001you at this time i'd like to call the meeting of the dysart unified school district governing board to order let the record reflect that all members are present and we'll start with the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you and well next up there's a recognitions and celebrations dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet this evening we are very happy to be celebrating some extraordinary accomplishments of our students and the hard work that they and their coaches have put in over the last year mr dean will introduce this item good evening madam president members of the governing board dr
002kellis and members of cabinet just as we did at the last governing board meeting had the opportunity to recognize several state champions we have the opportunity again this evening tonight and tonight we focus on our arts area and we're very excited this evening to let the governing board know that the indoor percussion group convergence which is based out of willow canyon but features students from all throughout the district is the state champion as well as our winter guard congratulations please come before come forward and please be recognized [Applause] if you could just stay right up here at the front if you could just gather right up here at the front that'd be great just hang out right here you can use the steps just hang out right here for a second how's it going good
003you guys so ladies and gentlemen in the audience governing board members before um we dismissed this group we would just like to thank coach rad and and all of the other coaches for all the time and effort that they put into what they do this group is phenomenal if you've never had an opportunity to see willow canyons winter guard and the convergence percussion group you are missing out because they are absolutely phenomenally amazing and they highlight and spotlight how great the arts programs in our school district absolutely are would you in the audience please once again congratulate our state champions congratulations thanks guys next up we have um audience with individuals do we have any speakers madam president we have several asking to speak tonight i do have multiple requests that are specific to a
004particular agenda item h3 so those i will wait to call up until we get to that agenda item although we do have one individual who would like to speak but i'll go ahead and read the statement this is the time for the public to comment members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda pursuant to ars 38-431.01 h action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for future consideration and decision at a later date in order to facilitate accomplishing the district the business of the district in a timely manner a time limit of three minutes will be imposed for each individual or group addressing the board when you approach the
005podium please state your name for the record and we will start with mr joseph benton uh good evening board members and extraordinary members of dysart unified school district my name is joseph benson this is my seventh year as a social studies teacher at shadow ridge high school where i am also the current history department chair my comments tonight directly reference the previous meetings addressing the adoption of the world history project pilot uh one concern i have is that the board has forgotten the democratic process when they voted against adopting the curriculum as a piloted program skipping public comment and usurping curriculum committees the comments made by the board members were deeply troubling to not my only myself but also my many other colleagues throughout all curriculums it is clear that the board did not fully
006vet the curriculum but merely saw bullets and key phrases that they believed controversial this resulted in the board illustrating possible misunderstanding of what social studies is as a subject as well as critical state standards worse it appears as if the board was showing personal political bias against standard topics that have been approved by the arizona board of education history is not merely facts or quote written by the winners it's actually written by people people who are infallible people who make mistakes or write based off their own experience without foresight of the present creating controversy in history and discovering new information is history and history changes all the time what the board inexcusably declared as quote a dangerous path was the belief that students should not be taught quote accounts based on particular perspectives or to
007quote pick the stories apart analyze test the claim and build their own lenses what you are effectively saying is that the danger facing our students in dysart is the ability to receive an education in which multiple perspectives are given diversity is celebrated recognizing bias and then addressing it i must remind you that even though these young adults are impressionable the worst thing we can do as educators is only let them think one perspective it's an accumulation of one perspective the worst thing that we can do as educators is only let them think one perspective on any subject history teaches just this that history is not set in stone it is not one perspective it is the accumulation of primary and secondary sources otherwise known as stories and narratives mixed with raw data from varied number
008of different perspectives and interpretations to give us the most likely truth about the past therefore history is not just facts members of the board please understand that we live in a highly technological and globalized world and like it or not students need to be prepared to be members of it in fact it is part of our state national standards and part of our shadow ridge mission statement of home in which e stands for empowerment through collaboration networking students have the confidence to explore real world issues that will prepare them for contributing members in our global society i encourage the board members to please reconsider their decision about adopting the world history project curriculum and to please do whatever it takes to serve our students over their own political agendas and talking points thank you the
009rest of the comments will be held for the agenda item next we have the student update dr killis thank you madam president members of the board of members of cabinet we do have a student update thank you luis there you go my name is louis spion i am a member of dlc currently attending valley vista high school currently we are planning to send out a district-wide survey to all of our high school students asking them one question and that question is why is dysart extraordinary after the survey we will be presenting the board with the top 10 to 15 responses we also share the results online we also want to add that dysart willow and shadow have all had their proms and valley vista will be holding theirs on may 8th that is all i
010have to report thank you next we have the superintendent update dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet um this week we reckon or last week we recognized our dysart heroes and i want to again extend congratulations to all the all those who receive this prestigious award we have a lot of heroes throughout the district who do extraordinary things every single day and it was a pleasure to recognize a few of those employees and volunteers at that special ceremony we have state testing going on right now and also i wish all of the students the best of luck the best of success um and also to thank everyone whatever role you have in the district that helped to prepare the students for the azm2 test and then next week
011is our teacher appreciation week we are calling it our employee appreciation week and we're recognizing all our educators throughout the district that's all i have to report uh next we have the governing board update and i'll start um i also attended the dysart heroes event and i just wanted to extend again another congratulations to all of our dysart heroes we really do appreciate all that you do and also those that were not you know able to be recognized so just really appreciate all that you do thanks let's see excuse me i visited shadow ridge high school and last night i had the fun event of attending the end of the year band concert and it was really enjoyable and i don't know people sitting around me when the jazz band started i couldn't sit still
012it was it was a lot of fun i also attended the heroes ceremony and last week was volunteer appreciation week and i know volunteers haven't been in the schools because of the covid and everything so i hope they're nice and rested up so that next year when school starts are going to be very very busy and of course with the employee appreciation week next week thank you to everybody in the district for what you do for our students so that's it i would just like to take a moment to congratulate the valley vista palm line for a successful trip to uda nationals in orlando florida last week where they competed in the national dance team championship event at the espn center in disney world the team received their bid to uda nationals after receiving a
013superior rating for their camp routine in july the team under the coaching and leadership of miss amy crow advanced to finals where they ultimately improved their semi-final score from the previous day this is a very rigorous competition one in which no other dysert spirit line has ever attended so they were not they were going in not knowing what to expect but these young ladies and their coach represented our district and in extraordinary ways and for that they should be very proud and i would just like to thank every there's so many people too many to name personally but um valley vista administration district administration parents so many people that went above and beyond to make this happen for this team and we are all greatly appreciative so congratulations again to valley vista palm and then
014last but certainly not least i just want to wish our teachers a very happy teacher appreciation week for next week it's been a challenging year and i appreciate all of you who continued to show up every day determined to make this year successful despite the many obstacles that we all faced and that your dedication and commitment is just very much appreciated so i hope you enjoy your week next week that's all i have uh i do have a couple of events that i have attended but i first want to preface it by saying that the reason that board members actually attend concerts or stem celebrations or go into the schools and actually see our teachers and students engaged is because we don't sit up here just to sit up here we go in and see
015what is going on in the schools and we appreciate everybody's everything that they do for our students and um to actually see a concert with all the preparation and all the man hours it takes to perform that concert all the man hours it takes for to put on a stem celebration we appreciate that and all of us up here have flexible um sometimes very rigorous but then sometimes flexible schedules and we get to our schools as often as possible so we do appreciate what our teachers and students do and one of the things that we do go into the schools and see is known as a cip which is a continuous improvement plan and each of these schools actually give us benchmark data the dibbles testing data high school credit things of that nature and
016their challenges that they have put up with over the past year what folk things they need to focus on for the next year so it really gives us a better shot looking at what is going on in the school so we really appreciate the work that our teams put in to share with us about the continuous improvement plan i attended four of those last week and i think one this week and also thank you to the admin professionals on the 21st of april we know our admin is the backbone of our school schools and the district office so we thank them for what they do attended the dysart hero celebration looked a little bit different this year but we were still able to congratulate our heroes and also congratulate everyone else uh also attended the
