001at this time i'd like to call the meeting of the dysart unified school district to order let the record reflect that all members are present and we'll go ahead and rise for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands god indivisible with liberty and justice for all our first item is recognitions and celebrations dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet we are so happy to once again have student performers back in our governing board meetings and dr dean will introduce our presenters for this evening good evening madam president members of the governing board dr kellis and members of cabinet this evening we are pleased to provide the valley vista high school monsoon
002marching band under the direction of mr andrew torbert and tonight they will play the first movement in their show along with the ever popular valley vista high school marching band fight song so drum major is your band ready you may take the field [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey [Music] so [Music] well madam president for only being in school for less than two weeks this is extraordinary performance i know they had a very busy summer with lots of hard work as well but uh thank you all we appreciate you and wish you the very best of the year ahead of you [Applause] all right mr torbert if i could just ask you a few questions at least one question um i know that behind every um performance there's a story if
003you could just share or maybe have one of your students share a little bit about the the story with this music sure absolutely thank you um so the story behind this um or like our show this year carry on um it's about like overcoming the grief of like a lost loved one thank you very much excellent performance [Applause] we have a few more recognitions i'll turn it over to dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet mr ken hicks will introduce this next item good evening madam president members of the board superintendent dr kellis colleagues and community members i am very happy to be here tonight to present our two financial awards dysarts received from the gfoa the government finance officers association the certificate of achievement for excellence in
004financial reporting and the asbo international certificate of excellence in financial reporting so first i would like to thank miss meridel spidel um and miss francie well bauman for their efforts and for their teams continued efforts it requires the entity to publish a comprehensive annual financial report to post it on our website as well as additional work that's done during our audit testing and so i appreciate all their hard work and their team's efforts to our continued commitment to our financial transparency so good job to them and thank you very much [Applause] thank you for our third item we are so pleased that not only is his department excelling and receiving numerous awards for their financial prowess but also their leader mr ken hicks assistant superintendent for business services recently received the prestigious bill lovett memorial
005award at the annual arizona association of school business officials conference the award is given annually to an outstanding member of his for his or her contribution to the organization recipients are nominated in writing by the membership and voted on by the aspaa sbo asbo board of directors the nominee must be a hall of fame quality demonstrating longevity exhibiting dedication and service to asbo over the years so essentially mr hicks is man of the year for all of the business officials throughout arizona and we're so pleased i am no doubt that he could take the national award i don't know if they have a national award but we like to invite mr hicks to come forward like to invite the board to come down and we're going to take a quick picture oh wow yes i
006understand your life [Applause] next we have audience with individuals we do have three this evening okay i'll go ahead and read the statement this is a time for the public to comment members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda pursuant 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 decision or 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 group addressing the board when you approach the podium please state your name for the record and first we have gail riggs hi i'm gail riggs i'm
007a grandparent with children in the dysart district and i'm here representing my grandchildren other families and my daughter she had surgery this morning couldn't make it i have folders right here so i won't have to go into it with you but it has to do with transportation how if you live a certain mileage you guys are going by radio the thing is you need a jet pack and the walk is way too long for the littles to go to el mirage elementary they split the schools up and the boundaries are different so we're trying to find a way to get transportation to our side no crossing guards no buses you're walking by child sex offenders homes or places of residence some pretty shady places it's for the safety of the child all families have different
008situations we always can't walk our children there or drive them there are 35 children 35 children their families are going through the same thing we are right now so i just have this to hand out and you guys can look at it because i know it's not on your agenda but please please take notice for the safety of the children there's only k through four they're too little to be walking alone the groups are too far so thank you dr kels will you follow up with this place um i'm president miss soy singapore yes would you be able to follow up with the board as well on that just the outcome uh madam president miss pritchard absolutely um thank you can we also have someone follow up with this lady in the audience thank you
009okay next we have soraya warren my name is sharaya warren um i'm speaking as a concerned parent as well as a worried educator am i supposed to start yeah there's no timer according to npr nearly 94 000 children got coveted just last week children are accounting for 15 percent of all new cases in arizona for the month of july mind you this is prior to schools reopening arizona has the second highest death rate for covet among children in the nation we are now in month 18 of this pandemic yet the dysart unified school district is acting as if the virus has been eradicated and the threat of infection is no longer a concern while i understand the official limitations that the governor and state have placed on the board in regards to mandates it's worth
010reminding anyone hearing this that it is the legal obligation of the school board as well as all educators to take appropriate action to ensure the safety of students according to medical professionals including the cdc anyone in a k-12 setting should wear a mask wearing a mask is not as dr kellis referred to it in an email exchange today a political or personal opinion it is a proven deterrent to contracting a deadly disease as a supported by data and accepted worldwide as best practice i would also like to remind the board and superintendent that the mass mandate law from the governor does not go into effect until late september my daughter is a kindergartner at one of the k-4 schools in the district and is one of only a few students in her class wearing a
011mess daily not a single student on her campus is eligible to be vaccinated in addition to this when we've been on campus we've seen a large number of staff unmasked it is day seven of the school year and we have already received our first exposure letter from her school the letter ends with thank you for partnering partnering with us to ensure the health and safety of our campus what exactly are you doing to protect these kids and staff doing what is right and scientifically proven to protect children should be the sole focus of the board and superintendent even if the board is unwilling to stand up to the governor i ask that you at a minimum request your staff request your staff to mask up around students especially those unable to get vaccinated in the
012end you have to ask yourself if you are doing the right thing for kids and i have the letter that was sent home that says my kid has now been exposed she's five thank you modern president we have one more person that is going to speak to an agenda item so that will be all for okay thank you all right we do not have a student update tonight so we'll move over to superintendent update thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet well school has started we are off and running and there's a lot of energy out in the schools and that's exciting to see um a year ago we at this time we didn't have any students in our schools and it's just great to see the the vibrance and
013the enthusiasm that's happening in the hallways once again there are some things we're still working on we're working out some of the bugs with transportation with phones with staffing some of the air conditioning but those are things that uh that we are working through and we look forward to providing an extraordinary experience for every student and that's all i have to report this evening thank you moving to governing board update any updates i would like to echo dr kellis's comments about school getting started and everybody hustling and bustling to get things moving for a brand new school year for the teachers staff students every single person that is tied in with dysart i also like to say that i attended the new teacher orientation that was over the vista it was great to see teachers
014that had come in uh brand new to the district that had i think somebody had come all the way from alaska if i'm not mistaken so coming in from across the country um all the way over to dysart and uh yes there's not much snow here but i'm sure she'll miss that so um welcome back thank you i also attended the new teacher orientation and by the way alaska was not the furthest it was italy we had somebody come here to teach and she was prior to that living in italy so that's right she won the award um i just want to say how much fun it was to listen to the valley vista marching band and kudos to the flag throwers i'm not exactly sure what their regard color guard anyway they did a
015really good job considering they were trying to twirl and throw in very cramped quarters but it was exciting to see students again okay just like to echo the other comments just really happy to welcome everyone back and see so many um old and new faces um i know we've had some some bugs you know we always do what seems like the first week but um very happy that everything has for the most part run really smoothly um considering you know that we weren't in person last year it's a definitely an exciting time so welcome back thank you all right um next we have consent agendas items i'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda items as presented second you got it i didn't get it i had to refresh why does mine say change
016vote that's weird i don't know okay motion passes okay next we have information item g1 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet this evening we are beginning our annual review of board policies and this being our first meeting of the year we will be starting with section one and dr croto will introduce this item thank you dr kellis madam president members of the board cabinet and guests tonight we bring you section one as dr kellis has outlined uh in reviewing section one the policy we have no uh recommendations for any changes in section one just as a reminder madam president that this is um a process that we will go through where there are two readings and this will be brought forward again in two weeks for actual
017approval this is just the first read if there are any changes or requests by the board on this item then those will be reflected in the next meeting okay i would just um recommend that we i know this is an official motion because we're not taking action but table this and the event and the meaning of not even schedule it for the next upcoming meeting because we are still in the process of developing our goals so perhaps bringing it back once the board workshops are done and we've established the goal since this is a an item specifically approving goals i would agree even though we're not officially voting right just so you don't have to go as far as bringing it back next time for action i don't know that we would have our goals
018established since we're just meeting next week on it okay any other comments okay moving on to item g2 exceptional student services dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet this year we will be inviting departments and schools to provide a report to each of at each of our governing board meetings starting off this year is our exceptional student services with dr corey montana and we'll turn the time over to you great thank you good evening uh president densmore dr kellis members of the board and cabinet i am dr cory montano and i have the pleasure of serving dysart as the ex director of exceptional student services i am about to begin or i guess i have begun my second year here uh so new to you guys uh we
