Dysart Governing Board Meeting - March 10, 2021

001at this time i'd like to call the meeting to order and will stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right and first up we have the uh recognitions and celebrations dr kellis um thank you madam president uh members of the board if you wouldn't mind just doing a quick roll call of attendance let the record reflect that all board members are present with the exception of miss pritchard thank you uh madam president members of the board members of cabinet this evening we have an amazing recognition recognition to present and renee ryan will present this information madam president members of the board superintendent kellis and

002cabinet it is my pleasure to share with you that our very own melanie coron vlasic has been recognized with a 2021 lifetime achievement in school social work award the honor recognizes her exemplary service to children and families and mentorship to other school social workers melanie please join us at the front left of the room to receive your certificate and then proceed to the backdrop at the east side of the room for a photo melanie is a social worker at ashton ranch elementary school and was recently recognized for the award at the school social work association of arizona's march 5th annual conference march is school social worker month and this week is actually school social worker week please join me in congratulating melanie carone vlasic on this achievement next we have audience with individuals i'll read

003this 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 ers 3843101 action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for further further consideration and decision at a later date in order to facilitate accomplishing the business of the district in a timely manner a time limit of three minutes will be imposed for each individual or group addressing the board when you approach the podium please state your name for the record first up we have angela bernhardt dear madam president members of the governing board dr kellis and cannabis canada our cabinet my name is angela bernhardt and i'm a member

004of the school social worker association of america march is designated as social work month this week we pay honor to the extraordinary social workers that serve dysart unified school district i'm going to read each person's name delilah riverview jackie west point mary freedom andrea in kingswood brenda sonoran heights mel ashton ranch megan sunset hills samantha western peaks sarah will canyon tawanda valley vista tammy dysart high school tammy with a y marley park kenny shadow ridge hannah countryside tracy luke soli cimarron springs kayla canyon ridge rebecca dysart elementary monica surprise anna thompson ranch amanda asante and julie martinview these ladies are truly extraordinary women in the dysart unified school district thank you so much for your comment next we have the student update dr kellis thank you madame president members of the board and members of

005cabinet this evening we have two of our extraordinary students who will provide a report to the board okay um hi there my name is dominique and i go to dysart high school just yesterday our student leadership council met to discuss quite a few things as always we get an update from each school and celebrate the extraordinary things they are all doing this meetings top this meetings topic item was to find a way to include all clubs and sports on each campus by doing an advertisement campaign to highlight them we also took the time to talk about opportunities of growth for our high school sites many of the items that came up were in regards to school culture and spirit as a result of this next month's meeting will be to look for ways to improve

006both culture and spirit at our schools my name is luis payan i am a senior at valley vista we also want to take the time to say thank you to our amazing community for supporting us with the covet relief drive we have many school sites with tons of donations from the community um some schools have told us that they have over 15 to 20 boxes and bins full of donations to to give you some reference these are big trash bins these are not small little containers um in fact it became a challenge for valley view food bank to be collecting them so they have rented a moving truck to collect them on friday and on friday we're going to do a final count and a picture here at the district office at around 11 30.

007so yeah that's our update we'd love to see it thank you next we have the superintendent update dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet i just first of all want to um give huge accommodations to the leadership of our student council our district our dysert student leadership council this is not just a simple task that they are pulling off to to bring in this much relief for our community but they are also engaged in many other things and so congratulations to to you and to everybody who's participating on behalf of administration i would like to extend um also congratulations to all of our social workers for the work that they are doing i again want to thank melanie for the work that she's done and is doing to

008be recognized with a lifetime achievement award is significant and to have one of our own counselors in dicer be the recipient of that award is extraordinary and so it is um she represents all of the social workers but she represents them with with such um great leadership and with the skill and the all the attributes that a a social worker should have our students are fortunate to have her and all of our social workers in the places where they are especially right now during this covert time we're hearing a lot more about the side effects of kovid we've gone through probably i hope the worst of it as far as cases and the medical part but now we're doing and we'll we will be dealing with a lot of the social emotional fallout of coveton

009so we're fortunate that we have the social workers who have the contacts with the families and the students individually and will be there for them as they need those services so thank you to you and to all the social workers that you represent um we are having an enjoyable week this week doing the the prize patrol for dysart heroes we've been out to about half of the school so far and we're again fortunate that we're able to do things a little bit more traditionally this year rather than not being able to bring anybody together we're actually able to recognize people at their work sites and so we will be continuing that during this week and a little bit when we get back from spring break and speaking of spring break everybody's been looking forward to

010it with great anticipation but i would hope that everybody enjoys their spring break responsibly and we want everybody to come back healthy and safe and relaxed and ready to finish out the year with a with a strong finish that's all i have to report thank you next we have the governing board update um i had the privilege of volunteering for read across america visiting countryside elementary and reading to mrs carlovich's class as well as ms billman's class and that was really fun for me and i just really want to thank countryside for having me i also volunteered for the valley vista marching band doing concessions at the surprise stadium again this weekend so that was exhausting but but good and that's all i have i also got to park i also got to participate and

011read across america i got to hang out with miss fallon and miss grier's class over countryside and it was great to see them i love their students they're great teachers um i also in response to read across america got to read several classes this week i read to a second grade class at canyon ridge and to two kindergarten classes at countryside and those kindergarten classes oh my gosh those kids i asked a question and every one of them it was don't ask a question to a kindergartner learn my lesson um i attended a guys and dolls musical oh my gosh that was so enjoyable those kids are so talented and the music i hadn't heard frank sinatra in a very long time so that was fun i've been visiting school so this last couple of

012weeks i visited western peaks in the growing mines preschool and willow canyon and then i've also had enjoyed participating in the dysart hero squad and going out to all the schools and watching you know how surprised everybody is when they won the award and so congratulations to all the heroes that got the award and to those that will be getting their awards in the next couple of days so um thanks to them for all they do for the district i could say ditto did oditto but uh um also had the opportunity to read across america uh let's see i visited miss great excuse me miss race third grade class at canyon ridge missy's fifth grade class at riverview and then miss divers third grade at countryside and mr dumont's fourth grade at countryside and i

013brought my own book um it was one of the newer ones and it says if i ran a dog show so of course since i have several dogs at home there were loads of questions so it's not just the kindergartners okay it's even right up until the fifth graders they have lots of questions about dogs but each one was enjoyable and i love the questions and the love the curiosity of all of our students also visited guys and dolls and i will have to apologize for anybody that was sitting near me because those toe tapping songs i actually sing out loud when that is going on so um luck be a lady tonight was a real bang up uh also um have been participating in the hero's uh dysart hero squad uh yesterday and today

014and uh there were tears and of course there was excitement and there's one even starting to back up because he really didn't know what it was but it was lots of fun and if of course when the kids get into it they are really excited that their teacher or their principal won so it's awesomeness next week spring break please be a safe have fun um and we expect to see everybody back here on that following monday so that's it oh and also i'm sorry social workers are are some of the best that are out there and i cannot speak for miss uh pritchard but i know since she is a social worker this is one of the dear things for her as well so um putting in a plug for miss pritchard there so but

015uh thank you social workers for everything you do that's it all right moving on to item e1 consent agenda item i will make a motion to approve the consent agenda items as presented seconded by ms grant motion passes next moving on to item g1 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet as part of our monthly monitoring of board policies that has been a regular scheduled feature of every of each month we present the first part of section 10 and the board has had access to these revisions and be happy to answer any questions that you might have since this is just the first read there is no action to take tonight i didn't have any questions on these we will be bringing back the second part of this

