001the governing board meeting to order and we 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 is that what you're supposed to say okay all right and first we have a public hearing to discuss the potential boundary changes dr kellis thank you uh madam chair and members of the board members of cabinet this evening mr hicks will introduce this item good evening madam president pro tem and members of the board superintendent dr kellis colleagues and community members i'm proud to be here tonight for the public hearing on boundary changes as a continuation of the boundary change in middle school process started last year the boundary chain
002the following boundary changes are proposed to finalize for to finalize boundaries for the 21-22 school year these proposed changes are reflected on the map upfront and also at dysart.org forward slash boundaries webpage the changes are to move part of the marley park elementary school boundary into the countryside elementary school slash ashton ranch middle school shared boundary to move part of the luke elementary school boundary into the el mirage elementary slash dinosaur middle school shared boundary and to move part of the western peaks elementary cimarron springs middle school and rancho gabriela elementary school sonoran heights middle school shared boundaries into the sunset hills elementary school boundaries these proposed changes entail the final steps to complete the boundary and grade configurations addressed in last year and approved by the governing board in december the changes in grade
003configurations have carefully followed procedural requirements outreach efforts including public hearings social media web outreach backpack letters home direct email calls texts public notices and newspapers and a live interactive question and answer event so these are the proposed and these are the this is the public hearing and we'll hear any comments thank you so um at this point i'm sure it would be appropriate if there were any there's anybody in the audience who wanted to address the board regarding these proposed changes they would have time at this at this moment if you would so allow is there anyone that would like to speak okay all right now we move to item c1 um and this is an action to elect a governing board president dr kellis thank you madam chair members of the board members of
004cabinet each year by statute the first regular meeting of the year is set aside for organization the organization of the board meaning it's a time for the board to select a board president and a board chair the appropriate process would be to open it up for nominations board members typically are able to nominate somebody else or themselves our administrative assistant luisa will keep tabs of who the nominations are it would then be appropriate to ask anybody who's been nominated if they agree to the nomination and if they'd be willing to serve in that role we start first with the president position and then whoever is selected as president would then take the role from that point forward conducting this meeting and throughout the rest of the year including the selection process for the board clerk
005which should follow immediately thereafter once the nominations are made if there are no other nominations and the person or persons have agreed to accept those nominations as first president then the board would take a vote and the nominee with the majority of the votes would then be selected as the president the same process would then be followed for the board chair so i would turn back over to you to conduct the process okay thank you do we have any nominees for board president i nominate don densmore for board president a second sorry so we will vote on board presidency unless someone else has just to be cleared to make sure there are no other nominations okay are there any other nominations and then hearing then you can call for a vote and i'm would assume
006that ms stansboro you would yeah i would accept it thank you i agree thank you miss chapman all right so we will call for that vote i'm chrissy did so congratulations madam president thank you and you may now proceed to follow the process to select a board chair clerk clerk sorry do we have any nominations for board clerk i would like to nominate tracy sawyer st dale is the clerk thank you i hope i said that right tracy and i would like to nominate christine pritchard for clerk i accept the nomination thank you all right any other nominations okay i'll call for the vote sensor so procedurally because there are two nominations we're going to go with two votes the system only has one blank so we can't put two names in the blank so
007um we'll go with the first nomination and then the second nomination okay so we're calling for the vote then for the first nomination for miss pritchard so uh nomination was or i'm sorry for tracy and then if somebody um can second that if there's a second do i need to make a motion to do that your nomination would be the motion if there's a second so you should have on your screen to be able to vote so that would take us to the next nomination so the um nomination was made by miss chapman was dennis moore okay so the promotion was made by myself and she accepted and then we would need a second pull second congratulations miss pritchard as the board clerk congrats okay moving to item d1 the agenda form um the governing
008board um i'm sorry i'll make a motion to approve this agenda form consistent with governing board policy and temporarily suspend any policy with which this agenda may be inconsistent second motion passes madam president just as a point of order given that everybody's wearing masks sometimes it's hard for the the borders executive system to hear emotions in seconds so if everybody could just speak really articulately thank you for the reminder well she has to learn two new voices too right do we have anyone addressing the governing board tonight any call to the public okay so i can just skip down okay all right next we have um g1 the student update do we have a student update yes we do okay good evening board members dr kelly from cabinet my name is dominique and i go
009to dysart high school i'm a member of the district leadership council just yesterday our council met for a monthly meeting we talked about how we could bring awareness to issues on our campuses and how we would solve problems identified we're also planning a community service project by hosting a hygiene and food drive with valley voot valley view food bank to help those in need in our community in addition to this each site will be creating a video to promote the proper use of a mask wearing on our campuses we would also like to say thank you to all of our nurses teachers substitutes administrators and everyone else doing extraordinary work each and every day thank you very much for the update next we have item g2 superintendent update dr kellis thank you madam president um
010i'd just like to take a moment first of all and thank uh mr greece haber and mrs parachini for their leadership in managing the dysert student leadership council just for your information this student leadership team is comprised of student leaders from each of the four high schools so while each high school has its individual student councils there's a combined district-wide one and they meet regularly to discuss ways to help us ensure that all students and have an extraordinary experience so congratulations to you for the things that you're doing even in a difficult time also just for the board's information there's been some interesting events happening with the arizona interscholastic association and we are very pleased that one of our own jim dean is on the aia board and represents not only dysert but the entire
011state of arizona very well and due in part to his leadership the aia has decided to continue with winter sports and so we were very happy to see that and that's all i have to report anyone else have anything i'm sorry item um three governing board update we have any governing board updates they use the knuckle there uh i just uh wanted to make sure that uh appreciation was extended to all staff and all students um for coming back it uh um it's a difficult time for everyone but i am very appreciative of everybody's efforts um in making sure things get done on a daily basis uh i did have the opportunity because i know this was back in december but i did have the opportunity to go um visit a couple of schools uh
