going to be a work day madam president has promised by dr kellis to
089the certified counsel yesterday if this calendar is approved there will be no pd on that day before um the second semester begins it will be a full teacher work day oh hallelujah can you say that one more time and dr k that was a an absolute promise by dr kellis all right and it's recorded we got this recording it was recorded in that meeting yes okay this will help so much just with like you said plc's and grading and lesson plans because as a teacher you honestly feel and yeah you can do most of that before you go on winter break but a you're exhausted b you've got all these class parties you've got everything going on so having that day just to focus on planning and getting your stuff together is absolutely wonderful and
090madam president miss jeff and i might add that it will allow our staff to enjoy two weeks of winter break anybody else i just have so works i guess i'm a little confused or concerned about this year graduation is the 18th next year will be the 24th so we're adding we're going later into the month of may so what are we accommodating at the other end madam president members miss grant that's an excellent question so there are just a couple of differences in the current calendar that's pushed forward one of them is that we are we are adding two days to the vacation at the thanksgiving break so rather than having you know only three days of thanksgiving we're taking that entire week off and then that tends to push around a week here and
091there so go ahead and entertain a motion i moved the governing board oops hold on it just moved i moved the governing board approved the revision to the 2022-2023 school year calendar as presented motion made by tracy sorry sinkhole seconded by joe grant oh my yes motion carries thank you okay next we'll move to action discussion item h3 recommendation to approve the employee work calendars 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 callus cabinet and guest tonight we bring to you the work calendars which coincide with the school calendars that you just approved most of the discussion already did occur on the work calendars in the last
092topic we do have some changes in the work calendars that do reflect some positions moving but however it's important to know we're just doing the calendars tonight those positions that will be moving calendars are coming to you at a different board board meeting once you approve the calendars so we have a basis and then we will share with you at a later meeting which jobs are moving to what calendar so with that all the discussion has occurred tonight earlier like i said with the work calendars and the changes to coincide with the school calendars that you just approved so i'll stand for any questions there's nine total calendars for all our workers madam president i also believe we have a call to public on this item i'll read the statement again this is the time
093for pub the public to comment members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda pursuant to ars 38-431 action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for further consideration and decision at a later date in order to facilitate accomplishing the business of the district in a timely manner a time limit of three minutes will be imposed for each individual or group addressing the board when you approach the podium please state your name for the record and we have uh miss janelle rodriguez good evening thank you members of the board for the dysart unified school district for giving me the opportunity to address you this evening my name is janelle rodriguez
094i'm currently a teacher at growing minds preschool for the pre-k level i've worked there since december of 2020. we've all worked so hard through this pandemic and now again facing the pandemic as it circulates through our school yet again we continue to stay open working hard and operating at our capacity that's not only something that creates additional stress as we additionally and traditionally have at least 10 members out on a consistent daily basis but it forces us to work a lot harder we run around and operate an awesome facility and we love these kids that we serve every day i feel that every single woman in this facility should be rewarded for their labor of love we do our best on a daily basis through sickness and health and most of us are here more
095than we are with our spouses and our own children and i believe that we should be rewarded for this i think a vacation is the least we should get as we work long days and need this time to relax i find that we come back better and we make the preschool a success we currently have more students than ever we're about to implement a new curriculum program and we can make this a success for years to come we all know that the saying of if it ain't broke don't fix it well i don't think our vacation is a problem that needs fixing many of us are single parents and need all the days and need that paid vacation time if we're ever to even consider affording to take a vacation i kindly request that the
096board members please consider the calendar change and that taking away our paid vacation time should not be on the agenda i have a signed petition from symbol members of our staff at the school that i would like to present to the board please for your consideration before you make any decision on the change to the calendar i thank you for this time and i render the rest of my time thank you thank you do i just approach you with the paperwork yes okay so dr croto um you and i um had a discussion as well as with dr kellis just for my own clarification again after listening to the presentation the way it was explained to me these employees are still going to be able to accrue their vacation or we call it discretionary days
097five days discretionary five days sick right they're still going to be getting that benefit those benefits aren't changing correct madam president that is correct the two um what our speaker is referring to is moving to a 222 calendar um and that um does afford them five discretionary days five sick days and 12 paid holidays um the 248 which they were on is um also has vacation days on there the 222 calendar does not have those vacation days and as i said before those will be brought to you those changes they are paid grade changes obviously there's less day's work so the board will have to vote with that at a different meeting next meeting oh i'm sorry what did you say they'll have to you'll have to as a board will present those changes to
098you of the pay the pay changes because there's less days worked so it's a change in the pay and that will be presented to you at another meeting and can you explain a little bit about the rationale um just for those in attendance as to why these employees are being moved to a 222 calendar madam president absolutely as you know the community education department runs growing minds and they fund all of their work and all of their employees they are self-funded they do not use district funds in order to pay that so the revenue they take in is the revenue they pay out and at this time our director mr williams has determined that there's not enough employment during certain times vacation times i.e vacation times times that our normal school is not in session
099that is not making money so he needs to make some financial changes in order to make this possible for community education madam president i might add a bit of context to the conversation so currently there are 276 students in growing minds preschool um total total preschool students during winter break that number dropped to 35 students total throughout the whole program during the winter break they came back after winter break but during the two weeks of winter break that was 35 students that were coming to the preschool during fall break of this year it dropped from 276 to 67 during that one week and in june when the summer starts it went from 276 to 97 and so as you see there are periods of time during the school year where preschool enrollment drops as parents
