001at this time i'd like to be meeting to order let the record reflect that all members are present and let's rise for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right first up we have audience with individuals one person asking to address the board i'll go ahead and read the statement this is a time for the public to comment members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda pursuant to ars 38-431.01 h action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for future consideration
002and decision at a later date in order to facilitate accomplishing the business of the district in a timely manner a time limit of three minutes will be imposed for each individual or group addressing the board when you approach the podium please state your name for the record and tonight we have hannah edwards good afternoon board members my name is hannah edwards a parent of first grader anthony edwards at rancho gabriela when the school reopened the campus we ended up choosing high school option with our existing classroom teacher mrs gentle and this was after an unsuccessful attempt at in-person learning due to mask difficulties anthony has been having an excellent grades of in all of his main curriculum core curriculum including math ela science and social studies when while we did have some difficulties with special
003teachers back in december we had resolved this matter adequately although we were hoping for some version of hybrid learning where anthony could um attend some specials in person instead last friday high school parents and teachers received an email from the district with that specials will be optional become optional in the individual classroom teachers being taken away and replaced with one instructor for all grades from k to four to fours i wasn't the only one surprised of this change so close to the end of school year after calling the school and district offices i discovered that this change was done in response to some teachers reporting the online students being absent failing or falling behind not benefiting from the current high school setup however however anthony is not falling into this category and is thriving and
004successful with the existing format the complete change of what anthony knows his first grade experience would be traumatic and for him and detrimental to his learning process when our older kid moved to surprise from peorium we made sure we uh they finished the school before we transferred them we spoke to mrs gentle earlier this week who um agrees that the change so close to the end of this year is not necessary and she offered that if the district would allow she would continue to provide anthony the same format that he's accustomed to therefore we respectfully ask for the ability to finish the first grade with the with mrs gentle as all parties on board with this option thank you do i need to answer any questions i appreciate you would consider this thank you for
005your time madam president administration will follow up with the edwards on this matter thank you next we have superintendent and governing board updates dr kellis and president members of the board we're going to start out with a student update and we have several students representatives from the dicer student leadership council like to invite them to come forward and share what's going on with our student body uh good evening board members dr kelson cabinet my name is peyton takolvi i am louise and i'm aubrey and we are all from valley vista and members of the dysart student leadership council we first wanted to start off and share our coven 19 relief and canned food drive that we've been working on we have drop-off sites at all five of our high schools and many of our elementary
006schools as well as the district office west mec and some community locations and businesses we're currently continuing to add more drop-off locations as we've had a lot of participation we've also completed our mascot campaign at all of our high schools this includes specific site signage and a student produced promotional video and that is the only update we have for you guys today and now we're going to show you guys this valley vista's mascot video we wear our math because we want to have a zen police i wear masks because it keeps everyone and me safe i wear my mask so i can participate in athletics and other extracurriculars that i do i wear my mask to keep myself and others safe i wear a mask because i care about the safety of others i wear
007my mask to keep my loved ones safe i wear my mask so we can stay in person at school i wear a mask to protect those around me i wear my mask to protect everyone around me i wear a mask so that i can protect my students and so that we can be here to actually learn together in person i wear my mask to keep everyone around me and myself safe including my husband and my daughter who have underlying medical conditions i wear my mascat valley to protect myself and to protect others and so we can continue in-person learning and have our cool school activities i wear a mask to keep myself and the people around me safe i mask up for my friends my family and my peers because i know i need to
008keep them safe and everyone else safe and i just want to have a fun high school experience and this is one of the ways i can keep everyone safe and have fun at the same time i wear a mask in order to protect myself and those around me we wear our mask because it's the right thing to do [Music] [Applause] i'd like to thank mr gresaber uh for his leadership over the ambassador student leadership council and to each of our student leaders for recognizing this as an opportunity to help students all over the district understand the importance of wearing their masks each high school including i believe sundown is going to be creating a video this is one that has been done and the others are either done or in progress so this is a
009a very nice thing that they're doing so thank you very much awesome can't wait to see the others too thank thank you next we have the superintendent update thank you madam president members of the board i would like to first start off by saying how much we appreciate our school counselors last week was counselor appreciation week and i can't tell you how much all of our employees are doing extraordinary things on a daily basis our counselors have had the added responsibility of tracking student progress in a very difficult time whether they're online or in person and helping them to stay on track for graduation they work with students individually with personal situations or or group situations but um i mean i could just probably spend a half hour listing all the things that they do
010but dyster is very fortunate to have the counselors that we do and our students most of all have just been incredibly um benefited by the extraordinary work that our counselors do each and every day so congratulations to our counselors under counselor appreciation week there's a lot of things happening at the legislature some of the more interesting ones are starting to get a little bit of traction i have been adding a little attachment it's not actually it's about 30 pages long but an attachment of the most current legislative bills each each week to the board if you have any questions about those ken hicks is our legislative liaison and feel free to send any questions to ken who's keeping tabs on everything education and then i also want to thank everybody in the district who is