012with dr kellis with sunset hills and i think canyon ridge and um just uh visiting a couple of classrooms and walking around um just to see how things were going and um any board members are welcome to do that but that actually that was it because other than that it's been uh kind of quiet for the board i guess but uh i just wanted to say thank you for everything that you do on a daily hourly weekly basis to provide the education opportunities for our students that's it kind of echoing what's already been said but i think it's important still to repeat it first of all i just really wanted to thank all of our teachers administrators all of our staff members who came to work on monday your dedication and commitment to our district
013and our students is well noted and very much appreciated not only myself but i'm our our students our parents our community so thank you very much for that and then just to echo what dr kellis shared too um extremely fortunate to have mr jim dean with us as a aia board mob as a as a dysart employee first but definitely during these times as an aia board member mr dean never wavered in his position and fought very hard for our student athletes as he always does and i'm just very thankful that we have uh your voice on that board so thank you very much okay um just echoing what everyone else is saying just so happy that our staff was present and and ready to help our students learn on monday um i i know
014that things are very difficult right now and a lot of emotions are running high so just very much appreciated the dedication that's going on in dysart and mr dean on behalf of all the students and parents across the state thank you so much for your work with aia thank you next we have our consent agenda items and i will make a motion to approve consent agenda items as presented second seconded by ms pritchard motion passes moving to item j1 we have an information item for policy governance uh dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet mr john crudo introduce this item thank you dr kellis madam president members of the board superintendent kellis cabinet and guests tonight we continue our policy governance and review of our board monitoring of
015adopted policies we're on section 7 the second half of the policy 7.33 through 7.67 tonight we do have two changes and that is to policy 7.35 and policy 7.54 we are recommending to you to add the wording on the bullet currently in our hiring processes we are required to call references obviously if the one first reference is has worked at an employer for longer than five years we just need to call that most recent reference if they do not the policy states we need to call three references we're bringing to you a recommendation tonight that if the first reference is not five years but the second one does total five years that we can stop at two instead of going on to the third reference so why are we bringing this policy and those changes
016to those two policies uh often we are running into situations where uh as we call the second reference they've been there for a long period of time so that third reference is obviou is sometimes very long 10 years plus and they do not recall um that person working there or it's changed there's been turnover and we stopped with five years on number one so we would just like the option to if we call the first reference doesn't total five years if we call the second and it does then we could stop at two instead of going on to that third reference if we call that second reference doesn't total five years we will go on to that third reference still as the policy states and with that i stand for any questions thank you any
017questions from the board okay all right next we have item j2 nutrition services update dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet this evening as part of our regular updates to the board we are presenting information from nutrition services and mr ken hicks will introduce this item thank you very much madam president members of the board superintendent dr kellis colleagues community members thank you very much this is a great chance we were able to shine and mr paul stanley is one of our shining stars mr paul stanley so introduce to you mr paul stanley he's our food service director he does work for southwest food service excellence or sfe so we do outsource our food services we work really hard to make sure that they're part of our team
018and feel very comfortable so that we hope that it's seamless and people don't notice that we outsource that and so i will introduce mr paul stanley to do our nutrition services update thank you mr hicks madam president members of the board dr kellis and cabinet appreciate your time tonight the opportunity to present our nutrition update this evening so just to give you a basic overview of our department there's of course a lot of moving parts in our department but first and foremost we're responsible for all aspects of the federal food program that's offered to our students our stakeholders in our community this is as you may know a highly regulated federally funded program with strict regulations in regards to the nutritional content of everything that we're serving operations as well as financials currently we have
019180 incredibly hard working staff in our department from our leadership team to our support staff in our office to kitchen managers and those working on site in our cafeterias fully staffed is about 230 employees the main component components of the program include breakfast lunch after school snack all a carton catering of course but at the moment we are offering more service models than ever to ensure we're meeting the needs of of our stakeholders and our community and our students in dysart um so that might include of course you know breakfast in a cafe uh curbside meal service with universal free meals catering services we have breakfast in the classroom growing minds meal delivery title one pre-k meal delivery all a carton of course our famous high school food truck is in operation as well just
020to name a few so uh currently we have uh we're serving about 18 000 meals per day and we're projected to serve anywhere between 2.5 to 2.7 million meals this school year so as far as our department goals you know as covid impacted our cips in 2020 we had to to make a small pivot and some adjustments to our cip this year just to ensure that we are aligned with current operations as we had sudden changes back in march of last year and and service models changed universal free meals were uh were offered uh starting september of this year um i think an example of that of one of our changes is the the goal of our free and reduced meal processing in our applications so since we're universal free meals at the moment of
021course we are not collecting free reduced meal applications so we want to ensure that we adjusted our cip uh to align with our current operations so goal one we want to recoup increase operational equipment costs so we've had substantial increase increases in costs due to the coveted pandemic just as we make adjustments to our operation to ensure the safety of our students and and our stakeholders goal too we want to really resume get back to our special events and local student programs uh by implementing additional safety and mitigation strategies so what i mean by that are our local programs that aren't required by the federal government the usda or the ade these are special programs that we do just for our students at the local level goal 3 we want to expand our recipe database
022really just to con to continue moving our program forward so we have so many operational restrictions right now we we never want to become complacent we want to keep moving this program forward and increasing student engagement so update on those goals we did receive 36 thousand dollars in awarded grants in october 2020 so that helped offset almost half of our year-to-date increases in our operational costs due to the the coveted pandemic goal 2 we did have our first event back in november so we had our third annual nutrition services election day where students were able to electronically vote on a new proposed menu candidate who will actually be inaugurated in our menus next week on wednesday so additional programs including roving chef pre-k mystery baskets stuco focus groups and surveys we'll start getting those scheduled
023out for february march and april of course with additional mitigation mitigation strategies in place and the goal three we have uh created through the r d process uh four new federally compliant recipes and so part of that was our nutrition services election day so we're really happy to roll out two of those uh new items next wednesday at both the k-8 and the 912 level so as with every department we've certainly had our challenges i think first and foremost has been staffing since march of last year so um we we began serving meals curbside with 40 fewer staff and and i can't say enough about our team and the dedication of our team who are out there you know last year in in april and may june and august 110 degrees outside and and our