017um the concert last night for shadow ridge and um they played i had no idea but they were playing one of my favorite songs birdland and it was extremely awesome kids are talented please keep up the arts it uh it does wonders for the soul and for everybody else so i think that's all i have thank you next moving on to item e1 the consent agenda items i will make a motion to approve the consent agenda items as presented second seconded by christine pritchard motion passes next we have information item g1 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet as part of our annual monitoring of governing board policy we bring before you for the first reads section 11. this was presented to the board previously last week and
018you've had several days to look at it if you have any questions be happy to answer those questions i used to have a question um clarification on 11.14 community use of school facilities um just making sure that we're still um ensuring that parent or the student needs continue to take priority over community needs and community groups as far as for example use of our auditoriums or buildings won't be opened up for community groups until it's after availability is determined once the student events are calendared are we still doing it madam president mrs pritchard that is correct and as we look to expand our community access to facilities throughout the district whether it's playgrounds or auditoriums or what but be it students will always come first thank you i had if there's no other questions or
019discussion we'll move to um item h2 sorry so sorry oh my gosh g2 big difference dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet we're very excited this evening to introduce you to some more of our very very talented students and mr dean will introduce this item good evening madam president members of the governing board dr kellis and members of cabinet this evening we're very excited to present to the governing board information related to the dysart student broadcasting program or better known dsb live the planning for this new program that started this year began prior to the covid pandemic outbreak however it turned out to be incredibly timely to be able to provide services to our community at no cost and so with that i'm going to turn it over
020to the director of the program and that is brian yoder and mr yoder the floor is yours thank you dr dean madam president members of the board dr kellis and cabinet my name is brian yoder the coordinator of student broadcast and i've had the luxury of working with four amazing film and tv instructors and their students here this year if we are without them we wouldn't be here in this position so before we get started we'd love to turn it over to a video that was created by the willow canyon students and uh we have a little bit of wrestling action for you this afternoon and welcome dsp live student broadcast here for the women's basketball game good evening and welcome to shadow ridge high school this was the first year of dysart student broadcasting
021and boy did we get a lot done [Music] as a team of schools dysart willow canyon valley vista and shadow ridge live streamed over 150 events these events showcase the academic artistic and athletic talents of dysart district students shoots it what a goal off the crossbar and in for shadow ridge gonna throw down this and it is caught by eight should be a touchdown pike tinsel for three bang this student-led initiative gives us an opportunity for hands-on work and learning we had student announcers student camera operators and student directors we also had students creating graphics and animations so we could put on such a great show using industry technology students were able to bring live sports to parents faculty and staff during covid restrictions [Music] we were here to help our school community during these
022difficult times each school now has its own vimeo web page a central place for teachers parents and students to go to find engaging live streams and cool content created just by us we hope to grow in the future sharing even more live events and stories about our district to the surprise community thank you and instead of you guys listening to me tonight we thought it would be fun for the students to be able to share their perspective and what they were able to do so tonight's first stop is high school hello dr callison members of the board my name is andres aguilar i am a senior student in film and tv at dysart high school beside me is miss haley linderman our film and tv and dsp instructor here are a few things i would
023like to take away from my time in broadcast we are not only just a team i call our team a family we learn a lot from post-production pre-production um the ideologies behind film in general how to work the graphics and most importantly the chords so important dsb live is comprised of all four high schools dysart high shadow ridge valley vista and willow canyon high schools we are on schedule to have completed over 200 live events in the areas of arts academics athletics and we will be completing high school graduations at the cardinal stadium on may 19th each instructor will be the producer for their own students graduation and students will be running the whole productions themselves all these graduations can be seen on vimeo.com thank you and as they transition to the next speaker i
024might just indicate that they are dsp live students are filming as we speak so practice in action hello my name is miranda mathis from shadow ridge high school and standing behind me is my dsb live instructor mr rodney moore i am a senior student at shadow and i am planning on attending asu in the fall to study sports journalism i always knew i wanted to write in the future but i didn't know where to take that dsb live has helped me realize exactly what i want to be involved in and that was the sports side of journalism dsb has been a great opportunity for me and i've learned so much about what goes on into live broadcasts and different career fields i could possibly take on in the future one of the essential pieces of
025our program is that it is student-centered student-driven you will see an adult play-by-play commentator at our games with the student serving as a color commentator we went through a training at the beginning of the school year and the adults have helped us learn our craft and broadcasting like myself some students are moving on to colleges and universities to do film and tv and we will rise above our class due to our experiences in dsp live this school year hi everyone i hope you're doing great my name is caleb berwin and i'm a junior at valley vista high school unfortunately mr martinez couldn't make it today because of an anniversary dsp live coming to valley visa has been an incredible experience i've taken on more of a leadership role i've been able to mentor students and
026make more friends than i could have ever imagined and now i have a potential career pathway lined out for me it's it's crazy what we've been able to do in just a year alone valley visto alone has made 103 events completed by the end of this year you can check them all out at dysart.org slash dsb live this is the first year out of a three year build and i'm excited to see where it goes next thank you evening my name is lolo crowell and i am a sophomore at willow canyon high school with me today i have my film and broadcast as well as my dsb instructor miss allison tickemeyer throughout my time in dsb i have come across many great opportunities for example this year i was able to conduct an interview with
027mr matthew earl jones our film commissioner for state of arizona and it was such a fun experience to hear what he does and the advice he gave to students in high school who might want to take work in the film industry with the opportunities given this year it gave me the benefit to open more before i came into dsb i was a very shy person and always hid within my friend group but that has all changed thanks to dsb the list could go on and on but here are a few things we as a community have accomplished this year daisar student broadcasting dsb live was developed in july of 2020 we created a unique logo and put ourselves on the map with student broadcasting in the state of arizona we have four high school instructors
028with the support of over 124 students just in the past year we have done over 200 live events we have connections with the city of surprise and 18 businesses to share our stories each week we share a story with surprise tv to air on their channel as well we have done productions in the arts academics and athletic areas the list could go on we are excited to move our work to the next level next school year as we hope to welcome in more students i would like to thank you for your time and please welcome our director of cte to the podium good evening madam president dr kellet's members of the board and community when we talk about career and technical education this is career and technical education whenever we talk about dsb live and
029what these kids are able to do after school with the equipment that we've been able to purchase for them and the work based learning that they're getting listen to them doesn't that get you excited it gives me chills when i'm sitting listening to them talk and you know bringing brian on and and coordinating this after school um even during school sometimes we're hoping to get some of those great events going on but whenever you look at what we have going on and brian congratulations on a very successful year dr dean thank you for your support and the board for your support of this program because this has given our kids work-based learning that they truly needed with the tv broadcasting so thank you all so much madam president members of the board dr kellis and
030cabinet that's our our report on dsp live thank you governor members if there's no questions and we'll be happy to move to the next piece thank you very much i just i just wanted to add um i was just so impressed i had the opportunity to be involved with the heat wave i don't know dr kalis or mr hicks if you're familiar with that program but um i was invited to be a part of that and just observing the students um coordinate that whole program and their their knowledge and their professionalism was just amazing to watch so i have heard firsthand experience with that you guys are just awesome and just incredible that you're able like at your age in high school you know to be able to just create programs and run them professionally
031and just have that knowledge base at your ages is just amazing so i'm so glad to have you all in our district writing that program it's wonderful so thank you madam president if i could also just add as was mentioned in one of the presentations um it's a three-year build for the program it's the objective that within those three years we have this professional program to the standard that the sponsorships will fund the entire program and so it will be a self-sustaining extraordinary experience for student learning thank you thank you next we have item g3 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet this evening the board will receive some information about what's happening in our community as it relates to our district and the the growth in our