011doing your part to keep us safe under covid and who's implementing the safety protocols it is because of the extraordinary protocols we have in place that people are following that we are able to stay in person to that note there's a lot of opinion a lot of frustration a lot of successes a lot of celebrations but just want our community to know that we are listening parents have expressed frustration about the amount of teacher access student access to teachers and so we've made some changes to have dedicated teachers for students who are online teachers have expressed challenge with teaching dual platform both online and in-person students at the same time and also to address that we have changed up some of the structures of the schools leaving it up to each school we're looking at
012air quality solutions substitute shortage solutions um it really is a a lot of things that it seems like you're we're always making changes and that was true back in march as we're learning and adapting and even today as we learn and adapt of how to provide that extraordinary learning experience we are trying to be responsive but also planning ahead and looking at ways to make sure that our students have a learning opportunity that's all i have to report thank you dr kellis i would just like to to echo what you said about the counselors i can tell you that my children have greatly benefited from their counselors specifically at valley vista i know that my daughter has changed her schedule for next year probably at least four or five times and probably another four or
013five to go so constantly changing what she's interested in um so i just appreciate them and and all of their work that they do for all of our students that was it yeah um well mrs schafen and i we attended the uh arizona school board association on zoom not attended uh boltz training which is a board orientation and leadership training and then today i with dr kellis i had a wonderful morning visiting riverview thompson ranch sundown and el mirage so it was a dysart day for me today uh just a couple of things real quick um i do believe this month is cte month is that correct mr grishaver all right so um if uh folks do not know what cte is see that gentleman that's over there cte is for career and technical education
014and you can't just put a student into one box there are so many opportunities for students whether they go to college whether they go into the vocational field there are so many opportunities and so i am very appreciative of everything the cte has to offer so thank you yes national council school counselors week was last week showed appreciation to all of our counselors it was a great week for them a company dr kellis to hand out a couple of the extraordinary pins it's always great to see people smiling underneath their mask you can actually see them smile when they receive a pen so you can look underneath and actually see them smile congratulations to the i call them the fine five of the arts teachers that are nominees for the governor's awards there were a
015total of 27 nominees and five of them came from dysart that is phenomenal so you know we have the three a's for dice art it's arts athletics and academics see i need that one but uh congratulations to those five and we're hoping to hear good things on march at least march 26th or something like that uh i wanted to give a big big shout out to um dysart education foundation d'ia uh each year they give to our seniors that are graduating scholarships that they go on to whether they go into medicine whether they go into architecture or something like that and they are they actually let us know what those kiddos are doing while they're in their first year their second year or third year of college and um it is really good facebook is
016a great thing if it's used right um but def puts up their um the contact that they've had with the students once they've left dysart and uh have used the funds from these scholarships so um i just have to give def a big uh shout out um because they keep us posted with the students and everything and uh i think that is it that's enough yeah all right next we have the consent agenda items i'll entertain a motion i'll move the board approve consent agenda items as presented second um are you waiting for me yes no hers didn't pop up mine didn't pop up okay so you give me a verbal yes i'm like come on you can do it are you logged in are you logged into the meeting oh i don't know let
017me check i'm logged in all right we're good give her just a second okay nexus information all right so next we have um item f1 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet this evening we continue with our regular monitoring of board policies if you have taken a close look at this agenda item and the attached revisions that are proposed we are looking at a possible solution to some previous board action and the modifications that are added there are intended to reflect um some of those modifications as it relates to the discontinuance of policy governance and there will be some more conversation this evening with the board and then later at our study session next week where we will also have more in-depth conversations about policy and moving forward
018but what is here tonight is just a first read and it's an attempt to take a stab at modifying our current policies to better reflect um the the will of the board so this is just information as a first read happy answering questions about these i had a question on 9.3 so um we have the red line where it redlines the superintendent shall not fail to and that's in the last paragraph but there is one where that is still included and that's in the third paragraph i don't know if that was an oversight or if that was intentional because that is still maybe a legal requirement madam president that second sentence can be rewritten to reflect that but there is um some statute that does allow the superintendent powers to close schools as needed under
019these bullets that are presented but yes um that can be adjusted to [Music] a language that's more reflective okay of a more traditional policy governing model okay that was the only item i had i had one question regarding policy 9.22 textbook supplementary materials selection adoption and as far as when the committee brings forth a recommendation what's that process like for an example is it the expectation that that committee actually read the materials themselves is there like a criteria that we use as a measure to guide whether or not it meets you know a certain set of standards for our district can you explain any of that i just want to make sure that we know what we're passing on to our teachers and students yes and a lot of this is also driven by statute
020the curriculum adoption process that allows more mandates some public observation of the materials first but there's a committee that is formed whenever we go out for an adoption of new curriculum there's a difference if you're considering the content versus the materials so the content is provided by the materials a publisher will provide the materials the the content of the curriculum it's what is being taught and how it's being taught as the resources so we present both of those to are public the committee will review those based on state standards which are all published by the arizona department of education if we are out of compliance with those state standards then we are necessarily required to tweak our curriculum um and then as far as the committee's recommendations sometimes it takes an entire summer if they
021are bringing in for example a social studies curriculum they'll bring in teachers from all the different grade levels i don't know if there's 18 teachers there but there there could be um a lot of teachers plus uh curriculum specialists who are over that particular content area they review the standards they look at our current materials they look at multiple publisher products so it could be that if there are six or seven publishers they will often send materials to be reviewed um and they'll decide what recommendation to make to the governing board as far as the purchase of those materials and then it's a package that is then presented to the board for approval i don't know if that answers your question as far as process yeah so in regard to like curriculum things that answers