024staff are out there ensuring their community are receiving high quality hot meals the simultaneous service model has certainly been a challenge so what i mean by that is is in conjunction with cafeteria service inside we're also offering curbside meal service for high school students or distance learners or the community at the same time so that with you know a reduction in staff has been challenging but i couldn't be more proud again of the staff for for really rising to the challenges as they always do a little bit of an inconsistent supply chain and product availability uh particularly last march in april we're seeing that improve a little bit lately but we're working very closely with vendors it has restricted what we're able to offer a little bit because we generally have such a wide variety
025especially the high school level will offer 30 different menu options and and we pull so much product anytime we we menu one item that it's it's been difficult to procure the the volume that we need and reduce local revenue so particularly in august when we didn't have students on site we had a drastic reduction in local revenue and what i mean by local revenue is the a la carte you know our snacks our catering services and things like that so that has a fairly substantial budget impact this year and then of course increased supply costs we are of course using you know a lot more sanitizer and disinfectant chemicals and keeping things clean and sanitary and so that's been a substantial increase in cost but but also with our transition into curbside and packaging everything
026for our students we've seen a pretty substantial increase in those paper goods and the because the demand is so high as restaurants are obviously serving more takeout supplies we're all pulling from the same vendors and so that's been a bit of a challenge as well so i i could probably give you five slides on celebrations but it was out of respect for your time we'll we boil it down to about four here so i'm really proud of the fact that since september fourth we've served over one million free meals um in dysart school district two you know our students our stakeholders but our community here around dysart as well we led the state in a very successful curbside service model beginning last year in 2020 and and we did that by offering hot meals to
027our students when a lot of districts were were struggling particularly with the the procurement piece um and a lot of other districts were serving cold sandwiches just kind of doing what they can and repeating items each week and we really focused on variety and really offering the best product and service that we could for our deizer stakeholders so we were so successful in this curbside model that we were recognized by ade and we were asked to create and facilitate estate training in regards to best practices for curbside service models our breakfast in the classroom federal county and claiming procedure has also been adopted by ade as a best practice and is now included in state training so anytime a school nutrition professional in arizona takes that breakfast in the classroom training they're going to see
028dysart school districts screenshots on there of our procedures and some of the materials we use in the classroom and then last but not least celebrate our staff of course um so we held our third annual uh hunger hero challenge in december and really proud of the staff for donating more than 3 000 pounds of food to st mary's food bank so these were personal donations by sfe staff and nutrition staff in dysart with the help of some some students in classrooms who jumped in on the challenge and really wanted to see that kitchen manager win the contest we had some help from them as well so i'm incredibly appreciative and and thankful for our staff for as always rising to the to the challenge and supporting our community when when they need us so with
029that we'll open it up should you have any questions well first off you're not paul stanley from kiss right the one and only the one and only your hair's kind of changed a bit that rock and roll lifestyle really took a toll on me with food right um thank you for everything that that you do and the fact that you had um you served over 18 000 meals per day and uh 2.4 projected for for this year um that's just totally amazing but the fact that you have 40 percent fewer staff is even more amazing and um it's it's not easy to continue doing what we're doing with some of our hands being tied but the fact that ade has come in and and celebrated what we're doing here is amazing so that's um a
030lot for you and your staff so thank you um what is the roving chef i heard so can you talk about that roving chef we we brought into desert actually in 2005 when we first started working in dysart school districts so and so that's a cooking class generally for the k-8 level students will come out of class will they'll work with the district chef or diet and dietitian and or a nutrition specialist i will go through recipes we'll cook it's a hands-on cooking class essentially generally we'll take a tour of the kitchen which we won't be doing this year but it's a really really fun platform just for that student engagement we talk about even food safety and nutritionals and and go through recipes make sure we're following a recipe to the tea and then
031of course we you know student surveys we always get feedback whenever we can so it's one of our original sfe programs that was brought into dysart in 2005. i don't even remember hearing that until you just said something right now and one other thing um and i have not been able to sample it but trying to track down the um the food trucks i seem like i'm always late uh after they get there so i will work on my own uh time to try to follow it um but uh i i hear great things about the food truck and and the variety that uh it has so um again kudos to you and your department thank you very much i appreciate that and i will send you the food truck schedule it's gonna be hey
032i'll put it right here thank you i will share thank you again thank you oh yeah thank you so much for your presentation um i do have one question um you mentioned about being federally compliant what are those compliance measures that you're tasked with this year so there's everything from the financial aspect ensuring that we are fiscally responsible that we are operating cash positive is huge for them as far as the financial aspect if not the district actually has to pull non-federal funds to make up the district the difference so it's very important that we are always operating efficiently as far as you know operational compliance everything every thing that we do to serve something very simple goes through a complete menu process recipe development process we have to hit sodium targets a lot of
033nutritional targets on that even the way in which we serve in the cafeteria whether we're offering this we can't force students to take this but we have to offer minimums for grains and fruits and vegetables and and fall within certain sodium targets it can be very very challenging at times it is it is a highly regulated uh program and when you when you receive a federal audit i mean they tens of thousands of pages of documentation are reviewed uh during our state and federal audits wow so were any were any of those measurements changed this year or last year no there there was a temporary um halt to the sodium reduction target so we were supposed to step down our sodium over the years and they they put a temporary pause on that one of
034the the biggest changes over the last year is there was a ruling that allowed us to serve some non-whole grain items and so one of the changes um this year for next year is the removal of that um and going back to 100 whole grain so things are are always changing um certainly have to be on top of the new regulations especially in this last eight months or so with different service models right i just wanted to also add that my three high schoolers at some point have really loved the snow bowl but they add pickles to it for some reason so i don't know if that's a thing but apparently it is it is so that is that is one of our our most popular concepts at the high school level and and it's
