Dysart Governing Board Meeting - November 10, 2021

001at this time i'd like to call the meeting of the dysart governing board to order and let's rise 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 thank you everyone and let the record reflect that all board members are present and first up we have recognitions and celebrations dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet uh dr dean will introduce this item good evening madden president members of the governing board dr kelson members of cabinet this evening we are fortunate to have with us the freedom traditional academy band orchestra and choir the band director is mr allen swanson and the choir and

002orchestra director is katrina mcleod and you are not here to hear me speak so we'll turn it right over to you guys and take it away [Music] ah uh [Music] [Applause] now [Music] oh [Music] america god shed his grace on me and crown thy good with brotherhood [Music] uh um [Music] foreign [Music] oh [Applause] [Music] is two shiny [Applause] oh [Music] do [Music] and i had to start again versus my children [Music] stands for freedom and they can't take that away and i'm proud to be an american or at least i know i'm free and i won't forget the man who died who gave that right to me and i gladly stand up next to you and defend her still i today this place [Music] from the lakes of minnesota to the hills of tennessee

003across the plains of texas [Music] from detroit down to houston and new york to land where it's bright in every american's heart and it's time we stand [Music] and i'm proud to be an american where at least i know i'm free and i won't forget the man who died who gave that right to me and i'll gladly stand up next to you and offend her cause still ain't no doubt i love this land god bless the [Applause] and i'm uss to be an american but at least i know i'm free and i won't forget the man who died who gave [Applause] [Music] [Applause] god say [Music] [Applause] madam president we are very proud of these extraordinary students and their talents and their their teachers thank you parents for your support it's it can be challenging

004having a student learning a new instrument in the home but you have helped them progress to a very performance-worthy talent so thank you everybody for sharing your talents this evening [Applause] madam president i just have to say that um that song was released back in 1984 and several people in here were not born yet and the fact that it is still such a moving song even today rings volumes so thank you very much uh young men and women for giving us that thank song i love that song next we have audience with individuals we do have one individual requesting to speak tonight i'll go ahead and read the statement this is a time for the public to comment members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda pursuant

005to ars 38-431.1.01 h action taken a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for future 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 tonight we have katie robinson madam president mrs robinson was here earlier and apparently has stepped out she's here here could you call her back up again reread the comment no just call her um miss katie robinson that's okay hello my name is katie robinson i'm a parent of a student at western peaks elementary school and

006i was actually attending this meeting tonight to discuss an issue that i was previously having but it semi got solved this morning but i'm still here to discuss the further issue that it sort of created so on november 1st last monday my six-year-old daughter was left outside alone after recess and excuse me because her shoe went off her shoe fell off and she went back to get it to make a really long story short it took me until this morning to find out exactly what happened where it happened how long she was outside by herself and whatever safety measures the school is going to take to fix it in the future um in the last week and a half i emailed miss hanson the first grade teacher called and emailed principal brown vice principal lynn

007karen winterstein or steen i'm sorry at the dysart student services office and this morning i also emailed superintendent kellis trying to get answers like i mentioned i finally received a response this morning from vice principal lynn and she explained what happened and an attempt to try to make this stop in the future i guess but the problem was that it took a week and a half to get that answer and my daughter was scared she asked me what happens if there's another fire drill a real fire drill and i get left behind again and i didn't have a good answer for her until this morning so that is where my frustration is now i'm just bringing this to the board's attention in hopes that you can maybe go back over safety measures at each school

008and remind teachers to be aware of blind spots in the playgrounds and also to do head counts maybe at the door instead of in the playground because what happens if a kid leaves the line after you do the head count and then you walk inside and that kid isn't there which is what happened to my daughter um luckily my daughter thought to find another door to bang on to get inside but maybe some other kid would wander off i don't know and i still actually don't know the exact time that my daughter was outside by herself i don't have an answer to that um so finally i just want to say that i think the lack of communication and the disregard disregard for my concerns about safety it was very disappointing and i hope it

009doesn't happen again and i think that there should be a way for parents to be guaranteed a response rather than an email form that goes back to the same people who have already been ignoring me so that's my concern i also do have a copy of all the emails that i attempted to get information from all of the different people if the board would like to see it and thank you for your time thank you madam president we will follow up with this parent that's all we have all right next agenda item we have a student update dr kellis thank you madam president um members of the board yes we have miss poundstone who will be addressing the board this evening good evening madam president members of the board dr kellis cabinet and the community

010my name is dawson poundstone and i'm a member of the dysart student leadership council at our most recent meeting we discussed the previous events that have happened to all the high schools all the schools have had a successful homecoming including parades and the dance and other activities our kin our councils also attended the annual aasc spirit conference that was held this year at valley vista all the high schools worked together to plan it and make it successful we are currently planning another event for all the high school student councils to attend together and learn from each other we look forward to sharing more compliment accomplishments with you thank you very much next we have uh superintendent update dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet this evening i would

011like to extend a appreciation to all of our school psychologists this is national school psychologist week and our psychologists do just an extraordinary job working with students who are our most needy students so thank you to all of you who do such great work i also like to as we celebrate veterans day tomorrow there are all of our schools are closed and everybody will be home celebrating our veterans i would like to extend my appreciation and thank you to each of our veterans for their service we appreciate you it's been a very busy week as was just mentioned with homecomings and with fall festivals and there may still be some going on but i'd like to thank all of the the volunteers the staff everybody who has worked to pull those off the reports from

012the schools are that those have been overwhelmingly attended more so than in a decade and apparently there's a strong desire to get back out into the community and to associate with other human beings on a personal basis so we're excited about the gatherings of our community at our school sites that's all i have to report thank you dr kellis next we have governing board update sure i apologize to re-re-opening of the dysart high automotive program and i was talking to several students in that program and one young man actually transferred from a charter school to specifically attend this program and so that's what it's all about i mean we have we always talk about choice but it's always nice when they're they're coming to dysart for their choices and he was very excited about it

013and telling some of his friends so kudos to you and to the cte program to offer more opportunities for these students i also got to tour while i was there the desert high cte program had waffles with the staff at shadow ridge high school they want me to come back that i don't know they start this at six a.m i don't do six a.m so that one was a tough one um and then of course i attended the chattel ridge high school uh cte program i visited them and i did the unveiling of the dsb mobile unit and that was really awesome the the equipment in there and then i have visited freedom traditional countryside and kingswood schools so that's it i know thank you okay so i kind of followed joe around but i

014didn't follow her around i also attended the grand reopening of the auto shop at dysart high i also took part in the asba maricopa county meeting that was on the 18th dsb live showcase at the vista thank you mr yoder and the kids shined during that time and it was a great pleasure to see them also attended the dysart college and career expo thank you mr greece haber love to see and i think it was ten minutes to six you had said that there was already 580 580 people that were already there and it wasn't even in full swing yet so thank you for uh that and your team attended riverview's trunk and treat i always have a problem trying to say those together but thank you miss hope for inviting me to be a

015part of the pumpkin carving contest and that was the the amount of people that were in the parking lot at riverview was just amazing there were lots of kids and lots of them smiling and having fun i also attended the surprise uh sci-tech festival that was at uh city hall i believe shadow ridge mountain view western peaks dsp live and dysart heis hosa was there so that was a great festival and also attended mountain views steam steam night which was last night and thank you miss lopez for the invite and quite honestly one of the particular things there last night was a mixture of corn starch and water and it was wired to sound so the mixture actually kind of danced which was a little bit freaky but it was awesome and as soon as

016you turned the music off it went flat so it was really really awesome so awesome event and uh continue to get out to more schools and see all the great things that's going on with dysart thank you thank you i just wanted to echo dr kelly's sentiments regarding veterans day just want to thank all of our veterans for their service a special welcome home to our vietnam veterans and wanted to just really think freedom traditional academy that was just such a moving uh performance by both the band and the choir and adding the asl to the sign language component it was just it was just perfect perfect perfect veterans eve type of performance and i just really appreciated seeing them tonight so thank you thank you okay um i have not been quite as busy

