Dysart Governing Board Meeting - July 22, 2020

001uh let the record reflect that all members are present and we are going to go ahead 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 for all thank you everybody all right we'll go ahead and start with agenda item b1 uh make a motion to approve the agenda um form consistent with the governing board policies contemporaries suspend policies which this agenda may be inconsistent second motion made by jay leonard seconded by jen tanner go ahead and vote yes motion carries oh it's up there i'm used to having it on the second screen hello all right motion carries getting back into being in person awesome all right let's go

002ahead and move on we will move to agenda item c1 recognitions and celebrations arizona school administrators asa distinguished administrators award dr kellis thank you mr president members of the board and members of cabinet this evening i am very pleased to be able to present our first recognition every year arizona school administrators recognizes extraordinary administrators throughout the state of arizona this year dysert unified school district was privileged to have two of our extraordinary administrators recognized by the arizona school administrators as distinguished administrators and received the distinguished administrator award mr hawkins was named by asa arizona school administrators as a distinguished administrator for the secondary division mr hawkins has been the principal at shadow ridge high school for 12 years he has helped make shadow ridge a home to a community of learners that inspire student excellence

003he's admired on campus by both students and staff for his visibility his unwavering support for everyone and his direct association with so many of the community members at shadow ridge high school so we'd like to congratulate mr hawkins for the distinguished administrator award i'd also like to recognize our very own mr jim dean who was also recognized as a distinguished administrator by arizona school administrators mr dean has done some extraordinary things for the district namely the under his direction bringing the vista to life bringing growing minds preschool to life the opening of asante preparatory academy the launch of our first annual festival of the arts and many many other things the least not which is growing our athletics mr dean has served as an assistant principal now for 10 years he is getting very close

004to completing his doctorate and has just been again an extraordinary administrator for the dyson unified school district so i'd like to ask the board to come down and recognize mr dean at this time [Music] social distance [Music] yes pictures [Applause] oh um thank you governing board you can be seated that's what i thought and at this time i will uh let mr ken hicks present the second recognition this evening good evening mr president members of the board superintendent dr kellis uh colleagues and community members i'm proud to present to you this recognition our second recognition which of course we can't go six months without celebrating our amazing efforts of our staff and especially uh miss janet janice peale on our wellness efforts and so um although she's not here um there's a list of the

005people attached to the agenda for all the people that participated in this virtual step challenge so it did start um i think it was uh march 16th and went through april 24th we did not win the traveling trophy we took second but we did take first place in the top 20 participant divisions for all the steps they still did during this virtual challenge which was a challenge as they were trying to isolate in that sense so i just want to say great job to everybody and here's the plaque for celebrating that good job for wellness phenomenal definitely appreciate the people that have worked so hard and stepped up to the challenge i'm here all week don't worry all right we'll go ahead and move on are we headed to d1 with added individual audience with

006individuals miss densmore do we have the first one we anybody i believe it's kelvin ray patrick hit your mic oh sorry and then you will have to read the statement i'm not in yet you want to read the statement i'm not in still sorry done okay this is the time for the public to comment members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda um 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

007group addressing the board when you approach the podium please state your name for the record are we allowed to remove these or do starting now yes okay well i would like to start by giving consideration to john williams because i'm here on behalf of the students of willow canyon high school uh a group of parents brought an issue similar to the one that i'm coming before you tonight with and this gentleman he handled the situation very well the kids and everyone was satisfied with the remedy that he brought forth for us tonight i'm here to talk about a situation where a coach came forward with some information about another coach who was trying to engage in inappropriate conduct with another kid she overheard the conversation shortly afterwards this coach was dismissed from willow canyon after

008parents you know kids coming forth you know with all the emails the witnesses the situation was not handled the way any one of us as a parent would want our kids to be in a situation like that in the violations that we have everything is documented there's been a charges filed with the eeoc this is a situation to where i wish some of the other parents wanted to be here tonight to voice their concerns they wanted to make the board aware of what's going on so everyone can know like what's going on in the dysart district this is a situation to where this uh right now these kids are still subject to this coach they're still in that position this coach is engaged in violation of the constitutional rights where some of these kids wanted

009to kneel during the game he took them in a room and threatened them with kicking them off the volleyball team if they participated or exercised their constitutional rights now see these are things that um my kids when they come home and tell me doesn't sit right with me and the coach that was terminated that was my wife she's been a coach at willow canyon for five years she's been a great coach but after she came forth and she told the administration about what was going on she was shortly let go right after that and some of the violations that these this coach has engaged in he's engaged in verbally abusing the players like my daughter she was one of the players that was verbally abused they said they had an investigation she was never called

010in and never asked one question about anything that transpired so that investigation is not valid um there's been players who refuse to play for this coach but they still choose to keep this guy here at the program i i we would just ask the board to contact these parents contact these kids get each and every one of them let them voice their concerns to you and see exactly what it is in dysart that we're striving for we want a dice i mean a school board a system where every kid feels valued no one should be verbally abused no one should feel like if i come forward and say something something's going to happen to me that's not a situation no one wants to be in that's not america that's not what we i go to

011work for and that's not what i send my kids to school for yeah that was three minutes oh sorry well i have a lot more because the list goes on like there's parents that have file claims uh for this coach sitting here threatening these kids if they don't play for his club then they don't get they will not be welcoming his team and if you would please contact these parents and get their information because they want to come and talk to you guys to voice your concerns thank you dr kels can we look into that and get the information and mr president members of the board administration be happy to provide the board with an update thank you for doing that appreciate it we had one more thank you dr kellis uh yes the next

012one is uh ariana corona all right good evening board community superintendent um typically you guys see me in the same outfit right over there giving a student update today i'm here doing the same thing but it's a little bit different because it's not the best so um piranovirus has been hitting us a lot a lot of us seen it worse than others but the thing is with district choosing to do digital learning it's a great option but there's some little things that i just don't think we're thinking about the impact of the students and that's just what i'm here to kind of briefly talk about um a lot of students just like me they want to speak about it they post about it on social media but of course not a lot of us see

013that not a lot of us connect with the students in that way and a lot of them don't really care to speak up to board like i am tonight so thankfully i kind of have an outlet here so i feel comfortable doing that um a lot of us high school students are being really impacted for me a lot of our senior year this year not going to be the same we're not going to get the memories that a lot of seniors are going to get but on top of that the whole digital learning it was very nice prior during last year we were available to go at our own pace because a lot of us we work jobs and with the pandemic a lot of us are short staffed at work and our hours doubled

014and tripled a lot of people including me are having to work 40 to 50 hours a week trying to serve our community dysart we try to be extraordinary they want our students to be extraordinary a lot of us are balancing we were able to balance work in school last time but with the new guidelines for school and digital learning for those first few weeks we are there from 7 15 a.m to 2 15 p.m that is very difficult to work around with work scheduling for those short-handed businesses and companies as well as that's eight hours a day on top of that we have more hours that we have to spend online doing homework and studying and that's just not healthy to be on a computer that long for that to a period of time and

015it's basically just looking into the impact of the students we want to be extraordinary we want to serve in our community i just worked 50 hours last week serving my community a lot of them look and a lot of them are sad a lot of the regulars are sad that i have to leave and not be able to serve a lot of companies are short-handed there's not enough people with all the numbers rising in we hear every morning about the numbers rising not a lot of people are there we're supposed to be high school students but we can balance academics and stuff but but digital being there for eight plus hours a day it's just not healthy as well as not being able to go at our own pace to be able to balance serving

016not only our academic and our district but our community i love my school and a lot of us can't wait to go back i'm very involved but it's just something to maybe consider for future references about the impact of a lot of the high school or older students that's it for me thank you thank you is that it excellent thank you all right let's go ahead and move on let's go ahead and move on to e1 superintendent update dr kellis thank you mr president members of the board and members of cabinet first of all we are officially in our 100th anniversary year and would like to acknowledge um all of our predecessors over the last 100 years who have slept established the foundation upon which we are being successful and that we are enjoying our

017term in dysart and we're looking forward to the next 100 years there are a lot going there's a lot of things going on over the next 12 months as we celebrate this 100th anniversary like to thank our public relations department who has assembled um a few requiredos that's what you say in spanish memorabilia for each of the board members in your in your bag there you'll be seeing more events coming it's always interesting trying to celebrate something this extraordinary in a virtual world not something we would have expected or planned for but it will still be a very exciting year i'd also just like to extend a huge thank you to every single person who has been working feverishly over the last several months to get ready for school to start virtually on august 4th

018there is countless hours that are being currently and have been and will continue to be put into getting ready for students especially now that as we are getting ready for virtual learning we want our students to continue to have an extraordinary experience whether they are remotely learning whether they're in high school or when we come back at a date that everybody is sitting on pins and needles waiting to find out when whether it be in person again i just want to thank everybody who's doing their part that's all i have to report thank you dr kels i appreciate that let's go ahead and move on to e2 governing board updates i'll go ahead and start i just want to say thank you to everybody who came out to the meeting in person it's good to

019see half of your face at least it's it's nice to get back into the grind i know technology is amazing and we had some good meetings but i don't think you can substitute the in-person experience at least for a very kinesthetic person like myself i appreciate everybody and uh making the adjustments wearing masks and and looking out for each other and i think as we you know look forward to what the future holds i know that as we come together as just good stewards of our areas of responsibility that we can make a difference and as we make tough decisions especially for the schools and the individuals and the employees i know that we're all looking for the right answers and and to do the best things um i have a great uh respect for

020dr kellis and the staff that have worked tirelessly as the rules of the game have changed um sometimes it seems almost daily um and and i've seen the work that's gone on behind the scenes and the adjustments and and everything that that we're doing um to make sure that we think about every single moving piece in this giant puzzle and make sure that we have something that is extraordinary and something that we can present to the public and feel confident about and i know that it's it's taken a lot of work and a lot of toll on people so as we approach those dates that you talked about i'm excited to um you know obviously work within the bounds that we've been given but i'm also excited to get the students back where they need