035kind of a build your own we'll custom make it for you get to choose your chicken and mashed potatoes and all that so that for for the last four years or so has been one of our most popular concepts thank you great thank you it's just the name of the recipe so this was in this started in flagstaff in 2005 which was sfe's very first district partner dysart was their second district partner back in 2005. so it was kind of named after the arizona snowbowl and and the mountain up there so it's mashed potatoes engraving you get to choose your chicken and kind of make a home style snowball it's delicious with pickles mr stanley you had mentioned that um there's a high volume of free meals that are provided um can i know some
036of our community are concerned that dysert is uh gifting food out who pays for free meals so it's reimbursed by the united states department of agriculture or if that answers your question so funded through the state by the usda um so right now we are not collecting any local revenue whatsoever it's 100 reimbursed at the free reimbursement rate for the remainder of the year by the federals correct thank you i just had one other thing that i was thinking of when you were talking about the roving chef um because i know you have students that work with it and everything so since 2005 i'm just curious have we kind of tracked and it might be something you might want to do track to see how many students may have gone into the field of nutrition
037i have not but that is a great idea i mean because i did not know about it before but it may be something wink-wink to mr greasable you know but i was just curious because if they're learning about nutrition and content and all that type stuff i was just wondering if there was any students that may have gone into the field of nutrition or anything like that so it's just something to think about i would love that information as well and i'll work with mr greenshade yeah there you go okay thank you anything else thank you so much madam president members of the board dr kelly's cabinet thank you so much for your time appreciate it all right moving to item k-1 and we have a discussion and possible action to determine continuance of the
038policy governance model and the dysart unified school district dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet this item is brought forward by the request of a board member policy governance is as a format that is used by some districts many other districts use a more traditional model this has been a format that has been in place here in dysart for let me go back to those who have been here for a while probably about 13 years and so there is a lot of information that could be provided about it and when it was first brought in i believe it was um it was a transition time and it involved everything from [Music] shifting to a new policy manual and and just some other practices that may or may not
039still be in place today but with that uh ms densmore i'll turn it back to you to lead the conversation thank you um i just thought it was a good time since we you know we have a new board to just talk about maybe the pros and cons of of this particular governance model i know that for me as a new board member um you know coming into this role wasn't something that i really expected to this model wasn't something that i expected to be in place so just with some questions that i have received from at least one other member one other board member um it just made me think maybe it wasn't um necessarily the best thing for us going forward and i would just you know like to ask you dr kellis
040if you could give us a little bit of background on it about like the why it was implemented in the first place to help us all understand that um madam president members of the board looking back 13 years let's see if i can piece together some history and i'll also defer to other board members who may have some history at that time here um i will say that the board was very dysfunctional at the time and that there were some grave concerns about the the board relationships with each other and with administration and the superintendent at the time brought in a consultant dr tom jandris and he helped facilitate the process of moving to a policy governance model the policy governance model anymore i would say is not a whole lot different from what other
041districts have adopted as or have never really adopted it's just their the way they've always done it more traditional model and that is the concept of ends and means and when we talk about ends and means generally it is the board's responsibility to determine the ends in other words the goals or the the vision and then it's the administration's responsibility to figure out the means or the how and then in our current policy manual the board adopts policy then administration figures out how to implement the board's policies so it's the the what um for as an example it might be the board would say we need to bring up our third grade math scores administration would then go and figure out what all needs to be done to bring up the third grade math scores
042it could be that the board might say [Music] i'm just grasping at things in the air keep schools open during covet and then it'd be administration's responsibility to figure out how that happens and put together all the processes that are needed sometimes there are situations where the line is blurred between ends and means and some boards thinking globally across the entire country start getting into more of the the means and that's where there's frustration from both the board and the administration that uh popular terms getting into the weeds can often be a frustrating place to be i will say that it is frustrating to board members across the globe to be presented with decisions to make that board members have not had the the privilege of the months of looking into all the information receiving
043the updates or doing all the research and yet you're asked to make the decision um that is absolutely universal frustration it would be inappropriate for the board to get on all the committees that exist and the reason why that's inappropriate is because the board ultimately is voting and it could possibly be that one board member who's been on a committee has the three months of experience and knowledge benefit that the other board members don't have and that can be frustrating to board members where they don't have that equal access to information so policy governance can be confused as the superintendent's in charge that's not the case the board is in charge and always will be in charge and that is statutorily in place the board does continue to in either model identify policies and put
044policies in place and then it is very typical and traditional that the board expects the superintendent to exercise the will of the board and figure out how to best implement those policies so again we could have an entire workshop a three-day workshop on it it took about if i recall about four years under dr janders's consult to fully implement all the different elements of a model that he i don't know that he originated but that he ascribed to and was very proficient with and no doubt that there are many elements of that model that are not in place today the board may some members of the board may recall that we separated services with dr jandis a couple years ago but we continue to follow the ends and means concept of governance when we have
045brought in consultants or trainers from arizona school boards association they train the same concept of ends and means they don't get into a lot of the other details that dr jandis had specific to to his framework but they also sba also follows that same idea of the the differentiation of roles between the governing board and the superintendent um so that's kind of a very very fast brief synopsis of potentially some history and some background on policy governance or just board leadership thank you um i know that one of the pieces that has concerned me is that we don't have the the what do you call it the self-monitoring um you know going on to to measure how successful we are doing as a board and i i know that that was something that was involved
046when we had dr chandras involved with us with policy governance as a consultant but since he has left it doesn't seem like there's really any structure to to what we're doing as far as policy governance goes so that has been a concern of mine as well madam president members of the board i would share that um having been in an administrator under both platforms um most recently in the madison school district that there was a system a process in place for board self-evaluation another district had a process for 360 type evaluation meaning they took input from administrators teachers parents as feedback for the board's performance in dysart under what you're describing under dr jandris's consult he had in place kind of uh like secret shoppers of sorts where nobody knew who they were but there
