Dysart Governing Board Meeting - August 25, 2021

001good evening i'd like to call this meeting to order and we'll go ahead and stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you and let the record reflect that all board members are present tonight first up we have recognitions and celebrations dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet this evening we are thrilled to be able to once again be entertained by some of our most talented students dr dean will introduce this item good evening madam president members of the governing board dr kellis and members of cabinet this evening we are proud to have the willow canyon drumline under

002the direction of miss radam maker phenomenal band teacher and we're excited to have them play for us and with that guys you are up [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] madam president each year the willow canyon high school marching band drumline and indoor percussion teams compete at a championship level and obviously they're ready to go again tonight so thank you for being here this evening we're very proud of what you do and good luck [Applause] thank you moving on to item b2 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet ken hicks will present this item good evening madam president members of the board superintendent dr kellis colleagues and community members we have two celebrations here tonight not just one both relating to wellness and uh i want to thank miss

003janice peel our benefits and wellness manager thanks to all her efforts to create an environment that values and supports wellness these two awards are representative of this belief so the first award is from the wellness council of arizona the sprint to summer corporate challenge and so we don't have a plaque for that one and i don't know if there's anybody in the audience i recognize names on the on the agenda item lots of them but we took 10th place out of the top 20 award um i mean on this one we took second place of the large company for the sprint to summer corporate challenge so great job to all this is counting their steps i think it said on the agenda item there was 138 000 a week that they were averaging so they

004did an amazing job and did a great job so not sure if any people here but thank you very much for your participation and your support the second award is that we finished 10th in the large company award for the category for the top 20 healthiest employers by the phoenix business journal so i know some of these are seeming like annual awards that we're getting on a regular basis but we do really do value wellness in our district and so this is creating just the various healthy options with flute clinics or wellness webinars we used to have yogas and some other classes a lot of those have been canceled but we continue to try to push a wellness environment so i just want to say thank you to janice to um all of payroll and

005thank you to all of them for all their efforts to continue to support this in our district and here is the plaque for that award thank you congratulations um moving to item i'm sorry did we do b3 okay um moving to item c1 audience with individuals we do have one person requesting to speak tonight to this item and then several for agenda items so i'll go ahead and read the statement this is the time for the public to comment members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda pursuant to ars 38-431-01 h action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for further consideration at a later date in order to

006facilitate accomplishing the dis 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 miranda lindsay good evening excuse me guys i'm a little bit nervous it's been a while since i've been up here so i'll probably speak fast and be a lot less than three minutes um i'm coming in um with the most upmost respect for what we do here at king's art dies art but at kingswood at my school um you guys we all know that we work really hard i know that our superintendents work extremely hard making decisions for a mass amount of students whereas in my own classroom i'm only making

007decisions for 25 to 30 students so when i come with you guys i'm not coming in any um bad names or anything i'm not coming with any grievances i just really want to start a discussion um amongst us as adults and as my peers um we are coming tonight about class sizes i know our mou states that we have 23 is our goal size for class sizes um it does not say any longer the plus four um it does still have the ten days um currently at kingswood we are each at 25 and we've been at 24 since the beginning of the school year um we all currently got a new student this week which puts us all at 25 and it looks like we're getting a new one again at the end of the

008week and then another new one coming in next week moving down from first grade so it puts us at 26. large class sizes for our little babies they're five some of them are four haven't even turned five yet until september so when we're talking about what we need to do and the amount of information that we need to be able to have our students attain having that large of a class size is really hard um a lot of our students are coming in i'm a title one school so they're coming in with a lot of disadvantages and i feel like sometimes with these large class sizes it gives them even more of a disadvantage the pacing in our curriculum our curriculum is great but the pacing is so fast when we have kiddos who don't

009even know what their name looks like we're already at 12 sight words and 24 letters they think it's too much for them and i can't give them the stuff that they need when i have behaviors and we have self-contained kiddos coming into our classrooms which i absolutely love having them in but it does make it difficult to be able to meet the needs of all of our students i also want to talk about i was one of those parents that were out walking and talking one of those teachers that were out walking and talking i'm at my son's football games at ccv and at my son's swim meets when we were at surprise so i know that i put in forth my best effort to make sure that that override passed and then for the

010funding to not be there to have these smaller class sizes and that's kind of one of those things that i was pushing it's hurtful to me because i know that i was that person that was out there talking and i was that person that was out there asking to help that um and we also one of the emails that i got was that we had 23.4 students but i don't have a point for i've got a whole body and i don't like that our kids are just numbers because our kids are whole bodies and i want to be able to treat them like that so we're just begging for support for our earliest learners to give them the foundation that we can all be proud of thank you dr kellis are we able to follow

011up with those concerns presidents pritchard um we'll have human resources follow up thank you thank you that's all we have for this item thank you very much next we have item e1 i'll entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda items oh sorry my mouse jumped moving to item d1 do we have a student update dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet we are very happy to invite jocelyn poundstone to present the student information report good evening madam president members of the board dr kellis cabinet and the community my name is jocelyn poundstone and i'm a member of the dysart student leadership council we had our first meeting last week and we discussed how we could make this year extraordinary we brainstormed ideas such as a district spirit

012conference including feeder schools to show what that to show what is in store for high school we talked about school culture and how we continue to cultivate within our school community and across the district all of our councils are excited to work together this year we look forward to putting these ideas into action and sharing them with the board throughout the year thank you [Applause] thank you very much next we have the superintendent update dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet um visiting with uh principals and walking the hallways in our schools i'm just very proud to report back that kids are engaged in learning teachers are engaging kids in learning and there's a lot of learning going on and academics is probably this year not to say

013more or less than in the past but it's definitely a priority is coming off of last year and a summer school where we did a lot of work to recover from last year's covid and we're very aware of the academic needs of all of our students and so there's lots of focus this year on having an awesome extraordinary academic year thank you very much dr kellis next we have governing board update i do not have an update what does anyone else like to share i don't have an update but i just want to thank the community members who have been reaching out to the board in the district if i have not responded to your email personally yet i'm getting to it but i want you all to be assured that i have forwarded all

014of the concerns to our superintendent dr kellis and i know he's been following up so thank you for your concern and involvement and i just don't want you to feel like if i haven't gotten back it's because i haven't heard you i just am getting through all of them so thank you for your patience and thank you for taking the time to reach out i got to visit a classroom today and read a book to one of our classrooms and it was so nice to see all the kids smiling faces engaged in their learning and that was a great kid we have some really great students anyone else okay moving to item e1 again i'll entertain a motion how much the governing board approve the consent agenda items as presented second motion passes thank you

015moving to our first information item g1 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet administration has reviewed section two of our policy manual and have no recommended changes for this evening and president if i could revise my previous statement okay [Laughter] of course there are two recommended changes um under policy 2.13 there is um a and recommendation from arizona school boards association that the following statement be added and that is that the governing governing board president may recess the meeting without a vote of the governing board in order to maintain a decorum and governing board meeting rules of order this question whether or not the the board president was allowed to do this in the past we believe it's always been allowed but this just puts it in writing

016and makes it very clear to our our community that the board president does have that authority to do so the second changes section 2.23 and this again is based on recent legislative action that was signed by the governor it says no public monies can be used for training orientation or therapy that represents any form of blame or judgment on the basis of race ethnicity or sex this does not include any training on sexual harassment blame or judgment on the basis of race ethnicity or sex is defined in the statute by some concepts and the statutory reference is cited so those are two recommended changes and if the board wishes to modify any of these policies or these recommended changes it will be brought back as an action discussion of the next board meeting otherwise if

017there's no further discussion between now and the next board meeting these will be presented in the consent agenda okay thank you for that um moving to information g2 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet this is a new addition to the board agenda that we will be enjoying this evening we have already experienced some previous reports from different departments within the district this is our first evening to receive school reports so we will first hear a school report from thompson ranch elementary followed by snoring heights middle school in that order so good evening madam president members of the board kel's cabinet community it's my pleasure to introduce principal dr rachel saunders who's here representing thompson ranch elementary school as well as with her staff thank you dr sanders

018thank you i'd also like to recognize my assistant principal danielle parnell for coming out and our amazing teaching and learning specialist um rhonda de la garza so thompson ranch elementary school what is our mascot we are the jaguars our school colors are blue and gray we currently have 730 students at our school preschool through eighth grade and our signature program is steem which is the integration of science technology engineering arts and math to provide children with a whole brain based approach to learning and really integrating those skills of collaboration communication problem solving and critical thinking and creativity to support them on authentic learning experiences and yes there's jeremy couldn't make it without being in the presentation lots of celebrations this year it's been an exciting and wonderful new year i'm starting out with our role

019roll out of the pbis school-wide initiative pbis stands for positive behavioral intervention support in order to ensure students success in modifying behavior in a positive way we've got partnerships with west ed and really focusing on improving instruction really focusing on academic conversations depth of knowledge depth of knowledge those learning objectives and alignment and making sure that students are provided with the best education tier one tier two and tier three we also have lots of recognitions for our students and our staff and families we had a big recognition program for those students that scored proficient and highly proficient on azm2 from the spring and we invited our families out to celebrate with their children and that was really exciting we'll continue with that focus those huge celebrations with that we do a lot of different things

020with our staff with our possum staff member on friday our share the love different recognitions just really trying to have some positive recognition for our amazing staff our fantastic students and also recognizing our families we do have a huge campus beautification initiative started out last year with our 50 trees that were planted at temps ranch provided by the arizona sustainability alliance they are looking fantastic and amazing i do check on them weekly we've got water to them so that's exciting because prior to having water to them i would have to drive with our maintenance person around in a golf cart and get water buckets out to them but fortunately all the water problems have been solved and they are doing well and thriving with our monsoon weathers also with our big beautification project we have

02150 or no actually 100 tons of rip-rap rock in front of our school we have this drainage in front of our school not every school has it so we're unique so being unique and special we had a unique and special pro stem problem of we have erosion occurring in that area in front of that parking so we saw our students solve that real world stem problem by recommending that we put large rip-rap rock in front of our school to stop the erosion of that continuous decay of the dirt we got 20 tons one truck donated um from the super from a surprise organization which is absolutely amazing and we're continuing to raise money for donations thank you dr kellis for donating fifty dollars for one ton and we are taking donations for that which is

022exciting so we have ordered another truckload which is 20 tons and our goal by the end of this school year is to have 100 tons of brick wrap rock jesse red in front of our school so that's an exciting initiative one is to improve the curb appeal but just as important is to provide us with solving our real world stem problem at thompson ranch lots of opportunities 2020 was really a year to remember moving into 2021 2022 we are excited about having in-person and engaging professional development i cannot tell you how hard it is to provide exciting and engaging professional development through google hang google meets i try to be entertaining i try to be engaging but it was really difficult so we're excited about having in-person opportunities for professional development we're also excited about

023effective instruction so in the past we've had to use quite a bit of technology and now moving away from that technology and providing really solid instruction to support every child is super exciting so that is really a great wonderful opportunity yes there's gaps in student learning but we have systems in place to ensure that those gaps are filled through solid tier one highly effective instruction moving on to tier two which has that small group instruction provided by the classroom teacher as well as that tier three instruction which is provided by interventionists to ensure that gaps of learning are failed and having those assessment systems in place through galileo as well as 95 assessments and other assessment tools to ensure that our gaps in learning are really filled strategically and that we give students what they

024need to really fill those gaps we've got systems in place to support student behavior through the pbis program super excited about that initiative and also important to me but what is something passionate about for me is engaging families how do i meaningfully engage families in really supporting um our school provi making sure that they're supporting our initiatives that they're well informed communication is key to success providing them with those opportunities really engaging our families through facebook through our weekly auto dialer and having lots of opportunities for them to come in and have opportunities to celebrate with their students as well as provide some professional development to families as well what's our focus what are we focusing on this year well we're definitely focusing on instruction and in order to have the best teachers in classrooms

025we need to make sure that they're provided with professional development that's ongoing job embedded having those opportunities for coachable moments going inside those classrooms having in and out coaching opportunities having conversations and really focusing on west ed protocol on those academic conversations depth of knowledge super excited about focusing on improving instruction for the betterment of students so uh not only do we have instruction and professional development not that is with west ed we have west end monthly professional development provided by west ed as well as our teaching and learning specialist but we also have that response to intervention so if students are struggling what do we do well the good news is we meet with our plcs weekly on wednesdays an administrator always sits in those plc's focuses our this week's focus was on improving

026with our pbis program making sure that our systems are in place to ensure student success last week it was rti focusing on the what are we doing for response to intervention what assessments are we using to measure student growth what systems are we providing in order to ensure students are successful um so response to intervention is very critical professional learning communities they meet again we do have professional learning communities that to me they don't just it's not an event it's something that is ingrained in what we do as professionals teaching professionals meet to discuss curriculum to discuss district pacing guides to discuss assessments one assessment is given we have our unit one assessment being given out this week and next week looking at those results making strategic plans of what do we do with students

027that are still struggling with concepts from our first assessment and making sure that small group instruction is provided for those students so professional learning communities are really focused on data-driven teams that really focus on those lesson plans focusing on tier 2 instruction tier three instruction as well as tier one we've got positive intervention support systems which are super exciting about having those school-wide expectations school-wide skills having common vocabulary common conversations and it's really about modifying student behavior in order for them to be successful in the classroom and and beyond of course and then we have focus as well as family engagement opportunities we have a unique opportunity at thompson ranch to have a family engagement coordinator that person works with involving families setting up family success meetings as well as providing professional development opportunities to

028our families on different topics on what they would like to learn more about any questions dr saunders as somebody that has come out to your school on several occasions um one of the things that i always like to see is i think it was in may that you had the steam with the focus oh my gosh it was it was totally awesome will you continue with that type of um engagement because i know you have you had so many people there and they were still coming they were still i'd go big or go home so we had to unfortunately did we did we and we opened the entire school which is exciting so we'll have two huge opportunities working with the arizona science center was there as well i'm having opening up our whole school

029and we'll have our big jaguar jamboree in december and we'll also be showcasing our steam projects during that opportunity so our whole school will be open we'll have the sprint the nice lights we'll have our band we'll have our choir we'll have the students singing in the uh cafe as well as have the arizona science science center in the gymnasium all classrooms will be open really to showcase the amazing work of our students working in their engineering process to build and design and showcase their learning so we'll have that in december and i'll have one in may and because we can use the whole facility i don't have and if there comes to be a day a time and there are restrictions on numbers because our school is quite large we can have over 1