021to be and and to help them continue their education in the best possible manner that we can so i appreciate everybody and just wanted to let you know it's good to see you it's good to be back and i'm excited for for this year um in all of the challenges that we we have i think we have the right people in the right places to to make great decisions and and to move forward so that's all i've got anybody else i just wanted um ditto i can't talk about this ditto the same sentiments that president leonard has said and i know that dysart has been working tirelessly over the summer thus far because we receive regular updates from dr kellis and his team so i just want to echo the same sentiments it's it's not

022easy it's it's something that we have never faced before but um i think that with all of the work all of the knowledge that we are getting from this we will be able to serve our students successfully as we have always done so thank you dr kellis awesome thank you anybody else go ahead hey just a couple things um first just want to congratulate again mr dean and mr hawkins for your distinguished administrator award um that's awesome and not surprised but congratulations to both of you on june 15th i was involved as a committee member for the legislative committee the legisba legislative committee to assist in the development of the 2020 political agenda it's always a very um always has good conversation um lots of deep thought and um time that goes into that just

023quickly there were so many i mean i think it was probably almost a seven hour meeting um obviously talked a lot about funding um a couple of the newer things though there was actually um a complete section on um kobit response and it discussed things like suspending the possibility of suspending state standardized testing for 2021 um making sure we're we're in line with accessing technology for our students safety lots of things so for me it was refreshing to be a part of that conversation knowing that our leaders are really they're hearing us and they're looking at these very important topics and hoping to really push forward to do some great advocacy work to make sure that our our voices in education are heard so that was that was wonderful the other the other piece that

024was a little bit near and dear to my heart they're looking into next year um possibly for school board candidates and e-file anyone that was out this year trying to get signatures during a state shutdown can probably appreciate that possibility i think there's pretty much every other candidate in the other office you're able to use like the e-file system but but not schoolboy members so that is something that they're looking into as well as a possibility so again looking forward to the delegate assembly hopefully in september possibly but um again just very much appreciate being a part of that process um and then wanted just to kind of echo uh mr leonard's sentiments about just very thankful for all the work that's been going on at district office from dr kellis and his team you

025know down to every every employee everyone's had to make adjustments be flexible it's a very emotional time it hits everybody in different ways and i can honestly say in speaking with dr kalis it was probably an hour and a half and very detailed in his responses very open and willing to listen i would encourage anybody who has any questions about the protocols and things to reach out to him but just know i mean how frustrating it must be for all of you that you work so hard to come up with a plan and then something changes and it's back to the drawing board so in a lot of times i can appreciate it's like you're spinning your wheels but just know that we all appreciate all the work that's being done across the district by

026everyone so thank you for that and i'm really just looking forward just want to wish everybody a great first day back to school however that looks for you whether it be online whether it be in person if and when that begins anytime soon but i think it's just exciting to finally get our students back into a routine and some consistency and structure i think i think that's going to be beneficial for everybody so i look forward to getting back into our learning environments for sure so thank you that's all i have thank you mr richard anybody else all right thank you go ahead and move on let's go move on to action item our motion to approve percentage item of f1 motion to approve the agenda items as presented second motion made by jay leonard

027seconded by miss pritchard let's go ahead and vote i lost my connection so can you mark me as are you a yes all right motion passes thank you you're back yeah okay perfect all right we'll go ahead and move on let's go ahead and move down to section h1 information item h1 update on dysart plan for returning to the classroom for the 2020-2021 school year dr kelvis thank you mr president members of the board members of cabinet this is really an opportunity to allow the board to talk together with cabinet it's not very often that there's this much activity going on with regard to the district and just because of the rules of statute regarding meetings it's difficult for the board to come together and have open discussion and to ask questions and be able

028to just dialogue that being said cabinet would like to just share some of the latest and greatest changes that have happened as president leonard said these changes happen so quickly and it often depends on the landscape and how things are are happening at the state level sometimes even at the national level as we receive changes for example from the cdc uh just as one example we had a a whole spreadsheet a flowchart on what to do if there is direct contact and then last week the cdc came out with all new guidelines for direct contact so we had to go back and revise our our procedures our protocols for cases where there's direct contact this week as we look at parent choices of the various options for school for this year we can see where

029there's opportunities to take a plan that was originally devised and make it better for everybody as we look at some of the needs of our employees and our parents outside of school again we are looking at opportunities to do things better so sometimes it's not always driven by external forces sometimes it's just reflection and sheer imagination and innovation to to think about what is really affecting our students what what is the experience that our teachers and our parents are going to have and when you approach any problem to be solved with that empathetic approach it makes it so much easier to understand the best solutions for it so we will start out this evening on this agenda item with just giving some quick updates some of these things may seem like they are routine but

030some of them have had some tweaks even within the last hour and so we'll start off right here with mr dean and then we'll just go to dr pulling mr hicks and mr croto good evening mr president members of the governing board dr kellis and members of cabinet um it's great to see you again this evening in person um it's been quite some time and we're happy to see um faces again so thank you for being here this evening just a quick update from um support services and the departments that are working tirelessly to to prepare for the start of school our student services department continues to work with our with our school administrators with our social workers and with local law enforcement in various aspects as it relates to school reopening additionally student services

031has been taxed with the responsibility of covert response for students when our students return to campus if students become students test positive our student services department will be the ones that will be handling that and facilitating that process and so they've been working you know on what those processes look like we've had some opportunity to practice those processes as we've had athletic and marching band folks back throughout the summer and we've had a couple of situations in which we've had to put our plan into place so they've been working on that piece community education has never stopped um in in this time community education continued um to offer daycare services and preschool services for our community our first responders and our essential workers during the entire time that we've been away from school and so

032john williams and his crew deserve just absolute praise in the effort that they've gone through to keep daycare and preschool available for our for our community and so thank you um to miss pritchard's point um things do change quickly and often um and as of about an hour ago we set in motion some plans that um we're still flushing out the the final details but we're working through community education to provide an opportunity for our community related to learning labs and the possibility of bringing a small number of students to our campus during the school day and providing den club before and after school to help with working families in our community who would struggle with supervision of their students during the day we mentioned this tonight because it is a process that we are

033comfortable that we can move forward with but there's a few logistical pieces that we will work out and share with our community early next week but we're very excited about the possibility and the opportunities that that may provide i'm regarding athletics and we are in constant contact with the aia and their plans for competition for this school year um as i stated earlier we have had our athletes and our marching band students in for summer workouts we paused for a few weeks a couple weeks ago but we're back now moving forward additionally i would like to remind the board that we've created dsb live which is dysart student broadcasting live which is a live stream program in our district where we'll be able to live stream athletic events arts competitions um and and arts activities

034various pieces throughout the school year perhaps this is more timely than ever needed before because we'll be able to live stream for those who can't attend to watch our students as a matter of fact we have our first live stream event with an athletic group one of our palm teams on sunday of this week and so we're very excited about that looking forward to providing the opportunity for those that cannot attend because we reach the 50-person capacity um in that just quickly um finishing up cte is it continues to work to plan courses as you know the cte courses are very hands-on courses and so they're working to provide opportunities within their online pieces to allow for those pieces or for those components um to be experienced by students and then finally our pr team

035certainly remains our key communicators as we move forward they're working endlessly to make sure that we push information to parents so um support services has been busy as everyone has and we're looking forward um to the start of the school year in 13 days good evening mr president members of the board cabinet and community uh it's great to see you tonight and a pleasure to be here and um just uh have to give my team kudos they've been working really hard um really focused on a few things first today we welcomed our new educators back so new educator orientation started today and new educators showed up to their school site and we're welcomed by the administrative team and and the support staff and my team worked to push out some virtual pd for those folks

036so they had a mix of virtual pd and in-person pd at the school site i was uh fortunate to stop into a few schools and it's just great to see teachers and and staff other things our team has been working on a resource links page that will be for parents for students for staff with links on how to use schoology on remote learning we'll have q a it'll have video and we're really just working hard on putting resources together to support staff students parents because the remote learning will look different than the spring and online resources will be very high quality and and we're excited to use them but we also know that people will need support we have prepared a best practices in online learning pd for all teachers and we'll be supporting administrative

037teams at schools in helping deliver that and we're also working with our vendors on preparing resources again just so that no matter the position or the teacher or the subject or the need that we are providing them the resources so they can teach students and then also we're on delivering ongoing pd we kept a lot of the same pd that we had scheduled we've had esspd this summer some virtual some in person um some gifted pd and and whatnot so there's some examples but um we're just really focused on preparing as being as flexible as possible but preparing as best as possible so that that students and staff and parents have the resources they need thank you good evening mr president members of the board dr kalas colleagues communities um so um i will say

038um we've been talking a little bit about superpowers um as we all have heroes around us my superpower is to take very simple things and make them very complex and talk very long about them so i did bring my covet file i reread the executive order 41 and 44 so that we could uh go over a more detailed description of that but um in all seriousness um it is uh very true it's every single day we're going back through how we're doing double checking things that i already ask you this um following through with my team and and those leaders to make sure that we're creating the safest environment possible and facilities the plant managers have been here from day one and continue to work down through work orders as we also have adjusted their

039schedule and what they're cleaning and how that means they begin each day we're spraying down the front offices with um i forget the name of the gun the pro texas statistics machine that has the electrostatic disinfectant that goes everywhere and cleans everything they do that on every single day the front office any high touch areas as well as working through cleaning first before they get to their work orders and supporting the staff that are showing up we've worked with abm to modify the cleaning schedule so that we're cleaning staff restrooms more frequently as that is come up of concerns and so we're trying to address concerns we're working with the hvac team to make sure that we purge the air every day so at about 5 00 a.m maybe a little earlier we're going to

040stagger things just to save utilities but we're going to push all the air out and bring all new fresh air in it is the coolest time of day so we're bringing the coolest air in because then we have to condition that air as it comes in the air cycles through a couple times an hour anyway because we bring outside air in but this is a complete flush push everything out so it's a complete purge and so we're looking at how we could adjust and help those we've been dealing delivering ppe for the last two weeks to our schools mass thermometers disinfectants hand sanitizers plexiglass barriers hand sanitizer stands front off to the front office and principles we're creating inventory lists so that we know what we're giving everybody so they know who's good in it

