001meeting of the dysart unified school district governing board let the record reflect that all board members are present with the exception of jay leonard we'll stand for the pledge of 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 um so we're gonna go to item b1 approval of the agenda form um and i'll make a motion to approve this agenda form consists consistent with governing board policy and temporarily suspend any policy with which this agenda may be inconsistent christine pritchard thank you motion made by don densmore seconded by christine pritchard and it passes okay next we have recognitions and celebrations and we'll start with mr kellis thank you um madame densmore members of
002the board members of cabinet this evening we're super excited to be able to recognize several people and first off our certified technology award will be presented by dr pulling good evening madam president members of the board dr kellis it's my pleasure to introduce miss diana hawari our chief information officer she recently earned the certified education technology leader designation by passing a rigorous certification exam the cdl certification awarded by the consortium for school networking signifies that miss hawari has mastered the knowledge and skills needed to bring 21st century technology to our k-12 school systems miss hawari is the second person in the state of arizona to earn this certification to become certified she demonstrated experience in the education technology field and passed a comprehensive two-part examination based on the ten skill areas in kozin's framework of
003essential skills for k-12 ctos so with that miss hawari come on down [Applause] good evening madam president members of the governing board dr kellis and members of cabinet this evening we are very excited to provide another um award to the governing board um to our outstanding dance teacher at valley vista miss amy crow and to present that award will be our fine arts director deniae marinelli there we go it is my greatest pleasure and utmost pride that i stand here this evening to recognize the arizona dance education organization's k-12 dance program of excellence for 2020. this award is being presented to valley vista high school's dance program under the direction of miss amy lane crow the award was announced at the azdeo virtual meeting so it is my honor to award the official plaque in
004person this evening i would like to read a statement from the president of azdeo miss andrea downing who was unable to be here this evening the arizona dance education organization is very pleased to award our very first dance program of excellence award for a high school program to valley vista high school this award honors a program that exhibits growth and inclusiveness addresses the needs of all students including additional learning outside of the classroom engage as parents and the larger community demonstrates a comprehensive curriculum aligned to the dance arizona dance standards and supports ongoing learning for teachers we know that this cannot be done without school district and community support valley vista's dance program under the direction of amy crow and with the support of the school and community exemplifies these qualities to honor this model
005dance program azdeo is presenting valley vista with a plaque and a monetary award of 500 to use to support the dance program thank you to amy principal lockhart superintendent kellis the dysart school board and the community for supporting dance at valley vista and dance education we are so proud of the extraordinary accomplishments hard work and dedication of this amy lane crow and her dance students thank you for always providing our students with an extraordinary art experience congratulations and then she has her company dance company board members here with her to help receive the award [Applause] wonderful good [Applause] and that concludes our awards and celebration for the evening um next we'll move on to audience with individuals next we'll move to audience with individuals i'm going to go ahead and read the statement this is
006a 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 38-41431 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 later consideration and decision at a later date in order to facilitate accomplishing the business of the district in a timely manner a limit 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 uh first person is tony simek dr kellis and members of the governing board and cabinet my name is tony simek dysart parent and i have a question for you what do
007you think your obligations are to the community it appears some members think the override is a political issue or a test of conservative versus liberal values it is not if the district truly needs funding from the override then you should need to be clear about your position and not change your message to pander solely to obtain political support our children are more important than your re-election whether your beliefs are left-wing or right-wing both wings are part of the same bird and right now some of you are making this bird look more like a turkey rather than an eagle genuine conservatives and liberals both know that investing in our own communities education is a long-term investment only short-term thinkers and politically fringe or bad actors make simplified conclusions that schools are not worth the investment and
008tax consequence as a conservative and believer in the free market i'd love to see lower taxes of course but as a parent and resident who is here for the long term i ask what kind of fool thinks education is not important enough to be fully funded those against the override are spineless and selfish and are acting victimized by the reasonable tax consequence it is a selfish and politically motivated act reconsider who you serve and the results of not properly funding the district the ones you serve will not be students forever i think you should feel accountable whatever your position you may feel justified and even proud but remember if you under fund the district that you serve you will own that outcome support the override do not be selfish doing the easy doing the right
009thing is not supposed to be easy thank you thank you for your comments the next person we have is beth simek dr kellis and members of the board and cabinet as well as honored guests tonight my name is beth simek and i am an active dysart parent for more than 15 years i am aware of the responsibilities of a school board and that is to be an advocate for the district this board voted unanimously to have another override election and approved the fiscal implications involved in putting the override back on the ballot board members then have a responsibility to advocate for the passage of the override by actively participating in the yes campaign so imagine my disappointment when i find that there are members of the board two of whom are on record as being
010part of the unanimous vote to put this measure out and they're out photographed actively campaigning against the override one member has a conflict of interest according to section 2.8 bullet 10 of the board policy by participating actively in a vote with a local political group to be against the override another member has joined her as they both violate board policy section 2.2 bullets 5 and 7 by actively passing out political groups propaganda to vote against the override while claiming to be fiscally conservative how is it fiscally conservative to vote in favor of a very expensive override election only to then go out of your way to sabotage the messaging it is the ethical responsibility of every member of the board to actively support and own their part of this board's unanimous decision all board members