016next weekend if there are no changes between now and the next time we meet this will appear under the consent agenda for the second read okay moving to item g2 information on 2020 2021 academic data dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board of members of cabinet i will let dr pulling introduce this item good evening madam president members of the board dr kels cabinet and audience uh it's our pleasure to give updates on academic data of course our top priority is student achievement and the learning of students in class every day and so we will give this update and tell you what we're doing to improve student learning and and work on our student learning data so i would like to introduce dr wiefrich our director of research good evening madam president

017densmore board members dr callus cabinet and community thank you for allowing us to present tonight we are here with the data update for march so tonight we are going to begin with the k8 ela listed in the blue is the benchmark overall school percentage proficient in the pink is the breakdown of the person versus the remote learning on the right of that we did give you the number tested and the percent proficient of that number tested just as a reminder we do expect some drops to our third quarter 1920 and the beginnings of 2021 from our covid situations you will see a drop from last year's benchmark three to this year's benchmark three overall district our ela is at 33 percent proficient we utilize the same color coordination system although it seems like a little

018difficult to see up there but your overall district math benchmark is at 35 percent so sometimes i think it's very misleading to only compare yearly benchmark to yearly benchmark achievement is a measurement by students performance at a single point in time and how well those students perform against a standard progress is measured by how much gain or growth students make over that time i wanted to give you a closer look at an example of a math and ela in a grade level for this year only this would be from benchmark one to benchmark two within this school year this demonstrates our student growth within the system we expected this is fourth grade ela we expected to see a 23 percent gain we got a two okay these are last year's third graders that are fourth

019graders now as we look at the four quadrants and i don't have a pointer with me i'm sorry about that when you see the red dashed line everyone to the right of the line is performing there are four quadrants there you have a quadrant that is lower growth higher achievement a quadrant that is lower achievement lower growth a higher growth a higher achievement in a quadrant that is higher growth lower achievement the bottom right our students have a lower achievement but they are presenting growth and it's important to point that out that bottom right because those students may not be at benchmark but they are growing so it's very important to pay attention to those students because they may be our students that are behind but they are exhibiting growth so we just keep working

020with them to make sure they get to that proficiency level then when you look at the bottom left this is our biggest area of concern on the quadrant these are low growth students with low achievement these are our target students for tier one and tier two and i'm sorry tier two and tier three instruction and with this we are able to identify each student individually and utilize their data for tier two and tier three instruction i went ahead and utilized fourth grade math just so you could see the same present presentation here for math the expected growth from benchmark 1 to benchmark 2 is 41. we had an overall growth achievement of 42. we still have students in the 4th quadrant area that is our tier 2 and tier 3 instruction that we want to

021move forward and we still have plenty of students that are moving forward and growing however they may not be at benchmark yet but we are moving them with progression to that we're going to take a look at our k3 acadian stibbles information so this gets a little bit confusing benchmarks for dibbles are indicators of grade level measures based on a student's progression through the early literacy skill set dibble's benchmark 2 is accumulative of all literacy skills taught in grade level during the first semester first grade the benchmark 1 data reflects the loss of in-person instruction fourth quarter of kindergarten this would be the focus on phonological skills and you're going to see that it's much lower than the previous year's benchmark 1 data second grade the benchmark 1 data reflects the loss of in-person instruction

022fourth quarter of first grade focus on phonics is much lower than your previous year's benchmark one data so i didn't get this slide in but i did want to address it the next steps for k3 the dibbles intervention is supplementing tier 1 florida virtual with hmh instruction and other resources including authentic text high frequency words and 95 group these are whole lesson groups providing tier 2 small group instruction for 30 minutes focused on skill need areas and also providing tier 3 small group instruction for at least 30 minutes with an interventionist and this is your k2 math slide and i have to share with you that we have kindergarten and first grade schools that are still in progress with these so it still hadn't closed as of tonight and time for me to get this

023to you so i did want you to see what was in progress and let you know that they were still testing so this is a very interesting slide what you see here is our quarter two midterm compared to the quarter two end the goal would be to identify the failures in the midterm make sure that you reduce them by quarter n our schools have done a really great job at this green is our reductions and we have a few pink wherein they didn't reduce and i believe we have one that increased but the goal is always taking that midterm point failure data and providing instructional strategies to reduce these failures by quarter n this also demonstrates the higher overall failure rate of our remote learning students so if you look your in-person failure rate compared

024to your remote failure rate most generally your remote students are have a higher level of failure so for k8 we have a lot of supports and action steps in place very recently third quarter coming into fourth quarter now there was a change in the remote teaching staffing classroom teachers no longer are holding simultaneous instruction they're dedicated schools to remote are dedicated teachers to remote learning we are back on the monday pd plan uh covet has impacted everything so tls and data specialists are back identifying tier two um we are getting stronger again with our small group instruction again coven intervened with our six feet those kinds of things so we're back at a lot of that and then one of the good things also that it was i felt was really important to me mentioned

025to you tonight was 95 produced a progression guide for us um with instruction that implements all of the missed instruction from quarter four last year and wove it back into our teaching in 95 this year working to help catch our students up in that so that's something that 95 percent has provided for us most importantly i think it's important that we review that k-8 had to utilize the schoology platform this year build their classes learn florida virtual use the online resource to deliver instruction this was all new for k-8 along with remote learning where our high schools were embedded in florida virtual embedded in using online resources embedded in losing and using schoology arcades had never had to do that before so along with covid they implemented all of those issues and continued their instruction

026so at this time i'm going to bring up dr sai and she's going to take you through some high school yes please good evening thank you so much um as i was sitting listening to jane's presentation i actually asked ken for his pen because i think we really always need to put data in a context and we need to think of what is our initial reaction to data you know and looking at the ela benchmarks for those of you who know me for a while you know i'm very competitive and you know i looked at the data and i freaked out then we have to think about what is the context of this data i stood before you last year and i told you i thought ela benchmark 2 was high that i would have

027loved to claim we had a gain of 42 to 57 but that's not factual it's what the numbers say but it really wasn't in the context i do feel that the adjustment of going if you look at the 1819 data for benchmark in ela 9 at 42 and being presently in 39 is fairly reflective of where our kids probably are with the loss of school that they had we've also had some kids that have been quarantined 20 to 30 days we have other kids that have other outside issues but the most important part of the data is the so what what are we going to do with this and i really try and emphasize uh to the teachers at my side in district wide when i'm able to get out that these are it's like

028having a cough when you go the doctor and that cough tells us that something's wrong with the way benchmarks are drilled down we can say okay tracy needs to work on rl1 joe needs to work on rl5 and we can do student by student skill by skill it would be my belief and my hope that the 38 average you see for ela 10 is up in the 40s by the times our kids test one concern that i do have is the high school testers the ones we got in i think are probably are pretty good testers i think our kids that are failing high school probably didn't get in to take benchmarks that could be for campuses as well so we'll see how that plays out with the next set of data with math benchmarks

029i will tell you dr weifer did i disagree on the on the algebra and that's okay she's very scientific i'm not a scientific but you can see the average of a 19 for algebra as an outlier with any other year i do see when i walk around on at least valley's campus where i currently am i don't think that's reflective of our teaching it may come out i tried to better a coffee on it but our kids will not be taking azm2 for that i would expect to see when they test as 10th graders that they are in the 40s you will see our geometry when in 1819 from 49 down to 40. it was comparable to last year um and it's still the 40s guys uh we don't want to be in the 40s