032district and mr ken hicks will introduce this item thank you very much dr kellis good evening madam president members of the board superintendent of dr kalas colleagues and community members let me i'd like to introduce mr kevin shipman our planning administrator and he's just going to go through a report on our growth within our district and some demographic information thank you ken president dinsmore members of the board dr kell's cabinet and the public um as we discuss our district enrollment let's first consider the biggest drivers of that growth that we see in the district so this is an illustration of the maricopa association of governments um projections for our district's population over the next um 30 years the green bars our population and then the blue is the total growth and what's noteworthy here especially
033is that there's approximately 35 000 new residents expected within the district from that growth over the next 10 years so again as we think about those biggest drivers of those large enrollment increases that we could see certainly the population growth that comes from the housing boom is is responsible for that this chart displays our k8 enrollment history and forecast of course this year as we saw nationwide districts and schools saw a decrease from the the outcome of the pandemic as kindergartners were withheld homeschoolers and other students just weren't present for school so as you can see our our enrollment forecast is a little bit lower based on that change that we saw in the last year however there's a lot of uncertainty as to what happens in the future and as you can see we
034are expected to grow several thousand k-8 students in the next few years here so and of course we'll be monitoring this closely especially trends in the near term so that we can better understand what's going to happen post pandemic with our enrollment so as we look at enrollment and enrollment capacity it's helpful that we just briefly define that so this is a hypothetical set of classrooms and as we look at what the sfb the school facilities board defines as capacity they're just looking at a straight square footage rate for each school with some excluded spaces and then our architects or engineers who develop a school they'll have a design capacity and then of course there's exceptions to that capacity right when we have a kindergarten room that may only have a capacity let's say 27
035students and then of course and this is noteworthy here is that we have special programs where we may have a room that has only 10 or 12 students that's absolutely fully utilized and it's important that we point that out just as we look at what we're defining as capacity and how we're utilizing the facilities that we have available so so you can see that the school facilities board says we're at 68 of our capacity and as we look at design capacity and then our actual utilization based on what's actually going on in our classrooms and our facilities you can see we're right about 78 and these are current numbers so pre pandemic we were more maybe 82 or so so i think it's important to note that as we look at our enrollment and then
036this is the same information it's arcade facility utilization by school so you can see for the most part our schools are pretty full this is interesting because if you look at one particular school like let's say you were to look at countryside elementary for example if you looked at the sfb or design capacity numbers you might think that oh that's that school has you know 60 enrollment or something like that but really when you look at how that space is being utilized and where we place our programs there's definitely more utilization there than you might consider so so this is a map of our development activity we monitor this regularly it doesn't probably look too much different than when we showed you last year certainly there's a lot more in the pipeline right now that's
037the pre-development activity before they begin to break ground and definitely it's really noteworthy that despite the pandemic there's a significant increase in all of this activity there's a huge pent-up demand nationwide for housing obviously that's driven uh the price is up and so you can see especially in the north part of the district and then in the southwest there's a lot of growing growth occurring so um and then we're going to take a quick look at these three particular schools and look at their forecasted enrollment over the next five years so sonoran heights and mountain view are in the southwest portion of the district and certainly their enrollment this year took a bump we'll expect to see the majority of that return or perhaps more and then both of those schools in the next five
038years are expected to see some pretty significant growth we do know that sonoran heights is merging with rancho gabriela elementary school as part of our middle school k4 model so that will help absorb some of that growth but again we'll be following that area closely just to make sure we're we're keeping track of the growth that's occurring and then asante preparatory academy so in the last year or two we had some very large numbers forecasted up there and despite the pandemic we're really seeing healthy growth up there and the building and construction activity is really significant so obviously you can see that we expect over 2 000 students up in that northern area here in the next five years so so as we look at that development activity and then this map also just includes
039where we have our k-8 sites as well as where we have existing properties or identified or pending school sites that are identified in a plan so i think this useful just uh as a reminder of the work that we continue to do where we are making sure we're positioning the district for future growth and making sure we're ready for that new building activity as it occurs this is our high school enrollment forecast so we've been working with the state or i should say having conversations with the state about maybe do does our high school growth trigger the need for a high school that the state would would fund in the next 10 years and certainly there's i think maybe more uncertainty with those high school numbers given the pandemic so we'll be following really closely
040next six months see what happens with our enrollment trends so we can get a better idea of what's going to happen with high school in the next five or 10 years the high school capacities are a little more ambiguous because you have different periods you have labs you have just a lot of more moving parts and so i think there's a little more room there to place kids but you can see we we definitely had a dip in enrollment in our high schools and um all the schools are are relatively full they have healthy enrollment populations and we'll continue to keep a close eye on them so and with that i'd stand for any questions i do have one question mr shipman i'm glad you understand the nuts and bolts of all this stuff um
041but my one question has to do with um the capacity or let me see the projection the forecasted five-year enrollment you have sonoran heights you have mountain view and then we have asante so we know that that development out there excuse me several developments that are out there um will continue and continue and is that correct in regards to 2500 or more than because our schools can only take so much before we would have to do something else with that particular area so you're projecting more than 2500 yes that's right madam president member sawyer st bell so um there is uncertainty i would be surprised if that number is somewhere at let's say 1500 or 1800 we do expect that student population that is for the entire boundary for asante and so there's all the
042development around ahsante but then we have the cortland properties and then we have rancho mercado which is up in the very corner of the district that most people don't notice but we're we're talking about thousands of homes coming up here in the near term so yeah that's a reasonable number um and if if you can you can drill down to the data see the permits lighting up see all the activity and the and the pre-development activity that's going on or the grading um yes so so that does pose an important question of of what happens when we get to that point so because our schools um i mean before when it was desert moon was um had the capacity of 1100 i believe so what are we going to do in order to look at
043this and decide in regards to boundaries or another school what dr kellis and the president sorry sink bill you mentioned a couple of those options right there is boundary changes could be an option adding an additional school could be an option what typically happens when the neighborhood grows and surprises the poster child for growth over over the last 10 15 years when we were building sometimes two and sometimes three schools a year to keep up with capacity we're starting to see evidence of that in certain parts of the district certainly not district-wide but while we could change boundaries um the state would say that they look at the entire district and all of our portfolio of buildings to determine if there's still capacity you saw a chart that had a lot of green along the
044top that's what the state would say you still have empty seats in these schools now it's not reasonable it's possible but we could bus students from el mirage or from asante to el mirage or from asante to the center of the district but in real in reality when you have growth you build schools that's a huge number that is a huge number when the schools can only hold 1200 maybe so that that's a real big concern because five years is going to be here within a matter of minutes i think something that you may um see around our neighborhood as you see well there's a new school right there that just got built and there's another new school right there that just got built those are not districts dysart schools those are charter schools that
045don't have to go through the same process that the district goes through so they can just take out a loan and build a school without any voter approval even though they're still using tax dollars to build those schools and staff them so as the district goes and looks at the growth and the potential need for the future we would look at right now starting those conversations as was mentioned with the state facilities board to determine let's get ahead of this and let's let's hopefully get some properties acquired as soon as possible as i remember the time when we were building like you said building two to three schools a year and we just had that big it was just a big boom of growth and poor mr thompson was just running around here like his
046head was cut off it was a very busy time and i just don't want to get caught i do understand the capacity as far as the district as a whole but this can be very concerning with a five-year projection so something to think about well and just looking at the five years i mean there's no way we can wait if this is correct you know that first line or that second line is at a thousand and you know it goes up from there so so how soon will we be looking at because i know several years ago we were saying that even though our our buildings were meant to hold like 1100 students once you get to about 950 to a thousand it starts impacting quality of instruction just too many kids in classrooms and
047buildings so how soon will we be looking at because i mean even if it just gets to a thousand just barely i mean that's that's just barely up the graph right here so how soon will we need to be looking at some of these alternatives we can't wait five years madam president miss pritchard um thank you for that question it is a uh a weighty matter for sure because we're not talking about what ifs um the ground has been broken and the the framing has started the the families haven't moved in but the framing has started on all of these homes in these very hot spots as far as how soon it usually from pencil to pencil and paper putting design plans in place to the first day when we open the doors is about