022my question but i think i'm speaking more toward like supplemental materials so for example sometimes english teachers will have a supplemental reading list and and so i know that those and if they're not board approved and you have to sign the like the parent permission slip acknowledging they're not but for the ones that are approved i'm saying are those books put through a process at a bare minimum have they been read by a district staff member to ensure that you know certain and that's why i asked about that list of maybe criteria or measures that we use to say okay are there certain things that we just absolutely do not want to pass on to or into our classroom like obviously politically driven bias or something like that or other areas where you know we
023just want to know that if we're going to approve it someone's read it dr pauline i'm going to refer to you i don't believe that there's a checklist of check check check check if it's met all these certain criteria of items but i know that there are some guidelines that come you want to explain that yes and supplementals often come from the teacher level things that they have vetted are recommending and that's passed up to district staff who also vet it before being recommended some of those supplemental materials could be recommendations from the publisher that come with the the curriculum adoption if we for example get a new math curriculum they might send i'll make it easier and say language arts curriculum they might send class sets of novels that go with that curriculum it
024might not be that the teachers have read all the books that come with that package deal the bundle but they could be adopted as part of that bundle do we feel like just to be responsible or just for the liability of it that we should not maybe not if we're not purchasing all the the recommended bundle but whatever books out of that bundle we may decide to pass on to the students would it be um reasonable to ask maybe the the staff to read it prior to forwarding up to the board to approve it to say okay this is definitely suitable to pass on to our students having someone trusted like an employee any of our employees should be able to read it and say yes i professionally i believe that this is something appropriate
025to put on a list i would say that that was definitely an expectation that whenever a committee brings together a recommendation to the governing board to approve curriculum and materials associated with that that they have thoroughly vetted the materials with the support of the district office staff i think what may be more challenging is after a bundle or a curriculum resources have been adopted on the onset perhaps there's a a literary classic that wasn't part of the original bundle but that supports the curriculum objectives and it could be that there's a class set of those books that are assigned to the class to read what you'll see more and more is that there's a list of options of three or four books that the students can choose from that meet the same objectives but if
026a student feels uncomfortable reading huckleberry finn then there are other options that they could read to get the same meet the same objectives okay you would think that it would probably be part of the procedure that's what i was asking yeah so like is it part of the procedure that someone would have read that book before it's even on that list i will say that someone you know either probably teacher level has probably read that book but not necessarily the district that will vet it do research on it but you know our supplemental book list is like 2 000 books long and so i i cannot say district staff has read every one of those books but they are completely vetted on you know on the the research behind them and are there controversies why
027are we recommending it etc i would also say madam president spritcher that it would be my expectation that before any teacher presents a lesson that they're familiar with the content of the lesson that they're teaching i would like that i would like to know that before they pass on a book they someone has read it to make sure that it's appropriate because i know that there's been times when it's just we discover things after the fact that then we might pull the books later that if we could just make sure that like you're saying that the expectation is that it's read before it's even put on a list for a student to choose from and i would extend that to videos to websites to magazines to books to any ancillary materials that are presented in
028a lesson so that's the only piece if that's not really clearly stated in there that i would ask to be considered in that process exactly how you've said it not just the books but any videos things like that okay thank you just to clarify is that in the acquisition of supplementary or is that in the committee piece for curriculum uh madam president that will most likely end up in the uh procedures when with the more detail um but un under the supplementary instructional materials there will be a reference that we will add to that that says procedures will be put in place to ensure that all materials have been properly reviewed vetted whatever that language may be okay thank you other discussion on this or any of the other policies okay moving on to the
029transportation update dr thank you madam president members of the board in our effort to continue to provide information to the board about the various departments and this evening we have our transportation department and ken hicks will introduce this item thank you very much madam president members of the board superintendent dr kellis colleagues and community members it is my pleasure to introduce mr doug curry he's our director of transportation he is new this year he has a vast knowledge of expertise knowledge skills abilities does an amazing job has jumped in during this coveted world and and done an amazing job so i will let him do the presentation thank you you can see the smile [Laughter] madam president governing board members dr kellis members of cabinet it's a great pleasure to have the opportunity to kind
030of give you an overview of what the transportation department does on a daily basis and also some of the goals that we have for this year and some of the challenges obviously with this year and some of the celebrations so with that being said we we maintain and uh buy several fleet annually we maintain 200 vehicles that's both activity buses school buses and our white fleet which is facilities food service community ed has one vehicle that i think our service for it is going to be put it on a tow truck and send it away and also warehouse vehicles we transport over 6 600 vehicles for 6 600 students daily and operate 87 daily routes and this is with social distancing normally that number would be about 3 000 more or 300 more excuse me
031some of the daily duties uh it was responsible for ensuring all staff made proper credentials cpr first aid cdl these are all all credentials that expire either annually every two years or every five years so our staff make sure that um we make sure that our drivers and aides are qualified some of our department of goals this this year are continue to provide essential services while maintaining social density whenever possible on a school bus that's extremely difficult but we've been working with the sites to make sure that we're we're providing cd charts we're updating them on every monday the sites have them by wednesday so if there is any contact tracing that needs to happen happens we're working with the with science and ess develop routes to support the middle school's opening at the start