041and how to distribute it transportation has been meeting for the last couple weeks to figure out how can we train 150 people when we do have in-person how and what are we doing so we've been working to move that to an online environment but how do we still train we're have to bring in small groups to do cpr there's certain things for certifications that we can't do everything online and so they're looking at how they can break that up and keep that in very small groups and keep everybody safe as easy as easy as just coming to work is very difficult when you have 150 people coming in at the same time so how we're staggering time so no more we're even thinking a color coding system so they can stay in their car until

042they see a green light before the next group of people come in so we're able to take temperatures at all the different i think we'll have 10 thermometers down there so how we're using those to keep everybody separate and taking that so we're working through logistically every single thing how um how we're spraying down the bus on the inside and between routes and between the the stop not in between the stops and between the routes so they continue to work through that process our food service who did an amazing job last year serving an unbelievable i think it was almost a half a million meals to our community took a little bit break they will have to start up on august 4th because national school lunch program requires that when school starts we have to

043serve lunches and so they will be serving meals on august 4th all kate students will receive the reduce free free reduced or paid meal high school is the only students that chose the in person get that option if they're an online student by law they have to pay the visitor price so it's a higher price and they're and they have to pay the adult visitor price meal and that's per the federal government on that one we will be serving breakfast and lunch options we do have some that have a completely free breakfast i think we have three schools that are completely free so they'll get a complete free we'll have options for breakfast at both times for during their schedule time for their parents to pick up we are asking parents to go to schoolcafe.com

044to put money on the account to help speed up the process and also i did not know this maybe i don't watch the news enough but we have a change shortage going on right now and so we were not able to get the change from our bank uh when we requested that so we're a little worried about not being able to provide the right change pushing people to school cafe would just be able to put it on account and be able to manage that process so we're working through those they've already had a ton of protocols in place to keep safe as they were doing it last year so we're just reviewing those and making sure that everybody's maintaining the the distance and uh keeping any opportunity to make little modifications and changes we're going

045to do it does look like it's curbside to keep it going as fast as possible and not having people park come in we do have a short window because we're creeping the keeping the same routines and structures in place one um just to briefly talk a little bit now the trust we're having liability so it is uh school board associations i think has put out some notices i've seen emails left and right i am on the trust board and so the organic pathogens is specifically excluded from our coverage our insurance coverage it's also excluded from any of the reinsurance coverages that the trust is purchased and so um we do have prepaid legal program and we do also have the no fault mold but that is really after an entire site goes down they will

046help as a claim cover the cost of cleaning but they're not covering any claims we do have legal our prepaid legal process so we do have coverage of legal costs for attorneys representing representing we are reviewing template documents that they've also sent of acknowledgement so parents are understanding to protect us in the case of lawsuits we're actually very very little chance of that anyway anybody can be sued at any time so there's no chance of stopping anybody from swimming but legal opinion is is that we we're doing a lot if you notice and look around things don't look the same so to try to allege that we have gross negligence that we're not taking this seriously we're not doing something would be a very steep uh legal bar decline but um we do have to

047look out for that process and and schools are very concerned um and so we work with the trust i was talking to mike tiffany the executive director of trust today about some of those acknowledgement forms and template letters and how and what we could do so we're going to continue to review that staff has covered the workers comp there's no issue there i know there's been some rumors that there's a law that prohibits any of those payouts or any of those concerns that is not the trust and we're with the alliance which is an arm of the trust we are covered and there's no concern with any inability to follow and pay out on that part other operations continue as we're working to track all of our coveted spending because we still have the exergrant

048we have the gear grant and now um because we can't have another we need more acronyms we now have the esg which is the enrollment stabilization grant that's worked through arizona department administration via the governor's office with his cares money and so we have three different grants now that we're trying to track monitor and apply it is a very difficult process we've already been denied on our first essa grant which i know they said will be super easy it is not super easy and i feel for the people that continue to try to submit as we're having to identify every type of hand sanitizer a six ounce and eight ounce individually what type of mask cloth paper every single thing individually to go into that for our coverage of that or for that grant and

049it's very very difficult so we're also always reevaluating and analyzing ideas sorry i talk a lot this is my superpower embrace it ideas decisions to ensure gifts of public funds compliance we're constantly monitoring and managing but we have to do the mental math every single day on every single idea that we're doing and so we continue to do that we've moved online training for student activities we're doing the parent support groups moving that online so we're continuing to provide those opportunities the best way possible can so there you go now i got to the end of my shoot i'll kick it over to hr thank you mr president members of the board superintendent kellis colleagues and community i'm tired after listening to him talk so um anyway uh hr has been a very uh busy

050place so first of all i wanna just thank my team they've done an amazing job uh in this time of hiring right now amidst all the hiring we have staffing going on which i'll explain i'll talk about some employee relations pieces that we're working on and also the exposure with the kovitz so human relations is in charge of the contacts for the employee side you heard mr dean say the students are with karen winterstein the employees are going to be with hr so to hit off staffing staffing is going very well right now district wide we're about 190 students off of our projection that we projected for this year a lot of that as we looked into the numbers today come off of the kindergartners and i know we have a plan to to address

051that and get them registered and back in but we are down right now and i'll elaborate more on the friday report for you but about 10 teachers high school and elementary so that's total regular um ed um positions and about 19 special ed positions so i'm doing pretty well as a whole obviously our special ed positions are a challenge every year and we're looking to uh to fill those and and get caught up with those addition in the staffing portion is as you know we we've allowed students to choose are they going to be in high school or are they going to be in face to face we're all starting off obviously with the virtual side but as we transition they're going to come back either face to face or stay online in the high

052school arena we have about 24 25 of the students that have chosen roughly about 2 000 out of the 8 500 that have chosen to remain online so we are busy staffing that we got an excellent staff working on that and also in the elementary side we have about 4 248 kids that have chosen to remain in the high school online piece that's about 30 percent of our population so we are busy shifting teachers the local sites are doing amazing job but shifting teachers responsibilities of egypt teaching the ischool or the in person or split of both they're doing an amazing job with that that is ongoing obviously we have schools starting pretty quick so that is one of our top priorities employee relations about three four weeks ago we sent out a survey to

053all employees i had a very great turnout over 2500 employees answered it we wanted to know three things from them basically um are you everything okay to come to work i'm not coming back to work or do you need some type of accommodation to come back to work uh like i said over 2500 employees filled that out uh we are in the process of calling everybody that answered two and three so can't come back to work or i need some accommodation that has um amounted to almost 400 phone calls from my staff we're busy reassuring them processing any accommodations they need or mutual agreements again employee relations trying to make it right for them to to return to work and make sure there's a lot of fear that as people have been saying and people

054are at different places with this so we want to assure them of all the process we have in in order and make it right so we're busy doing that on top of that is our exposure for our employees we continue process seven days a week whether it's direct exposure indirect exposure they all report to hr and we decide if they have to quarantine or not quarantine um and notify obviously the work and and those type of things the supervisors of of those people coming in there so we we have the family's first corona response act which uh provides them extra lead by the government that's through december 31st so we process all those and we process the return with the cdc guidelines so again that's been a lot of questions back and forth with employees

055and we continue to process that so that's life in hr right now so thank you and it's great to see everybody so that's just a quick superficial overview of a lot of different things behind each of those topics that were just discussed there's a whole team of staff who are working to make those reality so again i i thank everybody who's been involved with with the process as i've said many times before it's going to change tomorrow we are anticipating governor ducey making a press release and releasing as he said at his last press release he's going to be announcing more opportunities for flexibility for schools i believe is what he said and that is a very broad statement to make opportunities for flexibility i was interviewed by channel 15 yesterday and i was asked

056what would you like the governor to say and in the spirit of his statement of flexibility i said i would like him to just let us do whatever you want to do and pay for it and while i say that someone in jest i think that would be great if we could localize our plan to the needs and not be tied into a statewide plan that may or may not be conducive to the needs of our district we certainly appreciate everything that the governor has done i've met with him on different occasions regarding what our needs are as have other superintendents and he has been responsive to those so i'm optimistic that we will be able to move forward with the flexibility that we need to help our students have an extraordinary learning experience so

057at this point i just will open it up to the board and i'll turn it back to president leonard to facilitate the discussion but we're open to any questions that the board has thank you for that i appreciate those presentations and the fact that ken didn't have any slides made it even better not that i didn't miss your slides but um but one of the things that you know being a business owner and being in a situation we have about a hundred employees in seven different states and you know there's a lot of concerns and and understanding that as you know a community as you know people that are responsible for a education be safety of a lot of students and scholars and then see quite a few employees mr crota i appreciate you brushing

058off your smiling and dialing skills and reaching out to every one of those employees that that needs to hear from you and needs that needs that so definitely commend you and your people for doing that and it's a lot you know the beginning of school is is a huge undertaking by any stretch of the imagination on any regular year as we move forward we definitely need to pay attention to the additional work and the additional workload and the stressors that are out there for for everybody in the situations that they're in and some of those are perceived and some of those are real the very real um things that that people are going to face and that we have to take seriously and uh and and move on and help our employees and our staff

059and our students and our community members wrap their heads around all of those changes and and the moving targets that that we're all trying to hit in my staff meeting we talked about the 80 20 rule you know 80 of what we're dealing with is uh logical simple decisions that we're faced with and we can look at and we can make those decisions because logic is simple and just for for the ease of math you know that other 20 percent is broken up into uh microcosms all over the place and it's that moving target it's that piece that everybody wants to have a an opinion on and some of it's backed by science and some of it's backed on what i call bro science where you know people have come up with ideas and you

060know and here we are just you know working to make the best decisions obviously as we make those decisions we have to rely on reliable sources that have real science and real data and so as we look at you know moving forward i would encourage people to visit our website which is an amazing source of information as those moving targets we're trying to hit we are put in a situation where all communication is not created equal fake book doesn't always have the best answers and the bro science isn't necessarily where we need to turn to get emotional and involved in debates in all reality we have to make decisions we have to move forward and we have to look at all of the moving pieces and parts and do the best hindsight's always 20 20.