017i don't really do mornings so i attended the annual band jamboree this year it was held at valley vista and last minute i was asked to be a judge so that was exciting serving as a judge along side dr kellis i also attended the aboda semifinals for marching band i was able to catch two of our bands shatter ridge and valley vista at that they both did really awesome and just want to echo the sentiments for veterans day just thank you to our veterans and also freedom traditional academy that was an amazing performance by both the choir and the band just sounds like they're ready for high school band already band and choir is incredible thank you that's all i have next we have item e1 i will entertain a motion to approve the consent

018agenda items i move that the governing board approved the consent agenda items as presented seconded by miss pritchard this is motion passes okay next we have item g1 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet dr croto will introduce this item thank you dr kellis madam president members of the board superintendent kellis cabinet and guests tonight we continue our policy monitoring for section 6 facilities development there are four four policies in this section all were adopted on 428 2021 they have been reviewed and we have no changes and mr hicks will stand for any questions that you have on that that's my favorite part by the way we know any questions or discussion only thing i wanted just to open up for discussion um is for policy 6.2 in

019the first paragraph in deciding to name a new facility the district shall provide for the selection of an advice parents and students residing in the new facilities attendance areas we all okay with that no it is already in there i'm asking if everyone is okay with that yeah read it again oh here it is six point two six i'm sorry 6.2 very first paragraph okay so what if it's in a new development where there's not a whole lot of housing yet there's not a whole lot of what yeah what if what if the school is in like a very new development there's not a whole lot of housing yet i guess what would that committee look like i'm not sure dr kellis madam president we in dysart have experienced this many many times particularly during

020the rapid hyper housing growth where we were opening two and three schools a year and i believe in those in those circumstances um the boundaries were established and so the parents were already identified who would be attending that school um crazy enough in that time the schools opened full because there was so much growth happening so quickly i don't believe we would ever build a school that was empty and that we didn't have a boundary population of parents that we could tap into okay is there a concern do you have a concern no i just wanted to make sure that we were all good madam president if i may um the the wording on here refers to it says and decided to name a new facility it talks about um parents and students residing in

021the new facilities attendance there are district facilities that aren't related to a an attendance area administration is not interpreting those district facilities as fitting within this description that parents and students within an attendance area so it could be for example if the district were to build i'm just going to randomly say a new museum that that encompasses the entire district and so it would not pertain to an attendance area and it may be that administration uh make some recommendations for the naming them presents those to the board but towards the bottom of this policy the last paragraph so with district facilities or school facilities um meaning like an athletic field for instance the governing board would still have the final say in that madam president according to the the languages that's in here there um

022this is a new language that we brought in fairly recently to allow for what you're describing as naming of a field it could be that sponsorship a sponsorship could be added to that as different opportunities for naming a process different processes for naming facilities i'm just looking at that last paragraph there it says the the committee shall provide the board with relevant supporting documentation for final board selection and approval okay i don't have any other questions i don't have any did you have something tracy no okay sorry i just heard something okay moving on to item g2 dr kellis madam president members of the board dr pauline will introduce this first presentation good evening governing board cabinet community it's my pleasure to introduce principal connie wolford principal freedom traditional academy and she'll present tonight good

023evening governing board members cabinet thank you for having me here tonight and i'm connie wolford the proud principal of freedom traditional academy i'm sorry it's not wanting to work there we go our current enrollment at freedom traditional academy is 329 students our school colors are red white and blue and our mascot are the firebirds and our signature program is traditional so the opportunities of this year are student enrollment closing the academic gap in emotional health our student enrollment has remained stagnant for the time that we've been open the data does show that whenever students leave freedom traditional and that they either move out of state or district the things that we've done to increase enrollment is i worked with renee ryan the pr department to send out flyers billboard advertisements any type of advertising we've

024done facebook live events we've even had our staff and do an outreach and we visited local businesses including preschools and day cares and even housing developments delivering brochures and flyers we have a volunteer requirement that i'll be talking about here in a little bit but a part of that is in order to promote enrollment we do say that if you know a family um refers another family that enrolls then we'll waive their volunteer hours for the year um we also give volunteer hours for at parent and student testimonials and we've been lucky enough to have some of our professional baseball families do testimonials and then also be interviewed for the surprise newspaper we also know that in order to attract families and then also just to have a strong school it's very important to have

025a strong pre-k and kindergarten foundation so i did work with growing minds and we trained the preschool facilitator in spalding and saxon um so those the little preschoolers they do get spalding in saxon um at of course a developmentally appropriate level and then i do meet with my parent guild and student guild regularly and just about a week and a half ago i met with them and the focus of our conversation was what do we need to do to increase enrollment what's hindering families from unrolling um and everybody they were very supportive um of what we're doing they didn't really have too many suggestions the only things that did kind of pop up where maybe some more advertising transportation it can be an issue for some families and a possible volunteer expectations so the recommendation

026was to either decrease our number of volunteer hours or go to from required to recommended and i am working with dr poling to to use a white bus that has been wrapped with the freedom traditional logo to use that effectively to hopefully help with that and going to my instructional cabinet as well to talk about volunteer hours the next opportunity that we have is closing the academic gap considering the educational challenges that the pandemic has brought on last year was our first time that we've taken azm2 and even though we scored in the 60s and 70s and i thought it was pretty decent for the first year there's definitely a lot of room for uh improvement currently our um our current benchmark scores show that there is a need in seventh and eighth grade math

027i'm in sixth grade language arts and the grade level scored in the high 30s to 40 percent however the rest of the grade levels we have the percentage of students who mastered the grade level standards because it is a cumulative test we're in the 60s to 70 percent so in order to respond to this gap we've implemented a few things we do common formula formative assessments or cfas every three weeks we do pre and post and this allows us to use the data to figure out what students need to be met with in small group instruction tier two does happen every day for every single grade level even though we are a traditional school we still do meet with students in small group instruction during tier one just to make sure that we catch any

028misconceptions from becoming a bigger problem and time has been carved out of the special areas schedule so they can push in to help with small group instruction in the grade levels it needs so last year second grade was our our hot spot so we pushed in all three of our special areas um trained them in 95 percent and spalding and they were able to intervene and caught those kids up this year we are doing the same with 7th and 8th grade along with kinder and myself and my tls are pushing into 7th and 8th to help help with that out of our 47 kindergarten students we do have 17 that are struggling with letter recognition and letter sounds along with number identification so it is we are all working together to to make sure that

029they successfully go on to first grade the next opportunity is emotional health there has been an uptick in emotional health among our students and in response we have implemented restorative circles in each of our classrooms um miss mary our social worker who's amazing has been instrumental in providing support to our students she sees a high volume of students for a lunch bunch um so we can make sure that their academics are not taken away that they meet with their peers um and it the needs that tend to be focused on are anxiety communication building relationships in and out of school conflict resolution and mindfulness our celebrations is what you just saw i'm so proud um the choir orchestra and band um there was some that were absent tonight and i would tell you out of

030third through eighth grade we have 30 percent of them that are in choir orchestra and band and as you saw there's a few that do two or more mr swanson and miss mcleod they are absolutely amazing a huge testament to building building that program whenever you talk to them it's very evident that they want to increase that program and they also want to make it something that the kids are excited about and they want to be a part of when you walk into a music room miss mcleod she embeds science and math and social studies are fourth through eighth graders they're already required to memorize the preamble but she has gotten the kindergartener through third graders to memorize the preamble just through song and they all know the the 50 states as well so and

031i tell you like every time we come to around the holidays the amount of parents that say now i have a guitar on the christmas list i need to buy because she teaches fifth or eighth graders guitar it's and and keyboard it's amazing the next celebration we have is high school credit we do have 64 percent of our eighth graders who qualified for high school credit in spanish algebra and english there are quite a few of those students that qualified for more than one of those high school classes our next celebration is our newspaper i've always wanted a newspaper i knew that when i wanted to became a principal i was like my school has to have a newspaper it's a lot of work but the upper grades have taken that on and they've done