019are going to start talking if it works just a little bit about who we are and what we do just to kind of paint a broad picture so we are a department that serves students who require special education services we also support our sites with 504 plans so students who have a disability and require accommodations we also have preschool that falls under our department and then the health office so it's a rather large department and we are involved in a lot of different things we also [Music] base our count our special education count on one day every year and it's october 1st it's our october 1st census so i just was showing you last year we had about three well we had exactly 3826 students on that date that received special education services this year
020we're sitting at about 3 600 right now but we do in we anticipate that we should get to a similar number as preschoolers kind of roll in throughout the year and that increases so we are not dropping in students and we do provide a range of services for students so we provide students in the general education setting all the way up to some very restrictive settings depending on their needs but we do it in their least restrictive environment over the past year we had some opportunities or what some might say are challenges so we just thought we'd review a little bit the obvious is covid with kovid everybody had to adapt and adjust and for our students who had special education services it was no different so we had the opportunity to create and then
021implement some new procedures and processes to ensure that our students were able to access their learning in different learning environments and to provide the most opportunity to have choice for parents so that was one big thing that we were able to work as a team and accomplish another thing that we just had to work with is continue to moving our our students forward so while the world was dealing with the pandemic we wanted to make sure that our learners were getting exactly what they needed so we really had to consider the individual needs and really nothing was put on hold so idea that regulation that really governs us timelines were not put on pause we still need to do evaluations in a 60-day timeline etc so we had the opportunity to continue to move our
022staff and students forward regardless of what the situation was there another challenge was with new leadership often comes uh kind of turnover and we were uh definitely experienced that so of the five administrators myself included three of us were new to our positions and then our support roles of uh specialists who serve like coaches so kind of like curriculum and instructions teaching and learning specialists 50 of our team was new so we were learning to be a team together we did retain everyone so i'm happy to say we are a hundred percent back together so that was uh definitely a growing opportunity uh also just staffing we all know that arizona has some staffing shortages and special education certainly uh is did not escape that so all of last year we really worked hard to
023ensure that we had staff that were good for kids that had the right qualifications and we did work with some contract agencies to ensure that the needs of students were met so that classrooms were with the appropriate teachers that we had paraprofessionals that were there to support the students and their needs as well lastly for challenges that we overcame i'd say last year was creating opportunities for all of our staff to receive the professional development opportunities that they needed we are like i said a very large department and we were unable to meet in large groups and so we had to create a different way to ensure that everybody was getting the message getting the information and getting the professional development that they needed to move forward so we adapted and we were able to
024do lots of webinar-based things on-site and just smaller group professional development over this past year we also had lots of celebrations so we were able to successfully navigate all of the additional processes and and things that we had to put in place for covid including the legal aspects so we as i described our timelines didn't stop we met our timelines we were able to evaluate some um parents chose to kind of press the pause button and restart this year and that was fine um our health office staff stepped up and really took on more responsibility than they ever had to before so the hsas the nurses uh completed and participated in thousands of contact tracing lots of phone calls and um we also successfully had a large pod vaccination event that served the community additionally
025we had really a i think it was the largest summer school that we've ever had in dysart so there was if not on the only sites that didn't have it it was at a sister site just due to the moves of k-8 and middle schools and we had a record number of students participating in that who received special education services we were also required by the federal and state government to consider what we termed as covid circumstance recovery services so these are services that we provided based on the student's iep what we felt was needed to help the student get to where they would have been had they been in person for the spring of 2020 and then the first couple weeks of the fall semester the following year so it was a great opportunity
026for us to provide that service to students and families moving forward into this year we have significantly increased our we have decreased the number of related service providers who we have um through a contract agency and increased the number that have become dysart employees so it's always best to have dice our employees and not have them through a contract agency so this was a big win for us that's best for our students we were also able to increase the number of behavior supports that we have available to sites so we increased the number of behavior technicians from 12 to 20. these are folks who are trained at a higher level to help work with students who have more significant behaviors and they're able to be a little bit more itinerant so we kind of deploy
027them from a district level as needed they go and they assist for four to six weeks and we are able to provide what students need to be successful in the classroom as we move forward this year we're really focusing on instruction most especially especially design instruction what is that is what is unique to special education students who are in special education require specially designed instruction to help the students gain the skills that will help them be successful uh to access their academics in order to do that we're also increasing the amount of time that we're spending in the classroom so doing walk-throughs to make sure that what's what we want to be happening is and providing coaching and support to the teachers we are also looking at increased instructional resources so we are doing a
028very broad and then detailed look at what strategies tools and curricula do we have to to supplement the curriculum so that we are able to increase our student outcomes particularly those who require additional opportunities to to sorry so alternate curriculum so students get the core content and the curriculum that they need but they also sometimes need the supplemental curriculum so we're really doing an analysis and taking a look at what's in place is it effective is it evidence-based and then moving forward to ensure that we have that another area is that goes kind of hand-in-hand with that okay if we have the things do the teachers know how to utilize them and are we doing it with fidelity so we'll be focusing on targeted professional development we've increased the number of site-based professional developments so
029we will have the monday afternoons but then also we do short targeted ones twice a month that will be more effective as we are able to cater a little bit to the site needs and lastly is just support in general so one of the things that i know is that all of our classrooms and campuses have different needs and so we're looking at leveraging kind of the other items above the resources the professional develop et cetera to make sure that we're giving our staff and students what they need to be successful so we're not only just looking within ourselves but we're and just the west valley or arizona but we're also looking at nationally what's going on what are the best practices and how can we bring them to dice art to move them forward
030with that i'll leave an opportunity for questions thank you very much for the press presentation um i i don't have any questions um you were pretty thorough thank you i had a quick question so super excited to hear um that we've increased our behavior texts from 12 to 20. and um very thankful that we have them i know for a while we are our staff our regular parents that were in the classroom that didn't necessarily have the training we're getting hurt and you know we want to keep our children safe so i'm so thankful that we were able to increase it by that amount um just curious though is there a process for adding those behavior texts into the classrooms or are do we proactively assign one to like the level c classrooms or resource
031rooms or preschools or what does that look like now that we actually have our specialized people yeah thank you for the question uh president and more dr kellis members of the board and cabinet we the idea behind the behavior text is that it's student specific and so as we understand that there are students have more significant behaviors if it's not able to be managed by the classroom staff whether it be in a specialized program or perhaps even in a general education setting then we're able to deploy them and so that's one of the things that we're looking at as a level of support so we do want to utilize the staff that's on the campus first and then work with the behavior coaches who are on the on the campus to help support it and
032then we work within um each quad is what we call them so we kind of have different groups and we are able to send them out as needed oftentimes it's to help implement a behavior intervention plan it might be to train a paraprofessional on how to implement it it could be short time to do that or it could be four to six weeks to really understand if the student is getting what they need if the behavior interventional plan will work or if perhaps they need a more restrictive environment and that's what i recall it sometimes it requires like six weeks of data in order to get some movement in that direction so in the meantime are we um are we providing any training to the paris at the school site so while they're waiting to
033see whether or not a student would benefit from having some extra behavior support those staff members are properly trained in how to intervene with the student who is aggressive or and not just to protect the the staff but the students as well i mean that student whether they're doing this as a matter of trying to communicate and just need to learn new ways or because it's aggressive or it's just behavior issue i mean in the meantime we still have the setting of the kids and the the staff that have to kind of hang in there for four to six weeks while the data is collected so are we providing any any professional development to those paras that aren't necessarily ess pera's or behavior types yes so all of the paraprofessionals are ess paraprofessional site-based or
034program based they have ongoing kind of tier one training on mondays so that's become more formalized but then we will also do specif specific ones so if we have a student with specific behaviors and a plan then we'll work with that individual our behavior coaches and analysts participate in supporting that do we have our paras nci train do we still do that yes so we have opportunities for them to learn de-escalation strategies as well as physical management techniques if it comes down to the imminent danger and safety of self for others now is that mandatory training for those positions or is that still optional um it depends on the position so we do have it more in our specialized programs it becomes something that is more of a requirement it's it's kind of necessary for
035their job but then there are some where if they're not necessarily working with students that require that at the beginning it might not be but then we might recommend it as we learn if the student needs the need i see thank you so much for your information you're watching it thank you so dr montano good to see you again my question has to do with professional development so i know you were talking about targeted pd twice monthly and i know we have some teachers that are contracted you do have those teachers attend the professional development correct 100 all teachers staff that work with our students they get the same training so we if they're going to be working with our students we want them to have that knowledge good okay and um regarding summer school