061nobody wants to be in a situation where you look back and are judged um on on the decisions that we've made but at the end of the day we are put into a situation us as a board you as staff dr kellis is the leader of the the district where we have to make decisions and so i i feel comfortable in the interactions that we've had the communications that we have and i would ask people to turn to the real resources that are available and look at the information that's out there and know that we are relying on the professionals and the state and the government and whatever you feel about them those are the things that we have to turn to to to help the people that were are in our stewardship and that's

062really what we're focused on moving forward i have full confidence in what we're doing and i appreciate your time and your energy and your sleepless nights doing what you do i apologize um these decisions are not made lately there's not one person in this room that hasn't lost sleep over the decisions that we're making we care about every person that is under our stewardship we have worked tirelessly to make sure that we're making the right decisions and there is no solid information that we can just turn to there's no book of facts on the coronavirus that we can say if we do x y and z we're going to be safe and so in making these decisions i trust each one of you that you're doing the best that you possibly can with the information

063and i'm very grateful for that i trusted so much that my kids are in the system and i trust them to come and to be a part of this and as a parent i know that everybody struggles with those decisions so please understand we are doing our best and this is an important thing that's why we're all here that's why we've put so much time and effort into this i apologize for getting emotional but this is something that's important and i think everybody here feels the weight of this calling and as we pull together we're going to make the best decisions for dysart because we are dice art and we have to come together and we have to educate our students and we have to provide a safe work environment there are no other choices

064so i commend you for what you've done i respect you for your hard work and the extra hours that you put in and know that i'm here to support you in every way i possibly can and with that i'll turn it over to anybody else that wants to speak and just know that i had enough tears for everybody so president leonard thank you very much for everything you just said that is a very heartfelt very mindful [Music] very appreciative of what we are going through and as i said earlier this is something that we have never dealt with before that even with all the technological advances that we've had over the past many many years this is a brand new error and um i quite honestly i'm not satisfied with the new normal i i

065want us to be stronger wiser better and there's so many things that we have to take into account to make sure our students and our staff are safe um and are in uh a learning mindset and uh i couldn't have put it better myself um i do have a couple of questions for uh actually i think there's one for dr kellet nope yes one for dr kellis one of the things that happened to me on tv right before i left the house it was talking about ppe starter kits for districts i don't know if you heard about that and there was a small amount of masks and hand sanitizers in it and um maybe it's not for dr kellis might be for mr hicks but it was a small amount of mass and hand sanitizer

066and whatnot and of course it said afterwards um districts will have to purchase and provide all this stuff what mechanisms do we have in place um to support yes mr president uh ms harrisonville i think what you're referring to is the maricopa county um department of education uh makisa education sport agency has said that they are distributing these starter kits for the ppe's we appreciate the support of anybody who is willing to help support our staff and our students but yes the the question of supply lines supply access what kinds of supplies are needed just with the topic of masks for example just this week maricopa county issued not guidelines but requirements that all students wear masks at school whenever they are on school grounds and that's a variation from our previous guidelines um and

067what our safety protocols were previously that if they are outside if they're exercising that they don't have to if they're in the cafeteria the eating that they don't have to these new requirements mandate that students wear them unless they're eating or engage in strenuous exercise we understand that if you have well we want everybody to bring the ppe that they are most comfortable with you see in this room most of us have our own personal masks but there might be if you follow the costco model there are those customers who show up without one and we feel obligated to have a supply line available for students or staff who need it to be able to comply with the county health requirement for schools so if you were to just assume that nobody had a mask

068so we have about 23 000 students another 2 000 staff employees figure roughly 25 000 people in the district and if we provided one disposable mask per person that's 25 000 masks in one day if you're to carry that out over a week then we're looking at 125 000 masks a week if you look at the cost of them right now i think at walmart you can get 25 masks for [Music] if we were to just go at a discount and say they're a dollar each or 50 cents each that would be you can calculate for one week between anywhere between 80 and 125 thousand dollars and then you carry that out over the the course of the semester we do have a partnership with the mass our own in our own neighborhood iris is

069a manufacturing company in the district and they are very gracious to offer us a discount of 17 cents per mass so we have ordered 60 000 masks from iris at 17 cents those are the kinds of community district relationships that really gel our whole community and make it important to say that we're all in this together and it's not uh you fix it it's we can fix this and provide the sports uh mr hicks i don't know if you have any other comments about the the ppes and what we have available just to continue on with the conversation is uh in cabinet we talk about waters where's our inventory what do we have how long do we need so we talk about different inventory how many hand sanitizer stands do we have uh we have

070limited or no no water for uh sinks in our portables so we need to get hand sanitizer in every single portables for the mass how do we get where are the bus drivers holding mass so the bus so the kids when they enter the bus if they don't have a mass we have to give them one so what kit are they bringing onto the bus to have that so we go through and how many days supply do we need and so and we'll be distributing that out to the schools with the expectations for supplies and how to communicate back to we keep it all we've actually changed the locks on a few uh rooms down in maintenance to make sure that we keep all of our ppe pretty safe and secure so it's not walking

071or anything so we have control over we know how much we received and how much were given to schools on any daily basis but we continue to monitor all of those and and that goes for um spacing signs on the floor we've got those ordered and coming in additional plexiglas we have plexiglass going to um every school i think two or three of them every school to create some barriers for plexiglass we also have staff that want to purchase additional ppe plexiglas and others and they work with our facilities to make sure because some of them if we did them the way they would like would violate fire codes so we still have to maintain our fire code compliance and and modify some of those requests in that sense but we're constantly evaluating assessing our

072inventory and where we're at and how long things will take to get there i have a follow-up question about just about that um but i want to change gears for just a second um it was stated that uh superintendent hoffman is trying to push full funding for online learning have you heard anything different i know that the announcement will be tomorrow um but she kind of remains steadfast in this uh do you have anything to say mr president mr singh bill i i think uh what you're referring to is uh state superintendent um hoffman has basically issued a statement uh this is what she expects or is asking the governor to do and you're exactly right and that is to fully fund online instruction at one point uh the leaders at b determined that it's

073cheaper to teach online than it is face-to-face and what districts are are learning very quickly as ken just outlined one piece of the additional expenses that are required and we didn't get into how much other technology is needed for all of our students to be able to learn from at home uh dr pauline mentioned access internet access that we're finding more and more families don't have sufficient internet access for multiple kids plus maybe a working adult in the room to uh to be able to log in and follow the student's schedule if there's multiple kids in the house if they even have internet at all we have some of our staff who have reported they do not have internet access they might have a cell phone but it's hard to teach a class from a

074cell phone so if we want our teachers to provide an extraordinary experience for our students we would hope that they would have the appropriate wi-fi access wherever they're teaching from so these are all things that could potentially increase the cost we looked at hot spots to provide for those whether students or staff who need them a hot spot is basically just a little plastic box that provides internet in the household if we were to purchase those we looked at just a hundred of them and that would be twenty four thousand dollars if you look around the state there are other districts who are in the exact same situation so statewide i think there was a false belief that it's cheaper to teach online than it is to teach face to face and so president i

075mean superintendent hoffman is appealing to the governor to fully fund because right now if the school goes strictly online we only get 95 percent of the funding that we would typically get at the students were in a classroom that extra five percent for dysert mr hicks would equate to probably nine million dollars so if we um only got 95 percent we would be short at nine about nine million dollars that's a lot knowing we got short at 9 million plus we have to expend another couple million just for all of the x-ray technology and ppe's and and things plexiglas hardware to be prepared for for students to come back um so i don't know if that answers your question but we support the superintendent's hoffman's appeal for full funding it does and i know that

076um several districts um are supporting that as well that they wanting the full funding for online i didn't know how approximately how much that would be regarding the five percent that's that's a pretty penny and having the other expenses um on top of that is just after another source even if i could just add so the governor in one of his executive orders basically gave districts the choice we could take the 95 percent or we could take the 98 so 95 for current year for the students that we have enrolled 95 or 98 of last year's budget but even if we took 98 percent of last year's budget and said we'll take that we would still be losing about three million dollars off of last year's budget carrying it forward if we just did identical

077now the governor did say that there's an option to submit a grant a non-competitive grant for that extra five percent of the 95 but there are strings attached to it one of those being that we would have to offer parents uh a place where they can bring their kids during the day so if we went all online and didn't offer that in-person drop-off opportunity we would lose the five percent we would not be eligible for that five percent to get us to the full funding so districts are grappling with that if you close schools and go online but then say we will take any student who needs a place to be during the day you're basically reopening your schools we are looking at some learning labs for our community and for our employees we are

078going to have to put a cap on it because we know that we can't take 500 students back to school when we're closed and it's just a it's interesting and again we're hoping for more flexibility thank you dr ellis when i figure out my question i can't remember i will ask you mr hicks the moment that's that's all for me excellent thank you miss tanner think of anything else other than what's been asked or said awesome thank you ms densmore um i just appreciate the internally you know the opportunities for for flexibility that we're looking at um i know that we're looking at legislatively or through the governor's executive order we're looking for official opportunities for that flexibility um i guess um some of the concerns that i've been hearing um are just you know

079around like staff accommodations for example and i know that you said uh mr critter that you're getting about four or you're doing about 400 phone calls out are you also experiencing people that maybe didn't identify an accommodation originally and that are now realizing that they do need an accommodation are you still accommodating those requests mr president miss dinsmore yes we are being contacted if they originally selected they don't need anything on the what we call number one selection uh we've had numerous people send us emails or call say you know what i changed my mind so we put them right into that file and we're addressing those also so yes we do we do talk to them if they change their mind definitely just with everything changing i mean those they may not have anticipated