100are taking time off or parents or if there are teachers they're off in the summer and those kinds of things in july the enrollment starts to increase again as we get closer to the school year starting and then we pop to the to the large enrollment number as well and so as dr crota stated with a department that's completely self-funded they're looking for the flexibility in their employees calendars where when they have those times when they drop to 35 total students that the calendars for the for the employees match that as well and that they're not paying employees they're not paying a full staff for 35 students who are coming to preschool for two weeks they're not paying a full staff for 67 students in the month of june and so that's the intent of
101the the conversation i see so normally because they're on if they're on that calendar that different calendar with more days we are obligated obviously to pay them for all of those days but what you're saying is there's not enough work that's exactly what's happening rather than being called off we can't call off people because we're in that contract or that understanding that's correct so that's what this is about and as mr williams met with those groups he explained that should that number increase the 67 or the 35 that he would ask for people to work if they wanted in order to make up that time but they weren't guaranteed that work on the new calendar well and in fairness too um community ed has classified substitute positions correct correct so in fairness would these employees
102have priority to be called in first as like kind of the core staff before i mean do you guys have like a system where these employees would have an opportunity to make some of that money up before it goes to a sub situation i believe he does have that okay um and then the the growing minds employees on this new proposed new calendar they are not getting any less of benefit than any other dysart employee on a 222 calendar that is correct okay do we know where the cost savings is i mean i understand what you're saying as far as the reason but um just in full transparency so hurts from some community members um concerns about food service budget or um just concerns about where the money is going to be going the savings
103do you do we know do we know anything about like that concern just to kind of clarify that can we ask mr williams answer that he is here comfortable with that yeah okay good evening manager chair members of the board superintendent cabinet um yeah as as community ed takes a big picture look at all of our programs um we when we offer these programs these are essential programs to families beyond the normal k-12 school day these are costs to those families if you want to attend you have to pay for these services and so any time we're looking at these numbers as as dr dean explained when those numbers drop that accounts for our collective budget for the entire year as costs increase for us that's going to be next year food costs that's going
104to be keeping the lights on and every service that we have all the expenses that the school district incurs as you go through your budget and you see those increased costs we are absorbing those through community yet and so making these challenging decisions quite honestly we're trying to align with the normal school calendar and we're trying to continue to provide that service to families in our community when it's needed and keeping that that tuition rate which which currently if you compare us to any other public or private preschool or child care entity we are highly competitive um and so to continue to provide that service and do the extraordinary work that these people do and and and ms ms rodriguez explained it eloquently we we are seeing call outs like everybody else we don't have
105the the substitutes to fill in right away we're doing it ourselves they're carrying the ball and they're running with it we're not closing classes we're doing the best that we can with with the the staff that we have so so they are doing an extraordinary job and it's painful to have some of these conversations at times but there will be opportunities to make up for those that that lost revenue for each individual income and we're still providing that extraordinary service to those families at an extremely affordable rate so that's that's big picture 30 000 foot level rationale for for any decision we make is never made in isolation it's made with a team in here um and and there are a lot of intelligent minds on our dysart staff that that help contribute to that
106thank you and and thanks for explaining that and you mentioned meeting with the staff because i i think it's important and you've outlined it i mean it's not a matter of not valuing people or or treating some people on the same calendar in different ways it's a matter of your self-sustaining program and it's almost as if you'd be spending outside of your budget if you spending meaning employee salaries if you don't have the income to cover that expense and so it sounds like if for some reason we we market and we're able to get more attendance during those break times and the needs there then it sounds like these employees will have that opportunity or um mr croto you can probably speak to the fact are there other um positions for these individuals that they
107because this won't go into effect immediately obviously it'll be next year they could apply for a different position within the program um madam president that's correct it goes into effect next year okay well thank you for explaining that because i i was concerned um when we were hearing about losing i wanna make they do have vacation time discretionary days sick days and the holidays still that's not being taken away okay perfect thank you does anybody else have any questions i i do uh mr williams tell me um currently how many staff do we have oh great question um we have our structure is facilitators um and that would be just point of reference that would be your teacher um so we have approximately 34 facilitators um and and and that includes a vacancy of six
108facilitators i believe um and so as we grow that the need becomes greater to have more of those we have oh gosh we have three lead facilitators that that are that would be the equivalent to um they do the job at a school site just as a point of reference of support staff and your your assistant principals and and that's those are our leads they fill in for classrooms they manage call-outs um and then we have um assistant facilitators and aides um the there those they're on a 195 calendar the assistant facilitators and the aides so the the they don't get impacted by this particular conversation and are we in our third year we're going into our third year so we opened up with a pandemic year which was awesome um and then we're rolling
109out this year we're finally in a uh i would call it a normal year it doesn't feel normal right now but so would you say that uh even though we opened up in a pandemic year our we have 276 students right now how many students did we start off with enrollment fluctuates um and and it is fluctuated at a low during the pandemic we were only serving you know essential workers families and i think at that time we were still open when everything else was closed and we we had we averaged about 10 kids in a classroom in 14 different classrooms so you're still looking at between 100 and 140 students at a low point um and our goal um at full capacity with full staffing meeting licensing ratios is about 300 students so we