036how happy are you with summer school and how it went yeah i have nothing to compare it to it was a massive endeavor and i'm quite happy with the services that were provided to students so i was less involved with what it looked like in classrooms for the general content area but we actually did have a large number of providers so special education teachers related service providers who wanted to work this summer and provide this opportunity to students so based on what i saw the data coming in in terms of the progress monitoring that they did over the summer i am actually quite happy these were this was an opportunity for students to come and get more because they did get it even when they weren't in person it just is different for some students
037and they weren't able to access it in the same way so if you can think of a kindergartener who requires some um especially design instruction and reading it's much different to do that um when they're when you're wrong than when you're in person so this was that opportunity to catch up so i'm quite proud of the work that was done awesome okay thank you thank you very much for the presentation thank you next we have a summer school update dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet as was just talked about we had a big summer school program happening this year and dr pulling will provide the board with an update good evening madam president members of the board dr kellis cabinet and community um to piggyback off dr
038montano said in answering missouri sink bills we were very excited and proud of the work done with summer school it was a tremendous undertaking to invite every student to summer school and we knew that students had learning needs that were missed due to kovid and it was exciting that as you see the attachment over 3 300 students took the opportunity to come to summer school and it was awesome it was really neat walking through classrooms we really emphasized direct teaching instruction and learning kids with pencils in their hands so we we wrote curriculum particular k8 with no technology and except for the pre-post test and it was really exciting that there's just some great teaching and learning going on we did have summer school in june and july and this is the first time in
039my memory that we've done two months of summer school and um and really was a tremendous success we did see a big drop off in july and so next year we're thinking about possibly just doing june because that was the biggest turnout and i would like to thank the board we um were able to staff it and thanks to the board for for approving the staffing and pay structures for summer school we had lots of support and i know that staff appreciated the pay it was a bump compared to normal summer school pay and it was exciting as court as dr montano said we invited every ess student and we knew that and there were some needs there and so it was awesome to see that as well we also gave our growing our aspiring
040leaders our aspiring principals some leadership opportunities we posted summer school admin jobs and we had lots of applications from like tls's maybe department chairs and i'd say most of our summer schools were run by someone other than an assistant principal and so that was a great leadership opportunity for our staff we are still crunching numbers on achievement data some early information is that some big successes in k3 reading each grade grew and also that students were furthest behind made the most gains and so that's pretty exciting as i'm really trying to catch those students up with reading again we're still compiling data but right now first grade had a nine percent gain second grade 15 percent third grade 17 percent and overall district-wide in math um in k-8 58 average on the exit exam ela
04151 average exam we are going to correlate those to benchmark scores so we can really see if there's a close in the learning gap so that information is still forthcoming will be sent to the board as well as the number total number of high school credits earned we had both um in classroom and high school for high school summer school so tremendous success i really appreciate the staff and all their hard work and dedication they really made it happen and it was truly a story of if if you build it they will come and they came this year so much success and look forward to planning for next year so with that i'll take any questions okay um just kidding is there do you know why high school like 10th grade started at 613 and
042ended at and 9th grade we had 490 sign up and only 279 completed did they did did all 400 like in 9th grade 490 they sign up and then they just never came or did they start and drop out or is it a mix madam president miss grant the answer to your question is it's a mix there were students who enrolled in summer school that did not attend additionally i would remind that um during summer school we were still quarantining students and we did have a few instances where a student may have tested positive in the classroom and then there were some students that were quarantined as well but it's really a mix of students signed up and did not attend or throughout the course of the summer school period they chose not to attend
043any further we did have a requirement that a student did miss two days of of the 15 day session that they would not be able to receive credit for that course as well and so we may have had some students and i'm theorizing but we may have had some students who fell into that model as well okay thank you just to clarify just do these totals do the does that include high school summer school or is this only in person it includes both um our system compiled the numbers because um just to make a little clear because we also had students who were in in person and taking high school so it was a little tricky to count but this does include both okay it says unduplicated so i appreciate that thank you however i
044would add one last piece and that is that our initial data indicates that those students who attended face to face had the highest completion rate at the high school level than compared to the high school piece so hopefully you know as we look forward to the future you know we would deem this summer school session as a success as dr montano and dr polling have stated and look forward to continuing opportunities as well thank you okay moving to item g4 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board members of cabinet last spring administration presented the board with some information about social emotional opportunities and based on board member request we're coming back again to provide an update before dr dean begins his presentation i believe we have a public comment yes we do
045have one person requesting to speak i'll go ahead and reread 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 result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling matter for further consideration and a 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 group addressing the board when you approach the podium please state your name for the record and tonight we have miss amy houston i'm usually loud so i don't need a mic but my name's amy houstead
046i'm a dice art parent been a dysart parent since 2004 have graduated valley vista and now i have a senior at shadow ridge madam president madam members of the board superintendent kellis i'm here this evening to follow up on the emails i've sent regarding the stride advisory period that was attached to all shadow ridge students monday schedules i appreciate the three members of the board as well as principal hawkins that took the time to respond to a voting constituent a taxpayer but more importantly a dysart parent i find it unnerving the district superintendent the two remaining board members couldn't come down from thirty thousand feet to actually see what's happening at your schools or concern yourself with the parent concerns regarding their child's education path my guess is the board was either misinformed or not
047given all the information regarding this programming within the district in light of the controversy surrounding the curriculum and its framework that ties right into culturally responsible teaching also known as crt i received a prince received from principal hawkins the definition of stride which is stallion time to remediate intervene develop and enrich and that sounds amazing allow the kids to catch up share some important information work on whatever college or career goals they may have with guidance however these advisory periods were also set to include social emotional health support and activities that is a direct quote from a math teacher that would be leading seniors during her period a band teacher said he intends to spend some time on school culture again a quote i asked would you go to a podiatrist for dental work i
048think not so why are we placing our kids social emotional health in the hands of someone unqualified to tackle that another quote from one of those teachers is overall srhs is supporting student success through high expectations opportunities meaningful relationships and empowerment there are some catchphrases so that leads me to this i i printed up framework for crt and social emotional learning and how it's tied together and some of the catch phrases and the terms used are recognition influence groundedness self-confidence optimism empathy inclusiveness connection those are the exact words used in these emails from the teachers and from mr hawkins those are the exact words used in the social workers videos that they posted up for dysart school district and the sel program that was began six months ago exact words look at the videos i'll
049give you the the paperwork that shows the exact words so crt and sel overlap each other so i'll give you another quote let's be clear critical race theory is not taught in elementary schools or high schools it's a method of examination taught in law school that helps examine if systemic racism exists randy weingarten the head of the american federation of teachers said that let me be clear randy weingarten is a liar she's a bold-faced liar dysart is teaching sel which is based on the crt framework i have just shown you that i'm going to guess this is why no parent was told with more than 24 hours notice that this advisory period was going to be on our kids schedule if the district is being so blatantly opaque regarding this and assuming parents are simply
050too dumb to put it together what else are you doing so i'm going to listen closely to this informational session tonight because i can't wait to see how we try to squirm out of this shame on you we look to educate we look to you to educate our kids not mold and construct them to your utopian society when you are so extraordinarily failing according to mcc college readiness data to your first responsibility i'm going to suggest you reassess your goals recognize your own biases and stop forcing them on the kids that are not yours thank you thank you and that's all we have for tonight and with that we'll move on to dr dean good evening madam president members of the governing board dr kellis members of cabinet and members of the community this evening
051we are pleased to provide the board um an update or information on social emotional opportunities for students as dr kalas mentioned we did provide information in the spring as well and so we bring this forward or bring us back for information this evening and i'm sorry i'm sure that it's user error on my end but i can't let's see if that works i turning it on makes a big difference so the first thing we'd like to make sure that we um explicitly explain is what social emotional support is and what it is not first of all we'd like to indicate that social emotional support in our school system prepares students for success in the school setting and we do that by teaching responsible school problem solving and i apologize for reading the slides but i
052believe it's important to do so for context teaching how to foster productive relationships we've done this in past decades of social emotional supports for students through programs such as rachel's challenge and character counts additionally it's it's found in some of our discipline structures through pbis emotional support is teaching goal setting and management how to interact in a school environment and it's teaching coping and regulation strategies that allow students to be successful both academically and socially in the school setting we also want to make sure that we highlight what social emotional support in the district is not our social emotional support is not critical race theory we do not teach critical race theory in our school system we stated that multiple times dr kellis has recently written an editorial and surprise independent in that we do
053not teach critical race theory or cultural relations theory in our school district social more social emotional support does not teach that one race gender or ethnic group is superior it does not teach that one race gender or ethnic group is oppressive it is not moral education it is not sex education in any shape or form including gender education it is not any part of that it is not a vehicle to teach social justice and it is not a vehicle to teach about power and privilege so we just wanted to provide a little bit of context to the governing board and to our community as to what social emotional support in the dysart school district is and what it is not and with that i'm going to ask both ms winterstein and dr assai to assist
