001good evening everybody and welcome out to our meeting tonight we'll go ahead and call this meeting to order and start with the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice i will go ahead and do a roll call and let the record reflect that all members are present and go ahead and move on to agenda item v1 i'll make a motion to approve this agenda from the consent with the governing board policy and temporarily suspend any policy with which the agenda may be inconsistent second motion made by jay leonard seconded by miss tanner let's go ahead and vote motion passes thank you all right we can go ahead and move on
002to action item c1 association for career and technical education of arizona uh award recipients dr kellis thank you president leonard members of the board and members of cabinet this evening we are very pleased to present this recognition to some extraordinary people and some extraordinary things that are happening in dysert and mr dean will present this recognition good evening mr president members of the governing board dr kellis and members of cabinet valley vista high school guidance counselor heather webb and dice unified school district career and technical education director jim gresaber have recently been selected as award recipients by the association for career and technical education of arizona the a c t e a z awards recognize individuals for their accomplishments and dedication to students and to career and technical education in the state of arizona miss
003webb was honored with the actaz career guidance award for her commitment to connecting students with opportunities for success utilizing innovation in career exploration and development as well as being an advocate for cte as a viable option for all students mr greasable was recognized as the outstanding a-c-t-e-a-z affiliate of the year for his commitment and continuous service and support of a-c-t-e-a-z and cte throughout the year mr gresaber received the award in his current role as executive committee president of acova akova is a non-profit professional association whose mission is to build community advocacy and leadership for arizona cte administrators and provide them with the skills needed to successfully lead the cte enterprise within school districts we are very proud and fortunate to recognize both ms webb and mr greece saber miss webb is here this evening and
004we'd like to invite the board down to congratulate her mr gresaber is actually in his office currently conducting a professional development session for west mecc's board so he's not with us but miss webb we would love for you to come up and join our board in recognition can we give a round of applause please speech uh [Laughter] ready very well done on that and mr dean you get extra points because you were able to pronounce every acronym without losing a beat that is impressive all right let's go ahead and move on to action item e1 superintendent updates oh sorry d1 audience with individuals getting ahead of myself miss densmore all right this is the time for the public to comment members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the
005agenda pursuant to ars 3843101 action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for further consideration and decision at a later date in order to facilitate accomplishing the business of the district in a timely manner a time limit of three minutes will be imposed for each individual or group addressing the board when you approach the podium please state your name for the record first one the first one we have is tiffany sage hi um my name is tiffany c and i have a son at willow canyon high school and a son at canyon ridge elementary school i just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to the teachers the staff and the administrators for working so
006hard to prepare for our students to begin school remotely this has definitely been a learning experience for our family just like i know it has been for many others across the district and also across the state i also know it's a learning experience for teachers as well my kids teachers have done an amazing job of modeling flexibility and patience as the kids were faced with technology issues and the teachers had back-up plans for the kids if those technology issues were present in closing i would just ask that the board dr kellis and district administration continue to use data to drive your decisions and also to keep an eye on the schools that are opening across the state and across our country thank you thank you good evening my name is christina bergeron i'd like to
007thank president leonard and all you guys governing board members um i just wanted to tell you how much i appreciate all the decisions that you guys have to make i know it's not difficult or it is difficult um being in my position i get to hear all the sides as i know you guys do and i believe in my heart that we're doing what is right and what is safe for our students and for our staff and i just want you guys and and cabinet to know how much i truly appreciate everything that you guys are doing and all the decisions that you have to make and all of the sides that have to go into it so i just want to tell you i appreciate you thank you anyone else excellent thank you all
008right now we'll go ahead and move on to action discussion item e one superintendent updates dr kellis thank you president leonard members of the board and members of cabinet um so we have made history this year is something that surely will go down in the history books as a first and hopefully last but we have made history by not starting school in person but by starting school online for 24 000 students who could have ever imagined but i i definitely will say that i have personally witnessed extraordinary teaching happening as i have been into the schools i don't go into the empty classrooms with the teachers teaching because they are engaged in teaching but i'll wave from the window and and say hi but it's just very heartwarming to see teachers fully engaged with their