110have a wait list right now that would allow us to reach that goal but as you know staffing can be a challenge okay thank you all right thanks so the facilitators which are the teachers are they the ones so they could rotate so if there's more out at one facility you could pull for them to go there to help out am i understanding we're on a once we're on three sites so there's the main campus that's that's neighbors uh western peaks and then we have marley park there's two classes and one class at freedom can the freedom go to marley park if there is a need and you yeah the facilitator is a facilitator and that's the interesting dynamic in child care is we fall under child care licensing which is under arizona department of
111health services not under ade so um licensing allows any facilitator to cover any class and any child it's just one blanket requirement so technically if the enrollment is down at fall break at one versus another somebody could be called in from that other facility to go there to help out correct okay and then i guess so you have a wait list because you don't have enough teachers to cover the extra students currently as it stands with with our current dynamic dealing with covid yes okay i just want to make sure i understood that correctly and then did you say the aids are not going to be on the same calendar and i'm curious as to why not they're not um they haven't been um the just the demand isn't there and it's not required we
112do employ um child care aids most of our child care aides are collagen high school students um and and we do bring them back and they that we can we we can provide them those supplemental days as needed yeah okay thank you i had a question i mean not about preschool or anybody else have any questions real quick um so again i just want to make sure i understand so we're saying that we're going to be moving to the the smaller calendar but if you had maybe say a small skeleton staff right that that stays to cover the 35 67 or 97 kids that are still with you during those breaks would they then be adjusted to the larger calendar how does that work that's um supplemental pay so anything beyond your normal work calendar
113and i think um dr croter or mr hicks can attest to this anything beyond that it we we create a pay action and we pay them at their same rate so anybody on a 222 calendar if the demand is there and that's the flexibility of running and operating something that is self-sustaining like this sort of enterprise fund is we have the flexibility to bring the entire team back if that's what the demand is and pay them at their same rate if that makes sense okay but they would not get the same i don't want to say i don't know the benefits never go away they're 12 months out of the year so that as long as they're employed with dysart those benefits continue to exist what they couldn't do is if it's not on your
114work calendar they couldn't take the day off it's like taking a sunday off it's not on my work calendar i can't call that in i see okay go ahead sorry no you're fine um quick question are we moving any other class or grade of employees to a different calendar and if we approve these tonight are we approving each um department that goes with the calendars does that make sense madam president remember chaffin we are we will bring the moves to you at a later governing board meeting so tonight you're approving the calendars just the nine calendars that the district use if there is movement um which there will be i have a number of movements of calendars um then they will come to you at the probably the next being or the meeting after that
115okay so tonight all we are doing is approving dates that's correct we're not a okay right thank you any other questions i'll entertain a motion i move to approve the employee work calendars for the 2022-2023 school year as presented motion made by don densmore seconded by tracy sink bill motion carries we move to action discussion each four recommendation for approval of a district reorganization plan dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet this evening administration brings back an option three at the request of the board for the reorganization of student services which is a department within the district this was first presented to the board in december and we'll call this option one at that time administration proposed a reorganization plan that included an additional student services director the
116board heard from a cabinet and from mrs winterstein on the need for this additional position the position the the recommendation also included a reclassification of the then support services manager and the elimination of a safety and compliance specialist whose duties would be incorporated into the duties of the the directors and that it would include an administrative secretary three instead of on the support services manager um so the cost at that initial presentation um i think we said at that time as 40 000 at the request of the board that was adjusted to include experience and so that is at 63 000 as a cost to additional cost to the current pay structure um going back and listening to the recording of that board meeting cabinet was tasked to come up with a solution that did
117not include a cost increase and so at the last regular board meeting option two was presented which was a 20 000 savings from the current uh structure there were some other positions that were impacted and the the positions that were recommended were the two directors for student services based on the input or the the information provided to the board at the december meeting from cabinet and from mrs winterstein again included an administrative secretary but also included some changes in the hr department again that was a 20 000 savings the board after discussion on that option two asked administration to consider an option that did not include the elimination of personnel and so the cabinet brings forward option three and option three reduces the cost from option one and reduces the number of personnel who would
118be eliminated as recommended in option two and it uh now has a cost of sixteen thousand dollars estimated obviously again it would be based on experience that's already been accounted for to some level but depending the the position that was not eliminated or recommended for elimination would be the front desk receptionist and the other adjustments were the same as an option one including the restructuring of the safety and compliance specialists whose duties would be incorporated into the directors and the the manager support services manager position which would be reclassified to a secretary position so again at the request of the board all three options were brought forward for the board to consider um cabinet has worked very diligently to understand the will of the board with the cost and with the personnel um caveats and
119so with that we present option three and based on the conversation from the board at the last board meeting um you asked that all three options be presented so we present to you all three for your consideration i'll be happy to answer any questions before we go any further miss pritchard um and i do need mr hicks to bring up his rainbow report what is our this is what we're discussing um what is the district admin percentage that we've had for this year as opposed to last year and um you can just as it is compared to the state that's what i'm asking why you you can look thank you okay that's right um i'll i'll go ahead and start conversation i in speaking with dr croto and dr kalas my my concern was um
120i don't think i was the only member of the board but even i'll just speak for myself i know i expressed concern about or made comments about doing with what we have um so not wanting to increase the budget by 65 000 or almost 66 000 um i didn't like the idea of you know some employees just not planning on it but getting it getting noticed that their position was going to be cut you know week before the board meeting which isn't the way we do things i understand that was just the way it happened because administration wasn't planning on doing that at all so once they learned that they needed to look at another option they only had that much time and i understand that but i just you know the concern was cutting