054in the next few slides as well to provide some information to the board in our community as well and we'll start with supporting students with social emotional opportunities and that begins with our social workers mrs winterstein good evening madam president and board members our social workers excuse me support students families and staff in a variety of ways within the context of a school setting and that school environment and always with the goal to support student academic achievement whole group lessons take place to support school-wide expectations such as being respectful responsible and cooperative many of our schools that utilize pbis or just have cultural expectations they explain and have an opportunity to model what it looks and sounds like during the day during different times and in different locations they can reinforce certain skills that may
055be necessary for the class or a grade level beginning of the year topics might include sharing taking turns how to be a friend and even the differences between mean behavior peer conflict and bullying many whole group lessons vary depending on the needs of the classroom as a whole a social worker recently did a class lesson about the specific health needs of a student in the classroom the parent and student were there and explained some background about the condition and then the social worker was able to help the students process about what they can do and to support a student during specific times and then also what they shouldn't do and then the reasoning why the students were relieved to understand what was going on with that student and felt more comfortable in knowing how to
056handle future situations that may arise small groups may be formed to address specific needs of course with parent permission such as grief or loss anger management focus and work completion there's a variety of different skills that that may be needed these are usually very short in duration and frequency and often happen during times such as like a lunch bunch it provides students an opportunity to practice those skills in a smaller setting they can also be used as a diversion for risky behaviors in middle school and high school social workers also support students by participating in the threat management team the multi-tiered systems of support they are part of our crisis response team at a district level when there is a student death or loss they also are integral in re-entry plans re-entry plans take place
057when a student may return from suspension or when they might have had a medical condition where they were absent for school or if they received inpatient treatment at a facility or hospital they also provide weekend meals and provisions uh through our heart pan food pantry at all of our schools and they of course connect our families with necessary outside resources individual supporter check-ins may happen usually based on a recommendation from a teacher or a parent or an administrator and those also take place with parent permission it can be a result of a threat assessment or a suicide self-injury screener they can be for safety plans for either an offender or a victim and there are numerous other reasons why they would there would be those types of quick check-ins these are usually very um they
058don't take a lot of time they're uh done in transitions uh that happen naturally during the day and of course with the goal to always um help students uh remain successfully uh successful both academically and socially and i'm going to turn it over to dr sai and dr sai is going to talk about the advisory period that currently some of our high schools have nicknames for storm watches used valley vista for the term advisory stride is is the acronym used at shadow ridge i believe willow canyon is calling it advisory and desert high school is calling it advisory um so dr sai will will provide some more information as to what the purpose of advisory is and what happens during that period good evening dr kellis president dinsmore and members of the board um two
059years ago when we looked at our high school data we realized that we are definitely not where we want to be and we looked at our elementary models that embed intervention enrichment during the school day and we ask that our high schools start to form a plan to do that valley vista was the first last year with our implementation of stormwatch willow canyon quickly got on board and said you know what we looked at our surveys and not every kid is telling us they have connections with somebody on this campus so we want to put in an advisory period if you look at the research from breaking drinks 2 which is older and talks about school improvement in high schools if you look at the cognia framework it recommends that all students have an adult
060advocate on campus that they meet with some of our high schools have chosen to do this by meeting once a week at valley it's more ingrained during the school day after second period there's a list that you see of activities that should occur during this advisory period whatever the name is definitely academic intervention and enrichment they also use it for class meetings my daughter happens to be a senior at valley she was able to attend a class meeting the other day on a senior checkout when it was placed in at lunchtime not all seniors were on campus to do this it could be used for college career preparations we use a program called major clarity that helps kids identify a pathway and a four-year plan it could be used to teach things about citizenship and
061being a good student communication skills organization skills and study skills and that is basically the purpose of advisory on any high school campus and although maybe name something different or look different that is our main purpose and as we conclude the presentation this evening i'd like to draw the board's attention back to the previous slide and that is that with our social workers when they work with small group um groups of students and um individual support and check-ins that does require parents to opt in in order for students to participate so they don't just go grab kids out of class and create those small groups or check in with them it does require our parents to opt in for them to be able to be a part of that and the last thing that i
062would state is i just would reiterate that again the dysart unified school district does not teach critical race theory does not teach cultural race theory does not teach about privilege or bias and we stated that publicly multiple times should parents encounter concerns related to that we would ask them to contact their school administration so that they can look into the concern further and i'll be happy to take any questions dr dean the area that dr assad was talking about major clarity can you give me a little bit more information on that kim madam president member sawyer stingfield major clarity is the program that we use for ecaps for our students um where they plan their high school journey um and we've started that um i believe mr greasable in the audience last year thank you
063and we we we are pushing that down as far as seventh grade where students plan begin to plan out their course of high school and when i say plan out their course of high school looking at areas in which they may have an interest cte areas specifically and then that puts them on a path and assists with the guidance counselor in scheduling classes for them when they get to high school to move along on that path as well so with all of the areas that you're talking about up here the class meetings the communication skills study skills is it a possibility that because we have labeled it as update on social emotional opportunities that it could be construed as all the other things that are out there it's an excellent question i i would argue
064that advisory may not fit in the social emotional conversation as it relates to a normal piece for the purpose of this evening we put the two together for this presentation but advisory is is something that's been around for a very long time with high schools specifically it provides opportunities for students to have an adult on campus that they check in with regularly it provides an opportunity for students and that teacher slash advisor to be able to check in on their grades the progress how things are going should there be a school-wide effort on some something such as note-taking that's where that would be taught in terms of how to you know teaching students how to successfully take note note-taking um some of the things that we are doing with seniors with advisory um dr sai
065mentioned in the senior or in the advisory they had their senior class meetings um they've already gone through what senior checkout will look like students will be taught about how to apply for scholarships how to apply to colleges what the fafsa is and why it's it's very important for them to fill that out because in order to receive any financial aid to a college you have to submit a fafsa so those are pieces that will be shared in advisory graduation activities will be shared in advisory all of those types of things those are advisory pieces that we that we would see in our schools and again should parents have concerns about anything a teacher may post or something that may happen in an advisory period we would ask them to please contact the school administration
066right away thank you i have a couple questions um pertaining to what was presented and then just um from what miss houstad had articulated tonight in regard to um i guess where there's some concern i actually took the time to watch our social work videos a few of them and the one that stood out and i'm thinking that this might be where some of the concern is coming from and this is an exact quote but with something to the effect of um teaching students to be sensitive to diverse cultures and i think that in and of itself that can sound like just just being sensitive to others but i think in this climate right now um saying that is you know what does that mean really that could sound very much like crt and so
067i i'm glad you kind of outlined what our social workers roles are because certainly we don't want to be calling something scl knowing full well what we mean by it but then really when it rolls out it's sounding something more like crt or it is crt i mean i unfortunately have a a broken finger and a missed piano recital to prove that we don't play dodgeball and dysart we play football so i don't want this to be a we don't do crt and dysart it's sel but really some of the things that are happening um are more aligned with with crt possibly and even if we know what our curriculum is um or how we're using this particular hour it sounds like through different emails and what's being said out there that um parents are
068feeling a little uncomfortable with it so so somewhere it's either being just miscommunicated or misinterpreted or something so i think we have to at least acknowledge or be sensitive to that piece of it and so perhaps looking at the videos that are out there on our website go ahead madam president pritchard thank you very much that's an excellent comment that you made and i think as educators we very casually use social emotional learning in a lot of things that we do and now having a greater appreciation for the the um interpretation of what that means in certain populations we need to be more careful in the language that we use just to give an example of the video that you referenced and that that little clip that you you made reference to i go out
069and i visit student leadership groups at all the high schools about three or four times a year one of the things that i emphasize every time i go is to lead with empathy so i'm not trying to counsel them into being social examples but if they're planning a school dance how do they know what the interest of the population is that they are serving if they don't have some understanding we call it walking in somebody else's shoes but if they're planning a pep assembly they want to be the most successful pep assembly so they need to have their finger on the pulse of their school to know how to best plan those spirit days or those pep assemblies or those dances or homecomings so that they are most successful and appeal to the the greatest
070population of students so while i'm saying lead with empathy i'm not and i'm not trying to direct them into crt i'm encouraging them to develop leadership skills on developing an understanding of what the needs and interests of the school are yeah i don't think it was so much the empathy comment i think it was more the sensitive to diverse cultures come i think that because i understand what you're saying empathy isn't i don't think a word that could be misinterpreted i think it's when you bring in cultures diversity because of the political climate and because of the crt now those words are sometimes synonymous with the other um the communication piece i know with uh and i just would ask that we were mindful of this i would hate to think that it actually did