030000 family members on campus to engage in those community events so yes it's super important that we showcase our school as an amazing school that's steam focused and really we love we love our families at thompson ranch and we're very family oriented and community oriented and we really do a lot of outreach with our community so yeah go big or go home december i'll send you the invite okay please do please do thank you i have a question for you so um it sounds really exciting as far as all the family engagement opportunities um because that's so important to get the community involved and i especially like how you had said that to celebrate the azmerit scores you had a celebration invited families in which is wonderful super important i was just wondering um since

031since last year like what would you say is your like what was your biggest celebration academically prompting that that family engagement night um and then what area would you say is still a little bit of your focus that you're still gonna make a priority this year for sure so based on azm2 um our scores were not where they needed to be and the struggle was real students we had 30 percent of our students that were online learners and then a lot of them going in and out and in and out and quarantined and the struggle was real and our test scores were not where they needed to be um so our focus was really i wanted to really recognize those students that really because of covid that was not a crutch and a reason why

032they couldn't be successful on acm too so we sent out invites and in july july 15 i actually had a mailed out to the home saying congratulations your child is being recognized at us at an assembly where they were invited to celebrate with their child for doing being successful they be to me they beat the odds and they really did an amazing and fantastic job so really focusing on celebrating those wins because they were wins and we want to recognize those students so test scores were not where they needed to be we know that that's why our big focus this year and our big push is making sure that we have we're utilizing high yield effective strategies each and every day in our classrooms and making sure that there's systems in place to ensure that

033every child is successful so what um what would you say was your biggest celebration and score wise like like where did you see the biggest gain and maybe fourth grade really proud of the fourth grade kids they did really amazing um and that was actually the highest grade level that uh they had the highest gains so really proud of them they did a really nice and fantastic job they did spend a little less time on the computer that great level than the others that's just one just wondering if you want to see what a variable was they spent a little bit less time on computers okay and what about your area where you're you really noticed okay we're going to make this our big focus this year our big focus focus and push is going

034to definitely be third grade third grade is a a year that um the students really struggled not sure i mean there's a lot of reasons why they potentially struggles but bottom line is they need to get much higher they can do very well and we need to make sure that we're not reading slides from florida virtual and that we're actually providing students with quality instruction each and every day and i think those scores definitely will definitely increase you sound definitely like you're motivated to make it happen so that's a lot of it right there i appreciate that thank you thank you so much excellent presentation thank you madam president members of the governing board dr kellis members of cabinet it's my pleasure this evening to introduce andy frazier the principal of sonoran heights middle school

035previously the principal of sonoran heights elementary school sonoran heights elementary school or sonoran heights was recognized as an arizona a plus school and uh in the last time that labels were given sonoran heights is an arizona a school as well so we're very excited to have mr frazier here this evening to present information about the new sonoran heights middle school well thank you mr dean uh it's a pleasure to be here and i think you stole some of my thunder there in the first slide here um but uh the next slide for right there at the top you see we are proud that we became uh a plus school of excellence last year we had to wait an extended amount of time because when we put in for it they extended the times that they

036were allowing all those schools that hadn't been uh had their visits yet and so we were we're proud we finally realized that we got that um over it was probably over three quarter of a year so we're really excited that for the second time at sonoran heights um so yeah been a base a school for a while and and gonna be continuing that now as a middle school so excited about where we're going enrollment's up uh at 780 right now we had a little bit of a increase we've been hovering around 800 the last couple years we were projected a little lower than that but we've been seeing an influx of kids coming from some neighboring other schools that are in our district but not our public schools some charters and other things that kids

037are coming over to us i think that middle school experience is going to going to show and we're going to be able to to really um advocate for it for that what it does for kids we're a red and black a little bit of white in there and sometimes you see a little little gold in the hawk beak as well active mind and body we we are a school that definitely think that it's important to to be active obviously this is uh um mr hicks was talking about just being active being healthy is an important thing not just in in your body but also in your mind so we take pride in that and we want to focus on kids as a whole so opportunities obviously as a new school we we opened a new

038school i mean we we started with some of our staff that stayed with us at sonoran heights and some of our other uh staff went over to rancho elementary so we took some of their um staff and then we also had a influx of some new teachers as well so merging all of these individuals to one campus is is something that we knew we were going to have to focus on at the beginning of the year we took an extra day back before all teachers came back in dysart so it was a it was a nice opportunity to have one additional day with our staff we've done some just fun team building stuff obviously a lot of setting setting the tone for the school what are we expecting what do we want for our kids

039and our experience and so we're proud that we're continuing to blend blend our oral sonoran heights elementary into sonoran heights middle school because it is a new school and we're all in this together so opening the middle school obviously again it's a brand new school we are bringing in two communities this kind of my third bullet point shows is we're taking rancho gabriella community and sonoran heights community and actually expanding into other communities because our boundaries expanded pretty uh pretty vastly and so bringing all these communities together was was a challenge but we did a variety of things starting last year our pta and and some of the rancho community came together we did some events on our campus just either drive-through type things in a variety of things where families can come either meet

040admin or they could just come to see the campus this year as well even tonight we have our first spirit night so we have a joint ptso at rancho and our pta came together to do a joint spirit night so we know it's important to have these two communities coming together and be be one so we're still going to continue to do stuff like that throughout the throughout the school year instructional time so as a middle school um we're running a little bit more like a high school the kids have a little more opportunities they have some choice they have some freedom um and they're loving that i'll tell you that um it's a little bit of you know bringing them in at times but they are they're enjoying it and they're and they're thriving

041on it um it's good to see them i mean it just little things like in the cafeteria when you know you're always telling kids to pick up their trays you know the kids will do that they'll do that by themselves and you don't need to always remind them once you give them that opportunity to do so those little things like that they will do it but instructional time so just like high schools we're running on a period schedule and so we have eight periods throughout our day providing intense standards-based instruction during those times so even though we have a decrease this is an opportunity for our staff to kind of fit in their instruction into a little bit smaller amount of time than they they had in the past we're really standards driven and focus

042on that 50 minutes to make sure it's solid and is what kids truly need we're using our some common formative assessments weekly and some other module exams throughout the year to make sure our kids are meeting those standards celebrations tons of great ones so just like i said the kids are thriving at at a middle school so transitions our kids have two minutes it's pretty quick yes two minutes to get from one place to another especially if they're going from electives in our one building upstairs to a seventh or eighth grade room but they are getting there they're trying to find the best avenue so we've opened up outside doors and you know trying to you know get them go different given avenues but we're letting them go where they want to go and to

043get there as quick as they can and so we're giving them some flexibility with those two minute transitions but they are are thriving in it and they're getting there and they're going where they need to be they're not wandering around and they're they're taking that ownership there so it's lovely student opportunities middle school we have provided a variety of electives for our kids you'll probably hear this from some of the other middle schools that are going to present later in the year but i'll take take it all now so they're elected so we're offering uh percussion we're talking about choir this is during the day we have banned throughout the day we have cte labs so career and technical education um kids are loving that we have four different classes going for our seventh and

044eighth graders there spanish throughout our day over i think it's about 150 plus kids in spanish class so it'll be a one and two uh throughout the year so just a lot of exciting things and obviously athletics we have pe running throughout the day as well obviously the three a's are a big thing out you'll talk a little bit about some of our focus points for the year but athletics as well we're in a new conference so we're excited to continue to bring some sonoran pride uh we always are our champions in at least one or two sports a year so we're hoping to dominate some sports as well um in this new conference celebration um focus on learning so just like i said we're very focused on what our what we need to do

045um bringing these teams together and focusing on the learning so the three a's obviously and we want to make sure we're focused on learning as our primary source but making sure those other pieces uh blend in just like we've had in the past i've been at soren heights for eight years or this is my eighth year and we've always had that team approach at sonoran heights that that community that culture we we pride ourselves if you walk into that front door that we want everyone to have that positive experience whether you're a community member whether you're a board member whether you're a parent um that you you have that feel and as you walk around campus we want you to to feel that this is a team approach we're in it together and we're going

046to do what it takes and i think you'll always experience that there so we're continuing to make sure we're building that from what we have had in the past to make sure that that is there um you know in the upcoming years and it was a successful opening we did a little ribbon cutting at our um grand opening meet the teacher night um just like always we had i want to say about 95 95 and 80 to 95 percent of our families come through that evening and just a packed house over a thousand some people coming through our doors and it was just an amazing event so um it's been successful everything has gone very well um even better than planned as an opening so very excited about what what is still to come so

047focuses points obviously instruction is always a key one that's the top that's the top a one of the things that we've built into our schedule that the the principles of all the middle schools and uh dr dean um and some of the curriculum department really thought it was important to put an intervention block in all of our kids schedules so every day our students have a 40 minute roughly 40 minute intervention time focused on some either math interventions and or some reading interventions our school as well as some of the other middle schools are given common formative assessments every week on one standard to see where kids are at we're using that data to help drive where our kids need to be intervened at so we're really targeting that tier two piece as well as

048in that core core instruction as i talked about earlier so intervention a key piece we want to expand our arts program um just like i said we've been very athletic based we do have some theater performances that we put on but we want to do a little bit more now that we have a choir we want to have some more choir performances when i have our band maybe performing at some games or coming into um assemblies and things of that nature we'd love to see the drum line maybe we can do things like that even you know kind of bring some of those high school things down into a middle school setting so um we're looking at just having some art more around our campus and having kids see the different things that they're doing

049um on a daily basis so expanding arts can be a big one i talked about competitive athletics we're looking forward to you know competing winning and so we're looking forward that happening this year uh with not only within dysart in our middle schools but in the in the conference that we're playing out of district um data's database instruction just like i talked about we have um assessments that we'll be giving weekly for our kids analyzing those on our plc in early release mondays looking where kids are regrouping them some of our groups and our teachers are moving kids around weekly sometimes it's every other week we're really looking at what kids need and so when we get to these other assessments whether they're monthly or our benchmarks which are kind of quarterly we're not shocked

050where our kids are at so we're trying to really have that targeted focus along the way so we can intervene early and often and then the focus we want this to be the most positive middle school experience for for our kids and obviously we want to promote that to the community so everyone sees that and they want to be at sonoran heights so i think we're really providing that that true middle school so we appreciate this opportunity it's just got a different feel so welcome you guys to come by it's it's a different vibe in there come by during a transition it's got a it's got a good feel and and uh i know it's going to continue to be that way as the year has come anything else thank you i don't have a

051question but i'm wow like you answered all my questions in your presentation um amazing as always i mean just so many wonderful things always come out of sonoran heights for sure um just wanted to comment though i think it's amazing that your the ptsa at rancho and your pta pta are collaborative and helping blend those communities together and keep that parent engagement and parent involvement that's wonderful whoever thought of that i mean that was it was a lot of work but obviously some of our family members we have some here um but yeah it's it took a lot of a lot of coordinating for sure but it it's going to be a beautiful thing i think you're yeah yeah and the 40 minutes intervention time i think that's amazing um and then also i liked

052your idea about incorporating some of the arts activities in the high schools like bringing the band in sometimes or like just trying to um infiltrate some of that in to give them a flavor of what's awaiting them in high school but i also heard a lot of data-driven type of words and planning in your presentation which i just think as long as you're on top of it all the time which which you clearly are um you're gonna catch kids early and help them get where they need to be so amazing presentation thank you and congratulations it sounds like an exciting time over there with all the new middle school vibe so have fun with that definitely thank you mr frazier eight years i know it goes by incredible it's gone by too quick oh my

053gosh um yeah congratulations on you know getting the middle school off the ground and everything tell me what uh your cte is looking like and i know mr grace habers yeah yeah i think he's here as well um so yeah career and technical education we got to pick we have a seventh eighth seventh module our seventh seventh grade class and eighth grade class we have two of each um so we have about 24 kids in each classroom they're captured it's actually better to have around 16 but we have in each classroom there are eight modules we have the opportunity to actually choose some of those modules ourselves as a school um i won't remember all of them off top of my head but each one has eight themselves so some of them are building motors

054flight simulators um there's dentistry i mean you name it there's milling and there's um physical you know fitness and it's just a variety of different things that the kids will have about two weeks or so at each um each module and they'll rotate around so those kids in that classroom semester-based class and they'll have an opportunity to experience a variety of things that they maybe could wouldn't have a chance to experience in another capacity and maybe this is something that they'll go into in their career in the future that's awesome that is awesome for them to actually get a taste of that during their middle school i know some of our middle schools are posting that stuff on facebook i posted i think a picture last week too so check it out we're posting some

055different things that the kids are doing it's it's incredible and they're loving it awesome okay keep it going we'll do that we know you will i just have a couple of quick questions um with your enrollment do you is there one grade level that you're seeing i mean through the fifth five through eight do you see one grade level higher than any of the others or are they pretty much the same questions they're pretty close to where i say our fifth and sixth grade is in the hundred and sixty hundred and seventy range um and then eighth grade um our seventh graders are largest i wanna say around 225-ish and then about 200 or so for for our eighth grade so um i don't know if i've seen any influx one way or another obviously

056seventh grade i think we're a little bit higher to begin with i think we're just kind of getting them all all across the board we've seen a variety of kids come in and not as many uh withdrawal oh great and i know you were talking about spanish but are there other high school credit classes that yes i didn't even talk about those so yes thank you for asking um so those guys took off yes i'm glad all right yeah i'm happy to share some other great things we're doing so um we have been expanding algebra on our campus i want to say geez this has been maybe been about four four years in the making and i would say it's about year five um so we have high school credit algebra on our campus that

057was real one two we started about 10 to 12 kids i think it's about four years ago and now we're up in the i want to say in the six mid 60s now with kids that are taking algebra we have three courses every day um so we have three different classes that kids are getting taught algebra for high school kids that are ready for it too they're um they're showing data wise taking placements tests um showing through azm to benchmarks whatever that may be a variety of things and they're getting placed into those classes so algebra we're proud to have um this year as well as last year we have a high school credit pe so kids can take a freshman pe course um kind of some online base pieces and some physical base pieces