121cutting lower level positions to create another director higher level position so i had concerned with that and i know i said again the last meeting i want us to come up with an option where we do we work with what we have um so i'm a little concerned that we every every option being brought back is administration's desire to have two directors two directors two directors i i was wanting to see something where how could we make this work with um the position we have which is one student services director perhaps with the open positions we can restructure them to where they're more of a support to help offset any extra tasks or duties that are pressing to our student services director that can kind of help alleviate the demands of that position um you
122know or but the other piece of it is too is that even though our student services director is amazing and that's probably why she's been able to do all the work that she's been doing and i know in a perfect world there's things that maybe she isn't able to get to that if she was able to get to that'd be better but in the grand scheme of things she's doing the job so you know perhaps another another avenue is increasing the salary a bit from some of those vacant positions and compensating that next person for the extra work that they're doing i don't know if our neighboring districts have two directors of student services but but mainly i was just hoping that administration would bring back an option where we're doing with what we have
123we have the one director and somehow making that work so i'm just a little um disheartened that we still every option we're looking at is two to two director positions so that's where i stand um i wish we could still see an option like that adam president if i could comment thank you for that and just for clarification it was the understanding of cabinet that when the board asked to make do with what we have the interpretation of that was financially and so the proposal that we brought forward to not only do with what we have but with less it was our thought that we were accommodating that request i can see where that may have been how it was interpreted um but i still i know i know that i've i know that i
124mentioned that you know can't we just either compensate higher or use some of the vacant positions to kind of help again i just i i don't like the idea of adding two directors at the expense of cutting other employees um i don't like the idea of increasing our budget by 65 000 i wish we could find a way again now if if administration all this time was coming forward to the board saying we have all this data to support that this one person isn't able to do these vital tasks of this job and as a result student safety is suffering or all these other things are happening but we have we we always just hear how wonderful karen winterstein is almost to her fault i understand detriment it sounds like but um those are my
125thoughts so i'll open it up for other board members to express their opinions i may be the only one that has this opinion but that's how i feel madam president just to answer your question about other districts so since our conversation earlier today we did a just a quick check and it was reported that peoria has three directors of student sources just that focus on student services or are they kind of like we split up our stuff with our superintendents no those are specific to student services thank you that was my first question to you dr kellis as far as but peoria has 34 schools correct 34 or 35. madam president members of the board they have 42 schools thank you and just uh madam president members of the board just to on the previous
126question asking what our admin percent is um our auditor general calculation from 2020 is the last one from the auditor general is at 8.8 percent and the state average is ten point two five percent our projections for this year when they come out with the reports next month well that will be that we stayed eight point eight percent i guess i share personally i i guess i share miss pritchard's concerns about having multiple adding more top heavy positions you know what what if we just have one director and then we just hire a couple of um assistants support support staff to kind of help with some of those tasks that way our director you know we we don't have like multiple directors we have one director that we're paying at the director pay grade but
127then they've also got support staff to help them do some of those tasks is that a possibility and would that save us some money madam president miss chaffin perhaps we could look at him at option one in a little bit of a different manner so if you could reference option one in your conversations perhaps in order to meet the the conversation that's being held with the board an option could could include one director of student services an admin secretary three position and an increase to the safety and compliance specialist to a safety and compliance coordinator which would increase that salary and draw a different skill set which would be able to greatly assist with the safety aspects that are incredibly time consuming for the position if we looked at an option like that there would
128still be a cost to the district of approximately twenty thousand dollars but it would meet the board's conversation of having one director and providing supports to that director so that's more exactly what i was talking about is making like with what we have and that one that one position you're referencing the safety and compliance that's vacant right now right it is a vacant position as is the student services manager which we would continue to recommend become an administrative secretary iii position which would decrease the cost of that position a bit which would allow us to increase the safety specialist to a safety coordinator it would help with that salary piece but it would still come with approximately about a twenty thousand dollar cost to the district but it would meet the the request of the
129board of one director and supports around that director is that under the um the option one plan isn't that support services manager one that was slated to be eliminated right so technically if you look at the illuminated pieces on option one so let's let's talk based upon that so under the eliminated positions we have eliminating the the the original recommendation was to eliminate all of those three positions what what i'm talking in this conversation and and um dr kellis and cabinet have spoken about this possibility and hearing the will of the board this evening clearly if instead of eliminating that we just retain the director of student services position so we have one director that one director currently has two vacant positions in that department so ms winterstein currently has two vacant positions what we
130would recommend is with the support services manager position which is an administrative assistant type position to reduce that position to an administrative secretary iii and instead of having a safety and compliance specialist we would have a safety and compliance coordinator which comes at a bit of a higher salary and would attract a different skill set that would allow us to complete a lot of the safety aspects of the department in that position for example and this is just an example but it would allow us to perhaps target a retired police officer to come and assist in that with that with all of the safety components that are related to our schools reports with the state and all of our compliance efforts related to school safety so if we were to redo potentially reduce that support