071roll out 24 hours in advance um i know with my experience with valley vista when it first happened was was stormwatch as a parent we received an email a week in advance it was explained what stormwatch was and it was you had time to you just knew what was coming so i would just say in any of our schools however they're labeling this advisory time and it might just be better to call an advisor to be honest with you um my opinion um but just communicate it so people have some time to process it with their administrator that being said again just being able to honor each family and parent where they're coming from can if parents feel like you know what i don't want my child meeting with a social worker i don't want
072them discussing value-based ideas um or whatever that particular lesson is can they opt out and are we telling them they can opt out so they know that and president miss pritchard by state law a parent can opt out of any instruction okay and are we having any professional development soon or have we already done it to where we've talked to all of our staff members about this topic and being very mindful of you know not talking about crt-ish things in these sel type of the sel framework do they understand the difference and just ask to probably just stay away from those topics madam president miss pritchard yes and yes and yes we it's something that we have to monitor it's a when you talk about cultures there's a culture in education and sometimes when um
073we talk about um i'm just gonna use the same word again empathy and that as a maybe it's example maybe it's not but if we just take that one as a random term and that becomes part of the culture maybe now we're not calling it empathy anymore we're calling it research so now we need to start stop using the word empathy and start using the word research and i can go tell all the student councils you need to lead with the research but that's a change in in culture of sorts that's something that they've been very accustomed to using that that phraseology and to switch so yes and yes we are needing to make those those changes and yes we are working on that and i think too that to keep in mind that that
074even this conversation i'm sure there's going to be something about it you know at some point that maybe the board is you know they're not for diversity and and supporting differences in people that has nothing to do with it it has to do with we can't every family should have the opportunity to have these discussions at home with their children or their student and um i just don't feel it's our place not that i think not speaking for the whole board but just that this board is against differences or acknowledging differences in people or cultures um but it's just not we have a lot of academic work to do and i i don't know that we need to be take our focus off of that for something that should really be a value a home
075family value based discussion madam president miss pritchard again i i agree with you um arizona's a little bit different than the rest of the country dysart's a little bit different than the rest of the country um a large part of the country has bought into some of the things that that we have not bought into and with that we are finding that more of the textbook publishers are starting to just put because ninety percent ninety percent of the country wants that in their curriculum that they are now including elements of some of the things that have been brought up this evening it has been very very concerning to us and it adds to our responsibility to screen that out and we for example had a a book that was provided to teachers that excellent material
076but there were a couple of units in there that we disagreed with we collected all the books back and we we're not using that book so it is our responsibility to be the screeners the the the watchdogs for any of that type of content we take that job very seriously and if something slips through we know that there are web resources and it's very easy to update a web resource without doing a complete rewrite of a textbook so those are things that we also have to be very vigilant for and we are we're watching for those things as they come up but as dr dean said sometimes a teacher might not use the right word and it upsets a parent and so that's something that we want to know about that the principal of the
077school can have that conversation with the teacher if that concern is raised thank you i appreciate you talking about things at the national level because i think that a lot of families are hearing those things national news about some school district you know teaching anything from comprehensive sex ed to critical race theory and social emotional learning asking kids what their preferred pronouns are that's a big one right now um and i think that this was important uh tonight to have this conversation just again to and thank you dr dean for putting that together and saying what it is and what it is not um i think that that is very critical right now um one one question that i have i know that we've talked about this before dr kellis um but sometimes even within
078our own state um the arizona department of education will sometimes put on different webinars or professional development meetings on zoom and things like that where they suggest certain materials and suggest different supplemental reading materials chapter books for preteens that are in my mind personally my opinion very inappropriate um how does that fit in with with what we do and what we don't do i mean at a district level we can say one thing but at a classroom level how does that work madam president members of the board um i think you kind of answered the question that it works in that we have to be vigilant even with our own state department of education right and the state standards are the state standards and we review them regularly they are approved by the state board
079of education not by the department of education but by the state board of education um there are things i can't even name something i'll just say um in language arts there was something written in there several years ago about recess has nothing to do with recess right and so the district housing at the time we disregarded that recess element because it was not a language arts standard so those are things that yes we will continue to monitor even within our own state and things that come from publishers things that come on the web just as a mother watches what comes into her home we have to watch what comes into the district home and just just a comment um about advisory and thank you miss pritchard for for saying your thoughts on that because as
080a another valley vista mom um storm watch felt a little bit different last year in that it was in a sense part of lunch it was optional and sometimes mandatory for students depending where they on where they were academically my son was a constant required storm watch and um and my daughter got a long lunch out of it so it was great uh so this here is a little bit different in hearing what some other families are experiencing at shadow ridge for instance so that was kind of a surprise to me and i'm sure obviously just some families um and i don't know if we're really taking into consideration you know seniors that maybe expected to get out a little bit early and maybe was maybe they were hoping to work a second job or
081work a job after after school was out so really it's extending like their day at school in a sense too um and then coming back to the curriculum piece if you are a parent and you're if you're one of those helicopter moms and you're really looking over your kid's schedule and you know exactly what they have and then all of a sudden there's an advisory period um you start questioning and then but where is the syllabus with that because it's constantly changing you know i'm not sure how that how that works um for families just generically speaking so i appreciate you putting it together and what the advisory period may be but i think it still puts some questions out there for families we could we could definitely request that our high schools they plan
082for about nine weeks at a time on advisory and we could request some communication on that i also with dr dean's list of what it is and what it isn't right i agree that uh it's great to have that wrapped around because we can come back if something happens and say this clearly defines you know we'll be sharing that with the high schools to make sure you know we all have this information not everybody tunes into the board meeting i know we find it incredible but you know we'll make sure how we'll make sure that that gets out gets out to all of our schools because it clearly defines and then if something is said that's not we can say hey you know let's refer back to this this isn't what it's about but i
083do agree sharing those agendas maybe at a quarter with the families we'll and clarity to that okay and that can give families an opportunity to allow their child to be in that or opt them out if for some reason they don't want to do it okay thank you i have some questions are you done um so it looks like we're using the castle curriculum for our elementary kids are we using that for high school too madam president miss chaffin um castle is the state framework for social emotional pieces um and so that that would fall under um pieces that the state requires us to utilize those five competency areas okay well because what i'm looking at i'm looking at a from the castle website a powerpoint and slide number four it talks about some of
084those keywords that miss houston was concerned about it says sel advances educational equity and excellence through authentic school family community partnerships and then it goes on a little bit down i think uh a little bit further it says seo can help address various forms of inequity and empower young people and adults to co-create thriving schools and contribute to safe healthy and just communities so i feel like those key words that she was talking about the inequity and the empower are what's kind of sounding the alarm for most people how are we guarding against that crossover because the more i look into it the more sel seems like a back door into crt understand and i understand the concern as well i will tell you that to answer your question directly how are we guarding against
085ms winterstein meets with the social workers on a regular basis to discuss aspects of how we approach social emotional supports for students and what we do and what we do not expect and so that is a piece that is addressed there additionally we have as dr keller stated and we continue to work or we continue to communicate out to our folks what um we expect and what we do not expect in terms of critical race theory in terms of the pieces that you're concerned about that may interweave as well miss winterstein has a bit more to add with that as well madam president member jaffen um you use the word sel curriculum dysart does not have curriculum we do uh have used the five competencies that are within the castle framework uh to guide what
086we do um what our social workers do to provide support just like with any resource if you've you've spent some time on the castle website there are literally thousands and thousands of links on that website and multiple multiple resources as educators like dr kellis referenced with a with a textbook um we have to vet those out and so um we have been doing that with our uh social workers and we are really sticking to just what the five competencies are within a school context that is really important because um what we and we've worked since um school left out social workers have the i call it a luxury they may not but um they are on a 222-day calendar so we have a chunk of time at the end after school and they begin july
0876th this year they started july 6th so we have all that front loaded time and because i didn't have principals and assistant principals to work with it during that time my time was solely spent with social workers and that was our topic we went through and vetted what is appropriate what's not and so as a group we had an opportunity become aligned on what our district-wide expectations were as a social worker group so that is a very important process as a principal i did that with my teachers in um the the core content as well what our expectations were um to make sure that as a district we were aligned so we do not have a curriculum we do have some supplemental resources but honestly because the needs of the the schools and the classrooms
088as i mentioned earlier they do vary based on the the needs of the either the school-wide or the classroom or the student that's why it was so important what we agreed what what the support from a social worker could look like and what it doesn't look like so that it it allows for slight variations depending on the the needs of the school classroom or student but the expectations are so solid and in place okay and thank you so much for that would those re are those resources available for parents to view and what would we say to miss houston's concern that some of these words these key words of empowerment influence inclusiveness um equity all of these things being making their way into teachers comments describing this madam president ms chapman let me address the