058taken videos and a variety of things and they can do that during the school day um with us so they can opt out basically a freshman pe as well thank you i just want to echo everyone else's comments but um one thing that you mentioned was just the being able to empower these students with choice and freedom in their education and i i just so appreciate that um knowing that we have or are going to have a really robust arts program you mentioned percussion that's something near and dear to my heart so thank you for that um so just an excellent presentation i'm very excited for sonoran thank you thank you thank you and madam president that concludes our school reports for the evening thank you very much all right so next we have item

059g3 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet mr hicks will introduce this item good evening madam president members of the board superintendent dr kellis colleagues and community members um tonight um presenting our sr3 plan this was something during our budget adoption in july i actually mentioned that i'd be bringing this back presentation to the board just to have an overview before we go we solicited some feedback and so wanted to present that there's no requirement that we do this um but uh for transparency there was an inc there was a interest from the board of learning more and so i mentioned that i'd be bringing it back so this is just bringing that this plan back and so um just an overview sr3 we have lots of esther

060lots of federal funds have been thrown at us since march of 2020 this is just specifically although i'm going to i think before we go into sr3 and see the plan on that and part of the survey we did i think it's a good opportunity to just give a little history of some of our other esser walk through esser and esg money and so sr1 started march 2020 when they identified a variety of code relief funding for schools sr-1 specifically for schools our allocation was 3.9 million dollars at that time everything was going quick they used the methodology of how title one funding is allocated among in arizona and that's how they distributed this fund so the total amount that the state was awarded after you took off administrative costs was it equal to maybe

061around 70 percent of what the title one fund so they just said hey seventy seventy percent push out the allocation we had some other little requirements of handling some other title requirements of some private schools and allocating some for them a lot of at the front a lot of information at the beginning and a lot of details really we got 3.9 million dollars we used it for cleaning supplies there was a lot of unknown at the time we picked up some online curriculum some technology some devices that we could um there was a little bit of a backlog also hot spots we did a couple cast classroom cameras and then we were looking at substitute teachers permanent subs and into this as well then that was march um it takes a while we probably didn't

062get approved for that grant until mid-summer but at the beginning of the summer we knew the governor was starting to talk about something with a lot of unknowns so it was fluctuating as we were going back in this time um back in uh over a year ago with some unknowns some of the unknowns were going forward uh was as things were spiking what are we doing are kids going to come back where we're at so the governor then pledged his covet relief funds to school districts to create an enrollment stabilization grant uh the esg and there was to try to address some of this so there was some loss of students and also going online was a loss of financials and so between the two uh components the governor try uh tried to bridge that

063gap um it did not fully fund because there was more requests than what alec what money was allocated our allocation was 5.2 i think we were supposed to get around six and a half million in that sense or maybe a little bit more um and so we got the the 5.2 they used the same um on this that so not deviating from the title one methodology allocation it was really based on actual students what learning path they took and then loss of students compared to the previous year we used this to address learning loss of revenue and so that we had more flexibility in this in this revenue from these funds from the governor so we were able to actually some of our cash accounts that we were if you remember in march keep paying

064everybody don't let anybody go and keep going so when you have cash funds and you're paying people and there's no revenue coming in they're going in the hole and so some of these funds were used to prop up some of that loss of revenue also if you remember at the beginning we started with learning labs and so our bus drivers our transportation staff were out at all the schools so that we had an in-person option as we're going we funded that through our esg we had increased insurance costs additional online software additional online security software network and server support and so that's how we bridged and then sr2 comes this was one that we did not think was going to come around because there were so many different lobbyists telling us yes going not going

065then late december it popped and we're told that we're awarded 16.1 million dollars use the same methodology as sr1 which was based on your title 1 allocation we are still using it so for supplies cleaning supports some increased insurance costs we did put if you remember when the board approved our air scrubbers this was pledged the federal funds on this was the sr2 we picked up more devices substitute support so the incentive the seven senate program that's also later on in this agenda that was picked up on this some additional online learning costs with some of the software and then some operational support moving some actual positions and other things in there to bridge the gap is also in this this also so the the one disconnect that a lot of people hey you've got

066a lot of federal funds actually we just got approved we just got sr2 approved just last week it takes a long time it keeps getting kick-backed returned so even though we're spending in some of that because all of our air scrubbers have been installed and billed we just got that grant approved and so the timing sometimes is not exactly aligned so everybody thinks we have all this money and no it takes a lot of work to get to even have the opportunity to get that money so here's our sr3 plan so i wanted to provide a little history much like for if you took the survey online we wanted to build a little bit of a knowledge of yes we've received some federal funds and so that they understood where all the different federal funds

067were coming from so that they were educated and a little bit more opportunity to educate them for when they took the survey on our sr-3 our proposed plan just looking at some of the things we've been doing and putting together a couple discussions we've already started the retention stipend we can continue that for a couple more years sr3 does go out to 2024 so we have a few more years so it extended that um we're able to put in some indirect costs which allows for the administrative overhead uh we did not put that in in the other funds and so this allows us to recruit some of the additional costs that are coming from our staff doing the actual work of applying for and managing and the um the compliance of these grants interventions lost

068learning um we're putting summer school in some additional professional development and looking at some school-based programs um we talked about let's put permanent subs back in maybe some social emotional health some of our current social workers we can move those in that allows us to stabilize our current budget devices interactive flat panel displays security cameras network infrastructure and some i.t staff so that was the original so we had to have a base plan to submit so that we could have people comment about um give us feedback on the plan and not just a blank check how would you spend 36 million dollars so and that is unique so so3 was unique from all the other sr and other federal funds that it did specifically require us to solicit some stakeholder feedback or input and so

069we created the survey we put it out on facebook on social media linked to it pushed it out local newspaper we emailed parents i sent an email to all of our directors and principals because also in there did ask us to specifically solicit feedback from our special ed director as well so there was a litany of lines to reach out to and so we connected with all of those and so just i'll go quickly through what we heard so we had stakeholder input i think it was open up until the last friday in july so i think it was open for almost a month less than a month but almost a month of july to go in 70 of the respondents were parents we had about 240 which actually responded staff members community members students

070and some people not identifying we just we tried to keep it really simple knowing that the longer the survey the less people would be interested in it and um to collect a little bit of data from it and just looked at what did you like about the plan so we had various people didn't answer or they gave some positive comments or they gave some negative comments there are a lot of people that do not like any federal funds in our district and think we should return everything that the federal government is maybe hemorrhaging money or something i don't want to quote them directly but when i take out some comments around 50 those are just comments so let's look at what they liked about the plan number one uh addressing some learning loss and number

071two was continuity of operations um then we looked at what do you think needs improvement so once again let's take the comments a little bit out of it set those aside we had 51 because they would be just general comments that had nothing to do with our plan and so i just set that aside um negative or positive and or they did an answer so you take 50 off and then we're looking at the number one and number two is to increase support for support uh support for staff some continuity of operation and more supports for students so then we asked on the next question then what would you add to the plan if we know what you like what would you add to the plan and so once again take the comments off is

072about 40 that leaves 60 the number one was more student programs intervention support increased staffing uh increased staff pay increased staff benefits uh was number two so looking at that feedback then also collecting some emails from our special ed director and our federal projects director and just talking with some additional people we said we probably need to adjust the plan now this is the plan that we submit for our allocation we can revise it as we're going and often does happen so for example uh the reduced we reduced the retention stipend because we moved it to what actually so we're doing calculations on the stipend that was approved by the governing board back in february that three percent three percent retention stipend uh the costs were less than what we initially projected so we're moving

073that down to some more actual costs allows us to reallocate some funding but some of them just because we're talking about it and we put it in some of them require governing board approval a retention stipend if we're going forward that require requires government governing board approval we would monitor and revise this as the board goes on some of those we also noticed that just having some conversations our summer school very robust in june uh july was lesser and probably what we first originally planned on the biggest summer schools ever for the next three years is probably not going to happen and so it's going to probably take a reduced capacity maybe have a very robust june but maybe not a july as we're hearing some feedback of um just going on the whole summer

074and not stopping um increased professional development we've heard some comments and and so some of this is me always listening can we bring our teachers back uh day or two early and and do some more targeted professional development on instruction and what we're looking for so there's ability to do that i heard a lot from uh either our assistant soups or superintendent or just some of the data looking at increasing some school-based programs so can we allocate an amount to every single school so that they can create their own interventions for the lost learning whether it be tutoring or some other canned approach but let's give them money directly so that they can make some decisions on their site using some of these funds and so this in this is an increase on the school-based

075program so even though the summer school costs are going down that's going up increased sub supports as we talked a little bit about a sub-incentive program or permanent subs going forward as we continue as this continues to evolve and the pandemic that we're sitting in we looked at maybe we should increase some of those costs and then increasing the i.t staff to support some of the technology and so we looked at can we there's some people that are allocated in that let's extend it a year or two as we continue to move and technology becomes a continued need and we're pushing out the interactive panel displays our security cameras and network we might need additional i.t staffs to support so we made those changes it was good to have some feedback it made us look

076at a lot of different things and so that is the revision that we have to the plan based on the feedback that we have and i will stand for any questions thank you i have a question um i'm sure we'll hear more about this on our transportation update but is there a possibility of using the some of the s or three funds to buy more buses um madam president members of the board um i don't know if dr kellis asked you to ask that question but if you might uh ask that question of me all the time um yes that is an opportunity as i tell pretty much everybody that says let's use essa for that asset for that we do have a general plan of how we're going to use it so something has

077to come out if we're going to do that we are buying buses with our regular capital funds right now so we continue to buy not enough um so could we look at more yes thank you you stole my question all right i'm putting down two for that question well don't forget dr kello but i am curious though if in addition to purchasing um the buses if we could use like we've done for um the sub supports um if we could do that for bus drivers to give sign-on bonuses um madam president members of the board i don't know if you want me to start next presentation right now um we are looking at a lot of things and i just wanted to call it um so that's a great comment no it's a great comment

078um there's lots of different areas that could either support directly or indirectly okay by moving something else over that frees up money um not to jump to the next agenda but we have we are looking at various monetary items regarding transportation that we're not ready right now because some of them were checking with attorneys on certain things we're not ready right now but we're hoping something next month is coming to the board thank you and as far as the total the 36 million that's ballpark what we were i would expect then from sr3 madam president members of the board when i did the survey was ballpark it is uh since uh finalized a little higher so it's moved up a few hundred thousand dollars so i'm not sure if it's 36.5 i'm sure mary dale's

079watching and texting me right now uh it went up it went up a little bit uh so it will go up a little bit so this was uh the original before we had our final allocation all right thank you you're welcome and a president if i could just interject also some comments that these funds were intended to be coveted relief funds to help districts across the country to deal with the pandemic and the costs associated with it what we have seen across the country is those those expenses have been put on the shoulders of the districts and even in in dicer we have spent an incredible amount of money to to make sure that we have i mean you you say clean supplies and you think well that's not very much money it's amazing how

080much money it all adds up when you start putting those in place technology we were in a good place when the state shut down our schools and made everybody go remote within literally days we were able to transition from in person to online a lot of that technology has aged out amazingly just within the last couple years but we have some new devices but we were dependent upon a lot of shelved devices that we pulled off the shelves for for that experience so our first priority is to use the funds to assist with student success and learning that success comes with lots of supports a bus could technically be justified because if we want to make sure kids are getting to school where they can learn we want them to be in person and a

081bus could be justified but with that but we feel like the the priority of the funds should be for supporting academic success and any other things that the district has in the past been burned with with regards to covet thank you very much and i know that i'm jumping a little bit but if so you mentioned ken that um that the amount was a little bit higher maybe a little bit maybe a hundred thousand or more if you could just tell us what the cost approximate cost of a bus is about a 190 000 thank you okay thank you a question for you mr hicks with regards to the proposed proposed plan uh permanent subs and then increase sub supports um right now all districts are having issues with getting people to sub um what

082do you see that looking like i mean as far as like with permanent subs in the proposed plan boy there's a lot of peas in that um the permanent subs what did that look like i mean did we have like one sub at each school yes you're saying madame president um dr croto could jump in and add a little bit to this madam president member sawyers think bill yes currently we have one permanent sub um at our elementary sites and two at every high school so and those are permanent guest teachers uh that are going to be with us every year they have to flip-flop by law they can only be on a certain campus subbing in that for a semester so we have paired up uh schools to have sister schools to flip-flop um

083when the semester ends so currently that's where we're at with our campuses and the guest teachers so permanent guest teachers so with the revised plan if you're increasing the sub supports that's going to be more permanent subs present members of the board added on another year um so there's there was a lot of conversations in the mid-year as things are getting better and we're winning in this pandemic that maybe we don't need permanent subs going forward anymore and limited funds and so there might have only been one year of permanent subs put in this extended the years and then also layered in the sub-incentive program gotcha okay which is coming up shortly and did i hear you correctly that only 240 people participated in this survey okay thank you i do have a quick question

084um i'm not familiar with a permanent sub why don't we just hire them um that's a great question we our subs are all brought to us by esi so we don't have a sub program per se run by the district so we use esi for all our subs and to hire them as a teacher i guess that's what you're asking they have subserts so they're not certified teachers they have sub cert certifications but not teacher certifications so they're they're a permanent sub on that campus to use every day as a need occurs or an absence occurs or we have to relieve a classroom they are there on that campus for them to utilize daily they are the first person to help fill the needs on that campus but they are not certified teachers they're certified

085subs they have a sub certificate all right thank you when you were talking about the permanent subs how did we jump from 2 million to 4 million madam president members of the board we added years and then we also added the seven incentive programs so there's multiple things happening but one's just extending it where we only had one year permanent subs we added a year to it and then layered in the seven senate program for just one year okay and then security cameras could you please say explain how that is covered relief related um madam president members of the board so technology in general was given a very blanket pass in all of the covered relief funds they believed that doing to maybe a remote learning environment and where we're going specifically identified that we

086had a lot of flexibility with almost anything technology related so we worked so right now we have hundreds of security cameras throughout our district that are very old and the one benefit of some of these sr funds was our i.t director that i was previously saying no to almost everything said well now technology is open let's start renewing some of these things or renewing them quicker and replacing them and so some of our security cameras are sold we actually have to upgrade the servers and the front end on all of it so it's actually surprisingly more costly than i thought than just buying a wise camera at the store and throwing it up there thank you very much okay now the long awaited uh information item for the transportation update dr kellis thank you madam