032an amazing job and we have a newspaper that comes out on a monthly basis we have student reporters that go to athletics and arts and even academic events and reports on them it's been such a hit that i've actually had students come to me and said that they've never liked writing before and now they do so hopefully that has inspired a career in running and then the last celebration would be our volunteerism we do require parents to or families to volunteer 10 hours a year and that's per family so it doesn't matter if you have one child or five kids and currently we do have 97 percent of our families either have completed the volunteer hours or are on track we do understand that our families are busy working families so we do make sure

033that our opportunities are family friendly such as helping the teacher from the parents home or being a mr reader at a younger grade level to being a line judge at a game helping out in the cafeteria playground or just coming into the classroom to help the teacher in any way our focus for the year really comes down to closing that academic gap and the the way that we're doing it is focusing on teacher clarity after observations and conversations with staff it was definitely determined that instruction needs to be more explicit and purposeful we began this implementation last year with a pilot group who was interested in trying it out and it became a hit and kind of spread through the staff so this is our first official year of implementing teacher clarity a portion of

034teacher clarity is creating those learning intentions and success criteria really breaking down those standards and also having the teachers know exactly where students are and then students knowing exactly where they are in their progress to master those standards when you go into the classroom students do know that they're going to be asked three questions and it's what are you learning why are you learning it and how you know if you're successful and our next focus is academic conversations it's very important that we have authentic high-level academic conversations and being at a traditional school student collaboration is limited so we have to make sure that anytime students do talk it is very planned and purposeful and at a higher level so when you visit a classroom and kids are talking to each other you're going to

035hear students responding to each other's ideas and building upon each other with evidence and also using the academic vocabulary and it's amazing even kindergartners can do it and then lastly is instructional rounds we are slowly incorporating instructional rounds into this year um we have begun semester one with doing peer observations and i always tell my staff that if i were to be a teacher today i'd be a much better teacher than i was when i was in the classroom because of everybody i have observed and i think i really do feel like some of the best pd is right down the hall so we take their peer mentors and our tl tls and we coordinate what teachers feel like that they want to see with the teachers that our exemplar at certain practices and we

036pair them up and have them observe in those peer mentors and my tls they have facilitate those conversations at debriefing that's all i have do you have any questions i will go ahead and start so um we're in the third year right we are um that that's a monumental undertaking that uh you've taken on miss wolford and i know you've done it with grace and everything um just a couple of things that i wanted to know um with the enrollment you have siblings that um they may be students at freedom traditional but they may have a sibling that is at another school that we can pull over i don't know we try not to separate anybody so um but i can only think of a couple and it's because we do have a wait list

037for one one grade level and so they are they are waiting to get in okay so it's very rare okay yeah that's that's good um and uh another one um citizenship is a very big focus for um freedom traditional and i'm just curious what does a citizenship day look like for you for the school a citizenship day well i first i think of as our flag ceremonies we do have flag ceremonies every tuesday out in the courtyard and then once a month we do have family flag ceremonies and we always recognize students that have exemplar character so that represent all the the pillars of character um we have above and beyond tickets so not just doing what you're supposed to do but going above and beyond that can be given by any staff and the

038kids love that and they're recognized on a weekly basis every friday for that okay and do they i know there's only so much that students can do out in the community but do they do anything with the city of surprise as far as community events last year we when they started to open up just a little bit we did have cities of surprise come on campus and they did bean bag day so we did have our njhs and some of our student council with their families come on campus and help with packing beans is for the homeless um so that's part of city of surprise awesome okay thank you you're welcome i really enjoyed your presentation oh thank you thank you um and i've sadly have never been on your campus and i've always wanted

039to um so and i plan to but until then what would you say what would i notice that's different about your traditional academy that i wouldn't necessarily see in another dysart school like tell me about how unique your school is or yours the structure of your school um well the first thing i i actually just kind of comes to my mind is when miss grant showed up this morning and she said it's so quiet so it is quiet we have um excellent behavior um so that you walk down the halls everybody's very quiet they're respectful um the one thing that does stand out and i have um whenever i have people come on campus is kids open the doors for you thank you ma'am you know you go into a classroom you see spaulding going

040on it's in single file rows spalding is definitely like a signature program that we we do and you can always tell when you're walking down the hall who's doing spalding it's very structured kids love it they know exactly what what's expected of them it's a lot of direct instruction a little bit of collaboration like i said in this independent practice we have spanish for kindergarten through eighth grade and our math is accelerated in all grade levels kindergarten they do kinder standards up until december depending on the ability of the group sometimes we start a little earlier um and they go on to first grade standards in january so i didn't realize your um your enrollment was 329. has it always been low it has yeah it's remains down is that by design no no not

041impressive mr pritchard we would love to pack the house yes and we continue to seek efforts to solicit additional enrollment okay it sounds it sounds amazing to me so i'm sure i'm sure your enrollment's going to go up for sure i'm sure we have a lot of good things to offer um and especially wow 64 of your students qualified for high school credit yes it's amazing yes it is keep doing the good work thanks for your presentation thank you yeah okay i love the traditional model and i i just think it's great that you have them sitting in rows that they're doing the independent practice i mean a push towards collaborative learning and you know exploratory learning that that's okay to some degree but sometimes i'm a little bit old school and i'm just like

042all right we're going to do holy crap whole group practice and you're going to practice and um just seems so much easier that way sometimes um but and i loved your orchestra your choir your band they sounded so good but i'm just a lit can you tell me a little bit more about your specials doing interventions just because i know as a special areas teacher anytime i was put into a classroom to do interventions i'm like i'm highly qualified and it makes sense on paper you don't have to lesson plan for that section you don't have to do grades but you just walk away feeling like that's a waste of my degree so can you just kind of tell me a little bit more about that absolutely so i'm really lucky that i have a

043special areas team that is so flexible and they're just willing to help kids it's a team effort we do meet to see what skills that the kids need and then also it's definitely their how comfortable they are you know you can't put somebody into algebra you know without knowing how to teach it so we definitely are cognizant of that but they are they are very willing um we um brainstorm and come up with like okay how do you teach this and it's just it's a different type of plc but in small groups so do you need aids is or are you just looking to fill sections um because if you need aids we can kind of do that i guess i'm just a little concerned that we're paying a highly qualified teacher salary to do

044like an aids or an intervention job to do something that they're not to teach something they're not highly qualified to do and that's not initially what they are hired for so i don't know if it's just we need to fill a gap with some aids or if you have open sections that in a full-time position that you can't have your band teacher with four preps you know if that's if that's the situation that we need to work through too but that is a concern for me anytime any school uses their electives or their special areas to go in and to teach other subjects or to be used as aids or interventionists so that's just my piece appreciate that thank you but thank you i just have one comment because i was just there today and

045i have to tell y'all i was very confused yes it was quiet but the other thing was we were looking at classrooms and i went i thought this was a uniform school because there were kids not in uniform but today was dress down day so i went oh thank goodness i thought it was i just got confused but i just wanted to say thank you to your band and choir they were awesome and it's so wonderful as we're saying the pledge of allegiance that those kids voices were louder than the adults and that was i just got chills because it was just it's so nice that they were so loud to to say it and so proud so thank you for that absolutely i just wanted to also say again about the music program it

046it's just so nice to see that and i'm also really impressed with the journalism program so is that offered as an actual class time or is it built into something else um no it's it's offered it's called our creative course right now we have three teachers that teach seventh and eighth okay um so in order to meet all everybody's needs we had to create the extra course um and they were that the teachers came up with that and um they've done a fabulous job at it now is it actually printed or is it only online oh no it's printed wow you want to subscribe the only other question i had really was can you just walk us through what what the restorative circles are i'm not familiar with that um it's oh i can't remember