032of next year just just to be ahead of the ball game if it's gonna it looks like it is going to include a few art extend us for a few more routes so we're making sure we have equipment and staff in order to support that and continue to work with the state to receive grants on bus purchases our fleet is aged and we're working extremely hard to remedy that oops i want one too far excuse me so update on goals we are monitoring the number of students on each route daily um we're trying not to get on a on a transit bus you can put 84 passengers on that that's three to a c we're keeping it to the maximum of 56 two to a c and we don't have hardly any routes that have
033that we're looking somewhere around 40 students so social distancing is pretty easily maintained routers are working with the new boundaries for the four schools i kind of mentioned that for staffing and equipment expectations and we are applying for the dera grant monies on our upcoming new bus purchases derek grant is diesel emissions regulatory act which came from it's just monies that's there from people from companies such as volkswagen that did not meet emission standards and so they were fined and so that money is being put into school buses that are are not emissions certified to the 2016 standards and we have several that are in that category the thing is with that you know you don't really get you lose fleet because it has to be destroyed staffing this is some of the challenges is
034to continue to hire and train drivers and aides it stays a story one step forward two steps backward but where hr has worked extremely hard and some of the candidate pool has increased greatly we're getting a lot of drivers that already have their cdl and credentials which saves us about four weeks of training that we can put them actually behind the wheel obviously like i said maintaining a lower fleet of buses diesel exhaust has a negative effect on environment and children's health and increased maintenance expenses for our fleet with the intersection of federal and state laws as has related to school transportation which we all know this just gets more convoluted every year means the district operates in a complex regulatory environment state federal etc and with the ess growth in private placement more more
035students are requiring transportation outside of our boundaries which uses up some resources instead of being able to do two or three tiers a.m or p.m that means two or three different routes they can only they pick up and go to one school some of the opportunities and celebrations that we had this year which as we all know has been one of the most trying years in in public education ever i've been in in public schools for over 20 years mostly in transportation and not to make a pun but we are reinventing the will um learning lab experience um our staff with the opening of school being postponed really didn't have essential functions so we worked extremely hard with district office and community ed and nutrition and our food services and so our our staff was
036very versatile and willing to do whatever we asked them to do i'll go over a few of those our dispatch department transformed into a temporary employment agency matching transportation staff to sites so instead of dispatching buses to schools they were dispatching staff to sites to help with learning labs and cleaning and we also assisted with mail deliveries routers had to create whole new routing for students attending school versus online learning so instead of the routes we had made up we had to figure out which kids were going to go to school which ones were going to online learns we had to recreate routes they also created routes for during the first couple of weeks when ess um was online and we had to get the packets to the students in a timely manner so the
037teachers would have them done on friday we'd pick them up from the sites on monday deliver them instead of picking kids up we were picking the packets up and taking it to the individual houses in order for those students to have their lesson plans office staff routers dispatchers trainers continue to adjust to any and all projects i can't tell you i've only been here since july but what a great staff i had and and their willingness to come up with resolutions dispatchers continue to be able to cover routes with minimal staff due to covet trainers work week we're working weekends to help out with community ed for some cpr and first aid training so that they could still be in the classroom during the week with that being said that's my presentation if you have
038any questions or concerns you can give them to ken i'm just kidding don't ask uh if you could share a couple of pieces of information um you said we have a fleet of about 200 buses um i know that maintenance is a challenge how many buses do we have out of service right now um several we're working to um i'm working with the outside entity right now i i somewhat inherited this problem but i i do have a uh a goal in sight to get us back up to where we're on an even playing field i have uh uh outside of any gonna come in i've already set up we've got a quote i'm getting that to mr hicks as a matter of fact i got the quote today um to get an outside identity
039come in and just help us get caught up so our fleet is aging yes and the maintenance efforts are keeping up to some degree but as an estimate with our aging fleet how many of the buses would you say are i'm almost embarrassed to say but about 20 percent okay and and at the end of this project which is going to last about two uh three to four weeks i'll i'll know which vehicles are not worth um putting the money into so it'd just be better to to um get rid of them started instead of trying to keep maintaining them and we're talking some vehicles that are to 2003. it's just not a it's it's a liability to say the least and then you mentioned the dara grant and that some of those buses have
040to be destroyed so what you're saying just for clarification is that if we get a new bus under that grant then we're obligated to destroy a number of other buses correct so that they can't be used again right and there's also some uh regulations under that derral grant so i can't just take a bus that we haven't ran for a year or year and a half and put it on the deregrant you truly have to be pulling something off the road so you have to show that it did a certain amount of mileage the year before so there's a fine line there do i do i get rid of a piece of equipment that i need for ten thousand dollars when it's going to cost me 160 to replace it thanks 160 000. when you
041see destroy um the buses what exactly does that mean does that mean just sending it to an impound or does that actually mean taking it and getting crushed well into a cube they don't have a big enough crush okay but that's truly what they want to do but you do the main thing they're trying to do is get that engine offline so the engine has you have to put a hole in the block so they know for sure you have to show pictures of it all the emission system has to be destroyed the transmissions and and some of the other stuff you can take off so we really do we really do just send them to a uh junkyard it's like a graveyard or something it is a graveyard i know there's a big business
042you know for those tiny homes right now i need to kind of turn around on that maybe you wouldn't believe what people would try to use them for okay um and i just was curious what the cdl licenses i know just as average citizens we've had issues you know with dmv have you had any challenges with cdls expiring and are they extending those license expiration dates for you or yes we have had some extensions for that um fortunately not all drivers come in at different times so it's not like that's more of a cpr and that sort of thing when we have to train right away yeah we have a pretty good rapport with adot and mvd so we can set it up by appointment okay and we know pretty much ahead of time when