011are bound to uphold that position that's part of basic governing board training how are we as a community supposed to trust board members to make decisions in the best interests of the district when the first instinct is to sabotage what this board unanimously voted in favor of supporting there are members of this community who are owed an apology for this so instead of shaking pans of the graduates on graduation day i hope you look into their eyes and apologize to each and every one of the children for this gross betrayal of their trust in you the people you are hurting are our children and for that you should be truly ashamed thank you for your comments the next person is john medina good evening board members my name is john medina i am a substitute
012here in the dysart district as well as some other districts locally and i'm a professor at grand canyon university as well so obviously i love teaching and um a question i don't know if i'm allowed to post questions to you if you're allowed to respond or not um the question that i'm just gonna i guess rhetorically is are teachers allowed to make up their own curriculum as they go along or is there a process by which they run it by you folks or somebody in the district that approves the curriculum the reason why i ask is my understanding is that we're here to teach our kids the basics of reading writing arithmetic technology how to be good citizens how to treat each other with respect maybe some pe arts if they still have it and
013i was really shocked the other day on friday when i was substituting at asante school first graders who just came in from a quick recess break they were having fun socializing getting to know each other and they come inside and they have a snack time and i open up the the sheet that the teacher the homeroom teacher left for me and there was a book for me to read and some of the kids were playing and i didn't start reading the book because they wouldn't settle down so i opened the book and i started thumbing through it and you have a copy of it in front of you just to cover in a page or two and i it was a book it's a book called the masked ninja and i look at the cover
014and it looked like the ninja turtles back when my older daughter was growing up with raphael and those folks and i start scrolling through the book and it talks about how the uh coronavirus uh is racist and if you see that the picture that's on that attachment that i gave to you i was taken aback and i was actually really angry and frustrated because these are little kids they don't need to be indoctrinated and even going to 12th 11th and 12th grade the high schoolers i don't feel that politics should be involved i saw a meme the other day on facebook and it said about if you know a teacher's politics then the teacher something along those you should know what a teacher's politics are and these cute little six-year-old kids shouldn't be taught that
015a virus has racist tendencies they don't even know what the concept is until we teach them that and i was extremely frustrated and angry and actually i didn't even read the book we played and i asked them what was special about them and they had a blast answering that question as opposed to us teaching them what racist is so later on when they get older and also one other thing too i know my time is running out they talk to in the book it talks about how uh the virus and how to um that you should listen to your doctor the cdc and the world health organization which all of these have been politicized and i thought to myself why don't you say talk to your parents what's the first thing that should be you
016ask your parents so i know my time is running out but i just i was taken aback and it makes me wonder if i still want to teach at this school and in this school district and it's only racist if you want it to be especially in this regard so i appreciate your time thank you for your comments miss denmark that was the last comment dr kellis can you please make sure that um this is followed up madam chairman sawyers think about yes we will follow up next we'll move to e1 superintendent update sorry we'll move to e1 superintendent update thank you madam chair and members of the board members of cabinet we are celebrating again our first week of school i think this is our third time that we have been able to celebrate
017our back to school back in august again last monday and then this monday where we brought back the rest of our students and it's very exciting as many of us have been into the classrooms um there's live instruction there's kids in the hallways again there's you know there's that love of learning happening face to face and there are still a few who are still online but we are just excited to to have started the school year in person again also i don't know if you notice right here on the front of the dice is a temporary emblem of our 100th anniversary and the the celebrations are continuing in a very different manner than perhaps we would have in a normal year but no they're continuing nonetheless and we're excited to celebrate 100 years of extraordinary
018learning for dysert and that's all i have to report excellent to governing board update i don't have anything just a couple of quick ones just to reiterate the congratulations for miss hawari it's it's a great thing to know computers it's an even greater thing to understand them and the fact that you have received such a grand uh certification um and you're here with us um we're the one that's uh reaping the rewards that uh all the all your hard work and everything so again congratulations miss hilary and i just wanted to let those board candidates for this year whether they're streaming or right on the diocese that asba is having their maricopa county meeting and i would invite [Music] the candidates to attend it's virtually it's october 29th and it is a great way to
019[Music] especially those that have not served on the board it's a great way to further your knowledge about boards and board values and the whole gambit and so this is put on by the asba it's in each county all the counties across the state and maricopas this year is on october 29th myself and jill humphries who's the co-director for maricopa county will be hosting it so it should be a lot of fun but all the board candidates i would suggest coming to it or virtually tuning in and seeing the great stuff that asb has to offer that's it and i just want to say um i haven't like i don't have kids in school anymore but um i've heard from friends who've their kids have gone back and we're super excited too that um their
020first week went really well um that you could definitely tell the classroom and schools look different just for all the um you know the um precautions put in place but i just wanted to thank all those within our within our school buildings and of course administration for all the hard work to try and make this as a best experience as possible and like i said from what i've the the feedback i got was very positive and everybody's just happy to be i heard from one kid who said i will never complain about school ever again so they're actually very excited to be back so thank you again do you have it on tape [Laughter] that's all i'll go agenda item f1 motion two approved consent agenda items as presented second okay go ahead and vote