009students online so i'd like to thank the teachers for doing something that they weren't hired to do they weren't trained to do but that they are accepting and stepping up to the challenge and doing an extraordinary job with i also want to thank another group of teachers and that is our parents who have also not been trained to fill this new role of of helping out our full-time teachers by being at home teacher aides but they are doing also an extraordinary job and we appreciate each one of them who are making extraordinary sacrifices but also making extraordinary efforts to help their kids learn not like it was in the spring but in a way that is legitimate serious um rigorous instruction every single day and we appreciate our parents for that i also just want
010to commend all of the staff who are helping the learning labs we offer learning labs starting monday for all students who need a place to go to to do their daily studies and we are already at and above capacity so we know that there's a great interest and i would just share that as a superintendent nobody wants to delay one more day of opening school we all want our students back the teachers the administrators we all and i'm sure the governing board as well can't wait for our students to to return and to return safely so as we are very anxiously awaiting the final guidelines from the county on the matrices for determining when it's safe to come back i'm confident that we will see a phased return to school earlier than we had expected
011um that being said we have a a target date of october but we are hoping that with these tracking the trends that we can return as soon as as feasibly possible so again thank you to everybody and the best is yet to come thank you excellent and thank you for that feedback i appreciate that all right we'll go ahead and move on to e2 governing board updates i'll go ahead and start um i had the opportunity to uh be with miss prichard and come and get an awesome car wash with the uh valley vista cheered squad and they they did palm sorry palm sorry uh the palm squad and uh they did an awesome job and uh it was exciting to see all of them out there and uh willing to do i i think
012they were a little shocked when i showed up about 10 minutes after they closed with another vehicle so their faces kind of dropped but they they all jumped in and did an amazing job so that was a lot of fun i also have an opportunity to travel around with my day job and do some safety training and just happen to be in the city of mesa so i got a little loss was on the other side of the tracks and it was interesting because i ran into a few people that were on their school board and uh they mentioned mr ken hicks and also dr kellis um so we have a a very good reputation and they were very interested in what dysart was doing and also um how are you handling things because they'd
013heard a lot of good things about us and apparently mr hicks has a very good reputation with some of the people on the other side of the tracks because they spoke very highly of you so it's always good to to go and see people and when you mention that you're from dysart it's it's good to see them in a positive light and see them especially people that are in uh the education field and see them light up and get excited to talk to you about what we're doing here um so that's that's exciting and we just appreciate all the support staff and everybody who is working so hard to keep things moving um i know with the support staff and them being in some of the buildings that don't have quite as many people in
014them there's a lot of opportunity to serve in different ways and we definitely appreciate them and recognize the teachers and also cabinet for everything that they're doing so we're really proud of you for getting this school year started an amazing way and and being such a positive force so we are dysart and uh we continue to honor and respect you for all of that you do it's all i got anybody else let's just go ahead and um and echo i'm everything that's been said really especially the way dr kellis phrased it in regard to how um we've all come together this last week and um it is so different i think that we are all a little bit leery we meaning i think every every group parents teachers even the board um as far as
015like okay what's it gonna look like there's so many unknowns and all we had to compare to distance learning or remote learning was spring which was more crisis so it wasn't ideal but it was the best we could do in the moment and um so everyone was a little bit leery and i'll just say how extremely impressed i am not only as a as a board member but as a parent being on that other end of helping your your student learn and get what they need um it's just so much better it was such a positive experience there were definitely you know i'm sure hiccups but um just to see the the outpouring of support through um you know the administration here and um teachers and students and parents seeing things online as far as
016the yes again there might have been some bumps but everyone you know is trying to find the positive in the situation and it was just heartwarming to be in the middle of a pandemic with all the negative and bad and still see people coming forward with their positive stories and showing that you know our students are still learning and they're still engaged in their lessons and so for that i just want to say thank you all for everyone who had a part in that parents students teachers staff everyone and then also want to touch on um the other piece dr carlos mentioned as far as like our learning labs to me is very important too to make sure because we have our teachers contracted but we're all worried about our support staff and i just