030we're a district we want to get to the 60s the 70s the 80s eventually the 90s but we know that's a slow process and we know we have some things that have worked against us this year um so that's where our schools are and i'll come back and talk a little bit more about other data points but what schools should be doing at this point and what i believe they are doing is starting to overlay their data lots of schools gave their geometry and their english to teachers time via monday plc's to really look and say which students need those specific skills i know shadow continues to do intervention mondays kind of like a march to math or a walk to reading to fill specific skills and have kids interacting with their data and we

031know that one of hattie's high leverage strategies is kids self-reporting their progress so we're hoping to see some good games and get our kids back on track where they need to be jaden's going to talk to you about the really technical part and then i'll be back so it's important to note as shelley shared with you we we don't have a 10 uh we're not going to have a 9th grade test this year next year we won't have a 10th grade test we're going to have a ninth grade test next year and 11th grade test next year and then the following year we're going to have all new tests again so with the state of arizona we're getting no baseline going on so it's a little bit confusing to try and keep up with where

032they're going and and get an actual baseline going for our kids but i did want to discuss the algebra learning loss just a little bit so from benchmark one to benchmark two we cover the align standards and the difficulty of the questions differ in each standard area is from benchmark one to benchmark two the average expectation on this last algebra test was a 21-point growth cut scores are moved higher on benchmark two because of the expected growth although the same standards are covered it is just like a bell curve and when you look at it we're at the middle of the standard deviation when you move to one two three you are looking at a harder question when you move to negative 1 negative 2 negative 3 you're looking at a very easier question much

033easier question so it's just how we look at it so when we looked at the two tests when i when i saw the algebra scores and we pulled the parametrics on the test i'm giving you example discrimination is how well an item is covered a standard is covered getting at all points of that item and the difficulty is the level of difficulty of the problem i gave you a sample standard here this is a very sample standard in the list of standards that we use they are all like this they're multifaceted create equations and inequalities in one variable and use them to solve problems include problem solving solving opportunities utilizing real word context focus on linear quadratic exponential and piecewise defined functions that is a multi-level question so in benchmark one the area of discrimination

034how well it was covered and i'm sorry when they put the slide up it looks like it bumped over so i will read it to you had a .06 difficulty that same standard was tested in benchmark two with a two two-point discrimination and a 3.5 above the standard difficulty meaning that standard was covered on that second benchmark in all areas of those points you see in there in three points higher above the standard deviation in difficulty so the reason they do this is because they're testing the same standards but they're wanting students to show growth and some of these standards require substantial growth i took a scatter plot for you of 10th grade ela and again i just pick a grade level we i did 10th grade ela and then 10th grade geometry for you

035to see so um we don't we want to the bad with the good so we have some really great things and then we have some things we have to work on so uh the expected growth on our ela in 10th grade was 16. we had a negative 11 so there was a loss of learning there many many factors are going to play into that again we go back to teaching and learning we you know we go back to timeless listed time off we know that we have kids at every grade level at every high school at every elementary school who have had coveted time off i actually have my own grandson here and he's had two sessions of 10 days each off due to covet factors so there's there's just not any way around attendance

036can't factor into this so it makes it very difficult on the other end showing you the geometry and we have always done very very well in in geometry we have a very strong integrated math team so the average growth here expectation was 23 and our average growth was 23 for the district so we met that growth expectation in the geometry i'm going to give you back to dr assai and an interesting point there that i don't have the answer to is we had the negative growth in ela but if you look at the percent of kids predicted to be proficient it looks the same so there's some interesting i mean we really need to dig through this data and use it but use it student by student skill by skill again what's up next is

037our 11th grade act and the act compared to last year you'll actually see some gains except for act english which is more like the grammar and things like that which is currently mapped into our standards one of the reasons is that one of the reasons that accounts for that is that this year we're using chalk talk or method test prep so it's the first time we've had an act prep a specific program at each campus we did ask each campus to decide between the two what fit their needs because we know not every campus is the same we are going to be partnering with our research side of the house to do program evaluations next year to find out which is the most effective but we know teachers need time to get comfortable with a

038product before we start making those big decisions we are excited to see some modest gains there and we hope that it plays out when our kids take the act this is ultimately very important to us because for so many of our kids that are going to college this is one of their gateways in and regardless if they're going to work or college we want them to have that opportunity with the next slide you will see great distributions um our ultimate goal would our ultimate goal would be a zero percent failure rate uh but we would be happy with between a three to five percent failure rate uh two of our schools are almost there shadow ridge and willow if you look at them had a 5.5 valley was at an 8.5 and dicert high was

039at a 12.4 our schools are doing tons of good things to help with this next year we will be resuming our standards-based grading pilot which really promotes that grading equity kids can see with the standards where they fall and how that equates to their grades so we're excited for that we're also really working with our schools to work on multiple means of proficiency and i want to be very clear with that that is not just hey i want to come in and retake the test we know that that didn't play out very well for us that i sit down and say oh i just want to retake it again before i do this one that's not multiple means of proficiency but it is saying okay can you explain this to me a little more or

040two weeks later saying okay i'm going to retest you on this now that you've had some time to do it and see how that plays out so it's very different i think that's an important clarification with this slide you should just look at it and say wow bobby lockhart that's what i did with this one when you see the failure rate for quarter one compared to quarter two it was cut from a 19 failure rate to an eight percent failure rate and that's a phenomenal job in a very very short time uh so things that bobby's doing over there it would be worth finding out about more later because uh wow that's impressive going into high school high school grades are pulled from our schoology system right now and schoology has some limitations with being

041able to pull grades in terms of knowing where kids are and their percentage so we are working through that as we look at our lms to decide how we pull what's valid to pull and how it works we do continue to have concerns about some of our learners that are in high school that don't make a lot of progress we've encouraged lots of them to come back to campuses if they're not doing well by all means we want to respect parents rights to keep their kids at home if they don't feel safe but we also know if they're at home and failing that we can probably do better in thinking of ways to service those kids huh my credits oh i'm so sorry there's credits at the bottom i went to basketball it gave me

042it last night and i left my glasses so i apologize the girls did one though um you will see credit uh credits down down at the bottom too so supports and action steps and this is the most important thing so that's our data what are we doing how is it going to change for the positive how are more of our kids going to succeed um dedicated additional monday to grade level team interventions and really working with our our teachers especially the high school level what do those interventions look like it doesn't mean that i'm slowing down and saying it louder to you and doing it the same way we really have a lot to learn from our elementary counterparts in terms of solid interventions and our teachers are working to do that working to support

043students in high school who are not successful we have one really promising model where a teacher is actually pulling small group i saw it the other day working with about six kids on high school who volunteered to come to the office hours and i saw great things from that there was actually a lot of discussion for an online class i was amazed our comments are open at daily and hourly for high school students and there's office hours addressing the needs for more direct instructional contact for high school class times which i got they can come in documentation of instructional changes based on the most current data that's for example we had a school that pulled their geometry team and their english 3-4 team each for half a day and the principal really worked with them

044because not all of our english teachers learned how to dissect data like that you know in supporting our teachers because they only have so many hours a day and saying here you go here's package data for you so now we can focus on the so what instead of having our teachers put their time in there a tls and data specialist with identified assignments and strategies um also two things i didn't put on there that i think are really important is we're working on aligning our math and ela for next year the specialists are actually putting data pull dates saying we expect unit one test to be done by september 23rd we're going to pull the data on september 30th so we can look at it as a leadership plc and figure out how to provide