089second part of your question um and so i think it's important to note that as dr keller stated earlier there are words that perhaps are being redefined from where they have been in the past uh he you he used the example of empathy um i will use the example of empowerment i teach leadership courses often and i share stories of how it was very important it's very important as a leader to empower others to become leaders as well and so i believe it lies within your definition because as as i speak with future leaders when i talk about providing empowering those on a staff to be leaders it's providing them opportunities of leadership and so that is that has been the definition that i have used for empowerment for decades as words are redefined we'll
090need to recalculate how they're utilized in our in our system but the one thing that i can tell this board and the dr kels would certainly let the board know as well is that we're very vigilant in in this in this endeavor we vet we have have been and will continue to vet our resources our curriculum very closely to guard against concerns that have been addressed this evening and it's something that we take very seriously we take it tomorrow we every every thursday following a board meeting we put out a a brief newsletter to our staff called the connect um there's information tomorrow in the connect related to um things that are not expected in the district to re to reinforce um you know the fact that we do not teach crt um there are
091you know there are components that we do not expect and so you know i believe part of this conversation um is um you know has to focus back on on the redefinition of words um and you know how we view and how we utilize them um in the course of what we do within a school setting and every aspect that we've provided this evening relates to the school setting in no way are we trying to work through aspects to provide moral education or to teach values to folks outside of a school setting the intent of our social op emotional opportunities in our setting is how to be successful within the school day you know how to take care of problems as they arise how to be a better student how to study better those are
092are the pieces that we look to to move forward with so that's the answer to the second part of your question um and i'll turn to dr pulling or miss winderstein for the answer to the first part of the question in terms of where are those resource guides and please note we do not have a binder we don't have a book it's truly the our social workers are very skilled at facilitating conversations that is 99 of what they do is identify a need and they talk through what what that classroom needs what that student needs what that small group needs we don't have a binder or a collection of this is what you do with these skills because when when i hear the word empowerment my internal definition is advocacy when you add teaching a
093child to advocate for themselves and stand up for uh like if if someone's on the playground um reinforcing that being responsible respectful and kind courteous whatever the school mantras are so and i think as dr dean said is we need to realign and maybe just re whether it's redefined but if you can give us some of those words that are hot buttons right now then the more we know what is out there on the community then we can inform our our employees that hey instead of using this word like i don't i mean to me advocacy when you're advocating for yourself um or someone else that may not be being treated well i see that as empowerment or a close synonym but if there are words that you want um i mean the more information
094we have um the better equipped we can prepare our staff in in avoiding um certain situations or or questions i don't know if that answers your question i apologize no that's it in a way it does but i also i feel like it's really important for parents to know what's going on in their child's classroom especially with stuff like this i understand that you might not have a set schedule of what you're going to do but anytime a social worker is discussing any of these concepts i mean it might be wise just to go on the website school website later that day and say hey in today's third grade sel this is what we talked about that way parents understand and they're not you know confused with all these different buzzwords because that's a lot
095of those words are going around talking about empowering as far as one race or one gender is better than the other and a lot of people are going to be concerned about those member chap and i'll add them weekly teachers are expected to send email blasts out about what they're covering for the weekend teaching for the weekend um it's our expectation that would be in there and so we'll follow up to make sure and uh double check that piece and then how how much time are we spending on this in our school days uh madame president remember chapman you mentioned an scl time very few of our classrooms if any they don't have an seo block of time most of what is covered or discussed is woven into let's say um you have an ela
096in in in your ela course for the day you might have a book that touches on um a loss or a and then that's when you highlight the empathy piece or the compassion piece um and you make those connections well how would that person feel when that happened to this character and you you you weave it into the content that's where we want to be because um we don't have time to have oh we're going to put things down and we're going to teach seo that is not what happens now are there sometimes when it's planned and the teacher asks the social worker to come in and address certain things yes they do it's usually within the context of a different situation like some of the examples that i gave talking about a situation or
097something that happened and they it's relatable they provide some context um so most of the time it's not a separate chunk of the day or a 15-minute lesson here most of the time it is naturally embedded into the conversations let's say during transitions whether it's a procedure that you want to reinforce or expectations that need to have a reminder okay just a couple more questions thank you how do social workers support that what is the social worker's role in all of that just the everyday classroom are they assisting the teachers and then another question i have is how long do we foresee having the sel programs or the seo framework in our schools is this like a long-term goal that we're thinking or is this just short-term help our students recover from all the mental
098stresses of kovid remember jeff and what i'd like to do is respond to that what social workers are doing during the day as i mentioned social workers are supporting both the students and the staff because we want it to be a natural conversation we also know that our staff members have varying knowledge some are very very great at teaching content and may not have the skill set to know how to naturally weave it into the conversation so they're supporting staff that way they provide professional development they meet with outside providers they are with parent permission providing those diff more small group services they also meet with outside agencies they coordinate that tier three what we call more intensive services for those students who are in need of those services as far as how long sel
099will be i'm gonna defer to dr president miss jeffen um that's a an interesting question how long are we going to teach responsibility how long are we going to teach citizenship how long are we going to teach some of these it's going to be longer than i'll be in education longer than probably this board will be seated it's going to be a long long time we've had character counts we used to have dare the police department we used to have well we still have pbis i'm just trying to think of all the other different things that have addressed this very general theme of topics and that generally will continue indefinitely the specific targeted conversations it could be if if the wind changes this way or that we have to adjust to that and make sure
100that we are sensitive to the needs of the community so there will be those those adjustments along the way but yes generally it'll be for a long time thank you just to touch on what ms winterstein just said for those students that need that tier three i'm going to give an example a student comes in and says that their sister just passed away and they can't quite talk to mom and dad because they are working on funeral arrangements so at that point the student comes in and speaks to the social worker social worker does contact the parent correct in order to get services for that child madam president remember is a big word and i want to preface when i said tier three i meant when the student needs longer term support intensive support what
101you're talking about is that would be that grief support that our social worker can absolutely provide um of course they would reach out to the the parent first collect any information ask what information that the family member would like to to share maybe there's some some topics or some pieces of that unfortunate story that the parent does not want revealed to the student so there's a lot of dynamics and that's why we ask that our social workers reach out to the parent and ask for permission because each situation is unique and to that family um but yes the social worker that's a perfect example of what we call a school crisis situation there is a student in crisis they've experienced a a tragic loss in their family and it would be detrimental on the student's
102part for us to just put them in the classroom and expect them to learn they've got to have some processing time and and um the so the social worker is a safe person uh to have that conversation with our students right because um i don't know what was the makeup of everybody's high school years in this room and whoever's watching but i don't remember having a social worker on campus when uh one of your classmates passed away or mom and dad were getting a divorce so if you went to the guidance counselor the guidance counsel says well i can give you a an application for something i mean it it we didn't have those pieces back then i'm glad we do now or have been for the pa for the past several years but even
103after high school we want the students to be successful and that's why that citizenship that's why the communication skills helping to balance the checkbook there's just so many different pieces whether they're career ready whether they're college ready it's those setting the skills up for after life um whether it is with a death or whether it is with going on during your life but i am back to dr dean's thing i am very glad that we put in what is you said the connect correct on thursdays that uh things that have happened with the district and after the board meeting and i hope that we continue to reiterate that we are not teaching crt that we are not we do not have that piece embedded into any of our classes that's that's a huge issue not
104only within the state of arizona but across this country madam president member sir sink bell we will continue to make the statements and continue to iterate to our staff over and over and um it is as stated previously this board this cabinet is dedicated to being vigilant in this in this conversation and we will continue to repeat that piece over and over thank you one thing miss winterstein um mentioned that's got me thinking as far as what what might be something to consider is that you would say how skilled your social workers are and um that's a wonderful thing but could also be a concern in that even though it's just been a short hot minute since i left graduate school they teach that they teach all these things we're talking about they teach you
105know so a good social worker is going to come out of a graduate program knowing about equity equality socialism like all these things and um i think we just have to make sure that where our roles can be different depending on where you're at and in a school setting just knowing like all those great social working things you might learn in school can't necessarily always be incorporated into this particular job just um just like for those who are clinically licensed your social worker and you work in a school but like there's no way i could sit and have a 50-minute session with a student because that's not my role in that in that job frame even though i may as a social worker be licensed or trained to so same type things these wonderful social
106workers come out of their programs that come to dicer and they do great things but technically a lot of that stuff that they learned in the classroom may not necessarily be able to be transitioned into our programs or our students so i think that piece might help too they might have all these great ideas but depending on how they present them and certain things they just might want to completely omit while they're working here madam president member richard please know that that's why we front loaded with all that information those lines are explicitly and clearly established it was also part of the vetting process for applications we hired eight new social workers this summer so as part of those initial conversations i actually had a script that i read to make sure they clearly understood