047the author um boy um it's the restorative practices so coming into a circle and first it's just about building relationships and um trusting that you can talk about things openly like if some um if there's any conflict that goes on and is building that community and then eventually students will get to be comfortable to be able to talk about conflict and be able to resolve any issues right then it can look like a whole class but whenever you do have a conflict between students it's best to have a small circle okay and have that where there's norms of how what to say and how to act so i'm just i don't know if this is um similar or not but it's something like when you do this it makes me feel this way yeah yeah

048the feedback okay and how to right or wrong okay perfect thank you you're welcome thank you so much thank you madam president members of the governing board dr kelsey members of cabinet this evening it is my pleasure to introduce you to or to bring to the podium dr adam schwartz the principal at woola canyon high school and i must say that willow cane high school's incredibly positive momentum is absolutely exuding through that part of the school district so with that dr schwartz time is yours thank you dr dean president edsmore members of the governing board dr kellis members of the cabinet community i'm excited to be here tonight and share with you some of the amazing things we're doing at willow canyon if i had known i could bring a sixth of my student body

049and just use that as my presentation i would have amazing job by miss wilford uh i was surprised you made her get up here after that mic drop at that point right um diana there we go so we are certainly sitting just shy of 1800 students at willow canyon high school we are bill uh blue and silver and we are the wildcats um when we were tasked with determining what our signature program is at a high school we're so comprehensive we do so many things and and to say that a high school is just one thing and and you know those boutique schools where you have a fire site school or things like that we don't we don't have that when we have 1800 students we need to serve everybody and i was looking for

050that that signature and i was watching our student broadcast one day and our sports broadcaster was talking to a couple of our softball girls this was two or three years ago and he pointed to the wc on her uniform and says that wc that doesn't stand for willow king and it stands for winning culture and i started to walk around i started to talk to people about that i said what do you what do you think of this and and so that winning culture that describes how we act in the classroom academically it provides it describes how we approach our performing arts and our applied arts it certainly applies to how we approach our athletics in the field of play and most importantly it applies to how we treat each other the world of education

051is not a complicated business people are complicated and those relationships that we build with people is what makes education tick so this year we we've as we look at opportunities um one of the big things is our post pandemic adjustment and everybody's seeing the same thing but the ability to start reinstating accountability you need to be here you need to be here on time you know last year attendance slid across the board and on schools across the state and the state of arizona requires students to be in attendance 90 of the time to get credit and so we aren't going back to that hard line at this point but we are working our way back towards that because we feel like the best place for students to be and the best place for students to

052learn is in our classrooms also working on those resiliency and coping skills um so many of our students and our families and and some of our teachers uh those resiliency and coping skills have struggled during the pandemic and so working on re and reinstating those and giving people that ability to um to to face challenges and overcome challenges uh on their own and not needing the support of others but they need the support now to get to that place returning to our traditional uh curriculum as we look at the use of our florida virtual curriculum last year that served a fantastic purpose for us so that students can move between school and home without miss skipping a beat so as we move back to our traditional curriculum we look at student engagement in the classroom

053the ability to do labs we look at the ability to work collaboratively with other students and then we look at our teachers and their ability to work in plcs plcs are our professional learning communities and that's where freshman english teachers would work to collaborate share ideas share best practices compare data and last year working in florida virtual a curriculum that we thought you know we're probably going to be using this for one year we didn't want to force teachers to do a lot of work to create new common form of assessments and things like that for that so now that we're back on our traditional curriculum we are putting in the work and having teachers collaborate to make sure that that curriculum is the best and best serves our students needs this year actually we

054started this last year we identified that math is an area that unfortunately so many students come to high school and struggle in freshman algebra is the number one failed class on any high school campus and we need we need to be better than that and so what we did is we identified the bottom we had we had three sections available 24 students per second because we wanted those class size to be smaller we identified the bottom 72 incoming freshmen regular education who were not meeting math standards in eighth grade and we put them into a concurrent math class so they're not only taking algebra one two as freshmen like everybody else but they're also taking a lab in which we employ some of the skills you learn in avid avid tutorial skills to for those

055students to make gains in math and i just looked at the data last week our students who are in that bottom 72 out of 475 freshmen they are passing algebra one two at a higher rate than their peers and so uh we are seeing some gains there and we've tried some kind of fancy things just to play with it a little bit some students go every day to math lab some students we have a b their schedule with beginning band uh studies show that music is in math are related and so we have some students that are going beginning band in math lab every other day and we have some students they're doing math lab every other every day and we see pretty similar results in both groups so so we're able to also give

056our arts programs a shot in the arm through that program which is nice and then uh returning to normal this is something we're all so excited for you've heard about all the homecomings and the record-breaking number of ticket sales at these homecomings and in our uh and our games and and that's you know that's why i enjoy being in schools you know it keeps me young and and math and english and social studies and science they're all important i was a science teacher but the thing i enjoy most is the the arts performances the games uh the spirit weeks and being around kids and and so that's been a real treat to get back to that this year for us celebrations um one of the things that we really pride ourselves on at willowkane is

057that we um our staff wants to be there and they want to work there and they want to work with our kids um we are district leaders in staff retention having very very little turnover in our teaching ranks our discipline numbers are extraordinarily low two years ago when we first got there and we compared the first three quarters before we shut down for the pandemic to the prior year we had cut suspension numbers by 75 again the best place for students to be and the best place for students to learn is in our classrooms and if they're sitting at home or sitting in an in-school suspension room they're not in our classrooms and so we looked at how ways that we can focus on what's important and you know stop suspending a kid from not

058wearing an id but let's look at things that reason and keep kids in the classroom so we did a great job of lowering those discipline numbers and we focused by doing that we focused on the small things i called the broken windows philosophy years ago in new york city when they led the nation and the crime rate um the new mayor said you know what instead of worrying about the murders and the the big crimes let's focus on the small stuff they focus on the subways and they said anytime a subway car gets graffiti we're going to take that car out of circulation and we're going to get it cleaned up anytime somebody jumps to subway fare we're going to address that crime and by addressing the small things the bigger issues never came to

059fruition less frequently and so we take a similar approach and really the two things that i care most about is getting the personal electronics out of the classrooms so that students can focus on teaching and learning and so teachers can focus on that and then secondly be where you're supposed to be when you're supposed to be there and i can win an argument all day long that both of those are good for education so um we look at athletics and arts performances participation this past year we hung seven region banners five state banners a national championship banner we led the district in art seals despite being the second smallest school so we are continuing to kick rear end in those areas academic performance this year for the first time in years willow canyon led the

060district in azmerit 2 math and english course and then we've maintained our academic programming our international baccalaureate program our cambridge program and then our amazing career and technical education programs in fact adding one this year with our new certified nurse assisting program that we're using as a magnet program for students from all over the district this year we had three focuses uh one is our professional learning communities and i mentioned that earlier getting those back online uh and getting teachers back to working together and very similar to what ms wolford was talking about is those clear learning intentions if teachers and students know what they're supposed to be learning in the classroom half the battle is one and so making sure that stu teachers are clear in the present in the presentation of that and

061make sure that students can answer similar to ms wolford those questions when you enter the classroom what are you learning if a kid doesn't know what they're learning they're not going to learn it okay and then success criteria what do what is my teacher going to look for to know that i know this and so those are two of our big foci for um for for those professional learning communities we feel like the high school and i think it's similar in elementary school but at the high school more so uh our student voice is important and our students you know they're to a mature point in their life where their input is valuable um and so we do uh student surveys to look at engagement we um we have several different student committees on campus

062that we use as sounding boards so that we can do things to make their experience at willow canyon and the deiser school district more extraordinary and then finally is that two-way communication with community and i think our parent speaker you know the communication that she talked about tonight um that's important to us is that when a parent calls they get if they get a phone call or an email returned within 24 hours personalized from us and so that they know they're being hurt and they'll be listened to and that's customer service so make sure our parents are informed and making sure that we communicate with them on a regular basis so thank you for giving me time on the podium what kind of questions can i answer for you all tonight i just want to