048a three-year process so if we were to anticipate as you looked at that chart for asante where they're pushing 2 800 students clearly we're not going to put 2 800 students in one school it would be within two to three years that we're already pushing probably 1800 and then over the next couple years after that uh being up to nearly three thousand so now is the time as as i just mentioned we can't just go to bank and get a loan to build a school and we don't have 25 million dollars to build an elementary school and that's uh through voter initiatives that we're able to purchase and build those new schools and um it's it's unfortunately the process that we have at our disposal but i mean so then therefore since that's a much
049longer process are we looking at boundary changes soon for that particular area madam president miss pritchard if necessary that would be the solution there's another solution where we can increase the capacity of a school by moving portable classrooms put them on a trailer haul them out there and plant them on a playground that's also expensive because then you have to run all the utilities underground and overground to make those those facilities part of a school we call them portables or modules modulars so there are interim things boundary changes is one i know that the board has some members of the board have experienced boundary changes and parents like to go to their neighborhood school and when that's not possible it becomes very frustrating so we'll address this though one way or another before it gets
050to the part where it impacts student learning so you know before we are at 1500 kids which i mean it's even too many right that's what i'm saying before you get to that point but 1500 compared to 2 500 sounds like you know way in advance but we can't even get to that point so is this something we're going to be looking at over the next school year madam pritchard madame president miss pritchard we're looking at it now but as far as coming to the board with recommendations for boundary changes um we should anticipate something similar or if we can buy another year with portable classroom movements it will be within the next 12 to 18 months i just have one question i mean along the same line i mean we're talking asante and the
051growth out there but that's what the assumption that these are all kids k through eight what about the high school i mean what what's the impact going to be on our high schools i mean i realize we don't know when somebody buys a house if they have children how old their children are but what's the impact going to be then on our high schools as well mad president grant even though we don't know for certain we have formulas that can pretty accurately predict the population of kinder and high school students so yes we can look at the demographics as we are very very frequently and readily and we can make those same projections ouch any other questions okay thank you very much moving to item g4 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the
052board and members of cabinet mr hicks will introduce this item good evening good evening madam president members of the board superintendent dr kellis colleagues and community members thank you very much for allowing me to present the arizona auditor general school district spending report this was a report that was concluded i want to say february 28th but i think it was emailed out to the board the first week in um in march um i think i put a email out to the board just a little quick little summary of some things and highlights um i think i was scheduled to uh present on this earlier but um such packed agendas we've moved this back a little bit so this is just really brief the really good news is is that a lot of our projections when
053i show you the rainbow report we're all spot on so congratulations to miss meridel spidel and her miss lisa smith who did all the projections and told me here's what we expect is going to show on the auditor general report and they were exactly on on every single one of them so uh when i come to our um to the rainbow report you'll you'll see that one part so here's the beginning of the report just to highlight state the the state level per pupil and they talk about the teacher average teacher salary increased to 54 814 uh 13.3 increase over 2017's but short of the 15 cumulative goal this in and of itself just highlights and summarizes the issue we have a lot of school districts with the auditor general report the assumption is is
054that we didn't give a 15 raise which we did give a 15 raise but they're making the assumption that every single employee stays in every single district so that everybody got the 15 raise we gave a 15 raise but you have people retiring you have people leaving they come in at a lesser amount they don't get the full raise in that sense and and so there's movement in that and so that is um part of why we have problems with some of these auditor-general reports they make big grandiose statements and then walk away and not go down into the detail of that um so i've just uh snipped a few of the part of the report i put at your up uh by your on your desk um there um the full report it's just
055a one pager they're required to do it every year we send our books our general ledger to the auditor general after you approve our afr we send them everything by in october they put it all together and then report out on all school districts this is just school districts so charter schools don't apply they're not having to require and present this information and so the first one we normally look at is our classroom spending and a lot of times i'm just really looking at it doesn't say a ton of contacts this is per pupil um but i do look at the total operational so if you look at the district we did increase our spending we did get the as we were talking about the 20 for 20 by 2020 and additional funding and inflationary
056funding so we went up from 81.75 to 85 85.85 but you could see per our peer averages and the state averages we are still below our and the peer averages is a large group um so we are well i think technically with the auditor general categories is extra-large and we um with our size we're one of the 10 largest districts in the state and so they categorize us with those and you can see where we spend a little bit less than them and from a state average we spend a lot less we get a lot less so a lot of times i'm saying we do more with less in that sense and as you've heard from previous presentations we have equalized funding in arizona so the same student gets the same amount everywhere else it's
057all the auxiliary funding which could be additional voter approved incentives either a capital override a bond a bond project and what that does is a lot of times that picks up the capital load and then districts will transfer over the capital into mno and then spend it there and sometimes there's districts with higher poverty there's districts receiving more funds more grants and so that accu that makes up for the difference you look at the very bottom the total per pupil so you have the top operational is basically your mno but other grants that are eminent like you have capital the total non-operational below for grand total so we're at 92 almost 9 300. our peer groups are 10-4 10-5 and then the state average is 11-1 so we are spending we're getting a lot less
058and spending a lot less in the state so we are very efficient and effective with the use of our funding they do produce um average teacher salary across all districts and you can see where the higher line and so this last year we came out at 58 so we are 3 500 above the state average for teachers this is something that was new last year that was just the top part of the graph is just showing the difference over the last five years of where the money has moved no surprise student support went up because if you remember one of the big things we did is we implemented social workers at every single one of our schools which is categorized in the student support and so we um you can see a lot more money
059moving into that category with decreases in administration plan operations food service and transportation over that time this is a new one the bottom half is the lowest and highest so they're trying to just create a little bit more descriptive data to say hey over the last 19 years what are the highest and lowest amounts in the classroom spent on instructional spending the lowest being 50.8 when it first started and now and the highest in 2006 59.4 after that uh normally i i i hovered around there it dropped after all day kindergarten was cut all the cuts to capital all the cuts to mno all the cuts to the classroom and funding and so that uh drove it down but you can see in our last two most recent years we moved up to 57.2 and
060then we continued another half percent up uh this last year this is also a new indicator on the report it's just how much in federal funding from the coveted relief was being spent by the district and our peer group we spent hundred dollars that was all in our esg so we did spend a little bit money in esg and um our fema edema money um not all of it we received um 5.2 million from the state uh for continuous um continuing our education um enrollment stability grant 5.2 we spent 1.5 last year the the rest of the esu will be spent in this fiscal year and then there are some additional covet funds so the esser funds sr12 will also be reflective in this fiscal year so next year's report here's the hard to see
061rainbow report but it did not change from the december so i'm not going to focus too much on this really the only thing oh i forgot to take it off is the pink down or the purple down below where it says ag's estimated calculation i forgot to take off the estimated because it's now actual but none of the numbers change because our top-notch staff did a great job with projection so it's all fully in line and so really there's i don't want to be labor and just talk about the rainbow report and everything because nothing really changed from december we'll be doing it again i do it for every budget revision so when we revise our budget may 12th i'll update this and then i'll go into it a little bit more and so i
062will stand for any comments or questions and comments i have a question regarding um the transportation as far as operational measures relative to peer averages what do you think is keeping our costs high to very high compared to our neighbors that's a great question so not snipped on but if you look at the report you could see that it's red and uh and orange which is the very high now that's not the cost that we're spending because on the previous graph you see that we're spending less on the previous descriptive data transportation at 351 dollars per pupil we're spending less than our pure average and less than our state average but for that descriptive data of looking at the cost per mile and the cost per rider is high which is very indicative of we
063also have above average special ed cost special ed enrollment we have and a special ed bus costs a lot more has less riders and puts more miles so the cost is higher on all those so that just on the surface is a quick explanation of why our cost higher on the per mile and per rider is i believe we have around 18 of our population special ed and we have a high amount of ieps that require transportation and that funnels into the higher cost thank you very much uh mr hicks is there anything any type of legislation or anything that's coming about that will hopefully eventually require charter schools to complete a report just like this madam president members of the board no nothing at all because i know i know that they're they're not