080something originally correct thank you um the other thing i i had a question on so originally you mentioned for high school about 24 to 25 percent were requesting online and then about 30 percent for elementary is that still accurate or was that just the initial survey results i don't know mr president mrs densmore um those are accurate numbers that data has been cleaned up so the initial survey um and that data has been cleaned up so those are very accurate numbers as we move forward in the schedule we have to be really accurate and we're up against the time to get the staff in the proper place so we look at those those are updated as of this morning so thank you so much you're welcome all right miss pritchard i had several but just

081in the interest of time i'm just going to kind of narrow it down to some of the bigger areas that i think would be good um just for the community to understand too and then because there's been so many changes if there's any updates to this dr kalis but in regard to um so speaking about like the reopen date i think it'd be good because you you've been able to articulate it pretty well as far as dysart's position i know the board and we've been forwarding all of our emails has been flooded with people thinking that you know we can just decide to open in october or maybe january maybe explain your um thought process behind how we came to august 17th and if that were to change what would what would impact that decision

082mr president uh miss pritchard excuse me that is probably one of the biggest questions that is being asked is if we're not going to open on august 17th then when and in light of other districts who have already made the announcements that they're not opening until october um there's that looming question what about dysart and as we look at what other districts the process that they followed in getting to that decision there has been some question on our part about are they considering all of the unintended consequences of making that decision i had a meeting earlier today and i shared that in my heart of hearts we're not going to open on august 17th i think the governor will announce at his press conference that it might go another two weeks it might go four

083weeks i'm hoping that it's you decide when you want to open but as you look at dicert and why we're proceeding the way that we are we need to look at all of the pieces to the puzzle as president leonard said there's a lot of moving pieces to the puzzle and we are making decisions that are very closely aligned to data into the information sometimes that data can be seen through very narrow lens and it's i'm not safe don't open schools but in reality we don't have the the luxury of looking through that narrow lens we have to look at a very broad lens and look at all of the different implications of what it means to change the start date to a school year yes it would be easy to say that money should

084not drive our decisions as a superintendent um i am responsible for the money i'm responsible for the safety of of our students and staff i'm responsible for the academics um even though it may be a stretch i feel responsible for every family that has parents who work and don't know what to do with their kids for supervision during the school day so it is definitely a delicate balance that always tilts towards safety if if i were to put on my my prediction hat and say when is school going to open i would suspect it's not going to be august 17th i'm very confident that it will be at a time when we all feel a little bit more comfortable i just hesitate to say it's going to be in october could be and if it's

085october the benefits of opening in october is that that gives us a couple of months of stability it would be great just to say we need those two months to be able to have some semblance of normalcy rather than i would be frustrated if the governor said two weeks two weeks two weeks and we just would have that emotional yo-yo happening of should we could we will we is it going to go further than two weeks so there's some a greater level of confidence with our community knowing and being able to plan further out than just a couple of weeks but we know that if we go alone that we may be jeopardizing more than what other districts have considered when you look at up to 13 million dollars that's significant but if we're just

086a little bit patient and we make sure that all the pieces are in the right place we'll get there and we will not lose the funding and it's not a matter of putting funding over lives we're not going to put people's lives in danger but there's a sense of urgency that people want to know right now where are we going to be on august 17th are we going to come back too early we will not put people's lives in danger we will make the the right decisions it's just difficult to be able to come out and announce today that we are going to be open until august or october or january i don't know don't quote me on anything in january but it's it's um it's something that we are looking at every single day

087sometimes three and four times a day right now we are looking at the governor's press conference and if the governor were to say we're going to try it another week see how it goes that would be a very frustrating response from the governor i would hope that he would look at that stability and that opportunity for some semblance of normalcy that would allow us to [Music] if it's if we're closed for uh for two months at the same time i also understand that that puts a lot of families in very difficult predicament and so as we look at ways to mitigate the the extra stress the extra emotional duress that our families are experiencing our students are experiencing from that separation and we look for solutions to to that as well okay thank you and

088just kind of to piggyback on that um that piece too as far as coming back how would we balance though like let's say let's say we're well even from the seventh to the fourth to the 17th um if we were to offer our community some child care options you know there's the argument as well of well if it's not safe to have students in a classroom how is it safe to have a lot of locations where there's a lot of students in one room or classroom for child care services um mr president ms pritchard i appreciate that argument it's an option it's not a requirement it's something that for those families who see the need for it again we are not going to put children's lives in danger if you look at how the room

089is set up tonight and this was done very intentionally with a lot of forethought on how to keep everybody in this room safe and when we bring any any person onto our facilities we take that charge very seriously to make sure that they are safe so those learning labs will have specific safety protocols in place we've been doing them during the summer with summer camps very successfully to the satisfaction of all those who have been present and we would continue to make sure that it's a safe supervised place for students to do their schoolwork between the 4th and the 17th and beyond if necessary and just as a side note these students are not in classrooms with teachers we have asked the teachers teach from their classrooms to provide a very focused professional experience for

090the students the learning labs would be in very large group areas cafeteria the gym the library where they could be adequately distance apart from each other and that they would not be mixing with other people on campus like teachers and staff who are teaching remotely okay okay thank you now now with that then since we're talking about room space um so just something to consider just i'm sure you've already considered your thoughts on this so if we have a lot of students right now who are especially in high school opting for online and then that means our class sizes are naturally dropping is there the potential for rather than collapsing all those classes and making a full class of 32 students why wouldn't we keep those class sizes smaller so we could social distance or

091is that something that's already being considered and we're already putting in place mr president member pritchard um the answer to your question is that's exactly what's happening now so as as we are scheduling our students and our teachers for online high school the ischool option we're utilizing the sections that we have available within our high schools currently we're not adding sections to our staffing so as not to incur more cost but for example if if uh let's say uh valley vista high school has uh 60 students in english one and um and 20 of them opt for online learning or let's say 40 of them opt for online learning we would take one of those two sections and one of those sections would teach ischool the other one would keep the other 20 students in

092the physical classroom piece which currently is remote learning so we are not looking to shrink our sections to to a very small piece at this point in time our high school principals are managing that piece on the campus and they are managing their ischool sections through their current staffing so that we're able to keep classes low if we if we possibly can for the return but also make sure that we take care of our high school sections through the current high school allotment at k-8 at k8 um similarly they're spreading out those high school sections across if there's three grade level teachers then each grade level teacher might have seven seven seven so yes indeed then it reduces in person class size when we come back and so what you may have is you may

093have let's say take an english teacher for example an english teacher might teach four ground courses and one high school course um of the of their english class and so that way we're maintaining the the integrity of their schedule we're obtaining the the or maintaining the integrity of the sections but we're able to handle both the number of students that are in the physical location which is starting remote remotely and the high school sections as well so then you would be able to um so like let's say there were 90 90 students total in in because i'm not i'm not as quick with my math mr hicks as you are so bear with me on the easy example but if there's like 90 students enrolled in um freshman english and so there's 30 in each

094class and let's say half of each class so 45 would sign on for online that i'm saying couldn't we keep 15 15 15 rather than let's combine two of the classes and have a class of 30 and see what i'm saying to where we kind of even if it's a really really low number are you guys open to keeping it low rather than collapsing so we can ensure that distance so a couple things first i want to make sure that you're not asking mr hicks to respond because i'm not sure we have that much time left in the meeting this evening but secondly yes our high school principals are looking at those components as they as they balance between high school sections with our high school staff and their their current ground piece we're also

095keeping in mind that there is a strong possibility that when we return to school physically whenever that may be that a good number of those students who are currently signed up for online school high school are going to transition back into the building and so that's why we're working to maintain the integrity of those sections so that that transition is an easy transition back into the school and we don't balloon up classes at that point in time well i know since we're all using florida virtual it's supposed to be a semi seamless transition back and forth but for my understanding when everyone starts on august 4th you may not be starting in high school you'll be virtual but you may not be in the ischool program it's not like everyone can just zoom into their

096classroom you still you're only zooming in if you have signed up for in-person and the rest are would be in their high school that is correct that is correct however one of the advantages and one of the reasons that um we made the decision to use florida virtual as the curriculum for all of our courses this year whether it's high school or ground courses is that opportunity for transition so theoretically if i am in an english one class and i'm taking it online through high school and i decided to come back in the middle of october my my pacing should be very similar to where i am when i re-enter the classroom and so by having florida virtual as the curriculum across the board that allows for those easy transitions in and out throughout the

097course of the school year and this comment again is kind of an extension of what we're talking about and i know not to really get into a lot of dialogue now because it's too big for tonight but i just want you to consider it and think about it um you know some we know we've all talked about we know how every student learns differently they have their own unique learning style and where attending online through zoom your virtual it's not the same as ischool and so because of the situation you know we're making students choose between one or the other i school can be scary for some because with high school especially our high school students where if you're in a class and heaven forbid you fail your final you can still get credit and

098pass that class you're on high school you get less than 60 percent you have lost credit you're maybe not graduating or you're behind and so if you know you don't learn that well anyway i just hate to think of students who are unintentionally kind of punished for a situation that's out of their control because maybe their parent doesn't want them returning or they can't because they've got medical issues and they're stuck with this one option so i'm just asking you to consider when you're looking at all these things the possibility of a live stream or some way that these students who would want to be in their classroom and see their teacher and have that relationship be able to attend virtually that way rather than be completely on their own in a high school environment

099that may not be conducive to their learning style so just i hope you guys will think about that because i've heard that from from various people and um i just i think it's a valid one to at least consider so i hope you'll maybe consider that and we appreciate that point and one one thing that i would add is that those students who um take courses through i school um are assigned to teacher um and there is a teacher who is responsible for their learning as well so while they are while they are they're not attending school from 7 15 to 2 15 every day there is a teacher that's assigned to that class and that it's a sign that is assigned and responsible for their learning and so where students may find the benefit