017appreciate the the how the district has been innovative and finding different ways to incorporate our bus drivers and and different classified staff to still even though we're not running our buses like normal still things for them to do to help them economically as well so um it's just a really again in the midst of a bad situation it's heartwarming at the end of the day to see so much good happening in dysart and i just want to extend my appreciation to everyone who's been a part of that that's all i have thank you anyone else i'll try to talk with this thing on um echoing the uh the same sentiments that dr kelos has says and and um president leonard and miss pritchard um i know everything that uh the board appreciates everything that that
018the cabinet is doing that especially the teachers are doing we we know it's it's not an easy task to take and you would rather for the kiddos to be in your classroom and right in front of you but i know we'll get there soon but there's just so many obstacles that we have to jump over and but really appreciative of everything that you've done um just wanted to update that even though we may not be attending a lot of conferences or workshops or anything there's still the opportunity to chime in on webinars i've seen webinars from ade asba asa and sba and there's so many different ones that basically anybody can look at but the different guidelines with the cdc the prevention of early intervention mental health communication of districts plans for the fall i
019mean there were so many different ones that we could look at and listen to and listen from other districts as well and so those have been very enlightening because even though we are in the west valley in surprise there are others that are going through the same thing that we are and so we're not alone um out here um but i also want to congratulate uh heather webb and jim graysaber um i have actually worked with heather webb [Music] selecting girl state delegates for the american legion auxiliary and she was a pleasure to work with so i know firsthand as to how she got this award she she works with the kiddos and especially mr grishaver he is mr cte and so if there's ever a sash that says mr cte i'm going to find
020it and get it for you so thank you both for everything you've done and that you will continue doing for cte and for dysart that's all thank you and then i don't want to sound redundant but i just i want to say thank you too to um you know getting school started um even through some of the kinks that they're what i've seen mostly is just positive attitudes and how much i appreciate that and how much i know that that can trickle into the community if they're dealing with someone that they maybe you know if they're frustrated with something that they're not getting done and then they're addressed their concerns are addressed and it's met with positivity that that really helps the community and like you said making history it's been really fun even though
021it's been completely different watching people post pictures of their kids still first day of school and still keeping on that tradition of and the kids are smiling and they're happy and you know it's really how we handle that and the attitude that we have will trickle to them as well and how their learning experience will be so i just appreciate from top down just appreciate all the positivity and helpfulness that you guys are providing to people so thank you just want to echo everything else that everyone else has said um you know thank you so much to all of our staff uh cabinet our our parents our students for just being resilient through all of this change myself as a big time procrastinator parent enrolled my kid at the very last minute to get his
022chromebook and everything else and you know even through all that chaos everyone has been so supportive and just so accepting and i'm truly proud of our district and everything that we've done and everything that we'll continue to do to make sure that we're a success with this so thank you all right we'll go ahead and move forward go ahead and move forward to item f1 get this sucker to switch over here and i'll make a motion to approve the content agenda items as presented second motion made by jay leonard seconded by don densmore let's go and vote motion passes thank you go ahead and move on to here item h1 policy governance boards monitoring of the adopted policy section one district results and foundations dr kellis thank you mr president members of the board and
023members of cabinet this evening we begin a new year of policy monitoring beginning with this first section one and mr croto will introduce this item thank you dr kellis um president leonard members of the board superintendent kellis cabinet and guests as dr kellis just mentioned we start tonight with our board monitoring of adoptive policies tonight we bring you section one and we have no revisions for a second for ours for section ones excuse me i'll stand for any questions you have short and sweet any questions on this all right thank you we'll go ahead and move on to h2 revision of policy pursuant to asba recommendations first reading dr kellis thank you president leonard members of the board members of cabinet faster has received some policy advisories from arizona school boards association many of these
024are based on new statute that require action from each of the governing boards within the state of arizona so with that mr croto will introduce these new policy recommendations thank you dr kellis president leonard members of the board superintendent kel's cabinet and guests tonight we bring to you as dr kellis has said some recommendations for revisions to three policies this will be the first read it's policy 7107.10 policy 9.7 and policy 11.1 in 7.0 the policy staff personnel security and safety we needed to add a statement about personal protective equipment this existed out of the executive order 20 20 51 and that requires the use of face coverings until the arizona department of health services determines that coverings are no longer necessary and that we had to put this into our policy so i'll stop