064required to complete any type of report like this and um it is um very concerning when once in a while you will hear on the news that a charter school has had mismanagement of funds and they are not detailing the per cost for anything for per pupil spending or or anything and so there's nothing there's no legislator that is actually trying to lead the charge with this madam president members of the board no okay i think we need to talk some different legislations any other questions for mr hicks thank you very much for your update all right item g5 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet mr hicks will introduce this item as well good evening madam president members of the board superintendent dr kellis colleagues community members
065i'm very happy to be back with a presentation uh seems like it's been forever since i talked to you um so this is the accumulation of a process that started back in october with our iba negotiations meet and confer team taking a look at what we recommended the previous year what actually happened looking at our annual financial report fund balances where everything is we kind of just look at all balances where everything is take a look at that we then look a little bit at benefits and then we do meet with the governing board to get direction from the governing board back in january so that can help guide this process and you'll see that embedded in this recommendation this recommendation is it is an information only it is not an action item and that
066is because um we will be listening for the board and comments at the end of this process or throughout but there are a lot of agenda items whether changing hiring schedules notice of employment going out placement schedules mousse with changes in our mous that are all going to change after this presentation after hearing the board so if there's any concerns or anything please talk to us but there will be probably a handful of different agenda items over the next two months that will all embed all of these recommendations into those pr into those presentations and action items so although this does not an official action item please give us some feedback on that here is the team um that that represents all the different groups from the district we have the dicert education association for
067our certified staff dysart classified staff representatives our dysert school administrators and dysart cabinet representatives and as well as mr dr croto and myself that help facilitate the whole process the process does take time we do a lot of talking we start although we start a little bit looking at the finances from the previous year we do make sure that everybody has a chance we're trying to make a safe place that anybody could say anything question anything question any cost question whatever we're doing so that we feel like we're going forward with the best options possible so it's not a flat line straight line process it's very dynamic it's a lot of discussion in there we do make sure and we validate our recommendations against the board adopted standards and so those standards legal affordable alignment
068sustainable viable efficiency necessity judicious and equitable we read through that we make sure that everybody understands that that our recommendations going forward do not violate any of these and so there is a check and balance process on that so as i said we start with telling the story where each group comes from we identify interests what the direction they'd like to go find common ground we brainstorm look at options to solve all of those we layer in the direction from the governing board to make sure that we're on the right path we evaluate them against our standards to make sure we're not violating anything and then we go with consensus so everything being recommended has a consensus approach meaning that if one person says they're not for this then we have to keep talking about
069it modify it better explain it or take it off and so that is the process that we work through just as a reminder back in february the governing board already approved a three percent retention stipend so this is just a reminder of that and we reminded the group of that also in february the governing board approved our benefits package because we're an open enrollment right now with our benefits so we had to do that a little bit sooner so that happens before and that had our benefits it did have some premium rate changes as you remember some up and down and some hold steady and change the hsa contribution the state retirement cost increased as well and so we already had to make sure that we took into account those expenses one of the recommendations
070from the group was to look at this was a cha recommendation that was made at the end of last year for this year's iba and meet and confer team which was to extend the vaca the time for exempt and hourly staff to use vacation we extended it to december 31st and that was because at the end of last year we had the pandemic hit us a lot of people got moved to home there was nobody could travel nobody could take vacations and so we wanted to create an opportunity for them to have more time so they didn't use it or lose it and so this created an opportunity for them to use more since then the group said let's go back to the october 31st travel's been open people can take time people should take
071time for themselves even if it's a just stay home day staycation in that sense and so we are recommending that we roll this back to october 31st as part of the process as we're looking through all the other recommendations and looking at what we had available for compensation the group voted on and we are recommending a 1.3 increase to the base pay for all current and positions part of what was approved last year during the iba meet and confer process was to help a little bit with decompression was to can we increase our new higher placement schedule which was how about the proposal last year that was approved was whatever the raises to our current employees the hiring placement schedules will be increased by one half of that and so this falls in line with
072that recommendation which so if 1.3 is what all staff are getting then this is increasing those placement schedules by 0.65 if somebody has already come before the board for hiring starting next year they were using the current placement schedule that did not have that they would be eligible for that 0.65 percent increase not the 1.3 percent if they're not an employee they're not a current employee going on to some mou stipends create a lead nurse addenda of 3 150 per year we noticed that we had a lead addenda out there that was not being used and um is somewhat redundant to another addenda and so we're asking to eliminate the lead adaptive pe physical physical education teacher addenda 3150 and then also create a lead ess specialist agenda of 31.50 per year we're also recommending
073to change the high school drama agenda to high school theater so name change and then modify currently right now it allows for uh one in the fall and one in the spring one play in the fall one in the spring we would like to double that to two plays for the fall and two plays for the spring each semester getting the 2042 so it's basically doubling that create a ess hard to fill addenda at fifteen hundred dollars there currently is for three groups ess special ed math and science currently get a hard to fill stipend addenda of fifteen hundred dollars then the next year that's the first year they're coming in then the second year is a retention it drops to one thousand this is to uh create a new line which is for ess
074hard to fill and it stays at 1 500 and does not go down so we would still have the hard to fill addenda and the retention agenda for hard to fill positions those are just for the math and science and those would stay as is with no changes this would only be keeping the keeping the ess hard to fill agenda at the 1500 so they come in it does not drop after the first year so that would be providing a 500 increase to all ess teachers all staff that are receiving that um another request was to create a dsb live addenda for up to 4 000 per semester per high school based on criteria and the criteria i think mr dean dr dean presented some information on the number of shows or activities or events
075that they're hosting or doing currently right now this has very little cost increase because they're currently getting paid on timesheets so the budget's already out there to provide some time sheets for them this is to have our teachers stop putting in timesheets to get paid for all the events we're just going to do a stipend for them and they could do based on the number of uh events that they host there's also was a request to increase our ctso sponsor addendum from 2042 up to 3 000 per year per qualified activity this is not paid through emino but just ran through the same process and this is using our cte funds to fund this increase it does align with a lot of the school districts around us as well this request is to create two
076specialized program nurse positions um currently we have health service assistants filling these positions so we would eliminate the health services positions create the two specialized program nurse positions and move to place them on grade w for an increase in pay which is more aligned to the criteria or the qualifications that are needed to be compliant for the services that they're providing in this specialized program i believe this is in our aspire program that has some high needs students that have higher need service needed to them and so this would align a position with those increased uh qualifications would that be uh mr hicks would that be lpn or rn it's depending on the need you could turn on your microphone dr croto will help with that madam president um member sawyer stinkville uh the answer
077is both to that depending on the child's needs uh the lowest qualification is an lpn but sometimes the needs of the student require an rn so and it's based on what's written in the student's iep and the needs of care all right thank you uh the next request is um focused on our special ed paraprofessionals and this would be recommending to move our special ed paraprofessional from grade d to grade f so this would create a our resource base paraprofessionals so grade d is currently 12 15 and grade f would be moving them to 1372 so 1.57 base raise for everybody that qualifies on that this would then now create a tier so right now all of our paraprofessionals are on one we would then now break off and have a modified special ed paraprofessional
078specialized positions so we're calling it specialized positions to differentiate and these are in our aspire one-to-ones our preschool our vi vision impairment program our stc program and our pbs programs so those specialized positions in those programs would then be going from grade d to grade h grade h is 14 39 so they would be getting a 2.24 raise per hour along that same we would be moving our ess behavior technician and the preschool special ed preschool facilitator from the great age to a great l grade h is the 1439 grade l is 1591. part of the conversation as we're ending was reminded that this is to help with a lot of vacancies and a lot of turnover that we've had in our paraprofessionals that are impacting our special ed programs our ess programs and then
079the thought was well we have bus aides that uh service uh that are on buses just for our special ed programs and that we should be in an equitable move should be moving our bus aides from the grade b to grade f to align with the lower of those three tiers of those specialized positions which that would be the resource special ed pair provisional and so that would be moving them from the 1215 up to the 1372 position as well one thought just to make sure everybody was on the same page and just for clarification that when what commonly happens now is right now they're all paid the same our specialized our resource are paid the same and so positions people will get hired into the resource position but then a vacant position in one