107the expectations of a dysart social worker very different than in a therapeutic or clinical setting or even and i made it very clear because several of them were school social workers either in the state or out of the state but every school district has different job descriptions for their so their school social worker so i was crystal clear in what the expectations were for not only the new ones coming on board but for the existing um i'm sorry we have 24 total so for the existing ones that returned thank you for doing that absolutely i knew it was very important um when we designed this social worker program our roles and responsibilities were different than many other surrounding districts from the very beginning and so we wanted to make sure that that was that remained
108consistent thank you okay i just want to clarify one last piece i haven't seen anything like this presented i just want to put anybody's anxieties at ease um in some social emotional learning programs they're sneaking in these classroom surveys as far as data collection like so how many of you your parents have firearms in the homes you know i just want to make sure that we're not doing any of those types of surveys or data collection on our students just to clarify and put everybody's mind at ease madam president miss chaffin that is not occurring um that should not occur and um again that that is not a part of any aspect of of what um is happening with our social workers in their work or what is intended in an advisory as well thank
109you for the question if i could just add to that it's against the law to do that without parent permission and if if it's happening again just like anything please please let us know and we'll stop it thank you i know that we've asked a lot of questions of the social work that we do here in dysart and i just want to make it clear that you know even though we're being very diligent and asking all these questions and and we have a lot of concerns i think that for speaking for myself personally i appreciate that we have social workers i recognize the need for them um i know that i've shared this before but just over five years ago when my children's father passed away um we were in a crisis mode and first
110first one of the first calls i made um was to the school you know excusing them um from their upcoming absences and explaining you know what had happened and looking for resources and while the teachers and the staff i mean really just they went into crisis mode with us and wrapped their arms around us but there were no resources available so for this to to be available to our students and our families that's it's just incredibly important to me so i want to thank our social workers and everyone involved in that process for making that happen but um to everyone else's points though i just think that we just want to make sure that we're not doing things that would conflict with parental um and family values differing family values that we have out there
111so thank you so much for all the updates thank you any other questions okay moving on to item h1 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet dr croto will introduce this item thank you dr kellis madam president members of the board superintendent kellis cabinet guests tonight i bring before you a motion to uh continue our district plan to cover up to 10 paid leave days for any employee who contracts covet 19 and presents a positive kova 19 test result just a little bit of background beginning in april 1 2020 the federal government put together the ffcra the family's first corona virus response act which provided our employees leave time that ran from february excuse me april 1st 2020 through december 31st this governing board then in january went
112ahead and improved what we call the dysart cove leave covent leave which is 10 additional days for any employee that contracted kova 19 and had to spend that quarantine period away and not use their own leave days or in fact some of them didn't have leave days so they would be docked and pay that did sunset on june 30th 2021 and tonight we're asking the governing board to approve a plan once again for covid leave from july 1st 2021 through the whole school year we want to go through june 30th 2022 and that will provide again 10 paid leave days for any employee who presents a positive coveted test result you can see in the bullets there it will be up to 10 paid lead days we do have 10 quarantine days should you present
113us a test not all people need 10 obviously there's weekend involved in that so you're out 10 days there could be holidays in there but we will assure them that they will not have to use their paid leave or their sick days if they get coveted also in bullet two there if the federal government reenacts ffcra that this plan becomes void we will go back to the federal plan the benefit is only available to district employees that bullet says upon their own diagnosis that doesn't mean they're diagnosing the kovid that means that upon themselves it's for theirs so they don't get to diagnose themselves as i have covid they still need a doctor's note um it's but their own it's not for a spouse it's not for a child it's their own diagnosis on that
114they have to present the coveted positive test and the benefit is eligible i mentioned from july 1st 2021 through june 30th and we will reinstate any personal sick days that they need to use up to 10 for a coven 19 test just some numbers for you so you can tell the scope of this in the ffcra by the federal government we had 275 employees use this program that was up to december 31st uh 2020. um the cove would leave that the board reinstated in january 2021 and that was 134 employees that took advantage of the program that you approved from january through june 30th 2021 so again bringing to you a motion ask you to approve the continuation of the plan for this school year for our employees and i'll stand for any questions you
115don't have to stand you can sit thank you okay um question for you dr croto um how would this uh interweave with uh fmla if the person happens to go need to go into fmla fmla would take if they're out for covid reasons uh they would use the covet days and if they need to use the fmla so this would be on top of that this is not considered part of the fmla it would be on top of that so they could use the 10 days and then still have all of their fmla available okay um do we have a we have a donation bank correct we do have a sick bank sick bank and in the event somebody needs instead of 10 days they need 15 days can they borrow from those extra five
116days madam president member sawyers think bell they could if they meet the requirements one of it is they have to donate a sick um day in order to get into the bank so if they are not members of the bank obviously they cannot do that but they can use that sick bank um if they meet the requirements um to do that okay thank you are the 10 days per is that just one per year per incident that is 10 days per year so if they get covered twice then we don't cover that second time that is correct under this plan correct and you had mentioned that this is even these are this is for all employees so even those that maybe used up all their sick or had an accrued sick time they would still
117get the 10 days if they showed a positive coveted correct okay and i think in these hard times it's just reassuring to our employees i know some that are conversations that i've had with employees right now they're very stressed about that they're willing to be back they're glad to be back in the classroom they're excited but it's that anxiety of what happens if i do test positive or and regardless of where you sit with vaccinations or not we know people vaccinations are also contracting it once again so it just gives them that reassurance that we're behind them and we appreciate the efforts they're putting forth for our district are we being um just supportive or mindful of those who let's say get it a second time hopefully that doesn't happen but um if they do
118and let's say they don't have 10 extra days but they have to be out or they're they have a long recovery time are we doing anything to help preserve their job rather than them looking at possibly losing their job madam president uh member pritchard we are we our objective is not to get employees so absolutely we will work with them in any way like i said before it's up to 10 days so sometimes depending on the timing of when they caught it they may only use two or three days out of this 10 and still have some left over so it's a balance of that and we will definitely work with employees our objective is not to lose employees especially in this climate with needing all the employees we can get so definitely look to
119help our employees out any way we can with that i will make a motion to approve the district plan to cover up to 10 days paid leave for any employee who contracts covid19 and presents a positive coven 19 test result for the time period of july 1 2021 through june 30th 2022. second seconded by ms pritchard yes um oh there it is sorry thank you moving to item h2 dr kellos madam president members of the board this is the uh the opportunity that the board has been waiting for for a full year to come together and to identify the um the delegate to represent this board at asba's delegate assembly which is coming up in a about a month and there's also the asba political agenda that you would be sending off with this delegate
120and perhaps a delegate alternate to represent the board when it comes time to to vote at the delegate assembly um mrs brown has prepared for the board a copy of the political agenda draft and if you could take a look at it and if there's anything on there that you feel like you would like to eliminate off of the political agenda mrs brown will take note of that but your opportunity at this time as you look at the motion there are two parts to it one is to motion to appoint somebody to you don't have to appoint anybody you don't have to participate in this but to appoint somebody to represent the dysart school district as the district delegate and somebody else as the alternate and then the next part of the motion um direct
121the district's delegate to support all of or to support um all items or all items except and then eliminate from the list of the draft agenda so madam president i will turn it back over to you to facilitate this conversation thank you thank you very much dr kellis um i will open it up for discussion but uh just before i say one two three not it i would not like to attend this i would not like to be considered to attend this and i was appointed the last couple years so i can take a break as well okay don't want to be a delegate either i got to work this saturday yes i have to work tracy don't you usually go to this anyway yeah i do but shooter jen exist the night before are
122we try are we are we going to draw straws no tracy we could not participate you know that was on the table as well i'm fine with not participating i i think we each district should be there well if that's the case there are a couple things i might want to scratch i don't know how the rest of you guys feel but um so so just to be clear this is not what we have voted on this is what their legislative process went in and drafted correct madam president you are correct earlier last spring the board submitted five items plus i think two others and then those were collected from all over the state from school districts all over the state and they were compiled into this document so some of the things you sent
123may or may not have found a place on this document and so basically we'd just be voting to say to whoever our delegate is please do not support this or please support this correct and president chaffin yes and you can get a testimonial of somebody who has participated as a delegate to get an understanding of the experience of being there and how the process works when you don't support something or you'd like to change something on this at the assembly it might be interesting for you to go mm-hmm you might have some good information for them good perspective to share are you kidding me it is anonymous voting but it's interesting to you know when you're the only one in the room that you know it says like you know 120 and you're the one
124that voted against it that was me a couple times yeah it feels a little defeating sometimes to be a part of it but they don't know you're thinking about it no but i i know and i just announced it well you can speak to it too because they'll they'll ask for um discussion from the floor present your position and then you should have other people standing up to share their views on what you just said and can be very interesting it is interesting but defeating well depending on what we and i don't know if you guys want to go through like just the the redlined areas um coming off of what we just spoke about i was i was curious that they included um under that that first heading support for the arizona teachers academy