025there and have take any questions on 7-1 before i go to the next one any questions on that i'll just say that i appreciate the way that you uh worded that and made it a little bit more future proof than was recommended so definitely appreciate the insight and thought put behind that maybe we can go ahead and move on thank you next we bring to you policy 9.7 it is basic instructional program this adds a line onto it comes from house bill actually 2625 which added ars 1-319 and it makes september 25th a celebration of sandra day o'connor civic celebration day it is not a legal holiday however uh the law does make it that we dedicate a majority of a school of the school day of september 25th or the following day if it
026falls on a weekend uh to civics education and that is the point that we added in 9.7 i'll stand for questions on that any questions we're good thank you all right moving on to section 11.1 our first reading parent involvement in education senate bill 1061 added this section to ars 15249 which states that the department of education shall establish and post on its website the statutory handbooks of parental rights we as a school district must provide that link and in this policy in 11.1 if you look at the last bullet we've provided that wording that we're going to provide a link to the arizona department of education statutory handbook of parental rights so again that was by um statute that we have to add that and i'll stand for any questions on 11.1 any questions
027can i be a pain and go back to 9.7 my question high maintenance came later um do are we set to do something with that this this current school year of september 25th for that is that implemented immediately it um president leonard um miss tana yes it is implemented immediately so as we adopt this the you know this is the first reading so next boarding me it will be adopted by the governing board and it's our plan to put something into place this september 25th okay thanks excellent any other questions um just one quick one mr proto um didn't we on the uh yeah 11.1 didn't we already have something on our website president leonard missouri seat belt this is something that has been in statute for many years is that every district is required
028to post different elements of parental rights with regard to the educational program and so yes we do have something posted on our website as has been statutorily required okay just want to make sure thank you and president if i could just also interject based on some training that administration has received based on policies and adoption of policies it's a little bit of a procedural change moving forward if the board is comfortable with this procedural change that if there are no changes between now and the next board meeting when a second read for a policy is brought forward and that the second read would appear in the consent agenda and not as an additional action item again that's something that is completely optional and if the board is comfortable with that if the board has any
029reservations there's no problem putting it in a discussion action agenda item that's just some training that we have received so if there are no reservations when this reappears in two weeks at our next board meeting absent any changes to the policy between now and then it would appear in the consent agenda yeah i definitely appreciate that change and i think that that would help us move things a little more quickly so any other discussion on that but in the event we happen to have some type of questions we can't pull it off from consent absolutely any questions any further discussion that would be put as a discussion action agenda thank you great anybody else excellent thank you i think we can move forward with that all right let's go ahead and move on to h3
030and information on not my kid program dr kellis thank you president leonard members of the board and members of cabinet based on a board member request this item is presented for your information and mr dean will present this item good evening president leonard members of the governing board dr kelsey members of cabinet this evening it's my pleasure to present information on the not my kid program and resources and to turn on the clicker it's all in the wrist it may be in the blinking of the eyes here in just a minute can you advance to the next screen with the computer not my kid is a local non-profit organization i'm based in scottsdale focused on providing training and intervention to youth with a focus on drug use vaping bullying suicide and internet safety their programs
031are for students in grades five through twelve their goal at the end of the day is to identify and prevent negative youth behavior next slide please not my kid offers online resources and parent guides on the topics that you see drug abuse alcohol abuse bullying relationships body image depression and internet safety next slide please they also offer informational parent workshops and teacher professional development on the topics that we mentioned above as well as substance use and prevention planning drug trend updates specifically addressing opioids marijuana and vaping related health concerns suicide alertness issues with depression and mental health successfully navigating internet safety body image and relationships next slide please not my kid also offers youth presentations through assemblies and classroom workshops on the same topics mentions above their program follows the imbr peer-to-peer model which is