021motion all right thank you and then we'll move on to information item uh one and this is regarding uh policy governance board monitoring of an adopted policy section for executive limitations thank you madame desmore um this evening we present uh our regular monitoring uh board policies and this night we uh we have reached section number four and mr credo will introduce this item thank you dr kellis madam president members of the board superintendent callison cabinet tonight we present to you section four for our normal monitoring process section four is our executive limitations and we have no changes for this section any questions i have a question and i don't know if the gentleman who spoke is still here i don't see him but ironically we were going to be discussing this tonight i just uh
022dr kellis just wanted some clarification just can you explain a little bit about the process the district goes through as far as how supplemental materials are approved before they get to the classroom be able to share some of that thank you miss pritchard members of the board i'm not sure this is the agenda item that covers that 4.12 instructional so the executive limitations um we can since it does cover that but that's it's not the the instruction section but yes that that is there so very generally generically instructional materials are presented to the board for approval ahead of time that being said if there are ancillary materials say a teacher is presenting something on dinosaurs and there's a fantastic website that talks about dinosaurs um not every single website every single reference every single um
023worksheet is brought to the board for approval the general curriculum and the standards are and if there are textbooks novels those types of things that are directly related to the curriculum those titles are often brought to the board a teacher could say this is the topic you can go to the library and pick a book that's related to this and not every book that a student selects either from a public or district library comes to the board for approval but if the district adopts a reading list of suggested titles those titles are brought to the board interestingly there was a bill this last spring in the legislature didn't go anywhere because the legislature ended early but that bill would have required every website every worksheet a teacher could not create their own study guide without
024it being board approved there was a lot of discussion statewide about that proposed bill just because of how tightly that would tie the hands of of teachers but generally if there are titles that are related to curriculum it can be researched by the curriculum department and if we have a new curriculum adoption like a whole math curriculum adoption those materials are posted publicly for a period of time where the public can come and look at all the books there's usually five folding tables long full of of a potential curriculum that could be adopted for the public to view and to give feedback on but generally that's a quick overview so um if a list is brought like of novels or whatever for the board as supplemental materials is it safe to assume that that someone
025at district level or the teachers have read someone's read them to make sure that they're appropriate and relevant prior to coming to the board for approval um mountain chair miss richard generally yes thank you i did i had one um for dr kellis and uh it was on 4.1 which is emergency superintendent succession and um i know we have four very capable assistant superintendents um do we have a plan or do you have one that is designated to the one that is the designated as this executive staff member let's succeed madam chairman sorry sink bell the policy reads that the superintendent shall not fail to develop a plan of succession in case the superintendent becomes for whatever reason incapacitated or unable to continue fulfilling the position so the policy makes reference to a procedure and
026the procedure which is well nothing personal against anybody it identifies which positions are in sequence and it's not something that is a judgment of a person per se other than its job titles so according to the procedure the first person would be the assistant superintendent of support services if that person is unable to fulfill their responsibility that goes to the second person is the assistant superintendent of academic services followed by the assistant superintendent of of human relations followed by the assistant superintendent of business services again there's no judgment of why one person is last and one person is first it is just um how the poli the procedure was established many years ago that has carried through correct and not that i'm wishing any ill on you dr kellis but um i just wanted to
027know if there was an actual procedure on hand we are in compliance with policy thank you very much that's what i need to know and that was it for me thank you all right so [Music] we will move to item h2 yes uh update on the future performance classification for the 2019 to 2020 school year dr ellis thank you madam chair members of the board and members of cabinet each year administration presents to the board information regarding the previous year's teacher performance ratings and mr croto will present this information thank you dr kels madam madam chair members of the board superintendent kellis and cabinet tonight we have our director of human relations mr steve mattingly here to present this report mr mattingly governor ward members dr carlos cabinet thanks for having me today as uh
028dr kellis was saying this presentation tonight is a requirement by the state that all districts in the state of arizona provide aggregate data to the governing board members on state classification for qualified teachers when it comes to their four different classifications so last year the uh well i got to turn this on i think excuse me don't laugh at me this is not working i apologize you have to stand on your left leg very good i actually did that all right so change slide please next slide so um so for the sake of time classification for qualified teachers comes in two ways one of them is the performance evaluation which acts as 65 percent of the equation and the other one is 35 percent which is tied to student growth those two combined with an
029equation uh basically drives a classification for the teacher annually and that happens at the end of every school year so with that the data is we have this past year 1 300. it's up there no it was all right so this past year we have a total of qualified teachers 1 300 teachers that qualify for state classification and so with that if we can go to the next slide one more please there we go uh well i skipped one so the cut score for the teachers to understand exactly how their score is derived from the equation you can see here for a highly effective score you have to score between 77 and 100 for effective 63 to 76 and for developing 0 to 62. now ineffective doesn't have a score attached to it because the
030ratings of the actual evaluation that a teacher receives from their administrative administrators drives that label meaning if you're a teacher in this school district if you receive one or more unsatisfactories in your evaluation ratings then you're deemed ineffective by policy any continuing teachers that receive four or more basics and or one or more you they would be deemed ineffective on that those standards and policy alone all right next slide please there you go so uh we're presenting some data this year to allow you to do some comparison from last year to this year as you can see uh you see red and blue red indicates school year 1819 and the blue indicates 19 the school year 1920 the highly effective will start at the top about a seven percent increase from from 750 last year