045more supports to our teachers in our schools on an individual basis the other thing is to work with schools on overlaying data so like we said the benchmark is one point in time but what really matters it's what's next amy harchen has a very promising model of this at dysart high her teachers every two weeks will test on two specific standards like we didn't do well on rl1 and rl5 so they'll teach that where it's really fits in their curriculum map but then they'll meet with amy and her admin team to really say okay now we see these kids are moving student by student skill by skill and i've really seen promise with that administrative support for that because as principles we should be the best instructional leaders at the very end we have summer

046programs we are running so many summer programs at this time dysart is going to be full uh kh summer programs located on designated campus campuses and we have our 7th to 8th grade bridge program at dhs which we traditionally run each high school is going to be housing their own program which is phenomenal we just need teachers who want to teach in june and july we're working on that um see uh the summer senior summer senior that didn't sound right uh the sundown summer program for seniors our seniors who fell a creditor too short are going to be housed at sundown able to graduate in the summer so we're really excited for that and ischool is running their traditional pro high school traditional that's also an oxymoron there but our ischool is running online for

047kids who want to work ahead or make up credits and the high school expanding summer programming for arts and sports and our incoming freshmen and i think we're very fortunate because there are some federal relief funds coming that we're very grateful for that we're going to be looking at additional interventions and supports to provide for for our students and now jane will stand for the really hard questions and i will take in the easy ones actually the whole team is here um dana noble and adriel grishaver everyone's here tonight to answer any questions that you might have okay good no questions thank you very much an easy question when you're gonna get your glasses back i think i called my husband and they're laying on my counter okay i should be good when i get

048home all right okay um i did have a question and you just said something regarding the relief the federal relief do we know what is actually going to be coming in that would be mr head that's right uh madam president members of the board we're actually looking at state funding for this as in the governor's proposals and other legislative initiatives are for interventions and for summer school right now although that hasn't been approved our backdrop our contingency plan is the esser funds um that we would commit to our summer school and our interventions and we believe it's not just a one year summer school intervention that's going to take it might take two years but so state and or federal oh okay okay all right um disappointing on some of the the percentages but we

049we knew that and then we know that um school districts across the entire nation are dealing with this you know these issues um not being quite connected with everything so i'm just curious is there and i know i've heard the words before is there a silver bullet that is going to draw it all together and somehow make us a little bit more successful in the quarters coming up i i think member sawyers think well the more we can support our our teachers in packaging some data for them and allowing them to do what they do i i do want to say our teachers have been amazing through this oh yes um and they're they are the real heroes in this story that our scores aren't lower than they are um and we're very fortunate that

050our kids have had the ability to go to school so much more than others but i think the silver bullet is always student by student skill by skill and i don't think that's traditionally been done especially at our high school level that it's been let me reteach the whole class and then the kid that god is like why am i here having to learn this again and they tune out so i think the more we can small group kids and really individual address their needs i think that's going to be the silver bullet it's not going to be like a look at that it's going to be slow and steady over time we know our group that had the half day kindergarten it's taken them years and years to kind of get those scores up

051little by little so you know we know that the learning loss is real and not having that instructional time with the standards at the level they are but i would say that's the closest thing that comes and also continuing to support our teachers with professional development and the board's always supported that with our monday early release and using that time very judiciously and making sure that it's very focused that it's not about field trips but it's about standards and kids okay so regarding the summer school programs i am so glad we do have um a variety different programs and everything um are we possibly going to have some students kicking and screaming not to go to summer school they'll probably do that in their house [Laughter] i just wanted to tack on what dr assai

052said it's interesting to me because i do more of the analytics of it and i've been working with ati and we fit the mold in that the conversations i'm having with him they're actually working on a couple white papers and they're seeing across the united states that the learning loss for reading is going to really be the k3 group and then the math group is going to be the eighth ninth grade group so they're they're doing white papers that really across the united states we fit right into that mold um that's what where they believe that most of it will exist wow okay all right uh congrats and sundown i don't think she's here but uh um that's totally bobby lockhart that's totally bobby locker and um those those are great percentages uh but yeah

053my my main thing was the relief as far as uh what would be coming in or where we can use it and stuff like that so thank you ladies very much thank you thank you oh did you oh i thought you were going to ask a question oh i have my whole list here wait you're not off the hook yet no no seriously okay now you're just playing with us no i'm not i thought you i i'm sorry you're fine we need rules could you and i'm i'm everybody out here they know the answer to this but i don't could you please explain to me more what tier 2 and tier 3 instruction looks like i think that that's a great question member grant and we're working to really define that as a district throughout

054tier two would really look like i'm doing intervention and specific skills uh dana at the k8 that would look like a march to math when i think of i'm doing something outside my general ed curriculum and just pulling the small group within the classroom um we're talking tier two tier three would be more resource and going up that route would that be correct should have tier two as well as tier one so we say there's tier one going on every day tier two is going on every day it's usually about 30 to 40 minutes and then the tier three would those kids that attend that would be 30 to 40 minutes as well on top of the tier one and two okay um and then thank you as we see these numbers and as parents

055start hearing about their students and their numbers i'm sure they're going to be saying you're going to summer school but between now and then what does intervention begin to look like especially on the high school level um that's a great question because the challenge to the teachers is you know at my campus i told them i don't care what these are not that i don't care but i want raw data right i want it to be the cleanest data it can be so the kids do poorly they do poorly but the question is what do we do between now and easy merit and what do we do now and even after i see merit in the end of the year because we don't stop teaching at merit so they have actually gone through they've analyzed

056each kid they've told them hey here's your data in the cases for my sophomore classes or they will be doing that they've each group has had to figure out a plan because it's a cohesive plc plan as a teacher i can't be expected to address all that by myself so we want to also give teachers some autonomy in that with what it'll look like you know will it be a monday intervention um a story that i can think of that would paint that a paint a picture of what it looks like as i was walking across at shadow ridge one day i walked in and the kids were paying abnormal attention to the teachers class they were and i go what's going on like i never see you guys disengaged he goes oh that's not

057my teacher and i go what do you mean that's not your teacher he goes oh i'm here because i don't know g5 he goes and i need to know g5 it's a geometry standard because it's going to be on azmerit and i can get a grade bump if i pass um so that's an example that the kids for that standard one to one teacher a kids for another one went to another place one of the teams at valley they've designed an intervention board that kids can raise their score on the benchmark by showing proficiency so they designed where kids will have time to address their specific standards that they need remediation on and they'll be able to go and click on that uh they will watch a video or small group with the teacher and

058then they'll take a quiz to show that they're proficient does that how does that plan a clear picture much better but so what about like after school like tutoring so you have a student that is struggling in we'll just pick math and science and the to the the teacher says i do this on tuesdays and then the other teacher says i do it on tuesdays as well now how do i pick and choose as a student i need help and so on every other i pick math on this tuesday and science the following tuesday or is there a way for them i i don't know i mean i know everybody's overworked i get that but and i think that's something that high schools can probably in general do a better job of right now at

059my current location we have started a wednesday after school bus we were one of the last high schools to pick that up and we just did that leaves at 4 30. and what we've done is we publicized that list of teachers and we've told parents we've uh we call them a lot when we find out they're going and the teachers also tutor on other days but that's the day we have the transportation and we've said if you need a ride and you can't get there even if you have even if you have jane and jane's not tutoring that day you can go to any english teacher and that english teacher will help you and we've asked those english teachers to work together because we have to have the idea that they're not my kids they're