087president members of the board and members of cabinet mr hicks will present this information madam president members of the board dr super if i could just interrupt real quick madam president i believe we do have one request to speak sorry i'll go ahead and read the statement this is the time for the public to comment members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda pursuant to ars 38-431.01 h action taken as a result of public comment will be limited directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for future further consideration and decision at a later date in order to facilitate accomplishing the business of the district in a timely manner a time limit of three minutes will be imposed for each individual

088or group addressing the board when you approach the podium please state your name for the record and tonight we have amanda evans thank you for putting this on your agenda i'm surprised to see that there's not more people here but i know that you guys have received plenty of emails and phone calls regarding the safety of our children being dropped from transportation i'm literally just floored with the numbers that you just came in with i mean we're talking millions of dollars um security cameras i'm glad somebody brought that up like we're not running a prison we're running schools we don't need security cameras we need safe transportation for our children um crosswalk guards like we're we're we're paying for permanent subs but we're not hiring full-time teachers and we can't we can't offer more hours

089to crosswalk guards so they're quitting their job and looking elsewhere some of them have just changed careers completely our education system is being given money for coveted relief how long were our students at home this the the new technology it was crap when it first launched and i know the frustrations came from parents from students from teachers all the way around so we're funding and we're improving all of these things but do not you know don't don't forget that our our students and our parents and our teachers had to go through a good amount of time with kids being out of school so like i i'm i'm all i'm all for covered relief but come on put your money where it counts right so um from my understanding you guys are 20 plus drivers short

090a new bus costs 190 000 i'm a mother of six i bargained for my money like go buy a used bus fix the ones that you currently have there are ways to pick from a pot and put in elsewhere where we need transportation for these kids my kids main main concern right now are my 7th 6th and 7th graders and everybody says well toughen up they can walk home they can walk a mile and a quarter to school they can walk a mile and a quarter home from school in like 100 000 degree attempts and parents should just change their career they should just get off work earlier they should just go and work later like i run a cleaning business and i'm hearing it from all of my customers this the transition from taking

091our k through eighth which is what i loved about deisert school districts and dividing our children i have three that are now in different schools they start at different times they end at different times transportation is huge today i split from one house went and picked up one my kids and and came back and then went and continued hurried up so i could bustle and get here you know it's it's el mirage is where i live the community is not as safe as it used to be um crosswalk guards i didn't even realize but there's kindergartners and first graders walking a mile and there's no crosswalk guards um el mirage elementary school particularly this woman just gave a fabulous presentation about thompson ranch i wish i was given the choice to transfer my kids to

092a k through eighth or preschool through eight school before just told abruptly that your kids are going to be divided i have three brothers that need to stick together i i love the neighborhood i moved to for that reason knowing that my kids were going to be safely transported back and forth to school so i just highly recommend that you guys all get your heads together i know that you want what's best for our students and really consider putting some of this money into transportation and crosswalk guards that's it thank you so sorry thank you um madam president members of the board superintendent dr kalis colleagues community members um so providing thank you very much for the request of the providing continued update on transportation i know i've mentioned some of this already and governing

093board updates before but so bear with some redundancy and some of that we continue to have challenges and opportunities i'm meeting with transportation uh doug curry our director if not every day i'm meeting about transportation every day i know dr kellis asked me almost every day we start cabinet with transportation so it is a top priority within this district of addressing our issues although dicern is not unique and i'm not trying to make examples or excuses of others but right now i'm sure somebody has read saw or heard a story about a school district in arizona in transportation with bus drivers it is it is a little more intense this year than i've experienced the last five ten years transportation at least the last five when surveying school districts the number one issue is not

094hiring teachers it's hiring bus drivers that is still remaining the same right now we still have challenges as mentioned yes we are looking to hire 20 more drivers we're looking for 12 to 15 bus aides it is our primary situation and when you're down staff right now for the last eight days we are averaging 18 bus drivers and aides calling out sick every day and so we have a challenge on that which then just puts more stress on the current system and requires our routers to start working every single morning to split bus stops and routes between the existing routes and so so that is our number one primary goal how are we getting more and more bus drivers we started last week came up with just a skeleton of a marketing plan we talked

095a little bit about it over the weekend and then yesterday we had five of us get in a room and actually start putting an action plan together of what are we all doing and going through all of that i think it was a very positive meeting i had a director of transportation call me at night saying that he was very energized and enthusiastic about our plan the difficulty is as bus drivers if you hire them it still takes about four to six weeks to actually get them on a route so we do have to do first training they have to pass and get a permit then we do additional training before they're able to test and then we have to do behind the wheel training so you have hours requirements you have dps requirements uh

096that i think there's four endorsements that they're required to get on top of that cdl and so there's a lot of testing that goes on and then even after they pass all of that our trainers have to sign off on them because we're not going to put bus drivers out that are in an unsafe condition that they're not ready to be in and so just recently we had a bus driver from another district come over and through the through the training our bus drivers just did not want to release him after a little more behind the wheel the gentleman quit i'm just saying it was too stressful and too much they don't have tiers where they are and we have multiple tiers we have our three tiers to help us spread out so that we

097could cover more ground with at least number of drivers and so um we do think we have a good message so we're continuing to market more do more it's a good place to work we have great people down there there's uh you'll see a super in 60 with a great energized bus driver promoting that and flexible benefits i think he loves weekends off and other flexibility in that sense some love to be around the kids so there's various reasons why we do think it's a great place to work it's just very stressful you did mention buses we did have a lot of stress over the summer of hiring shop supervisor and mechanics we were down four we have hired three of those and so we're now just down one mechanic right now and so we're

098now almost fully staffed in our shop and so that creates a lot of stress on our old buses um as we have a pretty aging fleet on how to dress that and so we are this last year i think we bought eight buses i don't i can't remember blending years but we they come in in different fiscal years so we are trying to buy uh buses so i appreciate the support i'm hearing from let's keep buying more buses it helps our fleet it helps the shop it helps when you don't have to worry about a bus breaking down buses break down then mechanics or trainers are driving out buses meeting buses and we've had some broken down buses to start the year with we have leaned on our charters buses to help with this situation

099and so we are pushing out as much charter bus contracting we have three companies that are on state contract or out on our contracts that we're able to identify um and so we lean on those three for field trips and or for athletic events to help us to alleviate as much as possible we have received notice this week that they're having trouble hiring drivers and that they are now blocking out days in the month of september that they're no longer eligible to provide any services and so it creates additional stress i know working with some of the sites they are stepping up they're using white buses as much as possible instead of maybe before they would have leaned on a yellow bus they now just taking two white buses so they're teaming up to try

100to help out make uh the situation as positive as possible the el mirage situation we are working we've met i met with the principal um i've gone out i'm driving the neighborhoods uh in the mornings when i'm coming in i swing by and just drive through a couple neighborhoods to see how they are uh see where the crossing guards are or aren't and how we're getting more into the plan of how we can combine jobs to give more hours so that we could open up the school earlier provide more cars and guards we need a better presence out in that neighborhood to provide that so we're looking and we're finalizing three different solutions to hopefully make that situation better working with the principal in that situation we've we know there's a lot of big challenges

101we're trying to address every single one and i'm not going to speak to all the different monetary ideas that we've come up with but i know dr croto is working with our attorney to create some of them are a little more difficult that we've not seen a little outside the box things that you've already mentioned that we're looking at four or five different things that actually cost some bigger money on how to use that and how we could do that so that we could then implement retain the ones we have and attract more into that pool to get more people applying to our bus drivers and so hopefully that's a good general overview of i know i provide weekly updates on this but just another opportunity to talk about it i have several questions please

102i appreciate the fact that you're driving around um the neighborhoods but have have you reached out to parents to get their input to see or at least suggest to them to give you input to somebody on where they think a crossing guard would be i mean rather because they know the neighborhood and maybe this intersection is busier than others so possibly let them give you some suggestions on where or how many crossing guards i mean we just heard about that where they could be used better and that's just a comment how much is a white bus versus a yellow bus the difference in cost madam president members of the board might be about a hundred thousand dollars so we could possibly buy more white buses for shorter trips than a big bus a yellow bus

103um we can there are dps restrictions on so these white buses normally hold about 14. 13 or 14 students and there are dps restrictions on to and from school meeting some of that i i think doug said most of those are okay but an 84 passenger bus will handle more students and volume on that but you do require the cdl where our white bus does not require the cdl in that sense and just going back to the crossing guards we actually don't identify where our crossing guards are the cities actually will come out and do studies and look at patterns and then they will come out they paint and stripe it and then we staff it and so we work with each city the city of el mirage and surprise to identify those positions so

104the city would tell the school district where to put a crossing we work in conjunction with them but they go out and start walking i mean uh the 129th and meyer location that they're looking to put in crossing guard right now i think we requested about three months ago and just got approval a couple weeks ago for that so we talk to them they go out together we go out together and then we look at best places there are certain requirements and guidelines to make sure that things meet the international county or city safety walk guidelines that has been quoted to us i'm not exactly sure what that is and so they make sure it meets all their safety requirements and guidelines and criteria and we work in conjunction with them and how many bus

105drivers do we have total not not the ones that do dual like uh athletics and that sort of thing because i assume we have just a core group of bus drivers that do to and from school madam president members of the board we do have some sub bus drivers that will fill in and just take afternoons we have about 95 95 to 100 positions we're we would like to hire more because we have a lot of our drivers continue to identify that they'd like to be sub drivers but we're asking the drive every single day from that standpoint and has there been any discussion as far as wes mech or somebody offering some kind of cdl license to um i mean i'm not crazy about 18 year olds driving a bus but if they're qualified

106is there a discussion about through westmac offering a cdl license program madam president members of we've talked to westmac about maybe they could hire bus drivers and do some transportation they cannot hire drivers so i would lean on mr gruyshaber to advocate west mack to create that cdl program we could definitely ask for cate ford i know that they have a bus engine component so maybe they could move into the bus driver components i'm just saying i mean there's a job they get out they're certified they have a job and i'm just thinking myself because i when we think about hiring bus drivers we always think oh let's go to the retirement communities they're looking for part-time work are we looking at the other extreme madam president members of the board uh from my earliest

107days i remember tempe union the majority of their drivers were college kids uh so have we uh explored ideas with ottawa um yes i think we geofenced them i think we try to push in some advertising on some of that so we have identified we do have our own in-house trainers so we pay people to you want to be a bus driver we will pay you come in and sit down we'll start paying you we'll start treating you teaching you and we'll create a safe environment that you'll be successful to go out and drive our buses so we we have trainers on board right now good to know thank you i know that miss grant asked you how many bus drivers we have and you said 95 to 100 positions so are all of those

108filled like or madam president members of the board no um i know we go back and forth because i keep saying we need to hire 20 bus drivers i think there might only be 12 positions need to be filled but because i mean we're down 18 drivers every day from sick and everything we'd like to hire more than what we need so that we could staff effectively every single day and pick up sometimes there are drivers that only want to pick up extracurricular routes i'll just drive in the afternoon i'll just drive that so we're trying to create the flexibility that allows them to do that okay thank you and and i know that it was mentioned about westmech but i thought that for cdl you had to be 21 is that still true um

109madame president members but i thought it was 20 so i didn't say anything because our trainers when you apply our trainers will handle all that that's why we probably go after college kids but if it's 21 and maybe it's 21 and not 20. but there is a lot of criteria so i know on some of our brainstorming i took four or five of them back to mr curry and dps won't allow half of them through some of them he's checking with dps on some of those so there is a lot of requirements a lot of criteria um thank you for correcting and it's not 20. there's 21. but there's a lot of criterion so as we're identifying some out-of-the-box thinking criteria we have to check with our dps liaison to see if doing this is

110okay okay thank you um i'm wondering if we can advertise what like that checklist is that dps checklist is so that we can encourage more people or let them know that they are eligible matter yes um right advertising yep okay um and i know that one of the one of the concerns that i've had and i know that i've shared this with you but just so we can do it publicly is that some of our buses are not full um so at some of our schools we might have three drivers with three different routes but their their buses are not full and we still have little ones walking to and from school without their older siblings when you have the k through four split with middle schools i i would like to see some of

111that expanded if possible um ida i know that that's difficult right now with the bus driver shortage um but if we can get this remedied in any way i would like to see those boundaries expanded um madam president members of the board the first two weeks is kind of a little uh rough as we don't know who's on who's off so we do have all of our bus drivers filling out routes uh uh reports on how many kids on every single route every single day our routers were sick last week or else they would have at that time started condensing some routes moving them around and also we opened up a program to allow people to apply to be on the bus that are not eligible to see if they want to ride the bus

112that not so we have we normally let all that shake out first before we start expanding our bus coverage in that sense but it's something i've written down okay thank you i do have some questions um of course my first question is is what is the mileage like is are is transportation offered to students who live a mile or more away two miles or more what is that mileage i believe our policy is uh one mile k-8 or k-4 depending on the school you're at and 5-8 is 1.25 and high school is 1.5 and our policy says radio mile on all of those a while okay um the next question what about behavior on the buses um i know that some of our children especially with last year being so wonky they weren't really in

113school the whole time what are we doing to address behavior on the buses for the bus drivers madam president members board that is a great question it was a huge issue about three years ago i actually was having bus drivers come to me directly expressing a lot of frustration of the behavior on buses and that nothing was ever being done to kids in that sense we had a referral program but they stopped using the referral program because it seemed like nothing was happening so they kind of felt like they were at their wits end and didn't know what to do at that time richard moore was our director and we asked him to put a group together and include some principles so that we could figure out as we looked into some of them some

114the problem was it got to the point that drivers were not turning in referrals very much and then when we looked at some that were turned in referrals sometimes most the time the school was dealing with it but they never let anybody know about it and so there was a lack of completing the feedback loop and so we put a committee together to work on a process and get more clear defined rules and guidelines and how that can improve and then so that was done a year almost two years ago a year and a half ago and then um unfortunately as i found out from a driver that asked where's all that nothing was ever submitted to me and then our director left and so we're hoping to resurrect some of that and get that