032information motivation behavior skills and resources their presentations teach on a wide variety of coping skills and healthy activities for youth not my kid does offer these services at a cost um currently um the diesel unified school district has social workers in our schools that does provide or that do provide many of these services and beyond and so we'd be happy to answer any questions about what we found with not my kid or additional services that our social workers may provide as well related to not my kid information thank you for that we'll go ahead and open it up for discussion um and i'm the board member that had asked for this to be brought to uh the board for just discussion um the reason that i had asked it be brought was um several months
033ago we had a student that was abducted in the movie parking lot by her boyfriend and her life was taken from her and i believe the young man committed suicide the reason i ask this is because i'm not knocking social workers on what they do but they're they are very busy throughout the day and i know we have counselors that work with the students but i guess i just wanted another layer to assist parents and their students the mechanisms on how to get restraining orders or how to deal with the actual issues of somebody terrorizing you so to speak uh the coping skills like i said i know social workers do a lot of great work and everything but if there was some other layer that we could assist with um for our students to
034help them and i don't know what the costs are does it depend upon the number of schools does it depend upon one traveling assembly or workshop and i know we're in kobe right now but can you break that down for me mr president member sawyer seinfeld yes you are correct in um that was a horrific situation that occurred um many months ago in in the movie theater parking lot and um certainly our hearts go out to to both families involved in that um terrible terrible situation so um not my kid does break down their costs by assembly um by program piece as well um it um prices vary a bit um and we would have to get specific information on pricing we do not we did not ask specifically so as not to get into
035any issues with procurement down the road um but they do offer they do offer services at a pay fee with their various programs and they have a couple of different programs as well to address the questions specifically about helping families understand what resources that they have available to them in time of need how potentially could that the parents of that young lady gotten assistance in understanding how to do things like file a restraining order ordering those kinds of things we have in the past as you're aware offered various parent workshops um you know the the latest one or the last one that we did i believe was on vaping and probably the most well attended one that we've had for quite some time and that was in partnership with our local police agencies we certainly
036could look to continue those pieces obviously today that would look a little different than it would if we were back in school in person but we certainly could offer parent workshops with providing supports in various aspects of parenting or knowledge of where to find resources and those kinds of things we'd be happy to explore that as well or at the board's request we could also look continue to look at the pricing for what not my kid offers and explore further there um thank you mr dean and i personally i i would like for us to just look in to see what it would be because this young lady that whose life was taken she was in somebody's classroom and even though she may not have been best buds with you know another young lady that
037was experiencing the same type of things [Music] she you know students just may not know where to go to reach out or recognize the skills while my boyfriend is doing that to me or i see another student that i see her boyfriend is doing that damn or vice versa and um just the recognition piece because i don't want another student's life to be taken in this respect do they happen to and i'm sorry i did not get that information back to you but do they happen to um [Music] because of the um racial tensions that we've been having for these past several months do they work with that type of issues i did not see when we researched that information we did not see that specifically we certainly can contact them and ask that question
038directly you know when when we spoke with them and they talked about the life skills training that they have they have a program specifically geared towards alcohol and drug abuse but that topic did not come up specifically but we'll be more than happy to investigate with that as well thank you very much and president leonard um i would also uh echo what mr dean has said as we extend our sympathies to anybody who's been a victim of that kind of a relationship um all right and answer to your last question to give just a little bit of insight ms winterstein has been working with our social workers on a series of topics for supporting our students one of those there's a group of social workers who are working together to develop some some information trainings
039for adults and students on racial tensions and that is something that's in the works it's not from not my kid but it's something that our social workers are aware of and are working on okay thank you very much i think one of the things that i would echo is you know when we had the vaping conference per se i don't know what the proper term for it was i think a that partnership that we had the the police officers that presented did an amazing job and i think the word got out and it was a very powerful experience and having their experience obviously first hand dealing with the situations and seeing what's happening with our youth and exposing some of those things that you know i as a parent i'm just oblivious to it you