031to 8 51 this year all right and then our effective uh numbers for our teachers uh last year was 504 dropped down to 408 and then are developing from 31 rising up to 35 and then our ineffective we had five uh teachers that received the ineffective status and this year six so based on the requirements of the state this aggregate data i'm presenting to you tonight is meeting the requirements of the state at this time i believe that ends the presentation in closing i will say this it's a time to celebrate our teachers and our site administrators did a fantastic job with the unprecedented times that we dealt with dealing with this specific expectation so i just want to take a moment and recognize our great teachers we have in this district as well as
032our site administrators questions from the board i'll start off mr mattingly thank you for the presentation looking at the count from 1819 to 1920 we increased by 101 teachers which is is fantastic and they they came from effective to highly effective uh what do you account for that seven percent uh change i think there's a lot of variables that could account for that one i think i think of is experience as our younger teachers that we hire come in every year they get better as well as our principals and assistant principals as well as the resources they maximize that potential to make themselves better so i think that's one of the reasons uh also the commitment that we have from our academic side with our professional development and different things that they provide on a
033annual or monthly basis for our teachers i think there's a lot of different ways that that can answer the question here i don't think it's one specific thing but i think it's a credit to the hard work of our teachers as well as our principals and assistant principals because i know we didn't do evaluation since for spring because of you know covet but evaluations were done prior as in december or before february so this is really true information that our teachers have gone from effective to highly effective and it's a it's a great shot in the arm for us um uh there was another question i had um madam chairman mr st bill that just as a follow-up to that question something else that i would add to that is over the last couple of
034years we've added additional supports for our teachers these instructional supports have included teaching and learning specialists um that were not in place uh prior to a couple years ago and we would hope that if we are providing additional resources that not only would we see an increase in teacher effectiveness in their evaluations but also clearly in student performance last year we were saddened that with all the extraordinary work that teachers did to help students prepare for state assessments there were no state assessments and we're looking forward to hopefully this year being able to show the board evidence that these teaching and learning specialists had a positive impact both in teacher quality of instruction but also in their student performance on their achievement and just what you said that that's a clear indication that the teacher
035learning specialists are effective they they are helping in the classrooms they're helping the teachers and um hopefully that that count will be even higher for next year we would hope so i will hope so so i can't remember the other question i have for you mr mattingly so that's it for me anyone else okay thank you all right next we'll go to information item h3 information on the middle school dr kellis thank you madam chair members of the board and members of cabinet we are super excited to be able to present a quick update on the status of our readiness to open middle schools in august mr dean will provide this presentation madam president members of the governing board dr kellis and members of cabinet this evening it is my pleasure to provide the board
036a brief update on the work of our middle school committee and our progress towards transitioning some of our schools to middle schools next school year next slide please a middle school committee was put together consisting of teachers and administrators in the school district with the sole intent of looking at the designing the framework for the middle school program and so this committee's task is really to come up with a thirty thousand foot view of what our middle school program will look like in that process meetings have been held from may through september some of the meetings were pushed back due to covet 19 quarantine times especially in the early summer but the committee is very close to finishing its work part of what the committee has done is we've looked at structures in other school
037districts that have middle schools at this point in time we've looked at structures from litchfield we've looked at structures from saharita and we looked at structures from paradise valley the original intent of this committee was to go and tour middle schools in the valley that obviously has not manifested and we do not anticipate that that will be the case next slide please so the committee's work which will conclude next week the general framework that the committee has established for the middle school model will include a six or seven period school day that is still being discussed within that school period or within that school day there will be two elective periods what the committee envisions is that one of the elective one of the electives will be a year-long elective and then um the other
038one will be semester-long electives so students that participate in the middle school elective piece will have the opportunity to have three electives each year additionally within the school day we will be using an advisory period and an advisory structure which provides an opportunity for students to check in with their teacher on a myriad of topics advisory periods are typically 10 to 15 minutes more a long line of 15 minutes long that will be included in there we are looking to build tier 2 intervention time into the school day schedule um what that means is that the structure that we're currently looking at is that lunch will um consist of two components one will be the the regular school lunch that everyone has and then will be another time frame that is added on to lunch
039in which those students who need additional assistance in classes will attend those classes to get extra help during the school day each day and so those students who do not need additional assistance will have it extra lunch time every day the house approach will be used for core subjects meaning that the core subject teachers will have the same group of students they will rotate mostly together through the core subject classes and then they will pop corn out into the elective classes high school credit opportunities will be provided for sure in eighth grade and possibly earlier and that depends right now on information that we uh found today dr sci found information related to the ncaa clearinghouse and information related to credits provided to to students prior to entering high school and whether they count towards
040ncaa clearinghouse for those athletes who will move forward and play at the college level so we're continuing to map that out eighth grade students there's no problem with them earning high school credit we do that currently in some of our schools now and we're looking at expanding that in our middle schools next slide please along with the middle school committee and i stated that they will complete their recommendations next week in our final meeting on september 30th yesterday we began our logistical committee we pulled together a logistical committee composed mostly of district directors who will begin the very tedious work and will work very quickly on things such as special ed details details with laying out what electives look like the exact school day piece the demographic components as it relates to transportation start times