080of our specialized program specialized programs and we'll just move the resource over to the specialized because that is more iep and more needed and more impactful on the student and so we could have other solutions to solve the other vacancy but now that we're creating a differential in pay it would be unfair to move someone hire them at a lower move them and have them do the job of the hire and not pay them so we're requesting that uh paraprofessionals who work 10 consecutive days in the specialized or ess behavior technician position will get paid at the rate of those positions so they might be able to fill in a day or two here or there but if it's going to be somewhat permanent we need to pay them at the higher rate so mr
081hicks we have uh several vacancies that had not been filled correct so how many did we have for this year that were not filled madam president member source think bill um i don't know the exact number but if i was to estimate off the top of my head that would probably be um around 60 to 70 pair of professional jobs that are not filled and i think i remember i think i remember you saying something about 63. i don't know why that's sticking out so i was wondering if if that was still true to form it's true to form and i can get you an exact number if you'd like but it's a very large number um of those vacancies right now and uh madam president members board just to clarify i believe the 63
082number was already projected for next year um not currently in hand or that might have been the exact amount on that day we do also we will contract to bring in uh paris also and so we have contracted up to anywhere around 40 at that time but we're paying a much higher cost when we contract out and so this we believe will create a better system in place to fill those vacancies uh continuing on in the special ed world of the ess world we're also looking to create a contract agenda for occupational therapists physical therapists and speech language pathologists of three thousand dollars per year this would not be funded out of mno we would move this to the classroom site fund with the passage of um sb1139 it collapsed the buckets but it also
083expanded the usage of classroom siphon allowed student support services and so these are now eligible we cannot take some of our current mno equivalent because there still is an ounce of planting in there so we part of our standards is to make sure that it's legal and and sustainable um and so we were not able to move um the existing over but we are since this is a brand new one we're recommending a 3 000 for per year for each one of those the goal on that is to be competitive and in the marketplace be able to bring back some of i believe i believe we have 28 that we outsource in those groups currently right now and we pay a lot more when we outsource and so if we continue to increase our current
084funds uh current compensation to those now we would be able to retain the ones we have and then also hopefully attract new ones in so that we could reduce our outsourcing our reliance on outsourcing those positions as well and so that would be recommended to come through the classroom site fund the current staff and i'll talk a little bit about classroom site fund a little bit a few minutes or next slide maybe the current staff were also we do have i think it's roughly 55 positions funded through mno which we call the m o equivalent i think there's about 80 positions total from other funding sources as well that receive what we call the mno equivalent of 301 and that is way back when when prop 301 was first passed back in 2000 um it
085crea uh the definitions were not fully defined and so we were paying some positions out of that um the law changed or the attorney general came out with specifics that said you can't pay them out of that so we moved them out instead of taking away the funding from those people we grandfathered him and just said we'll pay you out of mno and so we called it the mo no equivalent and so what we're also recommending from this group is to continue to mirror our classroom site fund so the emino equivalent for those 55 positions will go up from 9 000 now up to 10 500 in accordance with what we're recommending for classroom site fund for our certified staff as well we're also recommending two calendar moves so we have two dispatchers and two
086routing technicians a routing technician one in rounding tech nation two they're both on 229 day calendar we asked them to work extra days and it mirrors almost a 248 calendar right now so almost no cost as well but if we keep asking them to work the same calendar why don't we just move them to that calendar so this is a request to move the calendar also move the ess specialist from the 197 day calendar to the 222 day calendar they also get additional day pay up to 20. um so this does come with a small little cost not all of them take it but we through the professional development the training the curriculum needed and the planning they're mostly there and so we're asking to this move to the calendar so we know they're all
087there all the time um some assumptions just to make sure i know um i talked to the board a lot about you should know um some things and maybe some board members have been interviewed by our auditors and um i do say you should know what is our budget we could make up any number of students and create a huge budget uh and do whatever and then have the have a lot of debts to pay at some point with that so that would be bad so what you see is a budget that's looking at it from this year a growth of 400 students previously a couple presentations ago you saw mr shipman make a presentation i think if i saw he had about 600 elementary kid increasing about 85 high school kid increase so almost
088700 increase we are not budgeting that we would have that full increase one his projections are normally through the whole year so you have to we only get funded through the first hundred days so not all would materialize as an adm increase and but we do know that with our approximately 800 student loss now from last year to this year some are coming back a lot of it's covert related we're not going to have a missed year if you're talking 50 000 students statewide we do believe some will be coming back we do have growth but we're just not planning on all of it coming back so we're taking a more conservative approach and moving it down to it's actually a little less than half of what uh the growth um would dictate in that
089sense we do have the increased base support level so inflation funding is supporting uh increase in pay uh revenue uh the final 20 for 2020 increase which was paid last year but paid in the classroom site fund we gave the raise in the current year out of mno and so i just don't want to get that double counted so i try to make sure that the teachers and everybody understands that i'm going to include it in the revenues but i'm also going to include the expense of it because we already gave the raise last year and i don't want to give a raise twice for getting only one payment we continue to see the restoration of district additional assistance so even though the budget the state budget is not done right now they have per
090statute that they've already approved was the restoration of capital coming into this year so we anticipate that increase happening and as you know with the retention stipend we're getting federal funds supporting um and they're also supporting some capital increase so i will also mention that at the end of the slide show too as i talked about classroom site fund that increase going from nine thousand to ten thousand five hundred so it's an increase of eight hundred dollars in our performance pay fund uh for a total of forty five hundred dollars um and so i know that the performance uh pay performance plan um is being worked on for next year and still has that piece to go through so you'll still be looking at that for approval but this is just the funding associated with
091it and then we're looking at an increase of 700 for eligible teacher of the 700 of funds 11 and 13 for a total of 6 000. so that's the increase going up from 9000 to 10 500 for our certified eligible certified staff so basically our all of our classroom teachers get this um so three percent retention stipend one point three percent on the base and also for the classroom site fund going up fifteen hundred dollars which is just under a three percent equivalent on their average salary another change that has happened i think a couple board members heard this during a cip presentation which was a change with our dual enrollment so right now students that pay through our maricopa community college district that sign up and pay tuition and complete a course they get
092credit and they pay for that that the community college we refunds or um reimburses the district back some of those costs so the cost of operating the program since we're operating the program students are getting the tuition at a low rate and able to as you heard in one high school since you could come out with an associate's degree and the district received some funds so currently right now just looking out over the last four years we did a little analysis to see we we've been purchasing supplies supplemental curriculum and devices has been the number one and it's really random there's no continued use a lot of times it looks like a high school principal wait until there's a sum of money in there and then they'll decide to use it and then they wait
093a couple years and then they buy something big what we're proposing is to take 45 of the funding that comes in and move it to a teacher agenda part of this personally i think is a good idea just because i think four years ago the requirements changed from the american community college districts of teachers and their qualifications and they actually had to start paying and it was more difficult to be certified to be a dual enrollment teacher so it got a little bit more difficult and they had to have a little bit more skin in the game and so this is aligning to a payment structure uh providing agenda based on the number of paid and completed students so at the end of the year we would work with our research department to find out
094how many students had been enrolled and paid and then how much the maricopa county dollars community college districts mainly rio salado has uh paid back the district and we would take and we would make uh these pro these um agendas to those teachers of record in the system and so they would be making getting back some of the money which we've already heard some positive comments that they believe will help drive enrollment and incentivize teachers to want to because a lot of times right now you'll ask them and they'll just say no i don't want to have to go pay my own money to take the test or go get trained and do all of that so there's some barriers and we hope that this would help eliminate some of those barriers so that we
095could increase some of those dual enrollment opportunities across the district so just in total um i'd like to go through just uh really i don't think i could say the word quickly anymore since i've been talking for a while uh but uh just summarizing our inflation um even though there's an increase we had a decrease this year and so i have to account for that decrease and also same with the bridge where the money came in somewhere else we already gave the mno raise and so i account for that on the revenue side but then i take it away on the expense side this proposal recommendation in front of you does have a district additional assistance transfer so we currently transfer about 1.2 million dollars this would increase it to 1.7 million out of capital