040know i see vape i understand what it is um but i don't understand how prevalent it is and how simple um it is to get a hold of and just you know obviously make it make it simple to get available and something that kids are gonna experiment with um but i would say i definitely see some value in partnering with our police officers and our social workers and anybody else that has first-hand knowledge or understanding of some of these situations and although they are sensitive topics i think they are definitely ones that as a community we need to address and as a leader in the community i think we can definitely have a high impact and give people an understanding of what is available and then work maybe through some of our tools that we
041have to find out what people are interested in and then offer a variety of tools or options that we could explore and develop over time and create those i would love to understand the pricing model that not my kid has obviously if it's you know working and it's something that is affordable i think it's something that we could look into obviously being you know covid and budgets being what they are we need to be cost conscious and and make sure that it is something that we do get the value for the buck but i would definitely say um as we continue on let's continue to work it work with our our staff and the amazing resources like i said our police officers did a great job just putting together a simple presentation and i think
042it was a little bit more of the shock and awe that they brought just reality to some parents and myself included and i just really enjoyed kind of their no no nonsense hey here's here it is and uh and then being willing to answer the questions um that that were brought up i think was invaluable to to myself and those that i know that attended so thank you for looking into that any other questions [Applause] just kind of want to add regardless of whether we we look into my kid or not my kid in pricing and even if we do it in tandem with this i think that there wasn't anything i saw on that list that isn't something that a licensed social worker should know how to do and i will say dysart is
043very generous with their school social worker salaries i think i think we're probably pay the best of any other school district on this for sure on the west side so um i think we should tap into those experts i'm like again not saying let's not look into it but when it looks our finances are so thin as it is we have social workers here that can whether be on professional development mondays or you know they can um do presentations even if it's monthly because i think that list is very um very relevant for sure and you know as many students as we can reach or families we can reach and something they could put together even on a monthly basis or quarterly but then having those resources and maybe not my kid is one of
044the resources and networking people with that information is a big key thing what social workers should be doing too but um or lunch bunch groups i don't know if they still do those but but i do um just want to be cost conscious because we do we should have especially at the license level the expertise to be able to present on some of those topics without having to impact our budget but it doesn't hurt to see what the cost would be i'm not i'm not you know trying to squash that i just yeah and springboarding off of some of our successes you know the super in 60 i think is a is a huge hit you know maybe we do social and 70 i don't know give them an extra 10 seconds to hit their
045topic because it's a tougher topic but i think definitely using our media groups and the things that we're developing in some of the schools and some of those recent developments and positions that we've created i think we could really come up with some great assets so definitely love to love to have more information on on what we can do and just maybe a continued update on what we're looking at as far as the social workers and and what they can provide for us so thank you for that any other questions yeah go ahead um hypothetically if we were to have our own um in-house social workers do presentations whether this was on you know zoom or a pre-recorded webinar i do think it's important i guess not to maybe to either go into the classroom
046and do it for all students maybe in an assembly type format where everyone is there or pre-record it because i don't think that if we make this available for students they're not going to want to join and be visible that they're part of this if it's something of interest to them because they're going through something like that i think a pre-recorded or or or give it to all students at the same time i think we need to be very delicate about that mr president um miss densmore our social workers are currently providing instruction let me rephrase that they were working to provide instruction and we'll continue to to do so through zoom and those types of things two whole classes as well as small groups as well and i don't want to get too far
047off topic of the agenda item um but but that is something that is currently happening um we're more than happy to look into to provide the the information requested further and and to see what that is but yes to answer your question yes that is happening on both ends and for the reasons that you described thank you okay awesome thank you anything else thanks for that discussion i think it's uh very valuable to discuss those all right moving right along let's see if i can get here uh request for j1 request for any future agenda items anyone all right let's go ahead and move to k1 our favorite agenda item of the night i'll make a motion to adjourn the meeting second motion made by jay leonard seconded by tracey shorter sink belt voted on
048by jen tanner and we are you