115up really quickly so i do think that is still a little bit of a gap is our completing the feedback loop and letting our drivers know the referral process and how it is supported and how and when discipline is being done i feel like that man president if i could just add to that response there are some schools that are working with transportation where rather than a teacher working after school duty on the pickup drop-off lane they will jump on the bus and i can't hear you a teacher will be on the route the the multiplying challenge with that is then the bus has to come back to the school to drop off the teacher and that delays their arrival at the next tier the next school but there are some schools based on the

116situation that you described where teachers are writing buses or it could be an assistant principal so i guess my next question is is what are we going to do now that we've identified that there is a gap we're getting the team we've already asked a team of bus drivers team get back together if we have the notes to reach out to the bus driver that was people that were on it last time let's get it back together and institute as soon as possible so with the behavior thing too i'm wondering do we still have our behavior analysts and behavior coaches sometimes ride the buses especially um with helping to coach aides or assist with um like ieps and things for behavior on buses do we still do that to help madame president miss pritchard i

117don't know specific examples i couldn't answer yes or no to that madam president i believe they do so and we do the crisis prevention institute training on some of that um and i will say and sorry multiple conversations we have teachers we have principals we have assistant principals we'll jump on buses to help with this situation too from a special ed standpoint um those are mainly handled very well and they're trained regularly on that some of our regular bus drivers maybe once a year or once a month or is not enough and so we're looking at some of those gaps that we think could be how we could make things a little bit better in that situation so so are we trying to fill that gap so teachers and principals don't have to ride those

118buses anymore um madam president members of the board teachers and principals never had to ride those buses they care and they're trying to make it better and they just jump on and do it so right so what are we doing so that they don't feel like that they have to do that anymore our main focus is the referral program we have training with the cpi and we have training at the beginning of the year and we have our monthly meetings they were stopped for covet and stopped everything as we're bringing them back in person we'll focus back on that uh the referral program and the behaviors to loop back is our main focus so we're talking about like within like a month or two we'll get that going uh we need to get the team

119the team will get back together in less than a month will it be instituted in a month implemented probably not at i'll have to figure out i don't i haven't seen the report so i don't know all that all the recommendations if it is just to the referral slip go back to the bus driver or a summary that's a simple thing that could be implemented immediately if it's more intense then it'll probably take a little longer okay i feel like we need to make sure that and i'm sure you will in your committees making sure that that gap is bridged so there is follow-through a bus driver doesn't feel like oh well why it's pointless why am i even gonna fill this out if nothing's gonna be done maybe we need to make sure i

120don't know if it's like an auto thing every time a bus driver you know if whoever addresses it just clicks done and then it shoots it back to the bus driver's email to where they say oh okay that's taken care of i agree with clear measurable consequences not just don't do that again like okay you get a warning you get a second warning we're gonna call your parents and then we're gonna talk about your behavior on the bus and if you can't behave on the bus we're going to have to talk about other options because i i feel for our bus drivers and then my next question is is last week we had an update about kids going back and forth from an elementary school to um the middle school and just not being not

121having enough time and feeling really stressed about that do we have something in place to where we were going to address that particular issue the dysart medical school in el mirage middle school is what i was talking about earlier about working on a solution to help with that and the solution was crosswalks not completely i'm working with the principal so i don't want to say something that's not going to get done so we're working to try to finalize that okay so maybe ask for another update in a month or a few weeks madam president members of it there'll be as you've noticed there's a weekly update on transportation is a topic that is hit every week i would that will continue to be okay and if need be i will ask for it to be

122on the agenda again of course um first a question do we have students that are crossing reems road right now without a crosswalk whether it be from the oh sorry from the um rancho to the sonoran or vice versa um i would love to say no but we drove by and saw a kid run across the street yeah so um what are we what can we do like immediately or almost immediately only because i'm feeling like i i'm almost positive we had an agenda item in the past where we specifically talked about reams and for some reason i was thinking that because we didn't want children crossing reams we um accommodated them with bussing like i wish i could remember the exact agenda item but but crossing reams okay it was the one where uh

123they were crossing cholla yeah from one side to the other yeah and so i was hearing um that you know we've got kids crossing rooms again but when we came up with the um when we decided to move toward the middle school model i guess i assumed that since i knew like we were already cognizant of rheem's road and some dangerous ways to school those things were addressed resolved and kind of non-issues so now i'm feeling concerned that we have this problem like with some of the el mirage families and some other families that are feeling like we're at least with open enrollment as parents if you open enroll in a school you know you're responsible for getting your student to school but for middle schools for some of our parents it wasn't necessarily a

124choice it was just their school was one was chosen that was split into middle school elementary school and so they're in the situation and i would hate to have it be where students are getting injured or worse because we moved to a middle school model like i feel like probably these things should have been resolved before we actually moved forward so and i think if we're waiting on because anyone who's ever worked in transportation knows being short drivers is like their life like it's you always have a shortage of drivers unfortunately so if finding ways to recruit for more drivers is kind of what we're our solution i'm really concerned that it's not going to happen soon enough so what can we do in the meantime because now it sounds like the fact is we

125have some students that are not having safe ways to school and i feel like we almost have to address it immediately like what what is our plan now that we know that students are at risk what are we going to do now to attract president if i could address that so for clarification the intersection that you're talking about we do provide bus from storen heights to rancho gabriella and back and forth so there is busing provided for all those students the student that mr hicks referred to was outside of the pickup drop-off bus transportation period so it was an early a student who had left school early and was walking home so he could have waited until the bus routes picked up at the school and went and dropped them off so yes we have

126planned for it we have buses that we are shuttling back and forth another similar one is at west point where we are working with the city as you're well aware of putting a an intersection lighted intersection at um 137th and greenway but until that's done we are bussing students across the street at reims or busting students across the street literally is there is there a rheem situation that impacts countryside um for countryside and this has nothing to do with middle schools there has always been boundaries that included students on the east and west side of reims there are crossing guards at the intersection of greenway and reams to assist students across reams so just again to reiterate it has been planned for and we do have safety solutions there if a student stays after school

127and all the buses have left and they get tutoring after school we don't have transportation at that hour if they stay for sports we don't have transportation shuttling them back across the street at that hour so are those the scenarios though for the parents that have always concerned they're they're those anomalies those after-school tutoring situations because it sounds like it's more and maybe it's not a ring situation or a busting situation it's more of just a maybe walking too far or the distance but all the things we've and you've heard and read too those are the things that i'm talking about yeah in the distance i believe tomorrow night i don't want to jinx a neighboring district but they have a board meeting tomorrow night and they're proposing to extend it to two miles it's

128an elementary district um another district um over on the east valley they're proposing to their governing board that they eliminate all after-school activity buses this other districts are taking extreme measures not to solve the problem but to eliminate the problem by drastic measures that we don't feel like is best for the school experience for our students we want them to have after-school activities we want them to be safe when they go to and from school we are not at this time looking at extending the routes further at the radial miles further out we'd like to bring them closer in mr hicks has looked at other district models where it's even broken down further where instead of three tiers there's five tiers number one challenge right now is hiring more bus drivers i'll solve everything pretty

129much because then we don't have students getting home late we don't have students who are having access problems because then we can provide an additional driver to a particular neighborhood whereas right now there's only one driver and it will solve a lot of problems so a lot of our efforts right now are focusing on getting those extra drivers we will be coming forward in the next weeks for some monetary opportunities to address the problem obviously changing the route side the radio mile is a free option but we believe that with some of the funds that have been discussed earlier that we can address some of the incentives to attract bus drivers and to keep our current bus drivers mr hicks mentioned that he has a long list of ideas we're intentionally not putting those ideas

130all out here right now just because if we say these are all the things we're researching and somebody hears that and says well i thought you were going to go the airport and hire all the bus drivers of the airport well that didn't work out so we don't want to tip the hat to something that may not work out but we do have a long list of solutions that we're looking for i appreciate that the timing of it seems to be long four weeks to process a bus driver from higher date to in the seat date we would love to do it in a couple of days and get that turned around but when we are paying for their cdl training and we are paying for their bus certifications and we're required to do all

131those trainings we are one of the few districts that actually pay training drivers to be trained while they're being trained and that we pay for their cdl fees that's a risk because we pay for their cdl fees and then they bail and go work for swift so that's okay we'll keep training them because that's an incentive that we offer that other districts don't offer it's a very competitive market but we feel like we have the the staff and the expertise to jump ahead of the competition might be that swift or peoria or litchfield or whoever else is competing for the same drivers we are and we are committed to tackling this problem but would you say that the list that might be coming in a couple weeks will address the concerns that our parent brought

132up tonight um we have a solution for that exact situation we don't want to make that a public solution that's something we can talk to the parent and explain this is what we're working on but to announce that publicly before all the appropriate pieces are in place may be premature thank you um you just said something and i've got it i'm curious um you shuttle between sonoran heights and rancho gabriela uh madam president miss grant for clarification the neighborhoods okay so not specifically school to school but there are students in the rancho neighborhood that go to sonoran and we will bus them from that neighborhood to the school okay then i'm missing so you're not taking them from rancho to sonoran to catch the bus home or to walk home with their siblings right it's

133neighborhood to neighborhood okay then i misunderstood when you said shuttle it made me think well why did we do it with that one and we're not doing it for the other ones okay thank you for clarifying that and we can buy buses with us or funds right madam president members of the board um i think we bought some white bands about 11 months ago we're still waiting for him so also put that in mind buses but but anyone could drive a van as long as they have a driver's license right uh madam president on a special crazy van okay endorsement is that what you're asking for some special license enforcement no okay how many students does that hold or are they equipped for special needs 12 are are white buses are you talking a van

134van sorry vans less might be nine uh maybe nine and are those equipped though for special needs they're not are we planning to equip them for that ones that we ordered were not okay um can you share and i know that these may not be final towards the end of the training are you able to share with us how many drivers are in the process of being trained now um madame president members of the board i believe we have five taking a class right now yeah okay and are they like one or two weeks in i believe they're two weeks in but i'm just estimating from the last time like twice i've heard five okay dr croto might know a little bit more detailed on that maybe we can go bring him some you know

135cookies or something um madame president members board i know you're joking but when i'm over at support center and i see people in the training room i'll just go in and say thank you at times just thank you thank you for being here and um thank you for joining the team and thank you for making a difference we and it's not just uh you heard crossing guards we're down 13 crossing guards we're down 40 food service workers we're down six landscapers 20 bus drivers 12 aids i think it's around 33 to 35 parapros we there is a labor shortage out there if people will not apply for work we are trying to multiply through marketing efforts through incentive efforts and through other efforts attract more people to buy to apply to these positions we need

136people and sometimes it may not happen but when the labor pool shakes loose and people start applying we want to be out in front of everything to put ourselves in the best position possible seven are in the class right now thank you thank you thank you do they have friends i mean uh i know we keep joking on this amount of present members of the board but i know uh a referral i know madam president you posted about our job fair uh friends to friends and uh contact will get the most traction of applying for jobs and so we ask that everybody promote that and i normally when i'm talking to parents that are upset i will ask them to apply for some of our positions not insultingly but we do need help in person-to-person

137contact promoting pushing out will help get traction the more more people to see it the more opportunities are for people to actually apply well i know it's difficult also and i mean i guess we need to start talking about the benefits of working for the district because not just salary because i was talking to somebody today and they have a job at ups making 18 and 50 cents an hour and they're right out of high school and that's that's just a warehouse job not just i mean it's a warehouse job at 18 nice salary and that's what we're competing with now i don't know about the benefits but working but i think that rather than the salary we need to start stressing the fact that what kind of benefits the district has to offer as

138well agreed i think we need to get like that total compensation package out there and that work life balance and whatever flexibilities that we have to offer i think that would be good one thing i wanted to mention i know that thank you miss pritchard for bringing up the the rheem's crossing and i know that other streets are being crossed as well but whether or not that was a pre-issue before we transitioned to a middle school k-4 situation we have to understand that we had siblings assisting you know sometimes older siblings assisting with those k-4 students crossing a busy street and with the transition they the families just simply don't have that same support so in that sense having a kindergartner across a busy road like reams as a parent it just seems insane um

139so i i think that we just need to re-look at the model i know you have some suggestions in the works but i just want to stress the importance of that we can't have little ones crossing busy streets so and i'm we're we're competing with a charter school on reems so for those families on the other side of reams for countryside for instance we're competing for those for those students and those families and if we're not providing supports for those families then then we're at a loss it's not i don't think it can be really a win for us so i think that as we work towards all those solutions that you already have in the works we we really need to keep that in mind any other conversation thank you all right moving to

140item h1 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board members of cabinet mr croto will take the next four items thank you dr kellis madame president members of the board superintellis cabinet and guests tonight administration is recommending the addition of an interim elementary school principal at west point elementary in order to provide appropriate coverage at that school additionally administration is recommending the appointment of amy michaels to fill the interim position for the remainder of the school year that position will be posted in the spring in order to find or have a permanent principle not interim tag as you know miss mikos has previously or she currently is uh the assistant principal at west point elementary school and um we're happy to recommend her tonight um to fill that interim spot and she'll receive

141the salary and benefits appropriate for that position so i'll stand for any questions she's here she is here no i just i think this is a great move for her and uh i moved to approve the addition of an interim elementary school principal position and appointment of amy michaels as interim elementary school principal for the remainder of the 2021-2022 school year second little button didn't come up congratulations cool position i'm sorry it's not coming up congratulations and welcome back mr kerr [Applause] okay moving on uh item number three um kind of a background tonight we bring to you motion to a continuation of our guest teacher incentive program last year you approved two guests and teacher incentive programs one in the fall and then one in the or actually the winter excuse me in the

142spring as you know this was based on a need for substitute teachers we call them guest teachers in our program and we were in desperate need at the time last winter and the last spring the program was very successful and a matter of fact just briefly to give you some uh background on that we have two last year we had 291 guest teachers on our pool for esi to work with before the incentive program only 76 of those 291 guest teachers worked in our district at any time after you graciously approved our programs in the winter time that number rose to 130 guest teachers which was an increase of 54 and during the springtime it rose to 159 guest teachers at that time and that's an increase of about 83 of those teachers so um

143last year the spring program ran from january january 4th to march 12th which was about 48 days we had we had 24 or excuse me 35 teachers work in the tier 1 which was 50 to 74 of the days they earned a 1700 stipend we had 67 teachers work 75 percent or more days uh which was in that band of the 36 to 48 days that they worked in our district and they earned a stipend um of about dollars so that total cost with taxes fees and all the and all the payments to them was about 279 thousand dollars for that spring program it was a good success and our schools are again needing that this year we're asking you we have 268 guest teachers in the pool currently only 55 of those 268 teachers