063make a comment um i should take a lesson on your no electronics i apologize i got this were you texting up there miss graham no i'm not talking but did you not hear my phone go off oh that's right so i'm sorry i thought i turned it down and obviously i guess i i don't know i got a new phone and i'm technology challenged so i apologize to everyone that my phone went off so anyway i apologize um i'll take that lesson next next time i'll leave it in the car um i just have one question could you please talk about the ib program and how many students are in that program the ib program so ib program is is a school of 1800 you know we had once upon a time we had advanced

064placement we had ib and then we also have dual enrollment and with a school of 1800 it's really hard to sustain those programs for example if i had an ap physics class and i had an ib physics class i probably have about 30 students school-wide who want to take that high-level type physics and if i have both those then i have two classes of 15 which is not an efficient use of our of our teachers and so um in the areas where we have ib we have moved from ap to ib and really what the ib is a rigorous curriculum it provides college credits for students and it really takes a world view and and you know whereas ap is very is very us centric and there's nothing wrong with that it's just the ib

065matches very well with our cambridge program also which also takes that world view so we have current so last year we had the highest number of graduates in the diploma program so the diploma program is a student who comes in and takes 100 percent nearly 100 ib classes in their junior and senior year and so they graduate with an ib diploma and we had i want to say 17 a year ago the pandemic kind of blew that number up for us because we had a lot of students who we didn't offer ib online and so a lot of students who may have otherwise done that program they did not so this year we're down to four students so that's something we just had our visit with ib uh last week dr polan was a part

066of that dr assai acai and we're looking at ways that we can re-up those numbers and bring students back into that diploma program but the bigger impact for us on ib is that and i can get you numbers i don't have them off the top head we probably have half of our seniors and juniors that are taking an ib class of some sort or another within their interest area so i think of my own children my oldest is a is a math and science kid my youngest is a humanities kid and so i don't know that my youngest would really thrive in an ib math program but they would certainly love to take the englishes and the social studies whereas my oldest would be more on that that stem side of ib but maybe not

067in the humanities and so our students do take that and with our ib programs our dual enrollment students who go to willow canyon and take the right track of classics and actually graduate with their first year and a half of college requirements done and so that gives us a strong leg up on some of the competition we see from some of the charter schools so when you say cambridge i'm sorry ib is not offered online what happened to those students when everything shut down march of whatever for example if they were a senior and they wanted to take ib english they could choose regular english they could choose ap english which was offered online or honors english okay so they they could still take a rigorous curriculum but just that ib was not a curriculum

068that was available uh in our with online programming there's a lot of different rules that we have to follow using ib and cambridge so cambridge is pretty much our freshman and sophomore honors curriculum and then ib takes over for junior and senior year roughly thank you so dr schwartz um if it was down to four students and i'm just tacking on uh um miss grant's line of questioning um was ap reinstituted or so we did some ap and online uh for students who work online but they said with the rules we have within ib so last year anybody who was a junior was not that wanted to go online programming was not able to take a full ib load okay and so the students those four that are left are students who were in person

069and taking our ib classes um but also the pandemic i think took a took a lot of wind out of sales for a lot of kids and and so it wasn't just the availability of the courses but it was also you know here i am living through a pandemic and and do i want to do i want to finish or do some students choose not to challenge themselves to the level of ib and that's unfortunate that's unfortunate okay um winning culture i like that um which led me to a question that came up in my mind what did you just do your dissertation on teacher retention uh i looked at the frequency of interactions with administration and how that affected teacher satisfaction and in turn uh teacher retention and i found that even those little

070interactions you know just pop in and say hey have a good weekend uh those are the frequency of those is as valuable as me sitting in there for 15 minutes of doing a informal evaluation which is where you got that winning culture from well i appreciate that thank you and uh last you cut your suspensions by 75 yes yes ma'am so that's good like i said we look at what's important and if a student has done something so egregious and by so egregious it would be drugs alcohol fight that they need to miss class time they can do that at home anything else we got rid of in-school suspension so we do any of those minor consequences in a two-hour block right after school and then they can ride the tudor bus home and i

071tell you what a 16 year old would far rather sit for seven or eight hours and miss their classes than those two hours after school and so that curbs a lot of those small behaviors that we would otherwise see if a student is chronically late to school i shouldn't sit them in in school suspension that's a kid who doesn't want to be in school all the time we should hope we should hold them accountable on their time it's kind of a little uh fast times that ridgemont high throwback because it's your time or our time right okay all right well thank you thank you i just have more of a comment um just like what miss sorry single mentioned the winning culture i love it i so love it my youngest just graduated from a

072rival high school so i couldn't gush as much as i usually do like then you know um but i love that because it's just it's catchy but aside from catchy it's true like you have the the academic gains to back it up the disciplinary you know improvements so it just really works for you guys it's just i i think it's just the best um and just really appreciated all of the the positivity that's come about um since you became a principal i appreciate it i've seen a lot of i've heard a lot of good feedback and you know the the um the academic pieces you know moving in the right direction as well so whatever you're doing there is truly working you you have a good culture going and uh a lot of good positive

073energy around it so i just appreciate all your work thank you miss picture it's a team effort and i you know i i'm just a one one cog in the in the whole system so but uh we all are pulling an order with that well thank you i love the math lab because as a student in high school i struggled with math like i did my homework i paid attention i would sit there and i would write down step by step everything the teacher did every single thing and then i get home and i do it and then i'd go in the next day and they would be all wrong and have a like and then especially with algebra one they were like no there's this exception and then there's that exception i'm like wait

074you didn't tell me about anyways but i love the math lab and i love how they're concurrent with their algebra 1 and algebra 2 classes and i really love the fact that you're allowing them to go to math lab on these days and then go to beginning band on those days because there's such a correlation between music and just activating those brain cells and just there's such a correlation that's awesome and i i love the fact that you make kids stay after school for two hours you're like nope you're gonna mess around in my class you're gonna spend two hours after school and i love that that is effective for you and it works it just works so keep up the good work in the math lab you mentioned you go home and you you

075couldn't figure out your homework half of the class is tutorial and and relearning it being it taught it by a different either by a peer or who got it better than you did or the teacher the other half is that homework help and and i'm an old ball coach and homework is practice and tests are games and it's it's a pretty parallel analogy yeah i actually had a math lab in college i think my junior year i transferred a couple times and i had a math lab before i went on to the required and it just it made a world of difference because you got those pieces that you were missing thank you you know what everything everyone else is saying i love the math lab intervention love the band correlation um that's amazing to

076me um and just the winning culture you you see it on everything you guys do and it's so impressive um sad i'm not able to see your band this year very much you know we're different divisions now yeah [Applause] um just everything's really truly wonderful um thank you so much thank you and as always i extended y'all invite you just want to swing by some day 11 o'clock when you wake up and check out what we're doing we'd love to have you thank you thank you president thank you board members thank you all right stumbling in our bathrobes and coffee cups curlers all right moving on to item g3 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet dr pulling will introduce this item good evening madam president governing board

077members cabinet and community it's my pleasure to talk about our accreditation visit so our accreditation body is a very important organization that visits every five years to really check on our continuous improvement of our systems and our schools and of course ultimately are teaching and learning they were previously called advance ed if you were here five years ago and i believe we sat in this room right here on wednesday afternoon and delivered the final report if you were here and this year it's virtual and it is at the end of november we've already been in contact with the team lead who's out of minnesota and cogni is really going to be looking at is dysart you know doing what they say they're doing in terms of continuous improvement in terms of leadership systems financial systems