043somebody's ready to go so two to three days okay and then once they've gotten their permit they have to have it for a minimum of 15 days before they can even test and we do all that so we're trained to do all the testing and so then they just have to go back down and get their actual license so we do all the training in-house we do that the only thing that we can't do is have them take the actual test they have to go to mvd for that but that's the only reason they have to go okay and i just wanted to thank you for including all the challenges and successes towards the beginning of the school year and even last year but um those were some incredible feats that that happened in dysart
044and it's nice to hear the the ins and outs of how that how that happened so thank you in my opinion anything else i just have a question and actually i want to echo what miss dunsmore said i i wanted to um commend you for including those challenges uh it's very transparent we can't help you and support you if we're not aware and so i always feel like people come across as being very real when it's like more than just a celebration you're just saying that this is what we're struggling with so thank you for being honest about that i didn't want to elaborate as much [Laughter] um just some clarification the social distancing um so would you say i know you had mentioned with the numbers that sometimes that means two to a seat
045but you said that you weren't quite at that amount does that mean like one per seat are you able to on average it's probably two one two okay and so we try to keep that and and this depending well so you can do you have your sides too so you do two one one two one so we try to keep it and then where we do do the two to a seat we try to make sure it's siblings okay or uh same household okay good um and then the other question i had i mean obviously filling uh openings as far as finding good bus drivers is hard i think for every district and then obviously if we don't have drivers that impacts our students getting to school and academic success and all that so it's
046a very important role that our bus drivers have and your department has can you think um as far as like the recruiting is there anything that you are your department is is putting together to make dysart seem unique or draw to dice art to like this is why you want to drive for our district that we're getting out there to help recruit some good drivers we're always working on recruitment is what you have in this industry is if somebody's comfortable driving at a district and they've they've been there a couple years to bring them in at a starting salary and to learn a whole new district and that sort of thing it's it's truly a tough sell we've tried to find niches we're working on some stuff that i don't know if i can discuss
047and uh nope i can't discuss it trade secrets so we're working on some stuff i'm just kidding with the work but but i can tell you that that being in other districts that um the relationship we have with the hr department and and this uh exp expendency what's right where the speed in which they get the applicant to us we get them interviewed and then the process of them being hired is tremendously shorter than where i've been before so getting the background checks and getting the people here and getting them to work within a week is is truly extraordinary so we're doing pretty good there i'm not worried about staffing that much to be honest with you i mean that part's good for us because we get them in quicker but i'm trying to think
048of what's good for the employee like why would someone and you don't have to answer it right now but i'm just thinking i think that's something important like we need to find a way that are going to bring the candidates to us or people that want to actually work for dysart as opposed to any other school district that has driver positions open too so just finding unique ways to pull people in that they'd want to work here before they'd want to work somewhere else i think that's a good recruitment tool i was just curious if you had madame president miss pritchard if i could just give a couple of examples um mr croto and i believe mr hicks also met with groups of bus drivers over the last couple of years to kind of get
049focus group feedback on why are they here why do people not want to be here why do they want to be here to get a sense of i think what you're asking is what makes us special and why would somebody want to work here um to the chagrin of some of my peer superintendents around the valley who are not open for instruction we are attracting many of their bus drivers who want to work and are able to come here both because of the benefits and because of the hours that they are able to drive but also thanks to the governing board with a recent pay increase for bus drivers um we are competitive on the pay salary good okay thank you all right thank you i was unaware of that recent raise so thank you
050guys because it is it is a problem that you we have the benefits we have the retirement so it's money that you have to throw at it because ultimately you can love your job but if you didn't get paid so prerequisite is loving kids those are the bus drivers of aids that that that truly succeed and we just we just keep looking for the right the right niches to pull from we i was going from one technology wow okay um i was traveling from one school to another uh last friday and um i knew we were going to have the the transportation update and uh i just happened to see a couple of our trucks that um had some advertising on the side of it and so you know getting that out in the community
051more which i know we have then they're just driving you know from school to school or from the these uh support services you know to another school it was just great to see that traveling billboard that was going down greenway or what have you so that's that's a big plus um regarding the dara grant when do you think we will be able to find out um the applications have to be in by march 31st i think we'll probably know before that if we even have anything that qualifies us for that okay so we're keeping our fingers crossed that we are okay all right well thank you very much for coming on board it's a pleasure to be here to be honest with you well and if i could also just let you know i when
052i'm out walking my dogs in the morning and jogging i always see the bus drivers they have no idea who i am but i always wave at them i'm like hey how you doing and they're like hey i just saw you where are we so your bus drivers are super nice yes they're super friendly i always worry about them and they're all like okay that's great to hear so i just wanted to let you know yes all right thank you all very much thank you thank you all right next we have action discussion item g1 thank you madam president members of the board of members of cabinet uh mr croto will take this item thank you dr kellis uh madam president members of the board superintendent kelly's cabinet and guest tonight we bring to you
053the staffing models for our administration front office you had previously approved on february 2019 the staffing model for our elementary and our high school however with the adoption of primary schools and middle schools that model did not fit anymore so tonight we're bringing a revision of that for a pre-k and a pre-k-8 so our primary schools and our elementary schools that are staying the same will follow the same model however we have added the middle portion the middle school staffing model as well as a revision in the high school area for drts the high schools actually have two registrars so we're bringing that to you tonight so we can staff the models accordingly and we can be within our policies in doing so and i'll stand for any questions if there are no questions i