047were people in the audience who were identified to evaluate the board how many times did you make a comment were you engaged in the meeting did you come prepared there's a list of of evaluative criteria and you're correct that that weekly [Music] secret evaluation has not continued something we could but again that would be something that would be an ends and means type of thing if the board would like to receive continuous evaluation we can talk about do you want self-evaluation a 360 type evaluation or do you want the the type of monitoring that we have done in more recent years does anyone else have any i just um i would agree that something dr callison i got to keep my mask on um was mentioning that i wrote down as he was talking that
048i i think really kind of hit the nail on the head as far as what i've been feeling is that sometimes there's frustrations between the board and administration with how policy governance has been rolling out over the last couple years or so or like when dr chandras um separated um i think there's been some changes over time with that like you had mentioned and dr kellis and i have had talks about opinions about policy governance for the last couple years so i know for him this is this isn't new information i'm saying but just for the rest of the board um it's changed over time it's not it's not what it used to be it's not what it was when i think it first came to dysart and um having the evaluators and the audience
049as well as us doing our own self-evaluations and some other little things that were big pieces of policy governance have kind of faded so i other than the reminders of ends and means i don't it doesn't feel like policy governance anymore anyway um so and i know i think from i've been a little frustrated with it for a while just because i feel like in a way probably too because we haven't been following it exactly the way that it's designed that um it's causing maybe some some ruffled feathers or hard feelings or just difference just um it doesn't feel as as free flowy as as far as all of our our work together and leadership goes um as it used to in the past when it was more of a traditional board administration um was
050governed by like asba policies or something that that typical traditional relationship um it feels sometimes i'm just speaking for myself sometimes i felt very uncomfortable asking questions or not that anyone refused to answer ever ever but it just seems more like like dr keller said like if you're in the weeds you know if i've had a question it's like well it's that you're in the weeds and so i'd be like okay am i allowed to ask certain things but is it like statutorily um sometimes it feels like the governing board should be making some decisions or having some having a voice in areas that maybe um policy governance kind of frowns upon so then there's more that feel of well but i was elected to do this and the law and the statutes say i
051should do this but our particular district has adopted a different model that just does isn't i just feel like moving forward it would be um for my own personal opinion i i would rather since we're not really doing policy governance anyway anymore i just feel like maybe going back to asba policy might also heal some relationships too and bring us back to where things were with how we work together and communicate and more of an open way then more rigid and structured and you stay on in your lane and we stay in our lane because sometimes i feel a little bit out of touch i think as a board member with certain things trying to stay out of the weeds so that's just been my observation and some of my personal feelings over time as
052someone who's been here since it's originally was brought to the district and how it's kind of morphed into something else now so if we were to eliminate policy governance we would still have to follow policy so what would change i mean there's still policies in place on what board members can and cannot do what student whatever the policies are what would change besides calling it policy governance the way that our policies are written now they're very um specific to the policy governance model right right so in other words if we were to eliminate policy governors i think we would have to revert to asba policy is that correct dr kellis madam president members of the board we as part of dr jandis's consultation with the district he did go through a process of creating a
053new policy manual that is completely compliant with all the state statutes and everything that needs to be in place the asba policy manual is about 12 inches thick our current policy manual is about two inches thick the board certainly could say we want to go back to the asb template it would probably take about two years to create a boardwalk between our current policy and switching it over to the sba policy [Music] there are a lot of things in the asba template that over 30 years or more districts have personalized to their district there are things that the asba policy has and i'm not trying to be critical of one or the other i'm just saying our experience with it there are a lot of policies in asba template that are not based on statute
054or regulations from a arizona board of education sbe um they're just opinions that have made their way into the policy template so when i say it takes two years it literally is a page by page line by line is this what dysert wants is this what dyson wants and then with asba we take any revisions to their template to asba give them our proposed changes they say yes and then we bring it back to the board for a first and second read that's why one change could take a month obviously we would do it in bulk but it could take as long as two years the other option is we could just scrub our current two inch policy manual of those elements that reference policy governance and continue to use it as we are currently
055using it and that is as a working document that is statutorily in sync and compliant but it is [Music] what a lot of us would hope title 15 would be is just reduced to the bare bones of what is necessarily required um the the thing that a lot of reference to our policy there are what we call executive limitations there's a lot of policy that says the superintendent shall not and when you look at that language that is an element to policy governance where essentially the board says here's our policy the superintendent when i say superintendent that's a universal term for administration because it's i don't do it all it's a i delegate to all everybody but um the superintendent has can do whatever is necessary to implement the board policies except for the superintendent
056shall not this this this and this for example the superintendent shall not fail to incorporate a student discipline policy or procedures the superintendent should not fail to evaluate teachers those limitations are meaning that i can do whatever it takes i being the administration whatever it takes but i still have to follow those those expectations in the simplified format and many of those are statutory the statutes require that the board evaluates teachers it requires that the there's a discipline plan but that doesn't uh necessarily say that if we took those references out that now we don't have a discipline plan if it says the superintendent shall not incorporate this one plan procedures statute still requires it so while it's not a limitation i still i we would still have to be compliant with all the other
057laws and and regulations so we could that's another option we don't have to adopt the asb policy we could take our current one and just go through that it would take several months of just saying these are the changes that we would like to see in our current policy thank you well if we were to make a decision tonight to to change to a governance model without policy governance we could make that decision at a another a future board meeting um which manual we wanted to go with right we don't need to do that tonight madam president members of the board yes you you could the policy governance um i would have to go back 13 years to see was there a board action to adopt policy governance that is like i said it was
058like a four-year process of becoming the model that dr jandris put in place you could go to another district they have policy governance but it looks very different from dr jandis's policy governance but i think what is most important is that we work with the board in dysert and say what do you want the governance model to look like and then we can go through if it's is it the policy manual is it communications is it um the [Music] the culture of board superintendent relationships what is it that the board would like to to experience in your leadership role and in your relationship with administration so we can go back and see if there was an actual vote taken to adopt policy governance and if that motion included by saying we now have adopted policy