078and the what the team wants to do is talk to people in dysart and a little bit of everyone so they'll come and be here virtually on november 29th monday morning they'll talk with cabinet and superintendent and louisa will schedule this part they would like to talk to board members either individually or in pairs at nine o'clock on monday november 29th if you are not available at that time if you have an alternative time please communicate that with louisa and they will make every attempt to accommodate your schedule i know um you're very busy and when working and whatnot but they do want to talk to governing board members and after that they have a series of focus groups throughout the day they want to talk to some directors they want to talk to community

079partners principals classified staff and parents and that rounds out the first day and again they're asking they have a you know scripted questions and they want feedback on how this diets are doing what's your experience what's going well where can they improve then on tuesday they will virtually visit five schools and it's a similar format where they will do focus groups with teachers students professional staff classified and that will take the whole day tuesday and then wednesday they will be finishing up working on the report and do an exit interview with the superintendent cabinet so in preparation for this visit we are uploading evidence according to their standards so evidence of our systems of leadership of finance of curriculum instruction and when that's ready i can certainly share that with you and a good deal

080of preparations going getting underway with this and we're excited for the visit we look forward to feedback on how we can get better so with that i'll take any questions do we have to study you have to study well you have to prepare to do your homework no you don't have to study will all of those stakeholders be present at 9 00 a.m on that that day or these separate meetings yeah they schedule separate zooms and luis is really going to be awesome with scheduling that so if you're on this the classified council she'll email you and you know send you the zoom for 3 15 that day and it'll be a separate link and so it's just a series of zooms and they'll typically have like five team members and probably one or two

081will will do the interviews i've served on these committees before and um i would typically go in and talk with parents and take notes and then we meet back as a team to talk and and ultimately they give us ratings and uh and so okay that's how that works thank you i think the last time because i remember i did an interview over the phone so um did they is it just still pandemic stuff why they're doing a virtual still yes yeah they have not quite transitioned back to in person okay but they're flexible on their days like i know for me mondays and tuesdays i just work all day yeah absolutely it feels communicates at least so um that the team will make every effort to uh to interview you on okay thank you

082next we'll move to item h1 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet item h1 is an item that was presented as an information item at the last regular board meeting and was brought back again for a recommendation for board approval and dr polling will further introduce this item thank you dr kellis madam president members of the board cabinet and an audience yes um as presented last month with dr montano and mrs winterstein um really seeing the the need for behavioral and learning loss supports and um so there's a couple pieces um first is there's a job description with student support technician and this would be the key piece that is a direct school support and one edit on that job description job description says grade h and that

083is incorrect it's actually a grade l and that aligns to other positions that are similar so that's one edit i apologize for that um going to the mod staffing modifications chart i appreciate the work of dr montano she really looked at what resources she currently has and she is essentially shifting what is district-wide support with the ess behavior technician and reducing 12 positions and and putting those in the schools and so those 12 positions will be reduced and they would be turned into a student support technician and then adding eight more so that there's 20 for our 20 schools that support pre-k through 8 students and so i appreciate dr montano's look at that and really it is putting district supports directly into schools and these uh student support technicians will be working under the

084principal and directly supporting teachers and students next line is a behavior coach so adding up to 10 positions and the purpose of this is that each school has at least a half time behavior coach because these student support technicians and the classroom teachers need direct support from a behavior coach and lastly a behavior analyst in turn one behavior analyst in terms of the budget as we talked about previously um the bulk of this will be out of esser funds and that we know that's a two-year plan and so it would be after two years you have to look at that to see if if either other funds have become available or if that phases out and maybe after two years of its intensive behavior support that our issues are better particularly k4 and that's the

085biggest need right now the other pieces are that emino decrease then rolls into the budget increase at behavior coach and then again with some mips or grant support on that and so um that is the proposal and and i can stand for questions and dr montano is here as well who is again working with ms winstein and directly coordinating this this effort to better support our schools and our teachers could i just ask i think we discussed this last time but can you just remind me if we approve this does this go up for approval every year or are we approving this just for x amount of time or is this like a permanent approval we have to go back and undo it it would be a approval while funds are available and so it

086would go through that that's for funds and so after two years then these positions would go away unless there another funding source became available another grant or another funding so what if we were just to put a time limit say we approve this for a couple years and then we re-evaluate it in a couple years and see where we're at yeah absolutely absolutely that's a great suggestion because you know certainly it's quite possible to be so effective and there'll be other funds available that would bring it back to you to say we want to keep going with this with these funds absolutely dr kellis um when we i know this has been a while but when we originally approved social workers that was through a grant i believe it was called we called it a

087pilot would that be appropriate in this circumstance to call it a pilot maybe for one year under president members of the board uh just for clarification um there have been grants available in the past for social workers um our current social workers are not funded on a grant they're funded with mips but in this case it could very easily be classified as a pilot program yes again given miss jaffin's question about funding and as a as dr polly mentioned that this essentially sunsets with the ending of esser funds short that it could be brought back if if the pilot is successful and and if there are other funds available it could be it's successful but if there are not other funds available then it would still sunset are those um employees interested in these positions

088or when when we um post these positions are they told that so they know they might consider do i want to get into a two-year possible temporary position madam president uh miss pritchard it's my understanding any time an employee is hired with what we call soft funds in other words funds that are not long-term and sustainable that that's part of their their intake they know that then that's a conversation madam president um if i could if we're doing that we are talking about the student support technician position only correct because we do all have those positions already exist right the other positions so the new position that we're limiting is the student support technician i just want to be clear about that if we put that because the other positions already exist we have people

089in those positions so are you talking about the staffing modifications those are already in place and present miss jeff and so the if you're looking at the blue chart in front of you yes um there are our current positions that are being merged with other new positions in this overall plan and there are different funding sources as you see as you go down through the chart so some of those that are currently in place have m o funding and those are not soft funded positions they're currently in place and those will not sunset the the positions that are funded with esser are the ones that we're referring to that are short-term because i'm just looking at the changes and it says right now we want to reduce 12 ess behavior text but we want to

090add students of cortex yeah we 100 probably need that right now i'm just wondering are we going to revisit this model in a couple years with the student support technician job are we going to just revisit all this in a couple years and kind of gauge where we're at and see if we still need this or if we need to do something else i'm just wondering if we approve these changes now is it going to be permanent that's that's my concern because climate changes you know no pun intended i did not mean that we quote you for that um clearly if half of the i don't know saying that it is half but if a portion of the plan disappears then the plan has to be revisited and a new plan developed so really it's

091not just the student support technician that would be limited it would be the new behavior analyst because they're also coming out of esser funds correct my big thing is just to make sure those employees know just so they're not surprised or budget you know wrong for themselves absolutely plus plus everybody's given a yearly contract nobody's given um two or three year contracts except for the superintendent so um each year nobody's promised anything so yeah but this is a little different only because you can assume unless you make a huge mistake you're probably going to be renewed every year but for something where it's you know has tied to the budget in a soft way you just never know yeah yeah i feel like that's my only concern is is just making sure we put like

092a two-year time limit on it and just revisit it in two years i mean this may work wonders and we may our behavior may have improved greatly and we can look at it and go okay what we're doing is working or hey everything's a lot better we might not need as much and then we can just revisit it so i'm personally i don't know how you guys feel but i'm personally fine improving it with like a one or two year time limit i'm okay with that i mean i mean staffing is going to be looked at each year regardless whether we put a time limit or not so they look at staffing um across the entire district every year or probably several times a year so putting a a time limit on it at six

093and one half a dozen the other honestly for me i still feel comfortable with the time limit but i'm madam president to note the the astr iii funds go through fiscal year so and ken will be glad to answer the specifics on the funding but it's about two and a half years so two years to review it would probably be good with the other half a year i'm fine with two and a half however i mean i don't know i mean because nothing makes sense anymore i mean if esser just goes on forever you know i mean we would still have an opportunity because it would be like you know s or eight right it's like booster eight okay that's fright okay so what i'm hearing is that approving this as the with the language