100of being able to take to work on their course at any time that they want in the middle of the day middle of the night you know when my kids were in high school they were up until all hours and so maybe they at 1am that's when they go and they do their their coursework there is still a teacher that's available that's monitoring their progress that's checking in with them and that is available through office hours for that student to to get help as well and that's the ischool model you know within that you know we are very cognizant and very concerned that about the academic loss of all of our students our students missed 10 weeks of in-school instruction in the spring we've had the typical summer period and now we're coming back to

101remote learning and so we're very cognizant of of making sure that all of our students regardless of which format they choose to attend school that we're providing supports and and measures needed for them to be successful moving forward we can't lose an entire generation of students to one or two school years that that were a bit out of the norm and so we're very cognizant of that but thank you for that point yeah and i and i don't want to i understand teachers be responsive through high school but i'm just saying again back to that learning style you don't get that face-to-face interaction you don't get the class discussion it's still a different experience it is it is absolutely a different experience you're correct um because things have changed dr kellis um have their can

102you just kind of quickly review the re-entry protocols for both students and staff that present with coping-like symptoms or maybe they've they've tested positive for covid what's that protocol look like so currently um our from a student perspective i'll let mr croto address the um the staff piece but i i can talk from from the perspective of what we've done with athletics and how that would impact the school you're moving forward and the reason i bring athletics into the conversation is that we have dealt with a couple of covet situations with our athletic workouts this summer and so students who present positive with covid are are quarantined from being able to return for 14 days any student who has had direct contact with that student and direct contact is defined by the cdc any student

103who has had direct contact has been quarantined for 14 days from being able to return upon return symptoms are checked every day there is a sheet that's used to monitor symptoms of students and that will be the case with the classroom as well just as all of our temperatures were taken as as we came into the building today that will be part of our protocol with students as well and so if a student test positive for cover 19 um in a school then we will handle that through student services in working with the family um to to keep them from returning to school and for a period of time um that 14-day period and we will also work to find those students that were that had direct contact to do the same as well mr

104croto can explain the pieces related to staff uh thank you um like the students the employees are very similar so we use there's two two theories out from the cdc based on a return to work status one is symptoms based which we use and one is test based so the question always comes do we require tests to return to work that answers no we use a symptom based approach so that one basically in the symptoms based approach is 14 days since contact either having covid in the test or having contact with somebody who was positive so your direct contact remember is less than six feet for greater than 15 minutes um and so we use that thing so if they have to be symptom-free no fever for 24 hours and all those things before they

105return to work so we i have one person in my office that's in constant contact um documenting all that setting dates um and making sure we follow all the protocol so even with um because obviously i mean fever you can measure but some other symptoms that they're associated with covid you may not necessarily observe in a moment like if you do like a quick screening so if someone um maybe so we're not requiring testing at all like a negative coded test from someone that either we know was positive or was or continue to recover as far as knowing it's basically on the honor system that is correct um we do not require we're not using the test-based strategy um from my understanding and i try to read all this everything from the cdc is ever

106changing um the cdc well for a couple reasons i believe the cdc just came out and said that they do not prefer the test based strategy i'm not sure if that's because of timelines uh how much the test is taken right now we do have employees currently that it's been three weeks since they tested um and so that obviously that 14 days has passed before that time and then um the other piece and there's so much to read out there and i believe somebody said it before we don't have any clear direction of this is this is the line we need to take so 14 days is what we use on the symptoms based approach because supposedly and i'm not a doctor but all the symptoms and all that are gone and you're not shedding

107the virus actively at the 14 day point now we could probably sit here all night and refute that and argue back and forth because there's so much stuff out there but we have chose a symptoms-based approach just because the test base is not realistic in getting people to return to work so to answer kind of the can't answer i just gave you to your question is um yes we require we we are contact with them so we require the honor system for them to say i'm symptom-free i don't have a fever um you know i haven't had fever for 24 hours i don't have the chills i don't have all those symptoms that are listed with that um and to go from there thank you um mr hicks as you mentioned we were going through

108um the cleaning protocols you you probably were just speaking in relation to the fact that front office staff they're the ones that are here now so maybe that's the only reason but i just wanted just for clarity when you're saying like every day that front office is clean staff bathrooms are clean i'm assuming that student bathrooms and a classroom like the whole campus is cleaned with that same procedure every day mr president member support yes so there's a highlighted focus of with no students on campus uh to make sure staff bathrooms are cleaned multiple times um three times in a day where traditionally abm would not be doing that so that is different when students are going to be on so yes they clean the whole campus and district office my office gets cleaned and

109trash taken out so they're doing that but we've re-prioritized some of the things they're doing to focus on where the staff are right now okay two quick questions from mr croto okay um for teachers and i school are we giving priority to teachers who um maybe have some underlying health conditions or for whatever reason they just feel like mainly probably for health that it wouldn't be in their best interest to be in the classroom but they're still willing to work and they're still you know they're wanting that high school option i mean assuming i know there's a fine balance because we have to make sure they're the highly qualified and the best for that particular need of that classroom but are we giving priority to staff members who um have underlying health conditions for ischool

110options mr president miss richard uh we are taking those people that are asking for accommodations they have to go through the interactive process for ada accommodations so that is a a process that they go through to fill out paperwork um have medical documentation and that such so we are processing those we are working through those there has to be opportunities for them not necessarily to teach at home but maybe reduce the class size as opportunities come available we just had an opportunity today where a school selected to have one teacher at a certain grade level teach all the online kids instead of spreading it out so we did provide an ada accommodation in that instance so we are going it's kind of a case-by-case basis on what the doctor recommends as we're going through the

111process so they write down on the sheet what they recommend for an employee so yes we are working with them we're trying to work with them is it necessarily everybody gets to work from home that answer is no but we are working with all our employees to try accommodate them the best we can and still keep our environment um our learning environment intact basically okay and then my last question is just in regard to our classified staff hourly staff um what are we doing to accommodate them i know we like we've we've transitioned our certificated staff members back in like slowly with the the green blue schedule um what are we doing for classified and then also have you been forward thinking as far as again if depending on what the governor says um if

112we were to delay our start just making sure because our hourly staff i mean even a couple years ago when things happen in schools close they're they're without and i i kind of want because now we have this time i want to be able to hope we're we're planning and we're considering that so they're not you know they're having as much anxiety as the next person regarding what's going to happen with my my paycheck and my livelihood and job so mr president ms pritchard you're absolutely right that the difference between the spring and and today this fall is in the spring the governor said everybody gets paid through the end of the school year so he basically waived a very critical law that is in place now and that is the gift of public funds

113law that we can't give money away if somebody doesn't work we can't just give them money for them not working whereas in the spring the governor essentially waived that when he said everybody gets paid through the end of the year so we are very considerate of all of our employees in fact that is one of the driving motivations of starting school on august 4th when the governor said school starts on august 17th because if we waited until august 17th all of our employees who have job-related responsibilities to the students would not be paid until the students return to school including all of our teachers most of our support staff the bus drivers so that was a horrible situation for our employees to ex to have to expect about a month delay in any any income

114as we're moving forward at this point that is still a very key consideration is how does any decision that we make impact all employees it's one of those pieces of the puzzle so as it is today the gift of public funds law is intact that's the second thing that i would ask the governor is to waive the gift of public funds clause so that we could use our employees in a manner that is not we could reassign them to different jobs or if so be that our bus drivers are needed on tuesdays and thursdays to distribute food or to help out in in the school wiping down door handles or but we don't need them five days out of the week that they don't go without any revenue or any income but as it is

115right now if we were to delay until october with having students back in the classrooms there's a very high chance that there'd be certain employee groups that would not get paid other districts are currently furloughing their employees basically saying we don't need you now you're not going to get paid until we need you and please don't leave us well dysert has a high need for bus drivers and we would happily take any bus driver who's furloughed from another business is that a plug thank you that's that's all i have i just want to say real quick like i know that this reopening schools is um just it there's no there's no one i have talked to that is middle ground that just says whatever happens happens it's either very passionate about reopening or very passionate

116about not reopening and so i know that you as our administrators or administration is you're tasked with the impossible of trying to make everyone happy and i know that's impossible but i do know that you know dysart's always been data driven and i appreciate you said that you look at the data you see what what truly is going on and trying to make decisions with that but i also appreciate the fact that you say you're also trying to be very empathetic for people in their situations and i know that everyone has a different experience with what is going on and for some it is a very fearful experience and for some it's it's not and but i appreciate the fact that you are also trying to be very empathetic to what everybody's situation is um

117i like the fact i love the fact that you guys are focused on dysart and like you said other districts are doing other things but keeping it very focused on what is best for dysart and so i really appreciate that and and i think just tonight shows that you guys aren't just making flippant decisions that every question that i've ever asked or i've noticed my board members asked you've thought about you have an answer to and it just goes to show there's been much time and effort and we recognize that and know that and appreciate all the time and effort that you've put into this i know that um you know just with your goals you've had when we hired on dr kellis he had great expectations and great things planned for dysart that i

118know have been put on hold because of the situations that we're dealing with and so i just appreciate all the effort that has gone into you know trying to prepare to open our schools and um and i just i just hope you know that i have full trust in our administration for because of all the time and effort that you're putting in as well as being empathetic to those around us so thank you so much anyone else going once going twice all right you guys can all wipe the sweat off your heads the tough questions are over we're only going with easy questions for the rest of the night miss pritchard [Laughter] appreciate you guys on all your feedback and like i said it's it's you know we're working together it's a great community it's

119a great place to be and uh like miss tanner said um i trust um this process and and what we're doing because at the end of the day um each one of us gets to come and be a part of the process as well so it's not that we're making decisions that we are not directly affected by um and you know we don't get the option to stay at home either when the the things come back it's everybody comes back and we're all fully engaged so i'm excited and i look forward to the governor and what he has to please say something good and so we'll support support our leaders and and do what we need to so thank you for that all right moving right along let's see where are we at all right