041those types of things and so all of those components have begun they started yesterday with our logistical committee i would like to add that we are looking at and i apologize for not adding this on the last slide but part of the semester-long electives that we're looking at are cte-generated and cte-based we believe that providing intro very intro level courses for our students in the 7th and 8th grade in cte will provide them opportunities to explore additional cte components in high school and we'll continue to build our cte programs providing students additional pathways beyond our high school experience so we're very excited about that next slide please with that i'd be happy to take any questions madam chair members of the board as you're thinking of questions if i could just interject a comment here
042that one of the greatest motivations of opening middle schools in dysert is to best prepare students for the next stage in their academic progress being high school there will still be some k-8s in the district but this offers a choice and some opportunity for mr dean mentioned cte but it also extends into the arts into the athletics and definitely the academics that students would have more advanced opportunities at the middle school that would help them be prepared to enter high school at a higher level having had that greater experience so right now we don't we don't know exactly you probably that's probably part of the logistics committee as far as where the locations for some of these schools right i'm assuming but madam president member pritchard we are certainly looking at a few different models
043um and we are running those through mr hick's department to take a look at what logistically would fall best within our neighborhoods and within our plans as well i really like the idea i mean way way back in the day not super late in the day but we had in seventh and eighth grade it was like home eq or wood shop so it's kind of like going back to that as far as that ct i mean i know ct is way more um expansive now but it's kind of reminds me of that of how you kind of get your foot in the door and give students a flavor of some possibilities that await them especially in our high schools with all the wonderful cte programs that we have so i i like that piece of
044it and i also like um dr kelsey you just mentioned that we're still going to maintain some of our k-8s so then that way for for those that feel like the middle school experience isn't their thing they still have that option and it just reminds me of how just it seems like in general we offer that choice whether it be the coveted piece you know how we've been working out choice and comfort with our families even with this parents have the choice of traditional k-8 middle school and then we also even offer our our form of a traditional type model at freedom so i think we're going down the right path as far as maintaining that those options for families and i'm really excited about that thank you ms pritchard for those comments and i
045would just add one more component that some have have inquired about the cost of this and it is now a good time to be imposing extra cost on the district when we'll be going out for an override right now we are not anticipating any new costs we have the same number of students the same number of teachers and the staffing isn't going to magically require a significant more amount of of teachers is just shuffling them to different locations based on whether it's a middle school or an elementary to uh to match the great configurations of that school growing a middle school long term obviously we want to have an extraordinary experience for our students at each of those grade configuration schools and so we would be looking to identify opportunities for maximizing the experience but
046at this point we're not looking at um at cost increases by switching to middle schools it wouldn't sound like it it would sound like it is just restructuring really what we already have do we know um and again might be too far ahead of the game but how we're going to determine like enrollment and that process because obviously i'm assuming we're not going to be able to necessarily allow every student who may want middle school we might not have the room initially right president member pritchard um the answer to your question is we will utilize our open enrollment process um for those students who wish to attend the middle schools who do not reside in boundaries that we would um request the board to approve later in the process um so what we anticipate doing
047is pairing schools up um and one school would become a k-4 a primary school and the other school would become a middle school within that pair and then the students would would attend appropriately to the grade range of that particular school we would request the board to approve new boundaries for those pairs of schools and then open each school for open enrollment we may have stu we may have parents um who desire for their children to to attend more of a primary school as well um you know which would be created in the pairing process but we will utilize the open enrollment process to assure um that we have staff to meet the demand of our of our community thank you uh mr dean do we know if um what grades are going to be
048targeted as a middle school will they be sixth seventh and eighth will it be seventh and eighth i mean i know i know the team the committee has been discussing this but what are we looking towards madam president member sawyer st pilla i i almost let the cat out of the bag a minute ago um and and may have unintentionally done so um but we are still looking at at um we are either looking at a 5 8 model or a 6 8 model um and you know within that in either structure there will be frameworks designed for the appropriateness of the grade level for example if a 5 8 model is is utilized fifth grade will look different than sixth grade within a middle school yet it will remain a middle school concept but
049we um we have not completely finalized that conversation um and continue to to do so but we're getting very close okay and i'm just like ms pritchard said i'm excited about cte and i know mr grishaver is just foaming at the mouth over there behind that mask but um to add give our students even younger a little bit of flavor of what cte is all about so the fact that they're going to get you know immersed with it that's good we believe that to be a great opportunity for our students to explore early in their school careers opportunities that may pique their interest and become completers in those areas in in the high school piece and homeek and woodshop have been replaced with things like architecture and engineering and you know medical professions and and
050and and and so we're very excited to be working with mr greece saber and the cte components that will benefit our students um for many grades because it was kind of funny you were talking about homeek and shop and back in eighth grade that was all i had to choose from a little box a little box and yep okay thank you mr dean um our foreign languages being considered as well for the middle school madam president thank you for asking that question and and um that's a component that i should have added to the presentation yes is the answer to your question um it's a very important component to the middle school model for several reasons number one it provides an opportunity for our middle school students to gain a high school credit um in