125and efforts to increase the diversity of the teaching workforce um does diversity mean is that is that almost like a affirmative action type thing i i believe in hiring the best qualified so i guess i would have an issue with that there was also another part where it was talking about um talking about you know the same kind of responsive and culturally diverse well you're looking for that one crystal i'll say the defend against efforts to chill the free speech rights of school employees i'm a firm believer in keeping politics out of the classroom so i do not want to see that happen that's on me that's under improve outcomes for all students page i think four can you turn your mind on sorry actually no three was it stuck into the left or uh
126let's see third third bullet from the bottom okay so did i put that in there i found the one that i was talking about i think it's on the second page it's it's in black it's the second bullet above preserve and strengthen local control it says provide funding for districts to improve student achievement by addressing social emotional learning needs and create training programs for school staff and cultural proficiency and responsiveness you're saying remove that yes please page two and how do we feel about on page one where it says protect voters intent in funding k-12 and oppose legislation that attempts to supplant or divert additional voter approved funding such as prop 301 and 208 i would like to exclude that so while we're going through and excluding if we do not send someone out is
127is what we're doing right now still important so should we agree or not whether we're not we're sending someone let's do that first i mean i don't mind it the conversation but why waste time if we're not going to represent ourselves right well and although i think it'd be important to advocate for some of that some of these things be removed i think i don't know how successful that position would be so right whether or not it's important to send anyone it just be in principle i guess so so do we have any volunteers to represent us okay yeah they're they're that's stephen okay okay so who i'm sorry who's going and who's the delegate tracy wants to go i'll go okay i just think we still should have a representative from our district i
128appreciate you both i'll be dead tired they have breakfast usually aren't you going to the law conference no shooter jennings is the night before oh wow i just got my tickets good vista plug there all right so i will make a motion to a point we haven't gone through the other oh okay sorry because now we have to do that okay well we've got three of them right we have three let's so the first one we're taking out or proposing we take out let's keep track of what we're doing so i know is that correct or am i the only person that is concerned about that no no you're good the first one i've just said is diversity i guess that would be the question on to the legislative committee what does that mean i
129think that would be a question to the legislative committee what did they mean by diversity of the teaching workforce and we won't know until they comment on it that's why i asked dr kellis he thought it was like affirmative action ish that's how i interpret it but i wasn't on the committee so then how would we since if we wanted to wait to ask the committee that question then well then i guess you can directly the person would have to way to go so in my opinion if they're saying that to not look at qualifications and who's the most qualified for the position and they're looking at more of a um just increasing the the diversity cultural diversity if that's what they're saying i would not be comfortable with that and the other one was
130provide funding for districts to improve that was being removed social emotion well before that one crystal head spoke about um the protect voters intent and funding k-12 education it's on the first page it's in red oh okay i see it and then crystal brought up the second to the last bullet about the social emotional learning needs it's on page two yeah excuse me i'm curious how districts are going to provide affordable housing options to teachers is that for like um dormitories indian indian reservations and madam president members of the board um it can have several different looks there are those who are on the reservation and there's nowhere for a teacher to live on the reservation so there is district provided housing in the form of a dormitory for the the employees and their families
131there are also some initiatives that are being pursued um because it is becoming almost impossible for some places like sedona you can't live in sedona and be a teacher and just the high cost of housing and so this allows districts to pursue some of these initiatives it might be grants it might be some external funding sources that the districts can work with to provide those housing opportunities i'm also curious about this one i'm not quite sure what do you guys how do you guys interpret this oppose legislative and legislative intrusion on school site budgeting decisions or patreon on the second page under preserve and strengthen local control i'm not quite sure what they mean by that do you guys know mr hicks [Laughter] oppose legislation are there instances where the legislature intrudes on your school
132site budgeting decisions um madam president members of the board there could be some very minor funds that do have some certain restrictions that you spend half the money or no more than half the money here there but that is um a fringe element of our budget our main budget is complete and total control by the governing board so i don't know how big of an issue that is but there are some instructional improvement fund or results-based funding those have some very specific requirements maybe that's what they're talking about all right thank you you're welcome what did we decide on the defend against efforts to chill the free speech rights of school employees i kind of agree with you i feel like politics should be left outside of the classroom like you can say whatever you
133want to outside of the classroom i mean that's your free speech that's keep that all the way say whatever you want to but inside the classroom we should definitely keep our politics outside of it so when you say that they can say anything outside of the classroom do you really mean that no okay madame president miss jeff and members of the board i think as i read that statement it says oppose any legislation that has its intent to lessen the legal authority of local boards i think any time that there's something that preserves your authority as a local board you might want to support that that was a curriculum based yeah yeah i think the one crystal was talking about was the um defend against effort fourth but fourth bullet down i was asking about
134the legislation legislative intrusion that's what i was asking oh yeah that one's curriculum so like the recent legislation um around crt for instance the last bullet on that section basically they're advocating that you preserve the power to decide what you teach yeah yep that makes sense so how do we feel about the defend against efforts to chill free speech did we decide we want to oppose that or are we keeping that i don't like it okay okay i just wasn't sure what our final consensus was uh no that's five isn't it oh let's talk about this one spot i think we're just pulling them for now madame president right now we count three items that you're asking to be eliminated we we're missing two yeah we got one diversity of teaching workforce three um remove
135content defend against efforts to chill the free speech right did you say yes to politium i'm sorry defend against efforts to chill free speech to chill free speech i thought that was the one that keep that early defend against efforts to chill the free speech rights of school employees defend against efforts so basically defend against efforts to chill the free speech that's saying defend against people who say right right that's how i interpret that that's how i is that not how you interpret it no we're just we're not sure if you said yay or nay any additional ones on page two can you reread the ones you had because i think i caught half that conversation the the um the first one right the first bullet yeah i have a bullet one um the red
136edition to support for the arizona teachers academy and efforts to increase the diversity of the teaching force that whole bullet to remove that correct correct and then on page two bullet eight eliminate that entire bullet okay and then to defend against efforts to chill the free speech rights of school employees yes that's four and then let's look at this repeal any program that gives public funds for private schools vouchers esas and private school subsidies and prevent future expansion i'd like to oppose that one i oppose that oh um it's the same pages defend against so page three it's under require public accountability bullet two oh okay that's the parent choice one yeah i'm good with those let's look at this last one on that last page what is this talking about oppose any measure that
137would result in fewer qualified voters from being easily able to vote or register to vote what does that have to do with school districts and school board i don't know but i don't have anything required it has nothing to do has nothing to do with us it's the last page oppose any measure that would result in fewer qualified voters from being easily able to vote or register to vote why did they put that in there yeah i see it so i'm i'm looking at the heading require public accountability for textiles spent on education so i'm just wondering why they yeah that's plugged it in there that's what we thought too page one in the fourth bullet in its entirety protect voters intent in funding k12 education dot dot dot page two bullet eight in its
138entirety provide funding for districts to improve student achievement dot dot dot page four bullet six under improvement outcomes for all students in its entirety page four bullet two under require public accountability for taxpayers in its entirety and page five first bullet in red oppose any measure of the oppose any measure dot dot dot of the draft of the asthma 20 22 political agenda okay so i got page one first bullet page one fourth bullet page two bullet eight okay wait page one first bullet page one fourth bullet okay page two eighth bullet okay page three was it one two three four five six bullet okay and i think i might have did that one wrong and then page three second bullet under require public accountability and then the last page page five first bullet opposing
139measure so it's page three on both of those did you have two page threes yes sorry yes i just threw me off because you said bullet six and then the second bullet and three and four sorry pitch four and then bullet two six on page three was missing earlier okay page one the addition in red in the first bullet support for the arizona teachers academy and efforts to increase the diversity teaching workforce page one in the fourth bullet in its entirety for tech voters intent funding k-12 education is that right these two age two bullet eight and its entirety provide funding for districts to improve student achievement am i going to be reading each line or just no i'm going to say this and you guys are going to agree and then [Laughter] i've read
140it and then motion thank you yeah okay page four bullet six did you do page three yet wait page one i'm at page two eight in its entirety yes okay page three this is where i got it page three bullet six one two three four five six in its entirety provide funding for district or defend the chill sorry page three bullet two under required public accountability for taxpayers in its entirety page four right no yes three page four sorry i miscounted the first bullet in red to oppose any measure so basically you're going to make the motion and then someone seconds the motion you want me to read again just okay no i'm here all night i'm not sure what you mean so i i will make the motion to a point to okay to
141appoint tracy sawyer sink bell to represent dysart unified school district as a district delegate and miss joe grant as the old as the alternate no nobody nobody motioned an alternate nice try i'm sorry i misheard i totally miss her so sorry she won't show up i know that rodeo okay tracy sawyer sink bill to represent the dysart unified school district as the district delegate yes okay for the arizona school board association annual delegate assembly on september 11 2021 and direct the district's delegate to support all items or accept except sorry that we're discussed to support all items except the ones the ones that were just read and discussed um of the draft asba 2022 political agenda do i have a second second yes i was gonna say maybe ours are slower because we're down here
142no we got yours i think we're just waiting for christmas oh sorry she's reading i didn't see it up there oh here it is motion passes okay moving to item i one request for future agenda items any requests i have a request all i request is that maybe we follow up with the transportation issue and then just give the board an update afterwards thank you okay with that we're moving to um adjourned so i would move to adjourn this meeting second in my miss grant all oh