131services manager to an admin secretary iii wouldn't that be is that what you said okay yes so wouldn't that be couldn't you take that savings and add it to the safety and compliance and coming up with something more budget neutral so madam president to answer your question yes so if we reduce the student support services manager to an admin secretary three that budget savings is approximately ten thousand dollars to increase the specialist position to a coordinator that's approximately a thirty thousand dollar increase which would be cut by the ten thousand dollars in savings resulting in approximately twenty thousand dollars cost to the district but again meeting the will of the board to have one director and prop up some supports um to assist with that madam president it's important to note too like remember chaffin
132said before that does not include experience so that 20 000 number could jump with levels of experience in either position where they're so i just want to note that up front so where we know what we're talking about right were there other positions though that we have vacant that could be absorbed into that madam president uh we have not done a survey of the other positions throughout the district yes there are lots of positions in the district that are currently vacant we hope to fill those okay so they're still needed it's not like there's some positions where it's like it's been open for a long time we've adjusted we can we can put that money toward another needed position correct any position that we have in the district is needed and we would um propose
133the this modified option one to the board for consideration hoping that this does accommodate all the the board's interests and madam president i might add that currently we have a director of student services who is operating with two vacant positions she's operating alone currently in the department and we would like to have the opportunity to know which positions that we're going to move forward with so that we could hire and get them in place so that we keep miss winterstein's sanity all the way through her retirement date of june 30th although this could be a lot of reasons why she's feeling the crunch because she doesn't have a fully staffed department correct madam president that's possible i guess if i recall back when we talked about one however many meetings ago and mrs winterstein got
134up i think she was here at that one or the one i don't i don't know we've talked about this a lot um we the safety and compliance specialist has been vacant for a very long time so what makes you think that adding a little adding more money you're going to be able to fill it i mean i'm very concerned that here we go again we're going to have a director and we're still not going to have a safety and compliance person for a lengthy period of time madam president mr grant that's an excellent question and i will tell you that increasing the position to a coordinator level with the salary allows us to target and and will specifically target a specific skill set and recruit differently for that position than we currently are able
135to do and what would that position take away from the director of student services middle school or in high school in k-4 and k-8 madam president miss grant should should you consider modified option one as described by dr kellis that position would take away all the safety aspects related to the director of student services which include assisting all of our schools with their emergency operation plans overseeing the school resource officer program overseeing all of our suspension programs our long-term suspension the the disciplined matrix the all of the state reports that are required as it for safety components um all of the suspension pieces that are required was with the state reports etc etc so it would be all safety components within the entire school system we just heard at the last board meeting about the
136threat assessment process and i just wonder can one person handle that because you know we want to make sure parents are informed in a very timely manner and you know and staff etc and if you have several things going on at once with some with so much going on now with social media etc i just don't know can one person really again handle all of that by themselves madame president miss grant i will tell you that in any of the options that are presented this evening those duties could be shared at any time and so if and threat assessment is a great example of something another piece that would be shared or taken by the safety coordinator if we went in that direction however should multiple pieces be coming at once the safety coordinator or
137two directors would share that responsibility and if that continued to grow on you know a one-time basis where we were just flooded with with aspects i would also become involved in that to assist our schools in in the threat assessment process it is a very real item that our schools deal with on a daily basis i know and that's what i'm concerned about i mean we heard about the calls at 3am in the morning and on multiple times not just once every six months so all right thank you mr dean do we dr dean do we still operate and i start under using threat assessment teams as opposed to individuals so our threat assessments are done by an entire team of people not just one one person is not tasked with doing the entire threat
138assessment madam president we do use threat assessment teams however triage is done initially by an individual person so for example if a safe report is filed that comes in and that's handled immediately by an as an administrator and then a team might be dispatched to deal with a threat assessment so dr dean or dr croto um if the safety and compliance person was now a coordinator um is that a 12-month employee or they're they're both 12 unemployed madam president missouri singapore that is a 12-month position and the safety specialist is currently a 12-month position and so would that bump that coordinator up to uh an exempt employee madam president yes the coordinator position is exempt thank you so if we do modified option one like you're talking about with one director and then upgrading that
139to safety and compliance coordinated and reducing the manager to an admin secretary three that would significantly lighten the director's load madam president miss chaffin the safety aspect is an incredibly time-consuming component to the director's current job and you are confident if we upgrade that with the salary and we open it up to a coordinator position you are confident that we could more than likely get that filled in a timely manner madam president ms chaff and i am confident in our hr department's ability to effectively recruit for positions that we have open i second that but i don't guarantee it in this day and age i am not going to guarantee you it can be filled in it i'm not going to do it publicly with this labor market i i would be lying to you
140if i could tell you i could fill in the week do you feel like you have a better chance of filling it upgrading it to a coordinator position absolutely okay with the modified version one are we still looking at the salary of 107 or are we looking at a salary of 99. madam president miss densmore the the salary level that we have presented to the governing board for the director position accounts for the five years of experience that is the minimum for the position and as i noted earlier his figure that he gave you did not include that so you're not you're probably looking in the more range of 30 to 35 000 in plan number four i want to be above board with that that did not include that's using salaries of what they
141currently are that's not going with the five years experience nor experience for somebody who would be coming in at the coordinator level as dr dean mentioned if you get a very experienced person they're probably going to want to experience coming in i'm looking at modified version number one i think that's what right is that what you were referring to number four the fourth option i'm referring to okay that that he presented the modified option we his figure of 20 grand cost did not include so experience now president densmore if i can understand here you see two directory student services one nine thousand one hundred seven thousand correct and you're wondering which one it would include correct um so the current position if you could answer why one is 99 and then the other one is