051foreign language it provides the opportunity every time they earn a high school credit that frees up a high school credit for another elective for them and that's a very important component additionally each time our students complete a credit of foreign language it assists with their abort points for our high school labels and so it's very important that we provide language opportunities for many many reasons and the most important is that it provides our students the opportunity to acquire an additional language right thank you very much gives them a little bit more flexibility when they get to high school and which is key right so we have we have so many tremendous opportunities for our students in high school that if we can free some of those opportunities up in a middle school component then that
052benefits them down the road thank you um one more question you mentioned you touched on just briefly about some advisory time they may have is that in similar to like a guidance counselor madam president somewhat similar although advisory is typically and in this case will be handled by the classroom teachers and so there will be a great amount of professional development that will be provided to our middle school teachers on many subjects of which advisory will be won it is a very specific component related to middle schools that has proven very successful and one in which that we want to make sure that we our our students benefit from okay so it's just kind of like a check in making sure that they're on track okay perfect thank you cool beans did you have something
053else no okay i'm just saying cool beans moving on to information item 4 2019 to 2020 high school student data update dr kellis thank you madam chair members of the board members of cabinet each year administration provides the board with data points related to our our board goals or our strategic plan so in furthering the data that you provide that you receive um toward our our district goals um miss dr polling will introduce this item yes thank you madam president member of the board dr kellis it's my pleasure to to call dr assassin dr wifritch up and they'll be presenting on this item good evening madam president board members dr kellis and cabinet thank you for allowing us to present tonight the first slide that we are going to look at is our graduation rate
054graduation rate is posted on the ade website and fluctuates often it is a four year adjusted cohort graduation rate the number of students who graduate within the four years with a regular high school diploma it fluctuates often often and it does run a little bit behind so for instance many people wonder why we don't have the 1920 up there it's because actually we still post graduates until august 31st and then we usually take the month of september all districts it's not just dysart but all through the valley all through the state to clean and make sure the data is accurate so graduation rate will run a little bit behind and they post it half about half a year later so next slide so tonight i'm sharing with you numbers that are submitted to ade without
055specific discussion we have submitted ccri to ade for our label component for this past year these scores are due to be audited and they're not final this component is worth 20 percent of the labeling system at this time we do not know how the scores are going to be utilized this year but each district did have to submit their ccri even though there was not state mandated testing last year and then the next spe meeting it is on the agenda to have discussion about how they're going to use this in the system this year when they talk about labeling for last year on a positive note we're looking good with our totals that we have submitted we feel pretty good about the rise of the high schools there and not to panic about high school
056if you look back into the 2016 measure you'll notice that when we first started ccri it's a very slow intricate process and this is the first time that ischool has been posted with a number so it's not going to be utilized they won't be receiving a label but it's to get everyone started with their aois and get them under the system moving forward so that's why you see the 11.4 there i don't want anybody to panic so next slide this is our dropout rate by fiscal year ade continuously updates this dropout rate and they fluctuate greatly the district average is based on the 7 grade level so a lot of you may look at that and say that math doesn't work but it's because the actual district average is based on 712 and the high
057schools obviously are their individual totals so when a student drops out or leaves the system certain things count against us so it doesn't make a lot of sense but we actually work very hard to clean our withdrawal codes as a district and each school does that but things like students getting their ged or students going to homeschooling actually count against us so we work very hard to ensure that students that do leave us um we are aware and we can report that they've reported to another school environment and that way they wouldn't count against us so it's always we're always looking for ways to ensure that students stay in a system obviously we believe deizert is the best system but we can't always mandate that so we want to make sure that they are going
058to a system so we continue to have a good average rate even with our kobe kovitz situations our high schools reduced and then again just so you realize that the overall district average is based on 7 12 instead of 9 12. and with that i'm going to turn it over to dr acai and i get to do all the exciting testing data uh for those of you who know me you know i i love numbers so we're going to go through a couple of different sets of numbers uh tonight and i really appreciate that jane is here to kind of get all our numbers because i think they've been a really full picture for us i was a little bit nervous when they came out because we know that covid really affected our kids our
059families how we taught in the spring it was much different in august but i think you'll be pleasantly surprised to see some of the results uh the first data set we'll look at is cambridge as you can see uh we track our course enrollments how many kids are sitting in the class how many exams were given the percent tested and those passing the exams and you'll see these referred to throughout the presentation i'm not used to presenting in a mask with glasses this is interesting um you will see that we didn't have as many kids that tested we do think that's because of the covet situation they would have had to come to the testing center for all of these tests um and initially you would look and say wow but look at how well
060they did we increased our passing rate on the exam from 51 to 90. there was a problem with the cambridge analytics where they resorted to going back to how some of the teachers had scored them so why i'm proud of our average going up i do think it's a false positive i think we would have been around 70 i think our percent would have gone up but not this high so i just want to be very transparent about that next slide please rib data you can see the number of course enrollments went up this is great um kids that earn an ib exam can get a full-ride scholarship to almost any school of their choice um any university which is a wonderful thing the percent tested went down a little bit however we gave more
061exams because we had more students sitting in seats the number passing the exam went down and we're really trying to go back and look at that um it's hard to track we're talking to some kids it could be you know that it changed and march april may the instruction changed our teachers said they couldn't review the same or kids didn't always show up virtually to the reviews so that could have impacted those scores we do have a goal set for this year for 84 percent of our kids to pass the ib exam so we plan to bring that number up next slide please our act uh so act data is presented for the last four years you will notice a great discrepancy between the 2017-18 number of test takers and those that took in 1819