059governance that that came as a bundle that included the policies and everything that associated with the monitoring and all that my guess is a lot of those things were either practices put in place along the way or policies that were created along the way or board votes doesn't necessarily have to be policy but the board voted say okay we're going to vote for board monitors in the audience then those are things that we would go back in and say we're going to vote to not have those board monitors in the audience we haven't had them it's just a matter of going back and looking through all the documentation and kind of you take a tree by the roots we have to find all those roots and account for them and if we say we are
060no longer doing policy governance what does that mean what comes with it if you're devoted out i don't know what all comes with it to be honest that would be something we'd have to research in theory though just to kind of just to kind of go back on that so i understand so it wouldn't just be if let's say for an example i were to make a motion to discontinue the use of policy governance and revert back to as traditional asba policies expected immediately then um at that point since we're in the beginning of the year anyway wouldn't we be able to just bring back each section of like the asba policies and then kind of start our work just like we normally do in january where we go through and we're like okay do
061these fit the way we like them do we not because i remember way back in 2007 we had a lot of board members that would create write their own policies and we'd send them forward and or asba would send us a policy revision and sometimes if we did our own that asba didn't have or didn't really like we wouldn't necessarily need them to like endorse it or have it it's just as long as it wasn't breaking any laws we could do it so technically if there's some asba policies that maybe we don't you know we don't necessarily want to adopt and die start or don't really fit what we're doing um then when we're going to through to maybe review policies like we already have that schedule set then couldn't we just kind of do
062that work along the way just like we're doing policy governance work along the way madam president pritchard um feasibly yes i would ask please please don't do that the reason being if you say tonight that you are adopting the asba template there are thousands of pages of associated regulations exhibits and other documents that come with it that we have not been under the the um the direction of that policy and we would immediately be required to be in compliance with all those policies so in one night to switch over to that yes we can do what you're thinking of doing is on a monthly basis adopting new sections that would be fine we can we can do that but to take it all in one night would throw the district into a tailspin of procedural
063and regulatory um law that we are not prepared to do i could say something real quick um i believe i came in on the fourth year of the talks when we were going through that and i i want to say that we did actually make a motion to accept policy governance um i you know after after looking at this and everything i i am not comfortable with making a decision for or against tonight um because number one we have two brand new governing board members i am in favor of i hate this thing i am in favor of at least having some type of working training session to get them on board to understand what we have been doing for the past 11 years 12 years 13 but to actually scrub this entire thing tonight
064there there's just no way um it doesn't seem like it's um as i was listening to you miss pitcher i i heard a couple of words and you had repeated the same word kinda and i don't want to put the district in a kinda situation as far as can we kind of do it this way and then do it that way i know the policies have changed with asba several times over the years but as far as making a decision tonight without our two brand new board members being brought up to snuff on the policies and everything for the district i don't think we should do that so you want to bring the new board members up to snuff on a policy mod or a governance model that is we may not continue using i
065would like them to be trained on what we have been doing for the past 11 years and if they see insight i it could it could very well be changed my mind while we're doing those training sessions but to actually just zero it out without looking at our options and not doing this during an actual board meeting but training session or a workshop i think that would be better suited for us see and i don't know why we would train on a on a model that because technically in 2019 this topic came up when dr chandra said he could no longer work with us because he thought policy governance was in jeopardy didn't feel like it was it was going the way that it was um designed that was in 2019 so here we are
0662021. so i guess i'm just saying how long do we want to limp along with the system that isn't working we're not implementing it the way it was designed um and we've had since 2019 when asba came and and maybe as someone who's very active in esba you can share why you know what the differences would be or why it is that the majority of districts in arizona don't operate under policy governance but to spend a lot of human resource hours trying to train on a on a model that took several months if not a year to train everyone on that we're not even implementing for us to decide then okay do we like it do we not like it i mean some of it when you're new a new board member you kind of
067are at a disadvantage in that you know you're coming into a system that we've all worked in for a while and then you kind of sometimes you do may have to make decisions just with the limited information that you have but then i don't know that it's you know for the rest of us to necessarily continue again limping along with something that in in a lot of ways is not working right but you've you just hit it on the head you said that you're asking two board members to come in and vote on something that they they really haven't experienced and i would like for them to know what we've been doing and you hit it right on the head he came in in 2019 and said we were in jeopardy or you know whatever
068he said and um you're right if we haven't done anything with it okay then why haven't we done anything with it um but this is january 2021 and he came in in 19 and now we've had that year and a half almost two years and we haven't done anything that was that's that's a very big concern that is i agree with you um but to have like i said two board members to come in and say okay i'll agree with you let's scrap it they don't know what they're supposed to remember well but they're not versed in what has been going on for the past 11 years and now the last year and a half two years with no monitoring self-monitoring so well i do have a few comments here i have to agree with
069miss prichard on as a board member i want to feel comfortable asking questions and it's not that i'm i just want to be able to better understand certain issues that's going on and i don't want it to look like getting into the weeds just because we're asking questions to me that's the only way to learn and to become a better board member and to understand the district overall but i guess what i'm trying to understand is what is your concern and your concern about is there a certain policy that you don't like and what will change i mean we still will have policies in place so i guess i don't quite understand the difference between like the asba and the governance we still have boundaries that we have to keep so what would truly change
070if we that you want to get rid of it so the reason that i that i brought this to the board was because i wanted and was hoping for a more collaborative you know situation here in the district you know not just with us but you know with administration too to be able to feel more comfortable asking those questions understanding some of what's going on i i know that that there are times though when there are decisions made that you would um maybe naturally think would have come to the board that don't uh some things that are um decided between um administration and in other districts you'll you'll hear that the their boards made those decisions but in dysart there's a separation of power so again just making a more collaborative um governance model for