142107. the current position when we eliminate that is the current salary of that position the addition of 107 is including at least five years of experience that's the starting pay of that position at five years so when we eliminate it we're telling you what we actually pay for that position now and what it would cost to bring in so that's the same which is the same the seven is what we pay now and then but that 107 no other way we pay the 99 now but somebody coming in is most likely gonna gonna be at the 107. that's correct that was my question one director at 107 versus two right that is correct i know dr dean you mentioned our briefly mentioned as far as possibly restructuring that safety and compliance specialist position for whatever
143it's worth and i know you guys you know have your own way of calculating things we had we have a lot of police officers retired police officers in our community that i know were interested but there seemed to be a heavy concentration on this position requiring school administration experience which can sometimes people can look at that as being like two different career paths i don't know if you want to consider being a little open to revisiting that possibility knowing that these people might be able to bring a wealth of experience and just knowledge in regard to safety and things like that as opposed to having school principal experience or something i don't know if maybe that's the reason i don't know what the stumbling block is because i think we filled it at one point
144right madam president we we did fill it at one point in time and and certainly our own experience helps us shape our future decisions the skill set that you describe would be the skill set that should this be the option chosen that would be the skill set that we would be looking for in a safety and compliance coordinator and when i say the skill set that you describe i used the example earlier of possibly a retired police officer that's the skill set that would be looking for and that salary range with the experience that you were looking for because you said that's an extra for extra five years what would that salary range be if we know that for our director we're looking at like 107 6. i think he said 30 000. 30 000
145more okay so that could be like 72. i'm present the whole plan i'm estimating be a probably 30 000 with experience 30 to 35 30 to 35 sorry i broke up in option four being conservative which is the same as modified option one who's on first and we wouldn't just look at i mean that would we wouldn't limit ourselves to a retired police officer right madam president miss densmore that is correct i was giving an example of the type of skill set that we would be looking for okay i mean given our relationship with luke i mean we could maybe even try to promote madam president miss densmore we have a great relationship with luke and many of them have the same skill set that would be sought any other questions comments concerns not hearing
146anyway then i'll go ahead and make a motion to approve reorganization plan option modified one as discussed second motion made by christine pritchard seconded by don densmore um okay motion carries thank you next we move to action discussion h5 action regarding a recommendation for compensation increase for the 2022-2023 fiscal year dr kalis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet mr hicks will introduce this item good evening madam president members of the board superintendent dr kellis colleagues and community members as part of our compensation recommendation for next year admin is recommending a retention stipend of four percent for next year this would only be eligible for current employees and would be based on their base pay earned in this current year it would require continuous employment through august 30th so similar
147to the plan that we implemented in paid in september we're doing the same thing but moving it from three percent up to four percent uh we would be using our esser funds to to do this um it does um does mean that it is only on their base paid it's not on all supplementals that are coming in so and it's only on employees so and it's only on the amount that employees are earned in this fiscal year so or in this year and so administration does believe that last year the retention stipend did did help we were able to get it approved by the board you were able to approve it prior to us issuing any of our agreements or contracts out and so that it does require them everybody to return them in the
148amount a lot of time that's allocated to them and we do believe this will help increase or maintain our retention of our staff it was also discussed at our iba our last iba meeting as a recommendation and they were approving of it and so i will stand for any questions or dr croto will help with support any questions if you have any thank you for the information and just to reiterate this is every dysart employee not just certificated classified as well everyone who's currently on our payroll right now madam president members of the board yes any other questions just had a strange question um because this was for those that stayed to the end of august correct um this isn't going to be a fair question so i'll just withdraw it thank you sorry i'll
149just switch everything i'm curious i appreciate the fact that it was increased from the three to the four percent with that said i am a little uncomfortable with this um being presented for for all staff i think it's really important for those in transportation anyone in the working in the classroom anybody supporting those teachers i'm not comfortable with this you know for administration can i ask why miss densmore i just the cost alone i i would rather see even more going into the classroom i would rather see five to six percent going into the classroom supporting our students supporting our teachers versus that going into administration but just curious our admin are working just as hard with the teacher and i understand the teachers and everything supporting our teachers and i know that there's a
150couple of school districts neighboring school districts that were giving five and six percent just like you were talking about um uh do we have the ability to do five just for a second do we have the ability to do five percent um mr hicks madam president members of the board so this is using escrow funds we do have it planned out and so this is having to make some adjustments to some of our future plans to cover the cost to go from three to four percent so i had put into our plans three percent for the for a three year period and so this would be moving that could it go up to five it could but it just means more is not being done in other areas um supporting either technology or some of
151our other supports that we have the esser funds planned out for for the next two years so thank you very much so back to the question about admin because right now our admin are in the classrooms covering teachers and the cafeteria and on the playgrounds where they i don't want to say should be in their offices dealing with a whole bunch of other stuff but they they are doing they are all across the district and even pulled from the district it's happened it's happening everywhere so but i'm just curious why not admin we're not unique in that but i think that we really need to focus on our classrooms retaining those people just do you think we would not retain admin and i'm just putting it out there just for a second if we did