060our kids and how can we help that but do the students understand that they can go like that english teacher isn't my english teacher and so i don't i don't know yeah i don't think it's any great practice yet i i really don't i'm going to be perfectly transparent with that i think we need to work to the part where it is um and that's a cultural shift for some high school teachers it really is because so for so long it was i walk in i work in my classroom these are my classrooms my kids and we've been working with the plc process but i think we have a ways to go and i think it's a culture shift cultural shift for students as well because they think oh i have to go to that

061particular instructor versus oh my gosh i can go over here i can go to anyone and get help right and that's really where we'll see i think some more growth and that power in it is we're doing all of it jane mentioned something i couldn't hear her um the comments so um for instance willow canyon the common area after school is open so the common area is open usually with instructors in there so okay there are those high school teachers or online teachers and that period after school is also open so kids are always welcome in there for any kind of help with instruction even if they're not high school yes oh uh something else that one of our school campuses is doing is saturday school and they're publicizing that so kids can come in

062and get help on saturdays from eight to ten there's a variety of teachers there and sometimes administration does assign it um if there's tardies and they see a kid's failing but it's also open to any kid and so some of our teachers have really done a nice job of coming in and filling those roles and then my final question and you don't i know you don't have an answer to this but so we we're looking at these numbers and parents are seeing these numbers and they're i'm sure summer schools the big chatter out there we've got to have enough teachers to do this otherwise we're going to be telling them oh yeah but so is there a plan b for if we don't get enough are they just going to be larger class sizes uh

063i would be hesitant to make larger class sizes with kids that are making up credits we know that contrary to some studies that say class size doesn't matter class size matters absolutely if i have 15 kids in a class i can get to them a heck of a lot easier than i can with 30. um you know i'm continuing to beg teachers um i promised a few extra coffee outside there uh they're 23 an hour um you know i wish i had a magic pot of money and could say hey i'm going to give you more than 23. what's your magic number uh because it is time away from their families in the summer and things like that our ischool is unlimited and we do have the collaborative commons open so some kids will go

064that way and they can come into the collaborative commons and work with teachers i think you know it would be hooves to look into some peer tutoring you know can our nhs kids and things like that come in and uh work with our high school students because we know that peer support is also a research-based method that works other than that it would be when they return in fall really focusing on you know are there credits we need to make up what do we have to do and what does that look like but that's a very reactive stance and not proactive stance and madam president remember grant i would add as well that we are working on and looking at um some pieces uh that that would provide additional incentives for our teachers um to

065to be involved in summer school this summer as well can the retirement community help with some of that madam president remember grant um we'll actually talk about that in two presentations from now oh okay look at that that's just like always i have a problem jim dean has an answer i know oh no thank you um quick question so just for instance if a student is failing more than one class maybe two or three classes maybe four or five classes what does that look like for summer school um yeah so first theoretically for summer school kids can retap cap two full credits okay a kid could go to english nine in the morning english ten in the afternoon english eleven and twelve so face to face there's the opportunity for two full credits which in

066a scheme of 22 i think is it 22 to graduate as i'm really bad with numbers that way off the top of my head in the scheme of 22 credits you know that's uh that's 10 i think um so they have the opportunity to get that they could also take an additional high school class um so depending on i guess as a parent how much i want to stand over them uh they could actually get probably between two to four credits done i mean if they were really really working uh that parent would need a lot of coffee and maybe some wine yeah i wasn't asking for a friend [Laughter] and then the other question i had was just about the curriculum being used so i know that you know we did the switch over

067to the florida virtual do we think that that's been impacting any of these numbers you know it's really hard to say because we there's so many other variables out there um we do feel um and this is a feeling i want to make it this is a shelly aside feeling not research based i've watched my own kids on florida virtual um get so freaked out over is the answer right or wrong and to me that's not what education should be about i want my babies to test well but i want them to love the process of learning um so next year in most of our high school classes we will be we've done curriculum focus groups with some teachers and i think jen and kami are going to integrate some student voice and what is

068it you like about florida virtual what do you want to get rid of um this this semester of the high school we told teachers all you have to give is the unit test and the rest you can do on your own because we saw a lot of loss of teacher autonomy and as long as teachers are aligning curriculum and teaching the standards level they should have that autonomy as long as we're seeing results we're not seeing great results right now but there's other things going on we do believe we were on a really good path prior to this and outside our english our scores in high school english have gone up every year we use pearson our teachers prefer that um it's not as cut and dry it's um so we are going to go

069to a mix next year we will use the great things from florida virtual there was a great poetry unit in 11th grade so we might hang on to that because it's free and we will and we will integrate it with our pearson another thing we're doing is with our unit test we've made sure to align three questions to every standard so it'll give us really good standards reads between our benchmarks to help overlay that data thank you you have anything no okay thank you very much thank you so much next we have item g3 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet continuing with our department reports we will be bringing in our next apartment introduced by mr dean good evening madam president members of the governing board dr

070kelson members of cabinet this evening it's my pleasure to present to our director of community education john williams and he's going to provide the board information related to the community education department and what they're all about good evening i've narrowed this down to 90 minutes so we can get to the next presentation so we'll go we'll go quickly through here um yes again uh thank you madam chair members of the board dr kellis cabinet um pleasure to be here this evening talk about community education and the great things that we're doing i want to preface all of this by saying everything that i present to you tonight there's not one single general fund dollar that gets dumped into it everything that we do in community education is self-sustaining so the services that we provide to

071students families in the larger community the fees that you approve this evening those those are what sustains our department our salaries and all of the operations that go into it so where we operate like an enterprise fund so i want to preface that as we go through some of these things and keep that in mind um all right let's go to the next slide okay so these are the key program areas uh and i have um our management team here so as i go through this i'm just gonna introduce them because i do nothing and they do all the work and and i appreciate all the credits so um growing minds preschool we have emily lopez um she is our preschool program manager if you have not been to growing minds check it out i'm

072just an amazing place it gives you a lot of perspective when you're walking around with one to five year olds with just big old smiles from from ear to ear and emily and her team do an amazing job enrichment activities and facility use management both of those bullets my court right is our program manager that manages all of those things um and we'll get to explaining a lot of those uh those the the the uh potluck dinner that that that maya deals with with within all of those different areas um the vista center for the arts louis is gone um luis is one of our theater interns i was hoping to shine some light on him he's a rock star and we have a theater tech uh maya is also heavily involved in that as

073our box office and front of house manager show nights um and that's it's been an amazing experience and i'll talk more about that den club and our childcare our licensed child care program christy martinez in the back there she is our program manager as well wave christy give a little wave there you go um and uh and then we have a new program with the advent of you adopting middle school programs are middle school rec programs so i'll get to that so growing minds just a quick recap we are a quality first program so um quality first we're currently three star in kind of a probationary period because we're looking to be a four-star um and higher out of five star um and uh emily's doing an amazing job and one of the ways that

074we're gonna get to a higher rating is providing cda credentials and that's child development associate credentials qualityfirst provides grant funding that will pay for our employees to continue that education and and that will get us to a four-star rating which just does wonders for our program um from grant funding and providing additional resources um when we look at our numbers pre-covered before you know before march 2020 we're at about 225 active accounts active students today we're at 267. that is through a pandemic and and that credit goes to emily and her team and the amazing services that they're providing we've expanded services through her vision of adding one-year-olds we started with three we were gonna start with four-year-olds um and we've slowly gotten younger and younger and younger because the demand is there the demand