062and 1920. we received a grant from the governor's office in 1718 and we were able to test all of our students which tells us we realize not all of our kids are going to go to college or university and that's okay but we want to make sure they're prepared to if that's the door they choose to go through so i i'm very grateful that this year we will be able to test all of our kids again we're actually testing all of our seniors for free they don't have to pay for it in october we will be testing all of our juniors um in april our score at 21 is above the national average in fact for the past two years we've been above the national average so that's a source of pride for us we'll
063see how we do when we test all of our kids again we were a little bit below the national average the year we tested all we put some things in place through my office we've been able to purchase ect prep for all of our for all of our high schools so they've been practicing using that we've trained our teachers better and what the act actually looks like not everybody was as familiar with the format as they could so just knowing the test format preparing kids and getting them there so we hope to maintain at least a 22-21 with more kids going and our goal is to get to 24 within the next two years dr sai could you explain very quickly you said that the test will be for free these college entrance exam tests
064can you explain how that i'm sorry there's a grant from the governor's office it's the same grant we received in 1718 the governor's office once again was offering it it's an important initiative on his part so we are very thankful for that and we don't have to pay for it it's paid for by the state so it's a great thing that the state's doing for us next we have our ap exams uh so for the ap exam we are excited that our percent passing went up almost 11 um however our kids taking ap courses went down we would like to see that number go back up and we're holding some focus groups with kids to find out why they aren't taking it is it because it's so much extra work is it because it's so
065rigorous i have to tell you we haven't come to that conclusion yet but we're looking at it but we hope we get more students in seats and we maintain a high passing average because those are college credits that our kids are earning we know that once a kid earns a college credit they're more inclined to do well in college because they've already they really have an increased sense of efficacy they believe they can do it so they're more inclined to do so next slide please and our dual enrollment numbers so we didn't have as many students enrolled however we had 600 more kids get college credit so those that were in the class we got found ways for them through financial aid or other ways for them to pay for the class and then get
066college credits so we had 600 more kids get college credit this year than last year and if you look at it compared to 1718 i mean we've we've grown exponentially in that so that's the source that we're really proud of one of the problems with dual enrollment is the community colleges changed what teachers need they almost need their master's to teach that so when we have a teacher that retires our newer teacher might not have that amount of credits at the 500 600 level or above so we're looking into ways that we can help our teachers get the classes they need to teach dual enrollment we're also working with finance to find ways that we can help offset the fees for students right now uh this year which we'll present on next year but our
067numbers are a little bit lower and we've heard from families it's really hard for me to commit i lost my job darren covid it's been really hard for me to commit to pay for the class and we don't want payment to be a barrier where we can prevent that so we would like to really work to make that a reality from our families next slide please arizona tech skills um you know we went down by 678 students um it wasn't given this uh last year due to covet so i have every confidence uh they hang at almost the the high 80s consistently um it would probably go to the 90s because of the great work that jim and his team are doing uh so just in summation i wrote down a few key points uh
068that make me very proud of the work our high schools are doing our graduation rate is consistently well above the state average and we've been above 92 graduation rate which is well above the national and state average our ccri points continue to rise and those are based on many things that the states deemed important in academics i would say the more academic side the more cte side which produces a more rounded kid our cambridge and ib numbers continue to rise as students rise to the challenge in those classes our ect continues to be above the national average and this year all students in the class of 20 and 21 cohorts will have that paid for and our students earned over 3 000 college credits last year that is so amazing to me as a mom
069to know that my kids if they choose to leave dysert with almost two years of college done if they get a four-year scholarship they can graduate with their masters to graduate in today's society with no debt i think is amazing so as you can see our high schools are doing extraordinary things that are happening and jane and i will now stand for questions she's the taller one i have a question thank you i do always look forward to your presentations i like all the data and you always have a way of explaining it in a in a way that's easy to understand so thank you um just to actually it's a celebration but i just want to better understand it even though like with the cambridge scores so last just last year we scored 90
070and i know you said probably 70 might be more accurate but still in 19 or in the previous year it we were at 51 so even still that would be almost a 20 increase if not you know almost a 40 increase and then same with the ap passing rate this year was 50 or i'm sorry 1920 was 15 and then the previous was 39 so just because of the challenges of covid and you know we which we heard you know again it wasn't that wasn't online school it was crisis teaching but that to gain you know in all the previous years our scores weren't as high is amazing um but i almost feel like we want to look more into how do we make that happen because that would be something that i would think
071we'd want to continue because we found a way to boost those scores so you know i think lots of the member pictured has been investing in our teachers for the last three summers we've sent teachers to ap institute which is taught by other you know by other people who are successful in the ap field who have taught it for a while we've also encouraged our teachers to apply to be ap graders if i know the intricacies of the test i tend to do better cambridge you know the more you teach it and go through the training the better you're going to get so i think teacher retention is really key in these programs and just to consistently introduce new things and ap has come up with a bunch of new resources they have ap classroom
072which has helped our students to go and do formative assessments so the ability to utilize to send teachers to training to utilize the free resources we love things that are free um and just to really commit to you know letting our students know that it's important that we want you to be proud to be a dysart student and this is why it's important for you that it's just not another test that it's about you know gaining something and pride in your school and pride you know and in your accomplishments really so was it just this last year then that we were sending teachers to this ap training no it's been the last three years um but i think it's with any training for it to get really ingrained in my practice we know from teacher