152not do the dr kellis do we have an administrator shortage um will we madam president miss densmore when you refer to administrator shortage if you're asking if we have vacant positions with no administrators um we will have i want to say nine admits six which includes some current um um interim plus uh the district has received some resignation several resignations in the last couple so dr kelsey you were right at nine if you include assistance i was only including principals sorry so yeah nine nine with principal assistant principals um yes we do we will have vacancies to fill okay um nine out of our so almost half of our district madam president that's principal's assistant principles if you add all those together there's more than it's not half it's less than half um to mrs
153densboro's point valuing teachers if you want the teachers to have more than 4 percent i think the sr funds as mr hicks said can accommodate teachers getting more um we could give everybody more and teachers would get more as you requested if the interest is to not pay administrators as much just as much um as the teachers the the interest from iba and from historically is that we treat everybody equal that there is value in every employee's work and to why i say equal equitably if we treat everybody equal they would get the same amount right and i understand that that that argument equitably is that everybody's treated fairly and we are committed to treating everybody equitably i also share miss densmore concern about just blanket getting everybody a four percent um i know our
154teachers have shown up for us this year they've covered classes they've split classes and our administrators have covered classes and they've also helped in different areas also so it's not necessarily you know that administrators don't deserve a retention stipend you know i'm just saying let's look at the big picture maybe not every single you know employee has put as much into it not that they haven't put anything into it but they haven't given as much as our teachers and you know yeah we expect our teachers to show up and teach we are an in-person school we are in person learning and our teachers have done that for us this year they've come to school they've given everything they've got they've you know covered this and they've covered that and i i'm i'm really proud of
155our teachers for muddling through on this pandemic but i just i also share the concern about just blanket giving every single employee of four percent retention stipend madam president i could speak yes uh madame president chaffin it would be impossible to [Music] judge a person's effort and suggest that one employee didn't give their all there are teachers who didn't get their all their administrators who didn't get they're all there are teachers who gave their all their administrators who gave their all it is difficult to suggest that whether you're a custodian a bus driver who did get a pretty significant pay raise recently that any employee group um didn't put forth a good enough effort to to deserve the the increase um again this is what's best for for the district and i'll just be very
156frank and say to eliminate what any employee group is not good for the district it's not good for our community we have a lot of pride in our employees every single employee and we value every single employee and it would be disheartening to single out any employee group in this opportunity if you would like to recognize and believe that teachers should get more mr hicks has suggested that we can pay teachers more through the this esser account but when we value employees we value all employees and can i ask does this include our maintenance workers too because i feel like sometimes they're the unsung heroes because without our maintenance people i mean our campuses wouldn't be able to function is there a possibility of maybe you know giving the maintenance people a little bit more
157money a little bit more of a stipend because i don't know how anybody else feels about that but i think the one word that we're kind of missing the boat on and this is just my perspective is that the word in in all of this is retention we want everybody to stay with us next year or as many as possible to stay next year so it's not going to be a huge it is going to be a um a lot from the esser funds but it's not we need to focus on the word retention that's i want people to stay as many of them as they can i think what we have heard consistently throughout this whole school year every presentation is that everybody every single employee is doing multiple jobs when somebody is out
158with covet or the flu or whatever somebody is picking it up there and then including principals and administrators or however you wanted to find the position they're in the the cafeteria i just don't see how we can i value teachers but right now it's taking the entire team to keep the schools open and to keep these kids on track i see um i can i can see i can see both sides i i understand um definitely wanting to give a chunk of money to those who are kind of on the front line so to speak in the classrooms driving the buses doing the maintenance like everyone but we have also heard number one we've heard through presentations about principals that are going into classrooms teaching when they don't have so or if they don't have
159subs or they don't have teachers when there's some administrators in other districts that maybe don't do that and so we're fortunate we have those administrators so i'd hate to see i'd hate to see that go unnoticed or not rewarded um but i also i also get concerned about splintering it too much because where it's like yeah the teachers come in they show up every day let's give them more and then almost like miss schaffen just said like what about the maintenance workers we don't want to create a culture where anyone would feel like our board or our district is valuing one set of hard-working people over another and i i feel i have concern about that because again maintenance worker versus maybe cafeteria worker school bus driver who gets the schools here the kids here
160so that i worry a little bit about like if we splinter it too much and i don't want anyone to feel like again our administrators i know they've they've gone above and beyond too um they get paid more so i understand that piece of it too as far as but i don't you know unless we did some sort of maybe tiered system for administrators i don't i don't know i i just um i hear what the concern is about wanting to really give to those who are on the front lines i just i i struggle with the fact that i think um this year even our our administrators are some of those frontline people and i wouldn't want to cause any ill will or you know i really appreciate your comments and those from everyone
161um and i would agree i i don't think that administration doesn't just i don't think that they don't deserve anything i just don't i want i would love to see something tiered i would love to see teachers getting more um something more than the four percent uh if we were to if we were to agree and approve something tonight uh you know four percent for administrators and then maybe five percent for teachers i i would fully be on on board with something like that i i just think that to ms sawyer sinkhole's point retention is is key here but i think teachers are key i they're all they're they're they all are but for from what i'm hearing um not just in our district but other districts there's everyone is worried about losing teachers and
162those classroom supports and i want them to know that we value what they do which it doesn't help that some districts like i like i told you that are paying the five and the six percent and um i know you've seen that so oh yeah well if we have if they're funds because that's not mno correct okay so if it's us or funds and the funds are available then what if we in in this item is being presented as a four percent for i everyone my computer didn't die um what what if it was a matter of um administration gets four percent and everyone else gets the five everyone i don't want to do teachers because then you're going to offend classified staff or you know i think staff or staff so that would be