075is there we follow um arizona department health services licensing um ratios and uh emily's doing an amazing job and that program continues to grow the goal is to fill up we have the capacity licensing capacity of about 300 students on the main campus and then expand to all of our elementary schools right now we're at marley park we have two classes at marley park and we have a class at freedom traditional academy so we look to continue to grow those programs and i'm gonna say this about um our den club team as well but when the world shut down the only individuals that were dealing with kids and providing services to students with the people at growing minds and our child care team they never stopped they didn't work from home they continued to provide

076services to kids for essential workers that needed it the nurses the doctors folks that were working at luke air force public safety officials we continue to provide services so so um i just i can't speak enough about the people that that work at growing minds and for den club enrichment programs um maya has done an amazing job growing this you see a lot of fun pictures on there of soccer a new k-4 six-week soccer program exploded we had 275 kids out at countryside this past saturday in conjunction with a partnership that maya has developed with arizona soccer association so all of our enrichment programs are activities that aren't otherwise provided by schools to our students and to the greater community um we we share these opportunities through a lot of different marketing strategies uh we

077started an in-motion dance program uh maya and our our dance teacher rachel guest um side story rachel was a product of covid the dance studio shut down and we scooped her up and she is providing that service out of growing minds preschool through k-8 for competitive non-competitive dancers and the program is blowing up we provide middle school enrichment and recreational opportunities driver's education we we have one driver's ed vehicle so that limits our capacity a little bit but it continues to fill up every time we have a class it fills up the demand is there um and we will be um providing uh cpr services we have in the past through a vendor but we're taking that in-house and we're going to provide that service to our our teachers that need it our coaches that

078need it and the greater community facility use and so you have all of these resources throughout the district um and they're open to the greater community you can come in and you can rent a facility um these uh include faith-based organizations private businesses personal reasons um special interest groups youth sports a city of surprise through the iga utilizes our facilities and so there are a lot of different um from from athletics to to hoas that that come and walk through the doors of our schools it's a great way to create community partnerships um again maya manages this area um she utilizes site specialists as hosts for for certain events and then we have field technicians you have three field technicians um that uh open and shut and make sure everything's safe and make sure they're

079following all of our district policies and um and and that the users feel welcome uh facility rentals and again this is this is credit to cabinet and and you our our school board um they blew up over the past year and the reason being is is dysart came back last june and opened up its doors to churches to other users where other districts did not and so um what we've seen is about a 25 increase in facility use over the last year and so we are confident we're going to hold on to these people because we're good hosts and we're going to grow this number all right the vista we've had three shows in a year we're doing good um it's been it's been an incredible experience to to be a part of this and

080i thank uh dr kellis uh mr dean cabinet the board um this has just been just been it's it's one of the perks of my job is is to work with some amazing people and have this opportunity to bring what will be and what is currently um a regional destination right here within your school district with with what we're doing with this um this past uh february 27th we had bill enville and he rolled up gets out of the car and um he gets out and i'm here i'm there with one of our our theater techs and one of our interns and he says i'm really nervous i haven't done this in a year and i said no problem we haven't done any here either so don't worry about it um so it it's and

081he had an amazing experience when he left he he said let's stay in touch and i want to come back and we'll fill the house we had two shows with him that were at full capacity socially distanced um so we couldn't sell you know the 1300 seats that that are there but uh just an amazing experience and we have some great shows as you can see up there um and and there's a lot of potential for that to really become a regional destination so we're excited of what's to come uh with the vista den club this is the bread and butter of community ad this is what we do we we provide services that we want i.e the vista driver's education but then we provide services that are needed and and child care from 6

082a.m to p.m very often is a needed service to working families especially in a community like surprise a lot of people don't work here they drive out of town and sometimes very long distances and so this is a very much needed service um christie mans this operation you can see from enrollment we dropped we were on the incline we were going we were moving we were providing a service that people wanted um and then uh right around sometime around last march um things shut down however we continue to provide that service to essential workers and we're slowly seeing this number grow over the past month it's grown about 100 students from 470 to about 574 um and they just do an amazing job what i what i will say is that 35 of the students

083that attend den club are des qualified families these are families that that have to work that need the service so i can't say enough about this program um i will point out sixth through eighth grade and this is going to be um germaine to the next slide i wanted to use that word uh there's only 49 6th through 8th graders in den club so when we look at this program for next year we want to pilot a middle school program for before and after school called wreck recreation education and community it has to be something that isn't just needed because obviously you saw from the preceding slide that sixth through eighth graders don't really need those child care services but it's got to be something they want and after meeting with those four middle school

084principals we found out that these are areas that they want to promote that sometimes they can't provide that community education will fill in that gap that includes recreational opportunities open gym open library time study hall tutoring and and then supporting other signature programs collaborating with cte and then providing some um community connectivity leadership opportunities for those kids as they prepare for high school so we're excited about this we we think this has good promise and after the pilot year um this this coming year we hope that we can expand it to those other k-8 schools so this this is more of kind of a visual i'm a picture person there was a lot of data on the last presentation and you lost me but pictures tell a thousand words and and if you look at

085the our graphic image of what is going on financially with community ed we are on the uptick for 2021. the pandemic hit everybody very hard and and for a self-sustaining program we had some challenges but we did have support we had support from the arizona department of economic securities grant funding we had support by continuing thanks to you to stay open provide facility rentals run summer camp participating in learning labs um all of those things helped us kind of sustain our programs and uh we we continue to uh to grow we were on a great path in 1920 as you look at that but then when you look at march the bottom dropped out and that's when uh everything kind of shut down so we're trending in the right direction we're excited i have an

086amazing team of people um we've got 91 employees in community yet from child care services to everything and that doesn't include our site specialists so it exceeds that those site specialists traditionally are other support staff and teachers looking for a little extra pay and we're excited of what's to come so that is my presentation thank you to the board any questions i do have a question um as far as the wreck for the middle schools um are teachers going to be doing that after school or do we have separate is it going to be community ed staff who's providing these services so great question so um we we will be the the point of contact for all services so christy already has staff at those sites and so those will be the facilitators of the

087pro these programs we do want to work in conjunction with teachers and support staff at that site so for example that academic prep hour that support we want an ela teacher we'll pay a math teacher to come in after hours and support students in that program so um it it's a combination of folks but we're always the point of contact so we absorb the responsibility of running and facilitating and making it easier for everybody else my turn i was very excited to hear when you you were going to call the six through eight wreck instead of dens club i think you'll get more kids because if i'm in sixth or seventh grade and you're telling me i gotta go to den's club it's like oh i gotta be at those little kids and so this

088will be their program so that the dens club kids will think oh wow i'm going to the wreck program next year so that would be exciting when when groups rent the facility like religious groups or sports groups or whatever are they responsible for cleaning it when they're done and with covid now do they have to sanitize it or do you have to go in after that and clean and sanitize great question so um part of the rental agreement is leave it how you found it so so that that is part of when when any third party comes in but our site specialists our field techs are also responsible for maintaining the facility making sure it's safe and it's locked up and it's left the way that that classroom cafeteria um what was when they got