096into mno to support this and i'll talk about that on the next slide benefits the health insurance i mentioned how that was going up our certified staff this is the increase and decrease does not have the 1.3 percent but just to staffing we do have a reduction of staffing embedded in this is we are moving 12 teachers into the esser funds for our high school to be staffed because based on formula we would have also got rid of those so keep those teachers around move them into high school to help provide a better more robust high school environment classified this is a reduction of 10 of the paraprofessionals to help support the program because if we increase the amount everybody's getting right now they're vacant positions we can't fill them let's get rid of get
097them off our books and let's use that to increase the funding for our special ed program our ess program there's no additional admin increases the other changes were all those emino uh mou changes and all the other special ed changes that are just talked about i like to set aside a little bit of money for a prop 206 so even though that happens in january and it's not a full year's amount we're given a 1.3 percent increase i don't know what the increase is going to be in january but if it's 2 we'll need additional funds because our grade a through d right now are all the same at fifteen cents and so if that goes up to twelve forty that's greater than a one point three percent increase and i need some funds to
098cover that so i just do an estimate it's just all pure guessing but i'd rather set aside some money than spend all money and not be prepared for it the estimated cost of a one point three percent increase is the two million dollars so you have the almost three million dollars um with the transfer and we have the three million thirty so it leaves us about a hundred eleven thousand dollar cushion um in our recommendation from the capital side um so one of the things we also talked about as a group is um i get a little nervous when we keep just going over the capital and moving money to mno because those are permanent moves and so we talked about as a group and in the iba team to can we put a cap
099on them out we transfer so this shouldn't be uh forever and so we looked at the max transfer would be a 20 of our capital allocation that daa allocation which means that at no point should we for the next year's calculation would be 2.3 million dollars so going up to the 1.7 is still under um the 80 percent and then if you just to um so you could also see here how much we're projecting to give the school allocation it is based on student council that gets adjusted and then department allocations the department allocations is all requests going in that have been vetted and filtered and all of it coming out of capital we do believe some of these technology will be moved over to our esser funds and some of the federal funds related
100to kovitz so that'll free up so this is almost i don't want to say worst case scenario but worst on a financial that we could still fund all the requests going forward and the transfer going over to emino there are just a few considerations that we talked about and just the classroom site fund it went up a lot so over 8 million dollars was going into it so that that is part of going up fifteen hundred dollars is a lot uh for it to go up we talked about some other districts have looked at providing one-time classroom site funding and then leaving their amounts the same but i teach that's just two different sources on a pay stub that they still see so you're still giving the full and then taking away that could happen
101to us next year is this goes down we are projecting uh so almost 200 of the 733 dollars per pupil is one time in nature we did our projections to think that we probably could keep it at 10 500 for two years if it doesn't drop by more than 150 so we we did some modeling to say hey what if it drops but not fully we still have some balances in there that will continue this money has to stay in those funds we can't transfer it out and use it somewhere else so i just wanted to convey that we were looking forward because one of our standards is sustainable prop 208 funding is going to come into next year's iba process and so we will not see the money next year but there will be
102discussion about that with i know that's at the arizona supreme court right now and so we don't know exactly where that lands but there will be some funding i know that there's also some legislation out there to create an alternative tax for small businesses that would avoid an individual income tax that would then reduce the revenues that this generates we also have current legislation so they're still not done with the legislative session you heard us at the at the summer school presentation talk about there's plans for uh learning loss bill with the state to provide some additional funding for school districts for summer school or learning loss we think something's going to happen if i look at the april jlbc monthly budget update which i read yesterday has a projection based on all everything that's
103currently in statute and all funding commitments and all revenue projections shows at the end of fiscal year 2024 the state will have a cash surplus of 6.1 billion dollars they only spend 12 billion dollars so they would have 50 cash surplus of an annual budget um that's a lot we know that they're going to they're working on a tax cut right now i don't know how many billion that is going to be um they don't want to give more to schools because of prop 208 so i don't think we're going to see a lot on that side we are asking them right now which will affect this current year which is to restore the cuts to the distance learning loss um so we're at around two million dollars that they cut us this year for
104learning loss we're asking that that be fully restored um i've asked for a lot of different things i don't think anything will happen so i'm not going to share all the wist list of things that i email our legislators about but it is still something to consider if something happens that is that we need to alter this we would come back with a recommendation to amend this or something that's additional we would come back and ask the board if there's any legislation that changes to change it going forward we would communicate that to the board as well i'll stand for any questions comments all right i'll go first um and this i i know i've been pretty vocal about it so just and i understand that i'm i don't have a seat at the table
105and i'm just one board member but i do struggle with our special ed teachers um just thinking for what they do as far as writing the ieps and having before school meetings after school meetings all the special behaviors and things that they have to endure in their work day i just really feel strongly i i'd like to see them um something more than what we're offering as far as it looks like i know you're saying fifteen hundred dollars um but really it comes down to about 500 because they're gonna they're gonna keep that extra 500 rather than drop down to a thousand i understand that but then looking at i'm not saying that any particular group is worth more than another um at all when i go through these but just based on your presentation
106as far as addenda's go i you know i'm seeing addenda for four thousand dollars for dsp and the and ctso sponsor addenda 3000 otp slp 3000. um you know especially too when we look at how we asked our voters for the override to pass it to help us recruit and retain highly qualified staff you know is all we can give our special education teachers 500 i just think they do an awful lot and i and knowing that we're we're giving a lot more money to a lot of different areas i just personally i just i wish that were higher again i know i'm not part of those conversations but those were my initial thoughts when i see that i just think they uh 500 just really isn't a lot of extra for them in my
107opinion man of present members of the board i think everybody works very hard i think everybody is they do an amazing job uh we did work with our ess director and also looked at the data what is the word where's the place that we could have the most impact and the paraprofessionals with the vacancies and the turnover is where we could have the most impact in so we wanted to solve that problem the second biggest when we talked to them was our ot's pts and the outsourcing and the problems that that has and the vacancies that that has and so this also tries to address that so it may not provide more than the five hundred dollars extra to a special ed teacher we are working to um and we could this isn't something that's
108one and done uh we'll continue to look at it and look at the data but we try to be as efficient effective as possible with our dollars and where can we have the biggest impact to improve and and support programs the best possible and we do believe this does satisfy that and for clarity and that's why i said it earlier but just to your point since you mentioned it i am not saying that one group is any more important than another of course i understand that everyone is important in worth more so i i want to clarify that because you mentioned it madam president management board i was not alluding to that i will say um also talking to uh is it dr montana there's a lot of doctors now our ess director she is
109looking for other ways i know we piloted a program to provide a monday using your prep day to help on ieps and we're looking at our case loads right now are very high so the question is can we do something to start reducing our caseloads and the burden that's also on the teachers in some of those and so that is also looking at how can we do the case management so they maybe don't have as many ieps and and that too so providing them a little bit more time and break in that time too mr hicks and probably dr croto may want to chime in on this as far as our agendas with the different areas are they in comparison with our neighboring districts that are about this size um madam president members think are
110you talking to otp um i know otp is is um i'm not even talking about that there are some districts that are larger that don't have to contract out for them those type things um but i'm talking about like for the um the ess hard to fill um do we are there any lead nurse agendas that are out there in other districts um for individual addendums addendus uh yes uh most do some type of lead to instead of hiring a position that you'll have one that's just managing them you'll just provide a stipend addenda to one to kind of coordinate and be the right but how are they as far as compared to other school districts um i only know a couple districts off hand so i don't know if that's a good comparison to
111all and 3000 is right in the ballpark of all those but i don't know i don't have a wealth of knowledge of another a lot of districts to attend those okay madam president and member sawyer shank bill ken is correct that they're in line and we know the ctso one um is definitely a line because that is what the other districts do so that's why they're trying to go from the 2042 to the 3000 to be like our neighboring districts and be equal with them um because and just to piggyback on what miss pritchard says there are some school districts that do pay two thousand to twenty five hundred dollars for a hard to fill and um i i do agree with her with regards to uh the time that is spent creating an iep
112and sitting through meetings and stuff um i i know everyone in our district works extremely hard but sometimes those positions are very hard to fill with qualified people but yeah there are some that pay two thousand twenty five hundred that's just difficult all the way around and it would be great if we had otmpt on staff that we didn't have to pay those extra extra dollars to provide those services for our students and madam president a member sourcing bill um currently we have 24 ess uh slp and ot vacant positions that we contract for see this 24 24 and the dollar amount we pay for contract it is much higher it's much higher it's much higher okay just a quick question on slide three um the keywords that are used they're the legal affordable alignment