054will go ahead and make a motion one second to approve the revision of the pre-k through four pre-k through eight middle school and high school administration front office staffing model as presented second motion passes moving to item g2 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board of members of cabinet mr credo will take this item as well madame president members of the board superintendent kelly's cabinet and guest our next item tonight is bringing to you staffing modifications for ischool and sundown mountain alternative program in looking at the two programs we are bringing to you tonight a recommendation to have them put under one umbrella two separate schools still under one umbrella and and that first piece is a name change in changing the alternative program administrator to the alternative program principal and that
055alternative program principal who is obviously miss lockhart will now oversee ischool and sundown mountain they will be under her uh umbrella of coverage uh with that we'd like to change currently the sundown administrative two secretary um to administrative secretary iii there is a cost of that of about seventy three hundred 300 by the way there is no cost on the alternative program administrator to principal that's just a name change we are also recommending tonight that with the increased umbrella that the high school registrar that is currently at sundown mountain and at 0.5 capacity half time be brought to a full time that is an increase a budget increase of 20 525 dollars we are also um looking to eliminate the instructional system position that is 0.75 that is a a savings of 1948 dollars and
056then the elimination of the sped para professional they currently have both of those positions they have not been filled the entire year so they are positions that are not being used and in order to make that those alternative program moves that comes out with a total savings of those recommended changes of thirteen thousand four hundred thirty three dollars in the savings under the ischool department we currently have that department the ischool department will be getting 12 high school teachers for high school three math three english three science and three social studies there is no cost to additionally adding that those have been allocated through our staffing process so we staffed accordingly with the high schools and moved 12 teachers over to become full-time high school teachers we also would like to recommend to you adding
057a guidance counselor to the high school the staffing model that you just approved is 440 to 1. and with that valley vista had seven counselors and we'll be moving to six counselors using that staffing model number and therefore we will move that counselor a counselor from valley vista to ischool to be the guidance counselor there and then the last piece is a name change we currently have a new century learning coordinator that will be the ischool coordinator so with that i will stand for any questions mr croto the one with the uh guidance counselor um for ischool uh currently we have seven right now so currently what's the capacity for each of those counselors madam president a member sawyer sink bill um they are about they carry a load of about 440 per counselor that
058is our staffing model for all our high schools in the district 440 to one 440. is that the anticipated amount of high schoolers using high school um madam president we are estimating that right now currently um i don't dr pulling do you know the exact number of high school high school people we have right now madam president the our current number of high school high full-time high school students so we're talking about high school um in this conversation um is approximately eleven hundred and we anticipate that number to drop by more than half um to begin next school year so the the counselor that um in valley vista's current model where they have seven counselors they have one too many counselors for next year um and so their enrollment next year qualifies them for six
059counselors according to the staffing piece so this counselor would be allocated to ischool where we believe that number will drop to very close to that ratio that we're talking about and you know additionally um we foresee down the road we don't know how far down the road but we foresee down the road that even more students will return to the campus with this staffing piece that allows us to utilize our teachers that are in high school and that counselor if need be to move back to the building as well thank you um and i i think you said this but i just want to clarify because high school and high school sound really similar they are very strong they do you're right so this is specifically for full-time students in high school that are enrolled
060in high school full-time so if they're enrolled in one single high school class but they're taking a full load otherwise in person those are not those we're not talking about those kids madam president we are not talking about those students okay we we refer to those students as taking concurrent enrollment both in high school and high school so the conversation that we're talking about today is full-time high school students that are taking our online program thank you so i hope that those are very very similar terms agreed so okay perfect thank you can i jump on to tracy's uh question regarding the the counselor taking the counselor from valley so i think that might have cleared up my concern you're saying that the numbers the numbers aren't going to justify having a seventh counselor it's
061not like the counselors left will have to endure a larger caseload than they already have to absorb that losing that one person we're not going to be like overwhelming them with madam president remember pritchard i'm just trying to do some quick math on my on the phone when we staff miss pritchard when we staff that is correct so we staffed at 440. we're not overburdening the counselors okay um matter of fact we rounded up to six to get there so their ratio should be a little less with our projections of course now if more kids show up we're going to have to monitor and adjust with that but our projections are that they will be at or under that ratio with the kids that we think are going to show up okay and then just
062two questions really quick on the moving from a admin secretary two to a three is that specific for that particular individual that is in that position or is that we are feeling like the person needing the job description of that position requires that three level uh they need to be at that three level madam president miss pritchard that it would be a pay increase which would result per policy in an interview process okay and miss pritchett i understand i think i understand your question their their feel with the more capacity and everything that's coming under ischool that that position is is doing a lot of the same duties as the secretary or admin secretary three at the schools so they are picking up a lot of those duties okay and then my final question is
063in regards i i cringe a little bit about the elimination of the instructional assistant and the sped paraprofessional i understand you're saying that we're not using them especially like with at sundown um just knowing the different like program and i don't even know if they still do this but i know sometimes they would take middle school students do we still okay who may have special education needs or that you know a pera would you know be appropriate um are we not using those positions but should we be using them to give those supports to those students to where we really want to get rid of those positions or should we just encourage that those people get utilized and we not eliminate them madam president member pritchard the answer to your question is that sundown with