120we are going to action discussion item eye number one recommendation to approve a pro statement for the maintenance and operations budget override election to be held on november 3rd 2020. dr kellis thank you mr president members of the board and members of cabinet earlier this year the governing board voted to call for an election of an override for the dysert unified school district this evening mr hicks will introduce this item and explain why this pro statement is necessary as part of that election mr president members of the board superintendent dr kellis colleagues community members thank you for allowing me to continue to present tonight tonight this is the pro statement for the governing board for the 15 uh continuation of the m o override um so as you can see from the agenda language uh

121for elections um it is uh different between a bond and an override election when a board approves a resolution for a bond election they are not allowed to approve a pro statement but for an override they are required to so a lot of times this will be attached to the resolution um i think that was june 10th and i had a lot going on and uh did not make dates to um the pre the pro statement that we had previously so i updated that and this is a requirement and this is our last governing board member before the required date board meeting before the required date so i've made the slight modifications to the attached pro statement and uh would be happy to go through it and make sure that everything is okay with the

122governing board or if we want to make modifications i can make the modifications approved as in and then i have to submit this um tomorrow to maricopa county for the ballot they're waiting i think i've gotten three emails from them in the last day and a half so i will leave it to the board to discuss and approve that is one way to improve your popularity statuses to keep them on the hook i've read it anybody else have any questions um discussion all right without any discussion all motion to approve the resolution of the governing board's argument in support of the continuation of the special maintenance and operations budget override election second motion made by jay leonard seconded by tracy sawyer sink belt let's go ahead and vote the declaration of the trust dr kellis

123thank you mr president members of the board and members of cabinet mr hicks will introduce the assignment good evening mr president members of the board superintendent dr colleagues and community members i do appreciate your time and thank you very much for allowing me to present this agenda item this is a slight modification to our current employee benefit trust board agreement this change what it will allow it will allow one member that's on the board to actually have a spouse or dependent uh that is an employee of the district so they themselves would not be an employee but they would have and um it is so that's the really the only change this is it's um one that is small and i also don't believe that it would hinder the trust's ability to make the best

124decisions and recommendations um going forward uh knowing that they're unduly influenced because they have a spouse or dependent that is actually an employee with this change with this change and if the board approves it uh tonight we will post our and advertise for our community to apply because we do have some open seats so we have technically two open seats that will be presented hopefully if we're able to post that tomorrow or friday get it'll be a google form for them to apply and then we will bring back to the board on the august 12th governing board meeting to recommend our new uh board uh trust board employee benefit trust board member so i'll be happy to answer any questions you have thank you for that do we have any uh discussion any questions i

125i had one question uh mr hicks the the folks that have been on the employee trust uh benefits trust um they've been on it for a while we've had some long-standing people so you don't think that there would be any issues in trying to find a couple of other people um mr president members of the board we do have one that is not continuing okay so um mr christie has done an amazing job leading and helping um he is asked to pass the torch and let somebody else please take so even though we have two expiring and we will be posting for two one will be renewed um and recommended but his technically his term expired june 30th so it's technically we did not bring him back to the board before so it's not a

126continuation we're making him reapply um and we will have one new board member because they've been on it for a while and um continuing to be on it is is a it was a great thing so i'm glad that they gonna miss him um if i could just say they provide a lot of continuity because of their knowledge and understanding so conversations happen quicker discussions so that they're able to make the best recommendations and to technically they're like an oversight and so they hold us accountable to make sure that we're doing what's right for our police um are we able to thank mr christie at a later date as far as the board i would that's a great idea okay apologize that i didn't think of that myself well yes thank you very much but

127no powerpoint when you do it and by no power point she means a very short presentation so i'll make sure we clarify clarified that after you cleared your desk earlier you any other discussion on this one yeah just a super quick question for clarification so how is this any different than um how board members aren't allowed to have a spouse or dependent is it because the trustee board doesn't approve have final approval over as far as then because i know like with us it's because you're voting on benefits and salaries so even though they're dealing with benefits is it because they don't technically have final approval is that the difference the difference of why this is uh recommended and our attorney reviewed it and approved it yeah in regard to just the difference because you're

128asking us to approve this now i'm just asking as far as like how it's different that the trustee board they're asking to say having one if a board member i remember on that board has a spouse or a dependent that but now that's allowed and i'm just saying how's that different from like a governing board cannot have a spouse or a dependent working in the district so is it because the trustee board doesn't have final approval where the board is actually voting on it so can actually um madam president mr president members of the board um so uh by that's by law in statute of that this is a trust board agreement that we've created as our governing board so we can control you could say all employees be on it um right now our

129attorney did not uh restrict that in that sense and so we're doing what we think is the fairest and having up to one allows for more people to be on it is hard sometimes to find people to serve on these boards and so we don't want to limit the number of people that would advertise that we're going to advertise to try to be on the board and so they would be on they don't have finals so the governing board has the purse strings and so um they could recommend something and you could overrule them so it does also have that extra layer just as you just described okay i'm just curious thanks great discussion thank you any other discussion all right i'll motion to approve the changes to the employee benefit trust agreement and declaration

130of trust second motion made by jay leonard seconded by ms sawyer seat belt let's go ahead and vote thank you mr president members of the board and members of cabinet mr hicks will take this item as well i knew there was going to be slides [Music] mr president members of the board superintendent dr kellis colleagues and community members i'm extremely happy to be presenting uh my final agenda item for tonight and here tonight i actually have a miss mr ben madison from mid-state uh energy well i think you're now verity there's a change in name change in the company we'll be here co-presenting with me on the item we actually have uh two others for uh that are online that uh give support and uh mr james gill with augusta rosenfeld is our attorney in

131this manner and he is watching online for two items one we've already done on the pro statement to answer any questions but he's also supporting online for this agenda item and mr brian lundberg who's with stiefel is also online by email or text message if i say anything wrong they're empowered to let me know to correct that but just wanted to acknowledge their help and support as we go forward in this so we will myself and ben will go back and forth over we have uh uh upgrades through equipment upgrades we're going to have savings but we're using the savings to pay for itself so that means budget neutral in a lot of cases here's our um what we're talking about um the simplicity of this is this actually has started um three years ago

132bendy remember how long you've been working it was before i got here yes yep correct uh you can chime in so we've been working on this for three years dysart has looking at it um reviewing it and it requires and i'll let ben go into investment grade audits and and other things that are required to be done but it provides just the simplicity is to save money through energy conservation measures to help pay for those improvements so i'm just going to hit it again of budget neutral and i'm hitting that again and i'll say many times over and ben's going to say it probably on the next slide and we'll say it by the end because um through many times and i've started some of these and stopped them and they did not pay for

133themselves or when i first started it the very first time i tried it uh looking into this was about nine years ago and the savings uh was hardly any savings and i just said why am i doing this i'm not going to go through all of this for almost no savings and just as a reminder we're not doing it to save lots of money because we're going to use the savings to pay for the equipment we're doing it to upgrade the equipment at no cost to our taxpayers or to our budget and so just as a reminder that's our goal safety comfort and energy efficient energy efficiency and sustainability so let ben talk a little bit perfect thanks ken uh mr president members of the board uh superintendent dr kellis members of the community thank

134you i'm ben matson principal executive with uh with mid-state energy thanks for the introduction ken ken told me i had an hour and a half [Laughter] but you do as long as it's a tremendous but i'll keep it pretty uh pretty basic so energy performance contracts at uh at their core they were developed they've been around for over 35 years in the last 12 years they've really been developed here in arizona they were developed by the department of energy the school facilities board arizona schools as you all know being board members are are usually drastically underfunded there's always budget concerns and most importantly districts have a hard time passing bonds so performance contracts are a way to utilize your existing uh budget of utility cost and if you think about your school and then there's

135these dollar bills escaping out of the school from inefficiencies whether that be lighting hvac controls all of that money escapes out we simply grab that money and then redirect it back into capital infrastructure so if you look at the graph here i think this is the best explanation of how a performance contract works um the utility costs column there on the left hand side then the energy project comes into play where there's the debt service that's paying for the actual upgrades themselves your utility costs drop there's additional savings above that and then after the project the savings is all there the entire amount it's still the same amount of money um and so that's that is why districts have uh have utilized these so much is to utilize their existing uh budgets um and redirect

136that back into capital needs so um a lot of times we call them self-funded capital improvements um but the best thing about these is its capital upgrades without increasing taxes uh and so that's why i do like the explanation i love this graph because when i first said no the nine years ago said hey it's not saving enough because it's paying i'm not putting a lot of money back into mno over the 12 years or 11 years that we're looking at that project and that and so i just said no but the goal wasn't to save mno during those 11 years it's to upgrade equipment that's 18 19 20 years old for no cost and so the savings is not instead of paying aps we're going to pay paying a financing institution for these so

137and then there's other uh uh soft costs that are also beneficial to the district which uh i know bob and his team are looking forward to led lights um have a warranty of 10 years seven years yeah ten years ten years and so if one fails uh they don't fail as often we don't have to change lights as often we get cases um from the warranty and if it does we don't have to buy a light bulb for the next 10 years we like that it allows them to redirect their time to do other things we'll move on to the yeah thank you um last thing i'll say on performance contracting the biggest thing for the statute is guaranteed energy savings so if we say we're going to save dicer to million dollars and next

138year we come in at 900 grand by state statute i would have to owe you a check for a hundred grand so we've been in business for over 35 years we've wrote two checks so it's not i'm not saying it hasn't happened but the risk is on us to make sure that the savings are there uh this is uh mid-state energy's ego slide this is how great we are so i won't spend too much time on this uh we're the largest company here in arizona we're a home-grown company we've helped school district achieve actually it's up to almost 400 million now we have three offices in arizona and we employ uh now it's at over 300 people actually some of them live right here in your school district we've worked from flagstaff to nogales to

139santa cruz the glendale union glendale al over over 68 districts that participated in our energy performance contracts i think well i don't want to keep talking to continue i was going to share some stories but let's just go on what are we doing yeah so ken mentioned leds this is a big part this is kind of a low-hanging fruit item i'm sure if you walk the the aisles of home depot or lowe's you'll see a lot of things about led lighting this has a great payback and most importantly this is where we really see an enhanced learning environment making sure that all the light levels at the desks are the same um 10-year warranty the actual hour rated it is actually over 75 000 hours which is over 30 years we get really positive feedback