071for dysart it doesn't mean that we want to be on a power trip or that we want to micromanage anyone we're still going to you know respect those ends and those means but again just a i hate to use the word again but more collaborative so more teamwork involved i would feel comfortable taking a vote tonight just because for one i don't like the idea of going through this grueling training about policy governance and then all of a sudden being like just kidding it's gone and then all of a sudden all of that time and effort and that you guys have spent training us and that we have spent in a training i don't like the possibility of then all of a sudden having to relearn something new and some some decisions if it really
072is up to the superintendent i feel like that's a lot for one man's shoulder to carry i am sure he's gotten tons and tons of emails about current events maybe if you know and right now when people ask me questions i defer them to the superintendent and i say hey i can't do anything about this to help you but because that is the superintendent's decision so that is my thought on the process we do have books that we can kind of look through manuals and stuff as far as policy governance goes but i feel like if we are going to make a decision now is probably a good time to do it and just start it off fresh that way we are all on the same page as we go throughout the year and the
073decision-making process madam president if i could comment that i'm very concerned about what the board by making a motion if if you have intense if your intent is to do away with everything policy governance there may be some misunderstanding of things that aren't necessarily attached to policy governance that the board may not unintended consequences is basically what i'm getting at um i would like to have our attorney help us to identify what is it and maybe come up with a proposed language for an agenda item what is it that the board is separating from and what is it not separating from again if you're asking to abandon the current policy manual we are not prepared to do that but if you're looking at the gender carver model of policy governance okay that's something that you
074can vote on tonight but if the expectation is what all is included in that vote i i'm uncertain myself of what comes with that bundle it was my intention just to change the governance model potentially not changing the policy handbook um that's why my question to you was how does that work does that mean that we eliminate everything or does that mean that we take it step by step madam president members of the board i think if a motion was made that directed administration to [Music] prepare policies in alignment with some vision statement we could work collaboratively to to achieve that again i'm very concerned about even the policy is one thing what i don't know what the board is expecting to be included policy being one perhaps it's been mentioned what other things is
075the board intending to be included in this separation i see what you're saying about um putting the district at risk if you just say effective immediately we're reverting to all asb policies and so that wouldn't be that wouldn't be my intention i don't think it would be anyone's intention to put the district at risk um i think that um for again just one board member i'm thinking that continuing to go through the policies the policies themselves and evaluate does this still fit do we still like this whatever that's to me not as immediate as far as like i'm not saying because we go through and we review these policies as far as actually what our expectations are for the district all the time and we have opportunity to ask questions or to change things i
076don't think i personally don't have anything i don't object to i can't think of anything necessarily um regarding policy it's more the governance model so i'm wondering if um if anything as we this work in progress as far as looking at okay are there parts of the policies we actually want to change as well that you know i can see might we can do that as we move forward through the year and change those up if we need to still operating under them but for me again moving forward again with to do board members that need to learn what type of governance model we're going to start with i think the sooner the better so for me that would then if anything just um discontinuing the policy governance model the concept of policy governance not
077yeah not necessarily throwing all the policies away so that i don't think i think that piece of it or that that little stipulation might um i don't think that's going to require like legal advice or putting the district at risk because we're not we're not stopping and reverting to a whole set of policies we haven't looked at for a long time i don't know that thanks madame president pritchard i i would say for the record officially absolutely without any reservation i welcome your questions and i i hope that um any action uh because of the the umbrella or the shadow the policy governance i regret that that has had any influence on your your interest in asking questions because i we cannot function as a district if the board is not informed and it is
078my intent and i've said this to to you many times it's my intent that you come into your job prepared with the knowledge that you need to lead and that's my responsibility just to make sure that you are informed so please officially i'm asking you ask questions at will and if you feel like the policy governance is prohibiting you from doing that then i support abolishing the policy governance for that very reason if there are other limitations that the board feels restricted because of policy governance i would love to hear from you what those elements are so that if you believe that by discontinuing policy governance that that now is going to start something that hasn't been happening that's a conversation we need to have to open up that communication and to eliminate your frustrations
079or any reservations that you have under your your leadership role um so i would welcome those conversations as well even whether or not you vote one way or the other and policy governance it's not my understanding that again different administration since i've been here i i would never say to you you cannot ask that question that's against policy governance i welcome your questions so i just want to make that clear thank you dr kellis um i'm not very comfortable making a vote on it yet but i'm with everybody else i mean if we're going to do something we do need to do it pretty quickly because like you say well i get trained on all of this and then we eliminate it and now we're we're starting all over and that's that's a waste of
080everybody's time but we have a study session coming up and i think february february that's not too far off could we add that just so we understand what them it sounds to me like it's not the policy end of it it's the model part and that's what i guess i want more information on is what is this model that seems to be the the concern so could we at least include it in a before we go too far into this year at least have some other discussion about it i think that that's one of the things that you just said miss grant um i i just want to make sure that our incoming board members know what the model is and what we if we choose not to do with that then what can we
081do with another model i just would like for both of them to get not necessarily get trained on policy governance i guess that's maybe i was using the wrong words but the fact is what we currently use and what else is out there as our options so just to get information not it would take a long time for you it took four years for us to go through it and everything but just so you know without um just so you know what you're dealing with what policy governments are over here and what asba is over here or there may be a third one out there i don't either no idea but just you said something as far as like getting legal opinion that's that's that's okay too but just so you know what you're actually
082voting on okay so respectfully i asked i was i was told that was going to happen in 2018 when we're like well let's just start looking into that and here we are so when i hear those words again i just feel like if if if this would clear things up by saying okay we're not gonna we're not gonna say we're to revert asba policy effective immediately but we're going to say we are abolishing or discontinuing the policy governance model in dysart unified school district and then we have these workshops to talk about do we want to tweak these policies any differently that's fine but i've already been told in the past yeah we'll we'll work toward it we'll look at when people have study sessions and we never did so i'm hearing those words again