144have worked two or more days in our district so not very many of those teachers are working in our district and our fill rates as of last week when we were preparing the agenda was at 65. i can tell you that has dropped this week 65 percent and it's going lower so we're only filling about 65 percent of the vacancies that are out there and remember we just talked about the long term our permanent guest teachers those teachers are filling some of those spots too um they are counted in that and so we have those filling spots and we need many more so we put together another incentive program we'd like to run this program from september 1st to december 3rd that's 55 work days the tier 1 incentive so if you work 29 to

14543 days of the 55 we will give you an incentive of 2050 if you work 75 or more of the 55 days which is 44 to 55 days worked you will receive a 3 100 incentive we anticipate utilizing the data from [Music] from the springtime and projecting the costs we we project that the estimate for this incentive program through december 3rd would be approximately it's roughly an estimate of 335 000 so um and those guest teachers we worked with esi because they pay them but they would receive that money on honor around december 17th before the holidays so we are excited about this um we we know it works and and i think um we have some guest teachers out there again the labor market everybody is is competing for these guest teachers and the

146substitutes in the school districts and we're trying to get out in front and secure some of the guest teachers that we need for our schools so with that i'll stand for any questions you said last week was since the first day of school our fill rate has been 65 up to last week when i pulled the data so i can tell you looking at a few days since we get the agenda about a week we get it ready a week before it was at 65 it's going lower than that in the last few days and have we well we wouldn't reach out to the guest teachers um to find out why they're not being taken or do we go back through esi to find out why that is correct we we go to esi and

147it's just we have other districts that are paying a little bit more they've raised their rates um and so you know the incentive to work in those districts has been increased we have roughly a district south of us that has raised 200 a day which is almost double of what everybody's paying so everybody's ramping up their game as far as trying to get the guest teachers because like like the bus driver conversation we had there's a finite pool of these people wanting to sub in our classrooms and so we're all competing for that and we have the advantage that we have you know 159 people that are familiar with our incentive program that appreciated what we did in the incentive program in in the winter in the spring and you know we we want them

148to work for us and i think this incentive program shows that and i think the numbers will be positive like the last two times i think some of it's also just still covered related people are hesitant especially if they're retired maybe coming into the classroom right now absolutely there's a little hesitancy about that so it is up to the school to um go into i don't know the ei esi system and then request a sub is that correct madam president the teachers go in into the system and request the sub schools do do it also if they find out late and that they can't get into the system but primarily it is the teacher's job to enter into our substitute system that they're going to be out that day if they know ahead of time

149they can put it ahead of time and people go and pick jobs saying i'll take this job i'll take that job so they enter and sign up for those through our subsystem well typically what we do with teachers is if we know we're going to be gone or if we just are feeling sick at like two in the morning we'll go in and then we'll create the absence and then what that does is it goes into a bank and then subs can log on and look at all the different open jobs and they can pick and choose what they want and then sometimes if it's like a last minute thing they'll do an auto dialer hey this school needs this press one to accept press two for no so the subs can pick and choose

150and more than one district can show up on their screen so they can say oh that district's open i oh they're paying 200 bucks i'm going over there versus over there so how would they be notified then of the incentive if you if the governing board approves it tonight we work in conjunction with esi and there is a mass email an announcement that is prepared to go out first thing in the morning to promote this so we are prepared to do that we have a lot on monday we we sent a precursor email letting them know that the incentive program was going to the governing board to be discussed and that stay tuned we'll give you the details after that so they know that we're discussing it i think they're eagerly awaiting your decision tonight

151and we're prepared actually after you vote and it comes out if it comes out that you approve it i am going to text the vice president of esi and let him know you passed it so he can hit send on that email so i've i've talked with him today and he's awaiting the news for us so they have been very good to work with and helped us out tremendously with this let's get it done i move to approve the continuation of the guest teacher incentive program as presented second i have a problem i still didn't get it so i'm an eye but i've hit refresh every time motion passes thank you very much i'll get to work thank you next we have item h4 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and

152members of cabinet mr dr dean we'll introduce this item madam president members of the governing board dr kelson members of cabinet this evening it is my pleasure to provide a brief update on our covet protocol as well as a recommendation from administration moving forward since the last board meeting we have been in touch with the maricopa county health department and dr sunshine as well as our legal counsel as it relates to quarantine and the requirement of quarantine through the county and what was determined between the county and our council confirmed as well is that it is maricopa the maricopa county health department's requirement it is their responsibility to notify parents of quarantine and not the school district's requirement to do such as such we have amended our protocol in consultation with our attorney that should

153the maricopa county health department determine and notify parents of quarantine that the district will enforce such so we we continue to remain or to have our protocols in place in which parents continue to receive contact from the schools if they are in direct contact with a student we continue to have our protocol in place that we ask parents to monitor symptoms however parents can choose to send students to school or keep them in home in isolation that is their choice however if the county notifies that family that a student has to be quarantined then that quarantine is enforced so that is the piece that was determined through conversation with dr sunshine and again confirmed with with our district legal counsel as well also this evening um we would recommend to the governing board that we

154reinstate um the dashboard and bring that back up we receive emails consistently from a few folks that are interested in the number of students that we have that are positive and so we would recommend to the governing board this evening that we reinstate the dashboard in the manner in which we held it last spring thank you dr dean madam president we do have some public comments on this topic i'll go ahead and read the statement this is the time for the public to comment members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda pursuant to ars 38-431.08 action taken as a result of public comment will be limited directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for further consideration added and decision at

155a later date in order to facilitate accomplishing the dis 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 first we have hillary love hello my name is hilary love i am a daughter of educators i am a granddaughter of a survivor from the sorry he was an orphan related to the spanish uh pandemic that happened he was a horrible wretched man i can only assume that losing his parents at such a young age due to the pandemic uh caused him to be an alcoholic and an abusive person um but that is my family lineage i am also a nurse for 25 years i'm a director

156of nursing of a nursing home uh dr kellis you don't have to feel necessary to notify my boss i'm sure he's watching this on the video if you want to send him an email you go right ahead uh as a nurse i've been following a federal mandate that is recommended by the cdc based on evidence-based practice uh i take care of the elderly they have evidence of doing something for us that we are not effectively doing for them and that is taking the smallpox vaccine they have a little blister on their arm i don't know older people do that i don't have to have that anymore because we've essentially eradicated smallpox but i've been doing everything possible for the last year and a half to protect the elderly at this point in time i'm asking

157for somebody to do something to try and protect my children i'm new to having children i've been a nurse for 25 years i've only been a parent for seven years i feel the mediation that you're doing is completely ineffective you are taking let's see if you're supposed to support education believe in science and most importantly create and implement policies to protect our children you are failing no masks no temperature checks no symptom monitoring no public disclosure of active cases although i'm if that website does come back i may minimize my snotty emails um your website has been evasive as is your policy of notification i am requesting that you do better i want my children to go back to school they are currently pulled out based on the message we received on monday that due

158to an increasing number of cases not able to verify on a website um that they were recommending social distancing in a cafeteria please we need to do a little bit better than that to protect the kids the delta variant is coming for the children it is sending them to the hospital hospital system is already too full there's not going to be effective people to treat them when they get this we have to do better social distancing temperature monitoring you're taking guidance from a person who doesn't have the slightest idea what he is talking about and that's governor ducey making decisions on medical practice that is not the person you need to take your direction from you need to do better you can't enforce masks do something else maybe spend some of that money you got

159on those walk-through thermometers that all the casinos have that would be an interview thank you thank you next we have nicole king good evening manning president president members of the board dr kellus cabinet and guest my name is nicole king and i'm a mother of three children in the district an active district volunteer and a pediatric icu nurse first of all i'm here asking that the district bring back the transparency of the kobit dashboard as a community we have no idea how many cases are impacting our district last week i asked around and heard from just six of our 26 schools these six schools required school-wide communication due to the nature of the clusters and reported 65 confirmed cases research tells us that actual cases on average are eight times higher than confirmed cases so

160in just six schools we have up to 520 kids walking around potentially infecting other children and staff what about the other 20 schools hospitals in the valley have reported over 100 pediatric admissions in july that same number was reached in just the first two weeks in august pch is at red sentence meaning we can't admit any any children's at this time as of last week 18 of new cases are pediatric cases the letters that are sent home after district exposure do not call for quarantine the exact wording is your child will remain at school and you should watch for any covet-like symptoms and keep your child at home if they become symptomatic you have the option of keeping your child at home for up to 10 days from the day of direct contact how do

161i know this i got this letter five days after my child had direct contact meaning that he was exposing everybody else for five days my entire family is fully vaccinated except for our youngest because he's only 10 years old i should know he wears a mask to school every single day but he is only one of five children who does this in his 30 student class his mask is primarily protecting others and though it does give him some protection it would be much safer if others wore a mask as well communicating masking reduces likelihood of contracting the virus by up to 70 we saw this last april when you stopped updating the dashboard because the cases were so low that brings me to my second request i believe we should be mandating masks in our

162schools children under 12 years old cannot be vaccinated yet the academy of pediatrics the american academy of pediatrics and the cdc all recommend that children over the age of two wear masks to schools not requiring masses putting our children and families at risk have you walked their crowded halls at schools or been in a classroom where social distancing is not achieved at all this delta variant is more infectious and it has increased transmissibility when compared to other variants even in vaccinated individuals we don't require vaccinate vaccinations here and roughly only 30 percent of children over 12 years old are vaccinated on the website we claim that dysart is committed to providing a safe learning environment to students and staff how can we claim that when we are not keeping them safe and we're not doing

163our due diligence to do so we have children and staff are immuno compromised families fighting cancer and multi-generational families with vulnerable adults i hear well if you are worried about your child keep them home for remote learning we saw that last year those children that were remote learning were struggling academically how can we keep them at home and have them struggle just for someone else's convenience what about those families who can't be home with their children while they're remote learning are we supposed to put their health and safety up against the family's ability to pay their bills we are arguing about a piece of cloth designed to keep us individually and collectively safe we are friends neighbors and a community but we sure aren't acting like we care about each other i'm asking that the

164board makes decisions to keep our children staff safe and our schools open thank you next we have jessica strakata uh state your name please can you state your name for the record yeah my name is brian strachan i'm a father of two daughters that go to canyon ridge uh main thing i'd like to address today is the issue of mass a recent experience of ours with my youngest daughter who's on a double iep suggests there might be a push from teachers to get schools back into mask and defy state orders you know to get those masks back on i'm asking that we stay the current course of allowing the parents to choose whether or not to put their kids in mass science has actually shown that mass really don't work even n95 uh shows that

165the mass standards of lung resistance are long resident aerosol particles are around 2.5 micrometers which are too fine to be blocked by a mass the minimum effective dose of covid is smaller than one micrometer the best n95 mask can only stop about 3.5 micrometers so basically it's like trying to stop a mosquito with a chain link fence so masks don't work second i have a daughter who's on a double iep from one of which is for speech delay since she was a baby she's been hypersensitive to things touching her face not only does the mask create an uncomfortable distraction it also prohibits her ability to communicate effectively kids make fun of her and don't properly hear her one of the things that we've tried to accomplish in private speech therapy outside of school is is

166facial cues and learning how to speak properly move your mouth and that's really the progression we had up until coveted once coveted hit and mass went in place it really put a detriment and took her 100 steps back secondly or thirdly i have another daughter who not only despises mass just the constant wearing of a mask throughout the day the sweat getting food on them render them useless it's been recorded that n95 masks are no longer viable after 20 minutes of use everyday bacteria and germs that we cohabitate with to build and create they build and create a toxic barrier on the mask so recent studies also showed that after 15 minutes of wearing a mass children have up to 12 times normal carbon dioxide levels in their bodies preventing oxygen getting into them ultimately

167i'm asking that we keep our current cove policy on mass and if mandated you know i think it's us as parents we would resort to pulling our kids out of school just for the fact of it's not how our kids are going to learn thank you okay so next when we'll have jessica strakota hi my name is lillian srakada i'm from canyon ridge and in fifth grade i like the way it is right now when masks are optional i don't like math and here are my reasons why they give us rashes and make it hard to breathe they also make it hard to focus in class i also see lots of kids at my school not worth wanting to wear masks they have the same problem as me all the kids at my school also

168don't like to be a part at lunch i would like to have a choice of where to sit at lunch so please i'm sorry to interrupt you honey um can you state your name for the record lillian strokida yeah i'm sorry i was i was jessica signed her mom i just put her on there honestly i have to what's the protocol no i think i think that's fine it's just we need to be specific for the record so what is her name well and just angus policy unfortunately and it was signed in as a parent so just per policy having them signed in prior to six and since she didn't sign in to speak it's just a protocol issue so does jessica still want to are you jessica ma'am yes okay and jessica needs to

169speak and you know i would be more than happy to speak with you afterwards but formally like this because we have the process and you and and she didn't sign in then um we have to stick with protocol but i would be more than happy to listen to what you have to say afterwards i have a question is it possible for jessica to read lillian's statement yeah if you could just maybe stand up there with your daughter okay that way you can be present as you website yeah do we want to start the clock over again and then maybe we're to lunch maybe lillian would you mind restating that yeah do you want to start over again yes thank you thank you very much my name is elaine strokada i'm from canyon ridge and in

170fifth grade i like the way it is right now when masks are optional i don't like masks and here are my reasons why they give me rashes and make it hard to breathe they also make it hard to focus in class i also see lots of kids at my school not wanting to wear masks they have the same problem as me all the kids at my school also don't like to be a part at lunch i would like to have a choice of where i sit at lunch so please keep the way it is at school where we have a choice to wear math at school thank you and have a good night thank you very much next we have katie vertell hello everyone my name is katie bertel i am the one that has

171been sending you all the annoying emails i have two daughters at marley park elementary they aren't old enough yet to receive the vaccine they are some of the few that wear masks to school every day my third grader is actually the only one in her class i'm here to please ask you to bring back masks to dysart i emailed you all a graphic a short while ago from texas tech university that shows the efficacy of masks isn't wearing masks a better alternative than returning to online school the following are some facts about the delta variant and rate of transmission according to dr emily smith an epidemiologist at baylor delta has up to thousand times higher viral load than other variants delta is up to 200 percent more transmissible than an are not of six to