113sustainable viable was that um are you saying that that was that those terms were board adopted it is in policy okay members of the board gotcha i thought there was like something new that we had a meeting on and agreed to and i'm spacing out madam president members of the board i think uh dr dean could give us the history lesson of when they were because he mentioned each year we we re-adopt the same thing every single thing each year yeah i don't think anything was specifically brought to the board say please that's something it was just in our policy of okay um i just i want a clarification if i'm reading this correctly on the high school theater agenda it's 2042 per semester per high school correct and what was it before madam president
114member grant it was 2042 for both semesters so they needed to do uh two shows total now we're saying they need to do four two each semester and they will receive each semester okay we're putting on four four plays gosh that hurts hold that thought hold that thought now i'm i'm just going back over the dispatcher um now you've answered that and um for combined total listen okay and currently how many teachers do we have that are certified in dual enrollment do we remember how many we have madam president members of the void i do not have how many teachers are certified nor do i know the exact number i looked at to model this these rates i took and created a bunch of different scenarios based on the number of uh students we had
115in a number of different classes because it depending on where it breaks you could be paying two teachers might only have five in each class and so you'd have to pay the full amount instead of just paying one and so with the benefits associated i grabbed a bunch of modeling to show uh what's the worst case scenario best case scenario but depending on how it all floats out and so then i created this amounts based on that to make sure that we're not exceeding 45 at no point did it go above 42 percent but there could be some other scenarios that have a stipend or two increase so that's why i used that and madam president member sawyers think bill we we have numbers that range from 24 on some campuses to um you know
116a dozen or so on others a few years back if you'll recall the state changed the the rules for those um who are able to teach dual normal courses and so that lowered the number that are available our our principals have worked very hard to hire more staff that are eligible to do so okay all right thank you madam president members of the board just uh i know i didn't couch it this way in the presentation but just looking at the 500 hard to fill the three percent retention stipend the 1.3 percent and the 1500 classroom site fund our average special ed teacher that makes 58 000 would get 42.54 which is a 7.3 percent raise for next year which is only the 500 more than the others to to your point but 42.55 42.54
117and our classified staff if they're not a paraprofessional would be getting 1.3 and our admin staff would be getting 1.3 percent okay i left out of there the some of the non-classroom site fund certified staff but there's lots of different categories but i was just trying to provide some context for the board okay i don't have any questions good thank you very much mr hicks thank you very much educational leadership from grand canyon university and a master's degree in arts from spaulding university she has extensive educational experience currently a teacher at dysart elementary school and has two years of administrative experience outside of our district so with that i will stand for any questions and vote and then i'll wait for the vote and we can welcome her and her she has her family with
118her here tonight too so [Applause] just curious miss v um did i read this correctly that you had taught at field elementary yes ah okay okay all right thank you very much i thought it was a field that was out here um impressive resume um you're you're one of those um i like to call a professional student that you keep on absorbing and keep on studying and everything so very impressive thank you do you want to say something yeah go ahead um i moved the appointment of mrs v because i don't want to slaughter her name as the elementary school assistant principal second motion passes congratulations welcome happy dance next we have item h2 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board members of cabinet mr crow dr croto will also introduce this
119item thank you dr kellis madam president uh members of the boards superintendent kellis cabinet guests our second recommendation this evening is for the director of research and achievement position we are proud to recommend uh miss amy hartjen um as the candidate for this position as you know miss harton has been with the district 21 years and eight years as principal at dysart high school with that miss hartson has a master's degree in curriculum instruction from arizona state university has extensive educational experience and like i said as well as 21 years in our district and we are very happy to recommend her for this position and she is also here this evening [Applause] harjan do you realize that you have to um eat and regurgitate a whole bunch of numbers at any given time i'd like
120to make a motion to approve the appointment of amy hartjen as director of research and achievement second seconded by christine pritchard go ahead i think she beat you motion passes thank congratulations to uh to both of you this evening welcome next we have item h3 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet it has been the routine over the last several board meetings to bring forward to the board an opportunity for conversation regarding colvid matters this evening this also will continue believe we have some public comments that we will begin this item with and i'll go ahead and re-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
12138-431.03 h action taken as a result of public comment will be limited directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for future consideration and decision at a later date in order to facilitate accomplishing the business of the district in a timely manner a time limit of three minutes will be imposed for each individual or group addressing the board when you approach the podium please state your name for the record and tonight the first person requesting to speak is tina malika my name's tina malika i am a parent of two children here in dysart school district continuing dr kellis cabinet members and governing board members i have come to discuss the covet protocol and mitigation plan our family chose ischool for the first three quarters of the 2021 school year
122in order to keep ourselves and our community safe it has been difficult and stressful and we've made many sacrifices to make it work believing that the safety and health of our community was the priority fourth quarter we decided to return our elementary student to in-person learning knowing that the numbers were improving many arizonans were receiving the vaccine and mitigation measures such as masks were in place at dysert our high schooler continues to remain in a combination of high school and in person learning the american academy of pediatrics the nea aea both arizona and maricopa county health departments as well as state superintendent kathy hoffman have all recommended that school leaders and board members continue to implement universal mask wearing as recommended by the cdc cdc has also recommended this mask wearing although i appreciate i
123do appreciate the efforts advisor has made to keep the schools clean and safe during the pandemic but the science tells us that covid19 is airborne and cleaning surfaces alone will not prevent it from spreading unlike this room here physical distancing is also impossible in a small classroom with 25 plus kids if you remove the mask mandate there will be nothing left to protect our students for these last three weeks of school especially those of us who have not been vaccinated it has been less than a month since those 16 and over can receive a second can receive the vaccine my husband and i are due to receive that vaccine next week it is scientifically proven despite what you may hear that children can spread the virus we are currently at a 10 positivity rate 40
124percent of arizonans are vaccinated there simply has not been enough time for all of us to get vaccinated yet for over a year we have done our best to bring this virus to an end it has been difficult and exhausting for the district the community teachers and its families we are so close do we really want to risk the health of families not yet vaccinated and send more students home to quarantine with just three weeks left in the school year i am asking that you vote to leave the mass mandate in place for these last 15 days 15 days to allow people to get more the vaccine 15 days for students to complete their school year in person and for seniors to graduate 15 days until summer break where we will have another two months
125to let the virus continue to climb i hope that you will each consider the science as well as the safety of all dysart families carefully when making this decision i know this has been a hard year for everyone i thank you for your time thank you i do want to apologize in advance for any mispronunciations of anyone's name so i apologize for that okay okay the next person we have is lisa moberg good evening my name is lisa moberg and i am a sixth grade teacher with the dysart unified school district i've been a loyal employee of this district for 17 years i'm also a mother of two boys who are both products of the des desert schools my youngest graduating and three weeks from tonight and thank you for listening i'm i sent you
126earlier in email with all the medical and scientific facts of wearing mass as of today without the biased decisions or thoughts of politics we are currently living and working through a global pandemic and we need to remember to stay focused on the health and safety of our children as a veteran teacher i can attest to the power of consistency if we have required our staff parents and students to wear mass all school year let's remain consistent with a safety measure which has lowered our covered cases in the city of surprise and in our district if we take away the power of consistency this will increase anxiety as students and staff during the most stressful time of the year as a mother i'm begging that we keep our schools safe while my son completes his last
127three weeks of his desert school career he started at the desart preschool at three years old miss yolanda and he's been a happy and secure child while growing up with the desert schools currently he is so stressed and anxious about kovid that he didn't even attend prom and the fact that his peers might show up without mass in the next few days is also causing a lot of anxiety our seniors are really stressed out right now with college admissions finals and graduation let's keep them safe and secure so they aren't quarantined for graduation as a staff member i'm asking you to keep our loyal and brave teachers and staff safe for the last three weeks of the longest school year i've taught in 24 years we have a volunteer with a heart condition who comes
128to school every day to help the school nurse let's keep her safe we have a staff member who just survived her battle with breast cancer and is back with us let's keep her safe we have a teacher whose husband is battling stage 4 cancer let's keep him safe mass prevent all people from getting kova 19. let's continue our safety measures which provide people especially the children with a sense of security thank you very much thank you i think we're going to take a brief recess you