083and i'm feeling like well it's not yeah and i i totally understand that but i guess i want to make sure that the incoming board members know frustrations or delights of whatever we've had with policy governance and we could probably we could probably knock it out with a an hour or a two hour workshop but it's just giving them the opportunity to see and again i said not training on policy governance but what we've been doing what what are our options instead of doing this during a board meeting so you're saying still continue with the policy governance model until we change it at a future date sometime is that what i'm hearing i just want to be clear too we're on our second meeting of the year are we saying they haven't been trained in
084policy governance this is their first meeting this is technically their first meeting so have either one of them do they know what policy governs that would have been covered like an orientation no no so that's that's it was covered in mine that's why i asked it was not okay so okay in order to take care of your concern can we put it on the study session i don't even know that study session as an agenda item and discuss it and then on the record as a future uh agenda item for the meeting after that study session have it on the agenda does that take care of your concern to have this work study session soon i mean it now it'll be on the agenda because i just want more info we did not get it
085was not covered in orientation we were given two big books but you guys were you guys attended board meetings for how long while you were i mean but they don't know what the model is but i don't unders that's why i want to have without taking up time i want to understand what is the difference nobody's been able to answer that question except for a book that's 12 and you know this thick versus this thick we still have policies so what is it about this model that is keeping that you feel that is keeping you from doing your job as a board member so that's what i wanted i want to understand what is this model you're asking me personally i'm asking you and miss jones more because the two of you yes okay so
086for me personally just like i've said this is not policy governance anymore this is not how the model was designed presented we were trained in years and years ago it's morphed into something else so it's not even can you be more specific i mean can you give me an example so um for an example yeah we had the we have the consultant come he analyzes the data he brings it back he tells us he gives us feedback on that part is too technical and since you're not familiar i won't um but there's that piece of it we have the um the people the observers that are in the audience that monitor are we following policy governance to give us the feedback we would have our own self-evaluation tool that we would have to do after
087every single meet that has not been done for probably over a year you know um so those are the more of the strategic the um the procedural types of things that are no longer in place um as far as my frustrations as a board member i feel like the board is very that this model keeps the board very hands-off it's very much like dr keller said that you know the ends and the means and not i was never even in 2006 or 2007. i was never a board member that believed in micromanaging i don't want to micromanage anybody but if i have a question about what's going on or i have a grave concern about something or something that i would like administration to focus on i don't i want to be able to have
088a voice in that or big decisions that impact the district we're in a lot of big decisions right now the board is not making those decisions those decisions we're we're reverting to our um our experts and i appreciate that and they gather information and they rather than gathering information and coming back and saying this is the data this is the information here's our recommendation but what do you think what do you want to do and then we as a board talk about it and decide what's best for our stakeholders our students policy governors is more like as long as the superintendent operates within the um ends or focuses on the ends he the administration decides what those means look like the how he gets there and for lots of things that that doesn't make a
089difference that's fine no one wants to micromanage anybody but that means that if there's certain things along the way like again whether it be covid or some of these other bigger things we still have to be consistent with that model we can't pick and choose when we want to use policy governance as board members so i can't say okay i'm good with policy governance we don't make any of these bigger decisions but they know suddenly i want to get in the middle of this because that's when we were told well you're in the weeds you need to stay in your lane stain your lane is my word um so that's just and then and then talking with representatives through asba about a year and a half ago they were even mentioning that a concern was
090well it's in statute what your roles and powers and responsibilities are per statute policy governance doesn't really it kind of goes against that it limits you so and there's been other conversations i've had with other board members that were like well what do you mean you're not voting on that or what do you mean well we have policy governance what's that you know so it's very different okay and i just want to feel more involved in i just want to feel more involved rather than i think for me i feel that the board lots of times is on the outskirts um waiting to see what administration's deciding on how to handle something and i would just rather be more hands-on not in the day-to-day but just hands-on when it comes to some of these bigger
091decisions that impact our community okay that makes sense and just to give you one example i pulled up one of our policies that kind of gets under my skin a little bit is that official communications if we as board members get a communication per policy from like a community member or a parent or a student we are not to respond to those even though we are elected by these people we are in per policy we are not to respond to those we are supposed to forward those to the superintendent so i i don't see anything constitutional about that but that kind of falls in line with policy governance though so just for the sake of further discussion and since i don't really think it's going i know for a fact it's not going to put
092the district in any liability at all i would like to move that the governing board discontinue use of the policy governance model effective immediately keeping current policy in place until a later date when the board can convene to discuss possible revisions or adoptions second well i have to speak against emotion because like i said i really would like to understand more information about the model i've been a board member before we did not do uh policy governance i can say that right off the bat that's why i'm very confused and if you if the policy says as a person you're not supposed to respond then why don't we change the policy why are we doing all of this just to change i mean can't we change that policy i mean we adopt them so that's
093my only concern i would just like some more time to understand it a little bit more and that's why i asked for the study session but okay we can still have a study session i'm open to talking about the policies that was actually part of the motion so as far as reconvening later well but then it's too late because i still want never mind that's richard can you restate that off the top of my head um do you need it right now or do you well we have to vote on your motion you said motion to content discontinued policy governance model immediately in the deiser infinite school district keep current policies in place until the board can reconvene at a later date to review and revise policies that discretion or to review and to review
094and revise policy as needed i have a motion by christine pritchard said was there a second don does more second motion passes item l1 request for future agenda items do we have any requests no okay we will move into executive session now madam president that would need to be an action item to call for an executive session i will motion to convene to executive session we need everybody to vote on that motion passes you