064ms lockhart's leadership sundown has really rediscovered its form and so they are able to meet the needs of our students currently at sundown and increase capacity within the staffing model that's being suggested today and so they have not they have not filled those positions because those positions have not been needed and that continues or that allows for the continuation of middle school students that have been attending there as well so what would happen though if say because i i remember how hard it is to get an instructional assistant assigned to a student if needed so what happens if that need arises and then they don't have those people there will they be able to quickly get those resources for those students if we eliminate them madam president mrs prichard the answer would be that they
065would work with with with both hr and ess staff should that need a rise um there is full-time ess um staffing at sundown um they have not needed those positions which is why they've remained vacant um for for some time now but if if that need a arose then we certainly would revisit the conversation how long have they been vacant do you know or not that question i don't know i'm president i remember pritchard they have not been filled this year the registrar position increasing to full time would that also require an interview process madam president yes any any changes according to governing governing board policy uh requires a reposting of the position and an interview in order to take that position so they would be posted if you approve this tonight they would be
066posted those individuals are welcome to apply and there will be an interview process for that job okay thank you any other discussion on that i will move to a motion to approve the staffing modifications for ischool and sundown mountain alternative program as presented second motion passes next we have item g3 recommendation for approval of job order contract in excess of one million dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board of members of cabinet mr hicks will introduce this item madam president members of the board superintendent dr callus colleagues and community members thank you very much for allowing me to present on this item tonight so first this is required governing board approval statutorily anytime a job order contracting goes above a million dollars job order contracting is a specific alternative procurement delivery method
067that allows us to procure services a little bit faster and we contract that through a consortium one gpa and so this uh request is for 3.3 million dollars for mid-state energy and this is for our air scrubbering proposal that we're bringing to the board and so we have heard for about six months or so from staff and others what are we doing to help the indoor environment for the last few months we've been researching it with our facilities director mr young we've been looking at different alternatives uv lights increased air filtration different purging techniques and what we're looking at is a lot of the others have negative consequences so as we looked at uv lights what we saw was uv lights depending on where you put them some of the places we put them anywhere
068they hit our hvac system we'll have to replace those components and it would cause some damage they work very well they just work too well at some points and so looking at our hvac systems what all of our needs and how can we increase and improve our air quality indoor air quality into our air environments we looked at the eyes in the ionization so the needlepoint bipolar ionization is the proposal that's before you today and this is to put about 2700 devices throughout every place we have an air handler or air handler-like situation in our hvac system in every single one of our buildings support center's district office every school building and what that does is it takes and puts positive charged ions positive and negatively charged ions into our air system any time that
069our air system is on so if our air handlers are on and it's moving air it's going to push them out into it the positive the ions will then attach to particulates in the air so it's not just a a covid it could be dander could be pollen it could be odors viruses it will then attach to those and then they start attaching to each other they they accumulate accumulate and then they catch in our air filtration system so we'll be using our current systems to do all of this and it will not require us to change our filters more frequently but it will start taking out and improve the air quality within the we do like that it has the two year warranty we also like that it does not have the negative consequences
070of hurting other systems within our buildings and so it has a long lasting so this isn't a coveted thing it's going to improve the air indoor air quality for time to come from that standpoint so this is being funded it is a lot of money um the sr2 so when that was approved on december 27th it also provided additional funding for schools and specific to covet and so we thought this was a perfect use of improving our indoor environments with that federal funding that we'll be receiving so i will stand for any questions i will just i know i put this in the agenda item it will take about two weeks per site they've they've already ordered a lot of the devices at risk because we want to start this as soon as possible and
071so they'll be starting planning and scheduling they've already started that we'll start having meetings next week we'll get the po done this week with board approval so it will take a long time to get through our district to get all of this but it will start having positive impact as soon as we finish they will do it after hours so it will not have any impact on the instruction so schools will be able to continue they have to get up in the grids and so they have to wait until school's out and so they will work after hours to do all of this i have a question um is this a covid specific precaution is this just so that our teachers and students feel safe with the air quality or is there other benefits you
072kind of touched a little bit i just was curious as if if this is you know just a pretty much a coveted precaution and if so i mean do we have um the relief the federal or state relief funds to help us with this um madam president members of the board so one of the things we've been looking at is we don't want to do a knee-jerk reaction just for covid that then let's just pretend um in a year from now there's no covid no evidence of covid then we have all these things that are consuming our lives that are cost a lot and that we're not using this is not so this will help improve the flu season it just will improve indoor air quality because it will take particulates out of our air
073because it will be being trapped in our filtration system it actually has reduced our utility bill i'm not uh promoting that because i always uh we'll know it when we see it kind of thing but um it will actually by taking so many so much air out our automatic system will measures the particulates and air and brings in outdoor air there'll be less particulates and the air will take less air from the outside in at times which during the summer we have to condition that air and it our systems are running longer to cool it in that sense so it'll reduce our cooling in that because pulling it out and putting in the filtration actually cleans the air greater than bringing in the fresh air from the outside because of the pollen the other particulates