094already recommended we would still be um addressing your concern as long as so3 doesn't keep getting extended yes or 12 yes yes exactly exactly but but it would need to but it even if it did get extended it would be a different esser is is what i was trying to say so we would still have to have a conversation in two and a half ish years as long as that makes sense we can have that conversation in two and a half years i just my fear is that it's just gonna go on you'll be here [Music] you can work that into a motion crystal you can work with you you want you can put it into a motion jump in all right so i will move to approve staffing modifications for proposed new k-8 student

095discipline and learning loss support until the end of sr3 2024 okay second seconded by mrs pritchard thank you i think chris used motion passes thank you everyone next up we have item h2 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board members of cabinet um this next item is a very weighty matter i'm going to ask dr dean if he will come up and assume this position to continue the conversation madam president members of governing board this evening we bring to the governing board a revision to the school calendars for the next two school years 2022 and 2023 the calendar revisions reflect a return and realignment of fall break back to cover the time that encompasses columbus day and um we asked for your approval on the revisions thank you dr dean any discussion

096along this uh for this item i appreciate you guys doing that yes no problem all right you're gonna make a motion i thought she was gonna be okay you go for it um i moved the governing board approve the revision to school calendars for the 2022 to 2023 and the 2023 to 2024 school years as presented however you can have it yeah i think the three of us did it come on yeah sure motion passes thank you okay moving to item h3 dr dean madam president the request of a governing board member the board is asked to discuss the district's membership with nsba the national school boards association the board may choose to take action to keep or discontinue the district's membership within nsba and we'd be happy to answer any questions that you may

097have as well thank you and does nsba then i mean i know that asba is obviously this arizona school board but so by not being a member of what was your mic on yeah okay of um nsva does that then mean that we would no longer be members of asba madam president ms pritchard the answer is no nsba we pay a separate invoice to nsba than we do to asba so we would in theory if we decided to not be associated with nsba we would still be associated with asba if we so choose that would be correct i'm not in favor of any school board association that wants to label concerned parents as terrorists um just so we're clear on on ms chapman's point has everyone had an opportunity to read a letter from the

098nsba to president joe biden yes i honestly have not i read it okay yes okay um so i also had the concern um about this organization that we have a relationship with referring to concerned parents as domestic terrorists which is um why i wanted to bring up this in conversation to potentially end our relationship with the national school board association i am concerned about that letter and those comments as well but nsba does not speak for the dysart school district um because i believe i can only speak for myself that we do we want to hear from parents input i do know a retraction letter came out that um i guess these people did this without board approval but even a retraction it's the fact that they did it in the first place is very

099concerning well and if you look at the testimony um from i think it's merrick garland who was being drilled um one of the representatives congressman was asking him about the data he said i have new data i got a letter from nsba so wait a second you don't have any data on escalating incidents no so i'm you know i'm appalled that any sba member would label a parent a concerned parent who shows up to fight for their students that that to me is not a domestic terrorist and that's insulting additionally in in their in their letter which is six ridiculous pages long the on the first page it's clearly states on behalf of our state associations and the more than 90 000 school board members who govern our country's 14 000 local public school districts

100educating more than 50 million school children they are speaking for us or attempting to speak for us and um again that's why this was added to the agenda madam president i would echo your comments in terms of the fact that that letter does not speak for this school district we have always and will continue to solicit input and welcome the input of our parents and our community members as a very important tenet in our belief system and certainly we understand that this governing board did not contribute to that letter its origins or its delivery thank you very much dr dean i'm i'm not sure if going down this route is um uh i i guess i want to make sure that that we as in dysart um politics are kept out of this arena um

101i just don't want us to be labeled as i know that there have been several state associations that have dis associated themselves i think it's what four or five now okay uh five now that have pennsylvania and a couple of others but that was the association so i'm wondering how many school districts themselves have actually disassociated themselves with nsba because of this letter i think it was wrong but to your point they don't specifically speak for dysart and i i totally agree with that and i am glad that they did print an apology retraction um but my other question probably to mr hicks and then also dr dean what does nsba provide school districts i'll start with you madame president okay [Laughter] in and start um so i will tell you that that while the

102question wasn't asked i'll just provide the information that we pay a bit more than eight thousand dollars per year um to nsba nsba provides approximately four newsletters per year they provide something that they call legal clips which are federal laws information on federal laws throughout the course of the year and then additionally the other piece that is provided through an nsba membership is a reduced rate on their conferences the last thing that would that i would bring up that nsba provides is access to their advocacy components in washington d.c i know that a few years ago we had i believe two board members i believe attended several years ago and i know that last year was obviously the pandemic created issues with that but those are the services that are provided through our membership with

103msba i know i went to the advocacy institute several years ago you went twice no i went once what to washington yeah just once i was supposed to go last year but the pandemic canceled oh okay i thought you went twice also um i think that they're a great tool but i don't want to separate ourselves just because of a few rogue people that decided to make a decision on sending that letter or excuse me calling some people terrorists i still find use for nsba i think that several parents still find use with nsba i just don't think we should be intermingling politics with education well they shouldn't dice our standpoint well they should have thought about that before they sent this letter that's my problem is we're paying them eight thousand dollars and then

104they go off and send this letter without even apparently we're members of nsba they didn't even ask anybody i mean i didn't get a survey did any of you guys get a survey no i mean so we're paying them eight thousand dollars to speak for us but not speak for us you know that's that's my issue with it is i'm not okay with that and again a retraction was made and but the letter never should have been sent in the first place and why those people why they did it i have no idea so my question is what is the status of our membership as of today madam president member grant we currently are members of nsba the the membership the timeline for the membership my understanding is it is january through december that membership

105we recently prior to the board requesting this membership being placed on this agenda item um we we have uh paid the invoice uh for 2022 um in terms of that so that would um take the membership from january through december of 2022 i do not know if that membership can be refunded that's not something that we've checked into we certainly could but that's the current status miss grant i mean i i have a huge issue with the domestic terror i mean the terrorist comment for sure um but to be honest with you i i mean my my concern as of late is asba as well i mean um they're just turning into something unrecognizable as far as i'm concerned and so i don't i don't know that i guess i'm just curious as to it

106was there a reason why asba wasn't a part of the and i know i'm assuming that part of nsba discussion they're national so we should be able to speak about anything under the national association which would be asba as well so i hope i'm i'm okay as far as the agenda goes um but you know what i like was there a reason why it was just nsba as opposed to asba i guess that would be a great conversation the conversation was had and i don't i don't know that i agenda wise i can talk about the other piece well the asba right i think it was just that it was okay because it's national madam president um member pritchard in rereading the agenda item i might encourage the board to stick to conversation with the

107national school board association well maybe we could discuss the nsba this week or this month and then we could revisit the asba at a later date because i also share your concerns so i feel like that would be a good conversation to have um i do want to state though that in me requesting this agenda item initially and having that conversation with dr kellis he did advise me as dr dean mentioned that the 8 000 approximately approximate amount was already paid so what i would like to do is have the conversation of keeping them uh through 2022 and then agreeing potentially to not renew for 2023 keeping at sba for another year because because conferences have already been planned for some board members for nsb nsba but it sounds like conferences can still be attended

108you're just going to pay a higher rate if you're not a member is that what you said doctor but we are already members yes that's already made the payment well could we get a refund mr hicks mr hicks because if we could get a refund and then we could just pay the extra for the conferences the companies have already been paid the conferences were already paid for at the reduced rate well they would probably just bill for the difference yeah yeah then just give me a heads up we could do that i'm still not comfortable with asking for funds back i again i agree with the statement about pulling you know the the retraction and everything but uh um not pulling your retraction you know what i'm talking about um and if it's already been

109paid until 22 i i don't mind us revisiting it i also don't mind us actually getting more information and having a broader discussion about it um probably more of a as an information item to gather more information um but at the moment i'm just not quite comfortable in discontinuing it since it's already been paid is there um because really it sounds like the only because if if it's a done deal and because it's been paid it has to stay in effect for another full year is what's going to impact this motion or this agenda item because we still have it for a full year anyway is it just a matter of waiting two weeks or i guess until next month if luisa gets the information on whether or not they can get a refund and