172nine this means that one kid teacher bus driver or person can infect six to nine people if a virus with an iron on of 2.5 spreads among a completely susceptible population the mass list an estimated 9536 infections would result after 10 cycles of transmission however for a virus with an r naught of 6 like delta 10 cycles of transmission could result in an estimated over 60 million infections here's a tweet going around about dysart unified school an unmasked teacher in break room coughing teacher a are you sick teacher b yes but my symptoms come and go last night my legs hurt teacher a are you vaccinated teacher b no teacher a are you going to test teacher b i'm waiting on results there's little to no social distancing happening at dysart schools kids are going

173to school sick absences are very high this is the environment that has been encouraged by you the school board the group of people assigned with protecting our students and staff the dysart website specifically states the mission of dysart unified school district is to create a safe diversified and engaging learning environment and it goes on with at least 164 positive cases i was told this week in our district something needs to be done please bring back the kova dashboard on dysart's website so parents know what is happening in each school most importantly bring back masks my third grader wanted to come with me tonight we decided against it i was watching the local news the other day with her in the room she heard an anti-massacre call masks child abuse she looked at me and stated

174masks aren't abuse masks keep everyone healthy she's eight years old and she gets it thank you thank you [Applause] that's all we have to say so madam president our recommendation this evening for our code protocol would be to reinstate the dashboard and that would begin on friday afternoon thank you i need to start okay i'm very excited and not excited that's not the right word i'm very happy to see that we're coming back with the dashboard i think that will it's information and that will help everybody with their decision making i is it enough i don't know but we'll see but back to maricopa county is going to notify the parents of a covid positive test right somebody tested positive did i understand that correctly madam president member grant maricopa county will notify parents of

175those in direct contact with a positive case that they need to quarantine and they have been making those notifications um previously so um the school dis does this oh shoot the school or the district notifies maricopa county madam president member grant that is correct so every day we send maricopa county the maricopa county health department information related to students that have tested positive and i would remind the board that if student test positive that they are quarantined for 10 days that is non-negotiable additionally we notify the county of those students that have been identified as being in direct contact with any positive case that's been reported to the school additionally not in addition to providing that information to the county information is also provided to the parents as we spoke earlier i'm indicate or letting

176them know that they had been in direct contact to monitor symptoms etc the county then takes their responsibility and they determine whether students should be quarantined the process that they utilize i cannot tell you every step of that i know part of that has to do with if a student is vaccinated or not vaccinated how that is determined the county has indicated to me that they have access to a database in which they can determine if that's if a student has been vaccinated or not and so that is the process in which the county goes about determining who's quarantined as explained to us but for parents to get letters like five six days later that their child was exposed is that madam president miss grant that would be a problem um and that would be

177an anomaly from what um we have heard and seen our schools work very hard to notify parents um by phone the day of direct that they've have discovered um direct contact a letter may follow but as stated um that would be an anomaly and i was certainly more than happy to speak with um uh the young lady that spoke with us this evening to determine what school that in which that occurred and follow up with that school as well and that's what i was going to ask would you please follow up absolutely there's two ways that parents are being contacted one is the through the county for the quarantine issue and then the other is through the school notifying that the in or whatever kind so there's two that is correct and the school notification

178would come first um the school notification would be the same day in which the direct contact uh was disc the direct contact was discovered and then the county follows up at some point in time with them related to if there's a need to quarantine if the county does not follow up with them then there was my understanding would be that there was not a determination made by the county for a need to quarantine can you interrupt really quick because it's a follow-up on that piece super quick just so i understand so but this we still require we still determine quarantine for our positive students madam president ms prichard yes if a student tests positive that student is is quarantined for 10 days at a minimum no i'm so sorry um so i know there's a

179whole discussion regarding mask no mask state law following state law federal funds etc i totally understand all that but if we take that aside and we just heard a presentation on esser money for cleaning supplies are we be coming back to having the additional cleaning taking place in the in the schools either before during and after madam president member grant uh we have continued with our cleaning cycle that was implemented this year which is the cleaning cycle that was imp that was in place pre-covered our teachers and our students have access to cleaning supplies should they wish to clean addition in addition to what is happening in our schools on a regular cycle why aren't we going back to the covet cleaning system madam president member grant the protocol that we put in place was

180based upon information from that we received from the county health department in terms of this the spread of covet i am while i'm a doctor i am not a medical doctor and so i don't want to make medical comments um but i will tell you that um it is our understanding that the spread of covid it has been mitigated in terms of its spread related to surface contact and that information has was shared with us in in webinars and in conversation last spring with with medical authorities so if i'm understanding you correctly the mayor the maricopa county health department is saying that the district does not have to go back to the coveted cleaning but they just go back to their pre-covered cleaning which was before and after school etc madam president ms grant we

181have not had that conversation with the county our recommendation to the board in the last meeting in july was based upon information that was shared with the county or shared by the county last spring could we please go back to the county and follow up on that particular issue madam president member grant we certainly can make a call to the county and then my final question is again we have all those thermometers um is there any why aren't we doing at least the temperature checks again madam president member grant i will let you know that in conversation last spring with the maricopa county health department that com that particular topic was brought up the county health department indicated that temperature checks were no longer needed they were not an effective way to monitor students in

182a school setting but now we're dealing with a different variant so again is the county health department has there been any discussion about at least temperature checks and i don't know i'm not a medical person i'm just asking to do whatever we can to make this these schools a safe learning environment for everyone certainly and and uh ms grant we we would indicate to you that we believe that we are doing what is necessary to have a safe learning environment for our students we have had no conversation with nor um any inkling of conversation from other school districts related to temperature temperature checks from the county health department and then i just have one i'm sorry just one more follow-up that in case i misunderstood you because i don't remember the dashboard and i'm sorry

183but the dashboard by school includes does it break out the number of students at test positive and staff or is it just one number madam president remember grant uh it's been a while since i've looked at that dashboard as well uh i believe the answer is i know that we report the number of students per school i do not recall if we report the number of staff as well again i just i think information on this is so important for everybody for all our parents for the staff to know as much as they possibly can and we certainly agree and that's that is the reason for the recommendation this evening to reinstate the dashboard madam president if i can interject uh staff is included in the dashboard and the process that was described earlier is

184followed with the staff also we require our staff to quarantine if they are positive we track our staff that is reported in the dashboard so it's one number so if a school has 10 cases it could be one teacher and nine students correct that's correct i believe so okay thank you i'd like to make a motion to approve the just the continue with the current mitigation plans with the addition of the kova dashboard oh i haven't asked any questions yet oh sorry sorry i had a question too but go ahead nice one do you want to say second and then we'll discuss i guess some madam president just for protocols motion has been made at this point it would be appropriate if there's a second that somebody says and then at this point there's opportunity

185for discussion my question is how many current cases do we have within the district madam president member sawyer sink bill um there are 23 260 students in the dysart unified school district there are 193 total cases as of today that is 0.8 of the student population that has a positive test additionally i would indicate to you that between friday and monday of this this week and next week 118 of those students will return from the 10-day quarantine which will take that number to 75. so and that was just students that that number is students yes madam president the employees this evening the count is 12 employees four return tomorrow so tonight there's 12 tomorrow there's eight plus whatever we receive from four o'clock on but there's 12 employees currently right so not not counting any

186students that in which we would be made aware of a positive case tomorrow or friday those 118 students will return and then there will be 75 plus whatever number students report positive tomorrow or friday for monday um and just just for clarity too i know i talked to dr carlos who confirmed it that they're because this is so broad and there's so many different areas because i had a few different questions on a couple different things that we can have several um several motions under one agenda item so if it's rather being like an all or nothing vote it could be broken out so i cause i i know there's like several different pieces so pardon me if i just have three different areas i just kind of want to cover thank you first of

187all for bringing back the data dashboard i mean i think we can know that our numbers um you know seem lower compared to maybe other parts of the state but i just feel like if it's information and if it's something that's going to make our community have more comfort in their decisions on what to do with their students then i think it's it's an easy fix people can make their own decisions so i appreciate you bringing that back um cleaning protocols that was that was on my list as well and then listening to mr hicks going through the um the esser funds and how they're spent and all those areas the cleaning supplies were part of all that so again i don't know that there's much harm in increasing our cleaning or going back to

188pre-covered cleaning i personally would like to do that also in regard to are we doing anything yet for capacity type controls like someone had mentioned that elementary school cafeterias are being more mindful of distancing you know are are we putting any type of limits on assemblies right now or like like we did last semester just to again if the pandemic is what it is as far as the numbers and we're our mass are optional and we don't currently have masks then are there things we can still do to mitigate like not cramming hundreds of kids in a small space that are unmasked so has there been any thought or discussion around capacity type or social distancing measures madam president mrs prichard we we continue to encourage our schools to provide distance when possible to answer

189your question directly related to assemblies we are working with our schools as it relates to assemblies i will give you an example we worked with a school yesterday who has a high school who has assemblies planned next friday prior to the football game high schools typically run two assemblies in a day two different assembly periods in working with them they were concerned about the number of students in those assemblies yet wanted to continue to have the assemblies and so we worked with them to look at an option of having four assemblies in a day one for each class of students in which they would be able to spread out approximately 500 students in a very large gymnasium and that's kind of what we did last semester i and i just think that it's just a

190smart thing i mean we know it's doable because we did a lot of it last semester and just again because the numbers are getting higher i i personally would like us to be mindful of that because it's um you know again with mass being optional you have some students that are uncomfortable and this is just with the cleaning it's one extra thing we can do and here's here's the big thing for me so um and i always tell people i'm always torn between parent choice and also i've just always been i've been healthcare for years and years and so i can't get that out of my head i can't i can't just disregard the medical piece of it so last semester when we voted to make to keep masks in place through the end of

191the year for me that was to honor parent choice on both sides it was to um because at that point the window for those students to go back to online learning was closed so if any parents or students had their children in classes because they knew dysart was requiring masks they were denied choice then to take their kid and put them back into online because the window was closed so it's like i want to make sure everyone has the opportunity for choice not just one group of parents so back with this keeping masks optional you know it honors parent choice but what about those students or parents or families who don't feel comfortable having their student in a classroom with someone who's not wearing a mask what about offering online instruction although i know at

192least for my student last year it was not ideal but it's still a choice it's still a choice for those parents who feel uncomfortable having their children surrounded by other students that aren't in masks to have an option to not be in that environment if they don't want to so i feel like that would be giving both sides of the house opportunity for to do what they feel is safe and i'm not suggesting that everything go back on one teacher but looking at you know again dr mr um i almost gave you a doctorate um going back to his presentation you know esther one funds some with online curriculum classroom cameras same types of things for sr2 s or three permanent subs i.t support so with some of that money aren't there ways to find

193opportunity to where if we have families that are like i feel uncomfortable with people not having masks they're not going to be stuck in a situation they feel unsafe where they can even if it's just the webcams that we have in our in our classrooms now um whether it be the numbers are too high for their comfort or something changes in their life and they just don't feel safe they can they can have like online instruction adam president miss pritchard that way dr dean it would be because one side can't we can't decide we can't say who what parent choice take trump's another parent choice like parent choice in general is important so then this way those who feel that we shouldn't mandate mass and i don't feel i don't feel comfortable and and they

194have all their reasons why they don't want masks that's honored for the people that feel like i prefer my child to wear a mask i don't feel safe around a lot of unmasked children they have an option that's going to make them feel comfortable so is there a way with practice madam president mrs pritchard to answer your question we can certainly explore those opportunities you mentioned that we have web-based or web cameras in in the classroom from a data perspective we had a very large amount of students fail that were online last year a very large amount of students fail and the learning loss is real the learning loss was real both online and in person last year because instruction was different in the classroom than it typically is we are seeing dr polling and

195i are seeing as we visit schools classroom instruction is back our teachers are doing a fantastic job of teaching our students without relying on the computer to do so and so we are seeing instructional practices return and we believe that the best environment for our students in terms of an academic component is in the classroom and and that's what our data from the last year would show uh and and so that's i would indicate that we could certainly continue that conversation um but we're seeing success with our students in in the classroom well that would be something and i understand that and i we all on the board saw the numbers and it was a horrific situation academically but parents would be going into it eyes wide open they would know the challenges and they

196would decide whether or not they want to try online with some extra supports and but this would be different too it's not florida virtual online it would be with the webcams they would be able to be in their classroom possibly madam president i i will and miss richard i will tell you without stepping on dr croto's department that it is very difficult to staff a full ground campus and a large online component as well not that that trumps student safety and and that never would um but there are significant challenges that that are presented as well madame president if i could also just add to that turning on a webcam is not instruction and we don't have enough teachers to pull teachers out of schools and dedicate them to being online teachers so what we

197found and what we experienced last spring is that we had teachers in their classrooms who were also trying to manage students who were online and inevitably the students who were in the classroom got the attention of the teachers because the teachers just can't feasibly stop instruction and then turn their attention to the students online and work in the two different environments simultaneously and we asked teachers to dedicate time during the week where they could reach out to the students who are online but it didn't work is the challenge so we do have cameras in the classroom that if a student is isolated or quarantined or even if they're just sick they don't have to have covet they could for any other reason they can request the teacher to turn on the camera while they're out

198and they're part of the classroom but for three five ten days they're they're going to be absent they're coming back to the classroom and so they can request that the teacher turn on that webcam during their instruction they can follow along um so to indicate and to even suggest to those families who go online that they're going to have a similar even experience of learning would be a disservice to them we found that it was not successful and we would not recommend it what about is the is the window to registering for i school closed right now madam president miss pritchard in terms of how you're speaking about high school correct for yeah because i know and i know elementary school had the cut off and they're done but i mean um would that be

199an option to open that up high school students are so let me differentiate the two we have a k8 online program that is not part of ischool and then we have high school online school which is high school high school ischools enrollment is open however there is a capacity number due to staffing of the number of students that can can be accepted into high school so that's open for them now should capacity exist the answer is yes and then hypothetically would it even be possible to open up the k-8 for a short period of time if people right now are reacting to the very real numbers that are being reported and for their comfort level they don't want their child to be in a school with unmasked children they would have the opportunity to take