089there um we obviously partnered with abm and they they do some extensive cleaning and sanitizing after every use even the sunday groups correct so i got a couple of questions all right all right so as far as drivers said um we have one car currently yes currently and are we how can we get some more cars yes but besides seeing the business guy you know how can we excite seeing him hey what can we what can we do to get more vehicles and i think that's par that's part of our business model is to grow that and and our hope was this year we were going to purchase another vehicle um and that didn't happen part of the reason was we limited some of the classes because we didn't want we didn't want three kids

090in the car we dropped it to two to spread them out for obvious reasons um so so the goal is over the next 12 to 18 months to to have another vehicle maybe sooner than that but it's all part of that self-sustaining program when the money's there we we go and we continue to grow that program um we did um and i thank you for uh adopting those driver's ed fees this evening that is certainly going to help pave the way to getting a second vehicle okay all right um so excited about the rec middle you know for the middle schoolers and especially the um community connectivity leadership growing them from straight out of sixth seventh and eighth on the way up to high school so that's that's a very comforting piece and also the

091quality first grant funding um i like money and i like the fact that i know you do um but uh the fact of that funding and um providing you know the credentials and everything for the teachers and every that's that's awesome that is awesome uh do we have anybody that's ready for it or has they've taken part in it as far as like the funding the the the scholarships yes yes okay yes and that scholarship started last july we had we had started accepting students into growing minds through the scholarships um and emily's working right now on the grant funding for um for those those teachers are facilitators we don't have certified teachers in our preschool but those facilitators to continue their their education um as well as it allowed us to purchase an entire

092classroom set of furniture to expand programming so it's been a great resource for sure awesome awesome and madam president remember sorry since i might add in closing that um john was also instrumental in working with ottawa university along with with our hr department to provide opportunities for our employees at a discounted rate to start working to get their degrees and so through through john's work and through hr's work we have opportunities pathways for our employees to continue their education and the hope would be that we have we hire preschool aides who then go to school through ottawa and come back and teach for us as well well i happen to like ottawa so yes there you go and uh back to drivers that you do accept donations always okay gotcha but but the vehicle has

093to run [Laughter] yes the vehicle would have to run no i mean you know if there there could be somebody that's out there listening right now that has a vehicle yeah just go to dysart.org backslash community education and there you go you'll find my contact info on there free advertising right there so thank you very much thank you quick question um so for the growing minds preschool when you talk about moving from a three-star reading to a four-star reading um who does those ratings uh first things first so it's first things first program yep um and uh it's it's quite an extensive process that we went through last spring um it started last fall and fall 2019 and um obviously kovid slowed some things down but we were able to get that temporary rating with

094the hopes that we're going to increase that over the next 12 months okay and so what would it take to get to the five star five stars and um five star really requires certified teachers running the programs okay um and right now i mean you can see from our mantra that's not something that um is sustainable for the services that we're offering so understood okay but we can always try all right thank you all right thanks moving to information item g4 dr cullis thank you madam president um based on recent conversations with the board we are bringing this item forward and mr dean will introduce it good evening madam president members of the governing board dr kellis and members of cabinet this evening i'm happy to provide information to you on some potential protocol updates

095as it relates to kova that we'd like to discuss with the board i'm joining me this evening in the presentation we'll be karen winterstein our director of student service so we're going to tag team this um presentation so um karen will speak to you from the stand-up spot and i will speak to you from the sit down spot over here so with that um we have four items that we'd like to discuss this evening as it relates to covid protocol the first being volunteers in the classroom um in this um remember grant this gets back to your question earlier and so currently our protocol has been that we have not allowed volunteers in our schools this year we've kept our schools pretty closed down to outside folks coming in what we would like to do

096is we would like to recommend a change to that protocol to allow up to 15 volunteers per day in each school not per classroom but per day total to assist teachers with learning loss efforts so this would be one of our first steps to really begin to attack the learning loss pieces that we're seeing based or depending upon our conversation this evening the plan would be that that uh dana k our k-8 director of curriculum would work with our elementary principals um to uh put a protocol or process in place um and then that would be rolled out so that we could begin this process the very first week of april um and so rather than waiting until the very end of the com of the conversation um if you'd like as a board we

097can talk about these one by one there's four total slides um so we'd love to hear your thoughts on changing the protocol to begin to allow visitors or volunteers in our schools i would thousand percent support this change thank you i just have one question so in the past what in the past um a volunteer would show up at the school and say i'm volunteering in mr dean's class and then you'd sign in and you'd go back to mr dean's class walk in they'd give you your box or your whatever so with this they would go in whoever the principal whoever would say you're going to go to mrs smith's class today and help them with reading so it could be a different class each day madam president remember grant it could be um what

098we would likely envision um and and typically we get the majority of our volunteers in younger grades i'm not saying that we don't get them in in all grades but um what we would likely envision is that our teachers would set up a rotation with their with their parents their volunteers um members of our of our senior community who are regular volunteers and that they would come in and they would work with smaller groups of students one-on-one or very small groups of students to assist with that learning loss but that would be part of the process that would be planned with with miss and i'm sorry i used her her former name dana noble miss noble and our elementary principals in the next week or so and how will the word get out to these

099folks that because i mean up until now it's nope we're not taking any volunteers so how will these not just parents but some of the senior communities like with some of the churches and stuff they're just they love to do this kind of absolutely so how are they all going to be we would use our utilize our pr department um in that plan to provide information to our general community that we are accepting volunteers again we also have a very large volunteer bank um currently in place one of the great benefits we have as a school district is to have three large retirement communities um in our um in our school district and many many of them volunteer in our schools and so we would look to to start activating that as well just go

100back yes okay thank you very good any other thoughts just to clarify the 15 volunteers per day is that at one time that's just the thought would be that 15 is a manageable number in a day it could be at one time it could be throughout the course of the day um you know 15 people in in our the size of our buildings is not a large amount of people to add to our population i was just thinking i mean if we had like 15 in the morning 15 late afternoon and and what we would do is we would monitor this as we move forward and we would love to be able to expand this quickly you know because again as you saw earlier and anticipated we have a learning loss that needs to be

101attacked and this is one of the strategies to begin to attack that okay great thank you the next piece and ms winterstein we'll talk about this is a recommended change to our student quarantine process yes so currently uh the quarantine process that we have in place is for 10 school days as you heard earlier from dr wifritch her grandson has had two of those episodes in which there's two weeks each of lost learning and so what we are would like to move to is the both the cdc and the maricopa county department of public health have enabled an option to reduce quarantine to instead of seven days to ten uh from ten days to seven days uh with a caveat of um that with they can provide a negative test that has been taken on

102either day six or day seven to return on that eighth day that way it would reduce that quarantine by um by those three days i know that this uh is very much needed and has been asked for in by both our students and our parents because they want to return to school i can also assure you that the data that we have been collecting my department manages all the numbers of the students that are positive and our health office staff collects all the information on those students that are in quarantine very very few if any students rarely get the are become symptomatic or test positive after day seven and usually those are connected with outside and are not connected to being transferred within a school setting any questions thoughts comments as it relates to a

103recommended change to our quarantine process for students and these students while they're quarantining they're still going to have access to learning online from home yes absolutely thank you anything else all right let's move to our third piece and that is student and staff temperature checks and both ms winterstein and i can address this issue currently our protocol is that temperature checks for students occur throughout the school day and temperature checks for staff occur at the beginning of each day we are not currently recommending a change to this protocol however the maricopa county department of health services in conjunction with the cdc have indicated that temperature checks are not doing a lot of things to assist in this process however at this time of the school year with one quarter to go as a matter of