110that would determine whether we would just cancel then because then we wouldn't be members in rather than now and we're then still going to be members for another full year you see what i'm saying just in did you see what i mean i was i don't know why we couldn't get our if we paid early i don't know how why don't we build our money back well my biggest concern is this stuff is going to keep happening until people stand up and say stop it oh i don't like it i just have a bigger issue with asba and i think we should do i mean i think the conversation should be around all of it because they're underneath nsba i agree because this stuff was done without our knowledge they do not speak for us

111and they're gonna keep pulling these shenanigans and yeah you don't want to get political but it just did this got political okay and if we don't start standing up to these people they're going to keep pulling these same shenanigans for as long as however however long they get away with it and it's not right it's not right and i know parents do not want this going on they do not want to be labeled terrorists for showing up to speak for their kids and it's going to keep happening unless everybody stands up we i just want to make a statement that we represent this community and this community doesn't deserve to pay eight thousand dollars to an organization that's going to call them domestic terrorists madam president i might suggest um that the board this agenda

112item allows the board to take action um the board may also choose not to take action this evening perhaps the board would consider the district gathering more information to the questions that you posed as related to obtaining refunds you've also expressed we've heard members express interests in expanding this item to include state associations perhaps the board would consider or could consider bringing this back in a larger scale to include both organizations um at a another board meeting including the answers to the questions posed this evening that's one action or that's one direction we could take um or the board may choose to take action as well um the option is yours as as it relates to the way that the agenda item is written we could also just have a separate asba um action item

113on a different board you certainly could absolutely i don't i don't like the fact that we would still remain with if our issues are with nsba coming forward and making the comments that they did without seeking any feedback or input from its members before taking such a huge action as to writing the president to then remain a member with them for a full year just doesn't feel good to me because it's kind of like i just don't like that so my big thing would be why are we why would we um why would we be okay just staying a member for another year why not find out about canceling the membership and not because we've already then spent that eight thousand dollars would be gone there is gone well i don't know it was budgeted

114that's what i would yeah that's what i'm saying so you're saying that that the conferences could still be attended as non-members yes for administration and staff as well yeah i will tell you that um currently administration is not registered for those for that conference okay um however there are those that are registered and nsba does not require membership to attend their conferences the the conference rate is different and certainly as indicated earlier the difference in conference rate could always be paid yes so can we possibly table this until we get more information to make a wise decision we've got a lot of little ifs that are in the pot i would the only way to get in the only additional um council that i would provide um is that there is another board meeting prior

115to january 1st when the new membership goes into play um and so the next board meeting in december would allow the board um to make a decision should you choose to um to go that direction and table the item you would have an opportunity to make a decision on this piece prior to that january of 20 january 1st 2022 when um the the next year of membership begins well could we vote on the nsba tonight and then ask for an agenda item for the asba for the december meeting you certainly could do that as well yes except i would still like us to wait and talk about nsba and asba at the same time i have a lot of questions now based on this conversation about the nsba membership and um i noticed we didn't

116talk about the retraction letter and i would i don't have it in front of me and i would like for us to you know reread that because i'm not sure these people i i anyway anyway i'd like some more information before we we do this i read it but it's i've slept since then so i and and i would note that that our comments are not meant to guide the board but simply to provide options right well and i guess again i want to make it clear i don't care to be a member of nsba my my thing is in principle that i just wish we would have the information on getting that refund back because i don't feel right having eight thousand dollars sitting with an organization that we're not going to be a

117member of um if the board so chooses and yet we've given them that money and we're disassociating ourselves so it's just like giving them eight thousand dollars i would rather it be like i'd rather know that piece but i have but we could also just be provided that information after the fact you know i'm not sure because we're already we're already stuck we're already committed to them for a year it sounds like that's what they want to think too right so we talk so we can so the motion you know potentially is that we discontinue our relationship with them so we may or may not get the 8 000 back yeah i think people need to know that that's why i'd like it to be an agenda item so that people know the stat yes

118we sent them this letter and yes can we get a refund or not get a refund i mean it's this little these all these little dangling things that i think the public again parents need to know what is our i guess what is our what would our community want us to do i mean how would they feel about it if we say well it's okay they they they did this but um they backpedaled so it's okay so we you can you can call our community terrorists i just can't assume we don't know which way this that parents would say um yes continue with it no continue don't continue with it this happened in september by the way yes did you get any emails about it about um what are you talking about the nsba or

119from parents yeah i didn't get emails from nsba i don't know i meant parents nope so parents probably don't even know that this happened unless there wait let me finish unless they're involved in the what's the right word i want to use here political circle where this would have been brought out because i'm not sure how widespread this was and again i'm not i disagree with the letter totally it's very it's just wrong on so many levels to call parents that this is on national news oh i'm sure all the news stations so any person turning on the news whether you're politically involved or not is going to see this did we vote on paying this was it a voucher that we did vote for it didn't we and we just did it again um

120madam president members of the board i'd have to check the vouchers but i know we checked to see that we paid it i'd have to check to see if this has been ratified do you know offhand miss proud that would be helpful i'd have to search uh let me see if i could open up that could have even been tonight that we ratified it i will i mean i'm sitting here listening to all this um conversation i will say that uh in principle though like even though part of me hates spending money on stuff that i don't feel like you know um is justified at the end of the day that doesn't change the principle the fact that this statement was made and regardless of whether or not you know um miss grant when you

121were saying you know do you think our how many parents really know the point is this national organization that we're affiliated with like we know like it happens oh i agree so that's i think i see that point now where you know again i'd rather be nice and clean and we get our money back and then we just completely break ties but at the end of the day are you are we comfortable being associated with with an organization that's going to make these types of comments about our parents or not and i guess that piece of it it's going to be a shame if we don't get our money back but that piece of it is i think what the problem is which i don't that's not going to make any difference i just want

122to say that i appreciate everyone's conversation and and comments tonight but based on principle i i am going to make a motion um i will move that the governing board take action to discontinue the district's membership with the national school boards association and sba second seconded by mrs chapman i will state that at this moment i cannot support this thank you i move the governing board take action to discontinue the district's membership with the national school boards association and sba and i'd like to just add that i am very disappointed that an organization our association that i have really enjoyed being a part of for gosh since 2006 or however long i've been affiliated with this board has changed so drastically in a negative direction um i'm sad it's come to this i i agree

123with you because i've been a part of it since 2010 and but i have gotten great value out of it but at this moment i cannot support it motion passes and madam president we will continue to pursue the information requested and provided to the board as well thank you very much dr dean um next we have item i one request for future agenda items i have a request i would like to request an action discussion item to create a policy and procedures on locker room use and restroom use for gender identity we'll be happy to add that to the next meeting i would also like to add an item action discussion item on whether the board will take action to discontinue membership with the arizona school boards association and we can add that item as

124well well while we're adding to the list do you have something tracy okay i would like a follow-up on the nsba voucher issue and of course the refund issue i think i don't know if i think it should be an agenda item so that the public knows and um i didn't pull it and i should have so i apologize but i want to talk about adding gun safety to the high school curriculum that class even though it was already approved and consent yeah can we not do that again or did i mess up madame president member grant um certainly the item could have been spoken about this evening um we can we can certainly bring a topic back for discussion and so we certainly will be happy to to visit that as well okay and

125how about i ask that we discuss it and reconsider it can i do that yes we will be happy to add that to the agenda okay i didn't know anyway i was focused on something else okay so there's four thank you um take a nap that day we have four four requests for agenda items yes okay but are they all for action or for information i will be emailing you the links for these submittal forms so that i don't i get specific information on whether they're going to be actions okay all right and next i will make a motion to adjourn the meeting okay seconded by ms grant motion passes meeting is adjourned thank you