073training i mean research going back to early the 80s with joyce and showers 10 of what's taught in professional development actually transfers without support going into the classrooms and constantly monitoring it so our ap teachers that go to these trainings also are able to collaborate across schools um virtually even darren covid we had a lot of plc work i think our plc's almost got better darren coveted because teachers were constantly having to meet together and talk about new ways of doing things so i think training retraining and then ingraining it in practice and reflecting over time has been what's helped well hopefully they can definitely continue those because they seem to be effective what's really extraordinary about this and i don't know if you realize this as as a team but ap ib and dual
074compete against each other so the fact that we can have gains in all three of those areas they're really competitive credits they're all college credits but students sometimes we combine those sections but more than not these are programs that compete against each other for students wow putting to put it briefly i realize that thank you um and then just one of the you made a comment on the side dr sai about how students can go can leave our district with perhaps two years of college done and then you get that four year scholarship and you're already completing your theoretically could complete your master's is that information that our counselors are on board with and are pushing out to our students because that is such a key piece of information i i think they are but
075i think it's something we need to do a better job of and i think sometimes we think because we come in and i tell you the information in a board meeting and i think it's ingrained and you know it and i walk away so i think that's something that we could do a better job of really kind of drilling that in doing some kind of graphic and saying here's a pathway one of the problems with my duel is if jane leaves this year i no longer have a dual enrollment chemistry teacher she would have been a math teacher i'm sorry we don't touch them so i would no longer have a dual enrollment math teacher and going from there that could affect the pathway somewhat until we find a way to make sure all of
076our teachers have that certification to step into but i do think we need to do a better job of publicizing that in the lumberjack scholarship recently i was amazed how many kids don't know about the lumberjack scholarship at nau that if we your child graduates with all a's and b's they can go to nau for free and i think those are things that we can really really advertise in our community because some you know some of our kids really want to go to college and they can't because they don't have the money or they don't want to get straddled with debt which is very understandable so i think the more we can do to promote that the better well but that's more of a reason to make sure our students are getting this information from
077our guidance counselors because there could definitely be a student who who is assuming they can't afford to go to college and yet they have an opportunity to graduate with a master's for free if they get that scholarship and that might be just and i think not only our counselors but our teachers because sometimes when the counselors come in the kids are like okay but if i hear it repeatedly from my teacher multiple times i think that would help sink into so i think both pathways thank you i've got a couple of quick ones here um and i know that our sundown students are embedded uh with their particular cohort school um but quite honestly i would like to see um like on the graduation rate or um like the number of students or to see
078i don't want to say they're people too but i would like to see their growth from year to year as far as and and i don't know if they're taking the acts i don't know if they're i quite kind of doubt that they're in cambridge or anything like that but they say everything that's on the ccri all of those are offered to sundown also so because those students are automatically attached to the school as sundown is a program and not a school technically so everything they do the same thing we do for ccri and all of the data that we gather on all students we gather on sundown also okay but i don't see it and i would like to see it i would like to see sundown um just to know how they're doing
079and because i know that all of our students are special and everything but it seems like they're just a little bit more special more close to the heart i would say accumulate too would be good yes yes so um there was a was it willow canyon uh the dropout rate by fiscal year um from 2018 to 2019 willow canyons went from .69 to 1.33 why did it change so drastically um well and specifically i can give you some ideas but obviously that always happens when you have students that leave and if you remember that's a year that willow canyon did have a principal change so there was a lot of change all the way through that new things to learn i think they had a drt change and it has to do with cleaning codes
080okay it has to do with codes so if you have students who are in a detention center or choose to get their ged or choose to home school or that just drop out after 10 days and we can't find them that counts against you so working very hard with the state databases trying to make sure that we track very carefully all of those students and i will tell you that um willow canyon's administrative team did a phenomenal job to bring that back into focus and really get that back into play so i just think it was a speed bump in their road and they handled it well and really got back on track with that so you can see the great gains they made and yes that is but it just kind of stood out
081at me when i was looking through this board packet so um [Music] i'm glad that we got the grant again for act oh my gosh and so um the fact that the students will be able to take the test again and is totally awesome uh it's a feather my daughter was not as excited as you are remember seeing fell back as excited i'm excited i'm very excited that that the cost factor is not part of them taking the testing it really helps promote that equity we know there's inequity when it comes to testing that right along really the income of the family so it's nice to reduce that barrier in college for all it certainly is so thank you that was it okay thank you so much okay uh item j1 do we have any
082requests for future agenda items i do um and i had spoken with dr kellis on this as i was reviewing the agenda there was something that just kind of stuck out in my brain and it is our agenda form which is b1 and um i i guess i would just like to find out as to why we continually say approve this agenda form consistent with governing board policy and temporarily suspend any policy with which this agenda may be inconsistent so i guess i would like to know if there is any particular policy that is out there that is still dictating us to say this because attending other school board meetings around the state i don't see other school boards reciting this type of verbage or depending upon a policy so is there something that's out
083there that's still telling us to recite this so i guess i just wanted to see if there was some type of issue out there or policy pam chair mr sneak bill we will research that and bring it back as an information item thank you i knew that we had during the meeting second okay vote it's coming there it is yay meeting has adjourned thank you you