104fact i believe it's 45 days of school remaining we are not recommending a change to this protocol however we will revisit the protocol at the end of the school year as it relates to next school year any questions if i can add please um right now this process and procedure is so embedded into the routines of normal day that it is just the expectation and it our staff and students don't even think about it so for us to complete the year in this way um i think is a it's a very natural process and then of course seeking guidance uh for whatever might um be among the community or uh guidance uh from other entities then we would definitely take a look to see if that procedure needs to remain in place or no longer

105be required thoughts questions comments i just have one question um you said that this would be addressed we're going to leave it in place throughout till the end of the school year and it'd be addressed for next school year what about summer school will it be addressed prior to summer school or will it remain in place for summer school madam president member grant we would have the conversation before summer school begins okay thank you the only question that i have is not really related to the protocol um starting or stopping but i know that there have been some inconsistencies as far as how the temperature checks are performed whether it's done on the forehead or wrist whether it is an option whether it's mandatory so can you speak a little bit to that i know

106that initially we are always doing it on the forehead there are some parents who have asked us to not do the forehead and they prefer the wrist the important piece is the consistency so i know the thermometer in my office when i do it every day it's always within a couple of um tents if it's up for a reason i'll wait a few minutes and and do it again so again it's the the staff members who would be taking it on the wrist uh they become very familiar with the um the normal temperature range for that student and then that's that's where you would track um uh what would be a normal or within range temperature because as we all know if you take the temperature on your wrist it is much cooler than your

107than your than your forehead area um but as long as the numbers are consistent that's uh where we know that the the student does not have a fever okay madame president just to take that one step further yes there's flexibility and we can make sure that we communicate to all of our staff that they should be flexible based on the request of the person whose temperature is being checked thank you very good and the last item that we would like to discuss with the board this evening relates to masks and ma and wearing masks during exercise and yesterday during our weekly quick huddle meeting with our school administrators we reminded all of them that masks may be removed during strenuous exercise such as recess or you know strenuous exercise times such as pe um the

108the aia recently has relaxed its mask mandate for athletes during competition time so you know certainly as students are in non-strenuous situations they should have masks on that if they're playing at recess or or physically actively participating during pe time those would be times that masks could could be removed questions or thoughts or comments as it relates to the mask piece thank you very much for for your consideration in that um i think it's so important um at all times that we allow our children to play freely and breathe freely um you know especially when um it's warming up and i'm a big fan of breathing yeah [Laughter] but i can't even imagine as you know we start hitting and you know in the 90s and 100s sure it's it's going to be really tough

109for our little kids agreed uh for all of us but especially our little kids and uh so i am just so grateful to see that thank you i do have a question do we anticipate requiring masks next year also madam president member chaffin certainly that those conversations would be held but those are also dependent on other entities um we're currently under um under orders from cities and counties that require mass um wearing and and so uh we don't have full control in that conversation any other questions well that will do it for us this evening so thank you very much thank you next we have item h1 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet we are thrilled this evening to have this item and mr croto will introduce

110it thank you dr kyles madam president members of the board superintendent kelly's cabinet and guest administration is proud to recommend mr joseph martinez for the position of assistant principal at valley vista high school for the 2021-2022 school year mr martinez received a master's degree in education administration from grand canyon he has eight years experience as a high school teacher and last two years as a teaching and learning specialist at willow canyon high school and so i will introduce mr martinez to you after you vote and we'll go from there so we are very proud to have mr martinez join us in administration so any questions i'll stand for any questions well you can sit for the questions that's okay that's okay uh mr martinez did you bring that uh report the three page or no

111i think it said 24-page report you have it right there okay so i see you're sporting the the purple tonight all right you learned your lesson um one thing i did want to say is that uh um you know you've been a great asset to dysart and um the fact that you've taken uh some or some certification in fema and um which is to me that's a great feather in your cap so thank you very much for everything you've done congrats with that i will make a motion to approve the appointment of joseph martinez as high school assistant principal second seconded by tracy sawyer sink bell oh there it is oh hold on there it goes congratulations and uh welcome i'd like to welcome our new assistant principal now officially welcome mr martinez glad to

112have you next we have item h2 dr kello thank you madam president this item is bringing is being brought back as a second read there were some minor changes based on board feedback at the last board meeting as we made those corrections it is presented for your approval i do have a question i don't know if i caught it the first time around but in policy 9.46 um it states that each student in grades four through six shall recite the following passages from the declaration of independence you can see that right there i'm not quite sure that our teachers our classes in grades 4 through 6 are doing this as you know i taught at one of our dysart elementary schools for several years and then i subbed for a year and i don't know

113that this is being implemented do our teachers even know that this is policy madam president staffon this is an interesting one because it's currently there's a bill in the legislature to modify the statute relating to to this particular item and saying the pledge of allegiance but this was based on statute initially and that's why this is in here i would agree with you that over the many years since that was first adopted it has had that creep effect of time and it would be something that we'll probably wait and see what happens in the legislature but if nothing changes we do need to be compliant i'll make a motion to approve the revisions to policies within section 9 instruction 9.25 through 9.50 as presented seconded by ms grant motion passes next we have item h3

114dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet mr hicks will introduce this item thank you very much madam president members of the board superintendent dr kellis colleagues and community members thank you very much for allowing me to present tonight and tonight is a request that we're making to the board for a recalculation a 915 ade 15 915 request to recalculate dysart state aid this was caused by the arizona department of revenue who is their responsibility for transwestern pipeline which has property that runs throughout the state that they are to provide a property valuation that property evaluation obviously incurs taxes and a tax rate applied to it transwestern believed that they were too high valuation assigned to their property as it went through they went through the court system litigated

115it and transwestern won and so part of the resulting was that districts had districts and all municipalities all taxation jurisdictions had to refund the money and with interest so this is for years 2016 17 18 and 19 and 20 for uh that refund so that has already happened so the county um takes the money out of our account um so there's uh some people say there's a disconnect there's a little bit so we can spend money by budget authority whether we have money or not is a different thing so we've lost the cash out of it this is a recalculation that will allow ade to pay us for the majority of that fund that's been taken out we've reimbursed us for a majority of that fund now the other fund the other portion of it

116hasn't been restored yet and there's a bill in legislature right now that the legislature will backfill all that other funding and so we would be made whole with that legislation but at this point we're really just asking ade to recalculate our state aid as if it was out and then pay us the money that they would have paid us if this valuation would have done appropriately the first time and i will stand for any questions mr hicks and you and i have talked about this um is there the possibility that the legislation will not pass um madam president members of the board so this does happen although it is very unique to us it's um unusual this does happen from time to time they have backfilled it there's been other bills and those have passed

117um i believe wow um well now i'm going off to my head the bill is 12 million 10 million 12 million um technically they have three billion of cash sitting down at the legislature so i don't think financially there's a reason not to to pass it so i have not heard any opposition to it so i guess technically anytime a bill could be voted down and not pass i think it's going to pass there's no this isn't a one district this isn't a one city this one one municipality transwestern pipeline runs around i-40 down i-17 around some of the 303 so it touches many counties many taxation jurisdictions and so i do see them approving this okay okay i mean you had answered my other questions and everything but i that for some reason that

118still just lingers out there that name somebody might not want to see it past so but i will make a motion to approve the authorization and certification of requests for recalculation of state aid as applies to the transwestern pipeline litigation second seconded by tracy sawyer singapore motion passes moving to item i1 request for future agenda items any requests okay motion to adjourn the meeting second [Laughter] last week