163the only question i would ask so and everybody was only expecting four percent so no one's going at home with less than what they thought would be presented tonight and it's still a chunk for administrators but then if the if the um if the will of the board is to really give out a little bit of extra for those classroom or school site working with kids type positions directly however you want to phrase that not just teachers then they get the thought so does that include maintenance does that include the bus drivers special ed we didn't talk about special ed unless the aids too right everybody welcome but they're not defined as a teacher so basically what what we're kind of mulling around is a four percent for administrators and five percent for everybody else
164is that investor money not mno right i'm on board with that yes madam president if i could speak um thank you for that and i i appreciate your acknowledgement that administrators are also valued employees the the opportunity to recognize all employees is is critical this is a one-time payout i understand i may hopefully understand what you're trying to say is that the um the percentage increase results in a higher increase so it's not an equal increase but it's an equitable and that's the challenge that you're dealing with is that there's a higher dollar increase because it's a percent increase on a higher amount if i'm reading that if i understand that correctly so if if it so pleases the board what you're talking about i think would work i will caution the board again that
165every employee group is valued and that by creating a differentiation of employee groups you are you're creating two different value groups it's not intended i appreciate the justification by saying that the dollar increase is still significant and i think as we consider that as the the premise behind your your recommendation there's value in that i would just be cautious about the uh the discrepancy when you separate out one employee group but i appreciate the the board's recommendation and i i would support that could you remind me last year we did this one-time stipend it was for everybody is that correct madam president miss grant that's correct it was at three percent okay yes or funds it's a higher amount to staff speaking to miss stensmore's um concern higher amount to staff just wanting a more
166of an increase bringing it up to five or do you feel like there should be um where you should there should be that difference a differentiation even if it was brought up to five percent so there should be like a um a higher amount for non-administrative staff or higher amount yeah a higher amount for non-administrative staff is that more your concern or is it just we think people in the classroom teachers should get more than just four percent where maybe that five percent would address your concern i think that they should be getting more than four percent yes okay it's not that i don't think that administrators have been doing an amazing job um i just think that giving administrators five percent might be a little bit they're on a certified schedule too much coordinators
167i know well and keeping in mind too that um nobody was expecting to get any more than four percent tonight um so everybody would be getting the four percent if this passed and as dr kalas said it's not a matter of so no one's being eliminated for getting the increase for retaining and for recognizing hard work done all year it's just because of that you know four percent of a six figure salary is much different than four percent of forty two thousand or five percent to forty two thousand so that's an entry i don't think you should compare it 40 40 000 that's an entry-level teacher we have teachers making considerably more than that out of your entry level i just said that that's entry level that was not a fair comparison why not we
168have entry-level teachers that are going to get five percent that's correct forty forty thousand i understand that but when you're comparing it when you say to a principal i just think that we don't you shouldn't be comparing the same it's not apples to apples that's all i'm saying i will move to approve the retention stipend of four percent for administrators for the 2022-2023 fiscal year for current administrators and a retention stipend of five percent for all other employees second madam president i may can we include language please of current employees who turn their contracts in on time and are retained who are with us through august 30th that's an important part it was part of the retention last year sure sorry that's not how the motion was written on here so we were just reading
169it as it was stated but absolutely that's important do you want me to reward it and presidents chapman luis is going to read it back to you for all remaining employees all current employees i'm torn because and just like dr keller said i don't want one group to feel like they are slighted more than the other and yes when we came in here the motion was or the the recommended action was to approve the retention stipend the four percent i i am going to approve uh i'm going to vote yes but i i still just have the concern that i don't want um administration to feel slighted no absolutely not i agree with that i understand they're in the classrooms and they do i mean i i acknowledge the work that is being done and
170that's why i feel like the amount that everyone was supposed to get including administrator four percent i don't feel like they should get less than that we are almost ready for the motion we just got a couple more periods and eyes to talk motion to approve the retention stipend of four percent for administrators for the 2022-23 fiscal year for current administrators and 5 retention stipend for all remaining employees for the 20 20 20 to 23 fiscal years fiscal year all employees must return a contract by the stated deadline that are continuously employed through august 30th 2022. does that sound right dr croto madam president remember chapman that that's correct and it's on the base salary of this current school year the base salary as mr hicks outlined earlier um and i still second just does
171this includes anybody that's on esi madam president miss grant it does not and uh to that point i just would for full disclosure that this does not apply to the superintendent i mean the superintendent would not be receiving an increase is that just because is that just an esi issue or anyone else or you're just choosing not to accept the increase madam president that is an esia issue okay so any current administrator would not be eligible for this anyway that if they were on esi any employee any employee okay okay esi employee and that is why base pay is important in this because you could have employees that are half on our our payroll sometime and on esi's payroll so they would be eligible for the portion that they're on our payroll so it's the
172base pay earned of this school year 2122. so then esi employees will be getting it only just it will just be look based on their base salary it no no esi employees it when they are in esi they are not earning this benefit so teachers on esi will not be received that's correct so they'll be teachers not getting it do we need to include the base pay in the original motion or is that just understood i think we're okay let's discuss but dysart pays some of their salary esi correct no that we pay a portion madam president the let mr hicks explain but they they're not employees of the district they right we have a contract with esi to provide those services and they provide us those services through those employees but we the district
173pays esi they are employees of esi who pays them i see thank you motion carries next we're moving to uh request for future agenda items anyone okay move to uh jay executive session we have a call for executive session pursuant to ars 38-431.03 a1 for superintendent's mid-year evaluation i move that we um recess for executive session motion made by christine pritchard seconded by joe grant thank you what did you yeah yeah that should be fine you