200advantage of the k-8 online school madam president mrs pritchard i would point you back to dr kelly's comment in in that the ability to effectively staff online programs for elementary school is very difficult we currently have classroom teaching positions that are unfilled that are filled with with permanent subs because similar to bus drivers and similar to to cafeteria workers and other positions there's a teacher shortage as well while dr croto and his team have done a fabulous job of recruiting and filling the majority of our positions there's competition for teachers across the valley as well and and we're all in the same boat in in terms of of not having enough teachers we are able to educate the students that are in the current k-8 online program with the limited number of online teachers that

201we have currently adding students to that would create a tremendous challenge of education but are we kind of in that anyway like i know we wouldn't ideally do this but in the pandemic and in this situation is it one of those things where again it's not ideal just like just like that first spring wasn't ideal but it we made it happen for those that well at the time we didn't have a choice but we continued to make it happen just because of the circumstances madam president miss prichard i would indicate that from both sides of this conversation the situation today is different than it was last year uh from from both sides of the pandemic conversation we certainly are in a different place than we were a year ago in in several capacities our teachers

202ability to provide both ground instruction and online instruction would tax them in a manner that is simply unfair well that's not what i recommend that's not what i'm asking i'm acknowledging the fact i think i said earlier um that i wouldn't say to put it all on that one teacher i'm saying finding ways to whether it be grouping grouping some classes together or grade levels together or just coming up with a creative way or seeing what the options are but certainly not just piling tons more kids on one teacher for one class madam president ms pritchard the ability for us to expand our k online program beyond what it in which it currently exists is incredibly difficult from a human capacity perspective and that human capacity perspective is the ability to instruct students we are

203barely keeping up with the number of students that are on k-8 online now with the dedicated teachers to k8 online in order to do that any further not speaking from any perspective except for the human capacity piece i'm not sure where we would find teachers to be able to teach to expand cade online um to the beyond to the point in which it is right now what about with the permanent subs or the esser funds madam president ms pritchard i would remind the board that our subs often do not have teaching certification they have subcertification and they are not able to stay in one location per ade beyond is it mr croto is it a semester beyond 120 days so we could certainly look at that option but we're going to take away we have

204two issues there number one throughout the course of the year students would have more than one teacher because we would have to remove that teacher at one point in time that substitute teacher that would be the first piece the second piece is that we would remove we would remove a an opportunity that we provided for our campuses in which which they have a sub on their campus to cover unfilled classroom positions on a daily basis i don't know i mean i hear what you're saying i just i struggle because and here's the thing too i can say well our k-8 you know they are um maybe more at risk because lots of them won't be eligible for vaccination if they even wanted to be and and that's the thing too where it's unfair to say

205that and just look at k-8 because there's some high school students who are old enough to be vaccinated but maybe they choose not to be which is fine too it's their their choice i just i just wish there were there was a way that if we if we're trying to honor parent choice and not mandate mass like a lot of other school districts are doing then we need to find a way to equally honor the parent choice of i don't feel comfortable sending my child to school without a mask we want i want to be able to offer them an option they're comfortable with which would be an online option knowing that it's not going to be the same and it's and they'd have to acknowledge that and know that and we're going to do

206our best but at least it's optional and i appreciate that conversation and i would indicate that um as you're aware that parents who would like to send their their children to school in masks certainly have the ability to do that under our current protocol as do parents who do not wish to send their children to to school in a mask right but in fairness like the optional piece if you're a parent that wants masks um you know people them being in school with students who aren't wearing a mask doesn't make them feel safe though so even though we're like you can wear one if you want there's going to be kids that aren't going to wear it and so that's going to make those other parents and families and feel unsafe i understand sorry i

207may have jumped the gun ask questions no i just have a follow-up question of what you were talking about when you said that i school is open capacity so if i if there's a student who's registered will just pick a freshman and this is their schedule and then they decide to go to i school not all of those classes are offered on high school is that correct madam president mrs grant that is correct you are correct the same classes they would end up either losing a credit that is correct so i will give you an example as a very specific example so if we have a student who is taking let's say sports medicine as a cte course i do not believe we offer sports medicine as a cte course online so that that is

208a ground course and that is a course that is available only to students online as the board is aware high school students can make their schedule hybrid and they can take a class two classes three classes online and on and on ground campus as well we provide that option for our students when they have online classes in that schedule they go to the collaborative commons you know in which they have support for high school there but i would state again that our high school enrollment for high school students also is has a cap based upon teacher capacity numbers but again i just want to make sure i understand you correctly you are correct that not all classes are offered yes that is absolutely correct got a schedule now they've got a problem if they the

209parents decide that they're going to put them in high school they really can't well they can for certain classes but not for their entire schedule correct there are core classes all of the core classes are available via high school as well as elective courses in which a student may attend ischool for four consecutive years and graduate they just may not get the electives that they would have access to on a ground campus automotive is another example of that not that they're all cte courses um but there are other courses that we offer only on ground and not online culinary too culinary is a great example yes and one of my favorites kind of tastes so just for clarity for per procedure um since there's already a motion on the floor if the if a board

210member wanted to [Music] would a board would would the board the majority board need to vote no in order to be open to other options because the motion um that crystal made was to approve everything that's in place as it is is that right how can you receive what was your emotion unless she wants to amend her emotion my emotion was to keep continue i wrote it down continue the current protocols with the addition of the copa dashboard madam president the maker of the motion can amend the motion as long as the person who seconded the motion can agrees to the amendment as well that's my understanding of robert's rules of orders madam president um mr pritchard so to your question the question you asked a couple days ago when we got legal opinion within

211this agenda item you can make multiple decisions it's complicated with the original motion as you just stated because the original motion is to move forward without any changes except to activate the the dashboard if the bor and so that is the the motion on the table and needs to be voted on after that there can be another motion to amend the the plan and to make a different change to it so if this one passes by majority then the action is to approve the the current protocol with the exception of the dashboard after that a board member can make another motion if it's not seconded then it dies on the table if it's seconded then that would go to more discussion or to a vote if it passes then that would then supersede the first

212one so i'm not saying we won't get into dueling actions here because then somebody else could come back and and say well i want to redo my first one so you cannot have conflicting emotions because you could be here all night just going back and forth on the same topic um right yeah so so would it be better than if you had a motion that would maybe combine a couple things maybe just do one at a time that way it's like one person can be okay with one part of it not the other and then they just vote it down because they're not good with both you should just probably do one at a time okay correct and it was stated um the person who made this original motion that's currently on on the table

213can amend that motion if the person who seconded it agrees to it if they don't want to amend the motion then that motion stands and will be voted on as i just said you can't come up with a conflicting motion which is complicating again because the original motion is to prove everything and if you're if you're saying okay this is everything that's currently in place but now you want to add something that would not conflict with it because you're adding to it not changing the current protocols so legal advice was sought on this agenda item uh madam president yes um chris thomas asba who's kind of the resident expert on boardsmanship responded to that question was was that communicated to the rest of the board madam president was not communicated to the rest of the

214board thank you i'll be honest like for transparency i think it was a big deal i asked because i knew there was a lot of different things encompassing this and i didn't know if i if there needed to be i just if there was a lot of different discussions like there is now there's masks there's cleaning there's the dashboard like that it wouldn't be an all or nothing there'd be opportunity to otherwise it would be an all or nothing and there's too many components to it so i just wish we had all had that information ahead of time so that we could have planned it's duly noted thank you dr tell us if we could address the disruptors in the audience after the meeting thank you if we have a current motion it's madam president

215at this point for um procedural discussion if there's no other discussion to be had on the motion then the madam president or another member can call the vote for the vote okay so i will call for the vote on the motion that has been made should it say addition or reinstate of the doesn't make a difference activated okay that was my motion i voted just took me a minute motion passes so i want to make another motion i move the governing board direct administration to resume [Music] cleaning protocols per what would that be back to um spring 2021 semester guidelines the covet protocol cleaning yes second motion to reinstate protocol covet protocol cleaning yeah call the cleaning protocol because he said there was a difference um there we go motion passes i have another motion

216i move the governing board direct the superintendent to explore an online option online learning option um could i just make a point of clarity the previous ones are they just adding it's to explore um no no i'm saying so we want to explore that but we're also keeping the cleaning protocol and we're also okay just for clarification this is just this is just to be in response to community members concern and to let's just have a presentation to see what would be how can we make this work so let me think of the exact wording superintendent too um explore an online learning option for students for the and we can even have it be like a um for just for this first semester but just it's completely butchered i'm sorry i did not think of

217that motion before i um before we proceed dr kellis have you already examined what the cost of something like that would look like uh madam president members of the board we have nada where there's last year's model that if this motion were to pass that would be part of the exploration couldn't that be a future agenda item rather than a motion madam president miss grant the the motion to explore is very different than the motion to approve an online program no i know but rather than making an emotion to explore couldn't that be a future agenda item to say i want to explore and president yes that can be no no explain what you mean then because i i'm assuming that if for directing the superintendent to explore this option i guess i'm assuming he

218would bring it back to the board for just for a discussion item or an action discussion item uh madame president pritchard yes that is my understanding is that administration would explore the the possibility of an online program and it to bring a recommendation or not yeah but you were talking about for first the first well because here the only reason why we're looking into this is because of the pandemic right now and the positivity rate and the concerns that some parents have and sending their student into classrooms or schools where there's unmasked students so it may just be kind of how we've done our protocol covered protocols ever since this started it was a we're going to continue to reassess and so maybe it's just we're just looking at this semester god willing in january

219it's going to look completely different and maybe we won't have to worry about it as much but so i have no preference on whether or not it's just for one semester or two my my concern is or my request is again being responsive to the community and exploring that possibility for online instruction to address the um online learning concerns regarding during covet pandemic president miss richard so that's a different motion than we were looking at could i ask mrs brown to read the emotion that she has as draft okay direct administration to explore online learning option for first semester of the 2021-22 school year okay so i have a motion by christine pritchard do i have a second never mind my present at this point um it would be appropriate for you to say hearing

220none the motion fails okay motion fails thank you do we have any other motions pending um not for this meeting yeah okay thank you moving to action discussion h5 dr kellis madam president last week the governing board held a study session to continue the conversation developing the superintense evaluation and this evening the board is presented with the evaluation tool that was discussed and the changes that were requested have been noted and this is presented to the board for approval thank you dr kelos i'll open it up for any discussion or questions does it matter that the points don't total 100 or because they're weighted it doesn't really matter man present miss pritchard that's correct just like um as we it was on one to five scale this is on one to three scale the multiplier

221puts it on a 100 scale so since i was not at the study session but i did listen to it i just want to make sure that the um and if you could walk me through this so that we have the superintendent's narrative and then we also have the board member comment so these two items are um sent to our governing board administrative executive assistant or whatever else you're called um before the board meeting that we will be discussing this excuse me the executive session we would be discussing this correct no we decided that we are going to all bring our own to the executive session and have discussion already completed individually and then as a group discuss and finalize is what i remembered us saying yeah i think how it's going to work is

222we're each going to fill this out on our own then when we go to executive session we're all going to collaborate and kind of look like okay so this category i did this and that and then we'll have the superintendent's narrative already there to kind of help explain and say this is what i did for this and this is what i did for that and then we'll all agree on the document and then we'll make our decision but our board member comments will be completed before we come into the executive session yeah we all bring it with us it's already completed and we bring it with this two executive session for a discussion but then there'll just be one that we decide on together okay so are we we are going to score it before

223we come to executive session as individuals but then only one will count so we'll have to decide on the scoring when we're together okay so are we going to run into the the um the problem of taking three hours in order to complete this i would hope not but i mean that's this is our like we've said in the meeting this is like our biggest role as board members is hiring and evaluating the superintendent so i mean i wouldn't want to rush it but you would think by i think there's only three areas meeting does not meet or exceeds where in the past we've had a lot of we have several numbers and there's a lot of ambiguity between those numbers which i think took a long time this should be this should not in

224my opinion take that long i don't feel like we're gonna have to sort through this and that that and that we'll already have it like ahead of time we'll have an idea we'll have superintendent's narrative to kind of say highlight certain things that we might not be sure of he can say oh here's some data points check this out we'll already have it ready to go and then we will come in hopefully we will have you know a good discussion about it and then we will come away with one document or dr kellis had mentioned if we thought it was going to be a long time we could have a separate meeting to do it but um just for clarity purposes we we get this document um i don't know a month prior to no

225two weeks whatever we decide prior to and then we fill out the score and dr kellis will fill in his narrative and then we do our comments then do we then share are the all of those comments then shared with him or do we decide as a board what comments will be shared with him along with the score so if we all agree or whatever to a three and then will there be comments will you to go along with it to him to say this is why we believe you are it is i'm just curious as to how the comment section is gonna be handled i don't remember how we decided i was asking i think that anytime a superintendent is evaluated i think that it's up to each board member to share their personal

226feedback with the superintendent yes we could just make a copy and then and i would hope that everyone is doing that when you go to music festivals you have three judges and they each score you and they each give you comments and then they each hand it to you so you can see what each judge you know said oh this was really good that was really good and this judge might point out something that that didn't and you go oh okay so i think it would be advantageous not only to hand him that one document but to make photocopies for us and then hand him the document with all of our personal feedback if that's what we choose i just went clear again yeah or um during i mean i think i know we have

227to decide on one score one com like comment sheet but i don't know why we also couldn't as we all go around share our own individual comments with him at the moment just and he can you know it may not my comment may not be on there but at least he'd have the opportunity to reflect on it and it may be one of the comments on there officially okay so i stepped away is there a motion on the table not yet i would like to make a motion to approve the superintendent's 2021 through 2022 goals objectives and evaluation plan second seconded by ms grant motion passes thank you madam president if i could just do comment i would like to thank the board for all your work over the last month of meetings and even

228before that i appreciate your attention to this two study sessions thank you all right item i one request for future agenda items is there going to be a discussion on class sizes for maybe the next iga agreement for our public comment this evening madam madame president chaffin are you requesting that that be at this point we would leave it up to each of the employee groups to bring their priorities to the iba process um administration can certainly bring that item to the iba process as an interest for uh for consideration yes please miss grant did you have something you know okay sure i hope we adjourn this meeting second there it is motion passes meaning is adjourned