074and smokes and odors and everything in there so this is a long-term solution that will be better it is only a one-time cost and so we do have the federal funds for the one-time cost so there's no long-term do we still have federal funding to help support this the funding is in excess of right now we're projecting at 12 million dollars coming in on the federal fund so this is only using 3.3 of that thank you thank you so i i know that due to kova we were doing a flush you know bringing in outside error so would this eliminate the need to do that um madam president members of the board um we still do that because we said we're going to do that um it does reduce once this is we'll still continue
075right now we have told our working with our team we said we like the purge early in the morning so we're going to continue to do that through the rest of this year for sure we'll we'll reevaluate that but this does eliminate some of that because it cleans out the air so much and takes it it probably could reduce that i think that that was one of the things that made people feel safe that every morning we were purging and flushing out our buildings and bringing them out regular because the dampers because other things will open and bring in outside air at needed times you normally cycle through your room in our system two or three times an hour of equivalent of getting fresh air the purge would allowed us to not um bring in
076a little bit bring in a little bit bring a little we just flushed everything out and started all fresh all new we'll continue that right now so we have not talked about taking that out that'll probably continue for the rest of this fiscal year for sure we'll reevaluate that this summer okay and i'm guessing you have but were there i guess maybe testimonials maybe from other school districts locally or somewhere else that have you that are already using this can you give us information madam president members of the board they all have been installing them in some other school districts um it's all really early right now what we're going to be looking at is we're included in this as a requirement to get environmental testing done and so they get a third party to
077come in and pre and post-test to show how it's taking the particulates out to show that it is working that we know that it is having the intended effect but it is early on from the local school districts that have already started this a few months before us or a couple months so any other businesses maybe not a school the other businesses that we're actively using madam president i have not reached out to other businesses um we've talked to the vendor that's promoting it um and they have seen long-term success this started in casinos so this technology has been around for about 20 years and it was a way for casinos to get the odor and the smell out and the particulates out of the air as quickly as possible so it's a that is
078basically where the industry borne out of and you mentioned that it would take care of some odor issues as well if i could just recommend that you start in the band room um i did have one more question real quick you said it was just a one cost you know just a one and done thing there was not a long-term cost so we what would we have to do to maintain these if any to maintain this technology or anything yeah madam president members of the board it's only if they break um they they do not catch or do anything they're just putting ions out we're using our existing filtration system for them to collect and go they're warrantied for two years right now i think the estimate the vendor said that they expect this to
079be in place and probably not have an issue for eight to ten years with any of these if they start faltering after the two years we would have to then start paying to replace them they're roughly around twelve hundred dollars each as they're replacing my only question mr hicks was uh um it'll take approximately two weeks per site so is there a way that they can do a couple of sites at one time no madam president members of the board we actually are working with mid-state currently they're doing our led project and so they're going to dovetail this into the led to save some money on some project management costs the project first started out over 4 million and of course you know i get nervous on any dollar amount and so we work to
080bring it down so they're going to dovetail it with that they're going to speed it up as quickly as possible they think uh one of our a we have great as builds b they've looked at our plans to do the lighting and then see our team does a great job of identifying exactly where air handlers are so we actually think they gave us an estimate that's probably a little long that it'll be a little bit quicker and they'll move through very fast because all of our stuff we know exactly where it is all of our buildings built in the last basically 20 years and so we have good plans and documents to speed up that process okay cool i will make a motion to approve the job order contract contract through one gpa for mid-state
081energy and an amount not to exceed three million three hundred thirty six thousand eight hundred seventy one dollars for the district-wide air purifier project second okay motion passes do we have any requests for future agenda items okay this time we will move to executive session um i will make a motion to establish executive session to be held immediately during a recess in the regular meeting second motion passes and we are in recess 856. okay i will make a motion to approve the compensation increase madam president we need to reconvene oh sorry okay we will now reconvene the meeting let the record reflect that all members are present okay okay i will make a motion to approve the compensation increase of three percent for the 2021-2022 fiscal year madam president if i could um ask if
082we could modify the motion with the language that ken hicks is going to present the president oh absolutely i thought that looked a little weird uh madam president members of the board and i'll have uh mr croto listen as i mentioned that it would be a recommended motion to approve a three percent three percent retention stipend to existing staff that accepts their contract or notice of employment by the given deadlines and remains employed through august 30th if the board sees it so are you making emotion do i need to make the motion can i get a copy i can't remember all of that you can say so you can say so moved okay all right i will make a motion to approve a three percent retention stipend to existing staff that accepts their contract or
083notice of agreement or notice of agreement notice notice of employment by the given deadline and remains employed through august 30th all second can i ask a question before we question yes does that include all current employees mad president pritchard that does not include the current interim employees for clarification should we clarify the motion are we good i was just asking that question okay all right i have a motion by don densmer it was seconded by whom ms chapman loud right now empty in here i am going to recuse myself from voting on this particular issue due to a potential conflict of interest no i'm not abstaining i'm recusing myself i respect that love thank you i don't want anybody to i am present so there's not an option oh okay but it'll reflect it motion
084passes madam president mrs grant your abstention will be noted in the minutes of the meeting thank you not abstaining thank you okay all right this time i will make a motion to establish executive session to be held immediately during a recess in the regular meeting okay second did i miss grant sorry did i did i not vote yes that's my vote motion passes you