140on our lighting as it has an impact in the classroom we hear a lot of great feedback in special needs classrooms where fluorescent lighting has a tend to pulsate and led lights really can help calm the environment and make for a better learning and better learning space in special needs areas kind of anything to add on leds nope they have a great return their roi is very good uh next thing um this is really a major capital infrastructure need of the district uh and that's the south central plant or by uh dysert high school uh this this is part of our project we're looking at a complete upgrade of the pumps the chillers the associated piping the control system this is really aging hvac equipment this is a this is a definitely a need for

141the school district and as part of our project we're going to be looking to to completely revamp what they call this central plant anything there ken the next thing is building automation or demand management um you may have heard the term smart buildings uh this is where hvac controls really come into play demand is really a topic of conversation uh with utilities right now um if you um mr croto there's got you know two cans two cans of coke there if he decides to chug the one on the left and then sip the one on the right the one on the left that he decides to chug i won't make him chug it but uh the one on the left could be you know would be five dollars and the one on the right that

142he decides to sip is only 50 cents that's my best explanation for demand but how you use your buildings is so important now it's not just about kwh savings or reduction it's actually how you're utilizing your energy and they the utilities company call that demand this is also an area where we're going to aid in your covid response uh mr hicks talked in the beginning of of the board meeting about fresh air and controlling that space if there is a cobia 19 case we can implement negative pressure strategies we can bring in necessary fresh air all of that has to do with smart building controls and so it allows district and the district facility to really help aid the building operations also your space is really changing right now and this is going to allow

143you to save additional money if you don't have to operate heat and cool and turn the lights on if there aren't teachers there and so this is really going to allow for some additional savings we first implemented this ken if you want to talk about maybe our case study that we did i was just going to share we have done this at surprise elementary and for the last year we've saved over 40 percent on their utility bills now it does create some confusion because we do have solar and so um what we have done looking through and we've uh created a connection with our automation demand management we connect it to yahoo weather so it looks at the what's the weather going to be in the next six hours and it makes automatic adjustments to

144control that we also super cool the buildings during the day so when we hear complaints that we're wasting electricity because it's during the day we're not we're using the free electricity that we're going to pay for no matter what which is solar we supercool it the block holds the temperature in longer and then we're able to shut the air off sooner so that we save money where we're going to pay money with aps and it has been extremely successful that we've saved over 40 uh on the year and so it's been a we're looking to expand that district-wide with this program great so this is uh uh final benefits really as ken mentioned it's utilizing utility savings to pay for capital improvements making this a budget neutral decision corrects a lot of building deficiencies and

145improves the student environment our main goal here is is bringing in some safer comfort and energy efficiencies um we're looking at a rebate from directly from aps of upwards of four hundred thousand dollars of free money that's coming from the utility uh so we're really excited about that we do offer ongoing energy sustainability training where we can help work with your building some of the culture we do a solar car race a wind farm exhibit where we can bring in some of the energy and sustainability into the classroom so we definitely will be working with the dysart staff on that standardizing equipment um as i mentioned aiding in some cobia 19 procedures and then the most important thing of why these work and how they work is that the savings are guaranteed and so yeah

146the total cost so this is a big project we're doing something at every single school at every single site whether it's leds or i think all but two of our sites i think two of them already have it uh ems our energy management system the demand peak management to adjust and manage that uh and then that central plan at dysart high school so which is a very big here's the utility rebate our estimated payment in annual savings and the payment financing and i'll go through the next steps as we get to that so as i've gotten a text already from mr gill about hearing and some choppiness online and it's been corrected our next steps we have already engaged an attorney to help create all of our documentation resolutions and forms needed financing is we

147actually will go out to the open market so we're hiring stifle to be a placement agent so they will put we'll we've already worked on some term sheets and the background to be able to go out to the market and collect uh bids essentially uh in the capital marketplace um that allows us then to place the money uh into an escrow account as we do the construction we'll make payments of that and then we pay the lending institution that did that it is actually a really good time right now to be going out the rates are very low and it's almost every two weeks when i'm talking to mr lumberg it goes down another 10 basis points in that sense so it is continuing to improve our financial situation and our savings guarantee is getting

148that much easier to reach so the financing as i just mentioned the walk through this really quickly that is part of what all the agreements and there is attached to this agenda item exhibit a which lists what is being done at every single school so that uh people in our community will be able to see what's all being done uh construction uh will be done over the next 10 months 10 to 12 months to be completed and then we'll start seeing the savings and start making the payments back on that um everything's been uh we're doing it in with our attorneys to make sure they're okay with everything to make sure we're following all the laws and making it sure that it's appropriate and so um just a little background how long we've been working

149on this it did require part of it i don't think we mentioned was the investment grade audit so mid-state had to come out for about three or four months and just inventory and audit wearing what we are how many lights we have how many light bulbs what systems do we have look at all of our bills for the last year to create the baseline and so the benefit is looking at this obviously we could do a lot more to conserve more and more but he has to give a performance guarantee that he's guaranteed to save it so the more things we throw in that don't have a quick roi like in led lighting the harder it is so sometimes we'll look and say you know that's not we're going to get the savings for that

150we can't do it because we have to guarantee it so there are some things that we move out of it but the benefit is is that this is not going it's not going to the bond a bond committee it's not going to be reviewed we're going to make all these capital improvements with the savings that we're going to be getting from these capital improvements and hopefully we've answered all your questions i didn't time it but i think that was a pretty good one we're going to have to invite the enforcer to be at all of your presentations so then they put that quickly so that you're always looking over your shoulder definitely appreciate that now i i love i love what you're doing the fact that we can you know see see these improvements and

151fund the equipment and make it a win-win is is amazing and i appreciate you guys and especially your company and for the oversight and just the vision that you have for for looking at this and making it something that that we as dysart can utilize i think it's an amazing program and and i like people that put their you know their neck on the line and and uh definitely can appreciate the guarantee and and how you have to walk the line as well so i appreciate that partnership that's very important for us any questions or discussions on this one i did have one question um as one of those folks that can't quite stand the fluorescent um any of it any offices that i have had um i've had them turn the lights off or

152dis disconnect they're very hard on my eyes so i greatly appreciate that but one of the things that you had said nine years ago it just wasn't good for you and i think it was at peoria right i was a little i was that little to that okay um what changed what specifically changed your mind from nine years ago to now i know that and i've read the presentation and everything but there had to be something specific that changed your mind from then to now yeah no mr president members of the board it was uh i looked at it as the total cost over a 10-year period and the total savings were almost exact and so there was no i i was looking at it as why would i do this i'm not saving that

153mno money i don't want to go through all this maybe i'll save a little bit in year 11 when it's all paid off but i have to wait 11 years for the savings and to me that was looking uh i i just was one of the ones looking at it wrong at the time you can get all your equipment upgraded it might not it's going to provide a little bit of savings on a annual basis but not a ton considering the size of the project but we upgrade all of our equipment at no cost and so i was looking at it why don't i save more money just net dollars when really i'm getting free upgrades to all of our capital equipment uh through the savings so i believe i looked at it wrong as

154well and i'll be honest i think we could actually save even more money and we've talked um we we least purchase our solar are we third party purchaser of our solar right now when i look at how much we pay and what the pbis are we could save more money on solar and so that might be something that would be coming down the pike in the next six months now all of our schools have the solar almost all of them but we don't own any of that and so but i thought all of them two sides two sides yeah okay okay all right thank you you're welcome i just wanted to add um you kind of touched on it mr hicks but rather quickly and i want to back up because we talk about fiscal

155responsibility and how that's a priority of dice arts i mean looking at the fact that i and i can't quote the year but i know there's a time or maybe it's ongoing that chillers for some school would be diced for high school or whatever it always shows up on our bond like there's always an issue with like for chillers the fact that you know you have found an innovative way or thought rethought you know another option without going to the taxpayers i really appreciate that i would just like to commend you for um working with our means and finding this option that once we had to go out and ask through a bond not not that there aren't you know still things out there but this is a big one and i just really appreciate

156the fact that you have um presented this as an option as as you're saying it's gonna it's gonna save us a lot so thank you for thinking outside the box that way too you're welcome we've actually uh from the last bond that failed we've taken a lot of things and said where else can we get funding for these and we've sent letters to the sfb you've seen our sfb building renewals go up as we're looking at every direction and this is one of the directions to find to get those capital improvements without having to go to our taxpayers well and as a board member i appreciate you but as a taxpayer in this community as well i appreciate that that you do that for us so thank you anything else um i i'm you know

157i'm just scanning through the contract here and all the information but if we were to expand um and add a school like say four or five years from now will this agreement cover those schools as well um mr president members of the board no so this is only the capital upgrades that we're doing with these construction that we will save the money and so what we would do is well first of all a lot of these are older so they're they're it's the timeliness new construction we'd incorporate to make sure we have demand management and other requests when we put it in a lot of these that we put in 20 years ago do not have those systems in place right now i understand i know the cost would obviously alter as we as we

158expand or grow but um i guess what i'm saying is it would it be an automatic thing that we would use this process for those schools or we need to revisit as we add yeah i think go ahead yeah um mr mr president um and uh i'm sorry i couldn't see your last name but uh to answer your question yeah so the one thing that this is doing is standardization of products and materials and so so there's not 20 different types of light bulbs across the district right it's your one there's one style so we do see that new construction or updated construction we want to use those standardized processes we're on phase 6 7 8 9 10 with a lot of different districts throughout throughout arizona so we have come back we weren't doing

159leds five six years ago but we were still doing these contracts so now if there's more opportunities for savings we would come back talk to mr hicks and his team to say hey these are some other additional opportunities so i hope that helps answer your question okay thank you yes um this dense word did he answer your question because i okay i thought you were saying as if we or when we at our new high school um were that was that covered under that's what i thought that you were asking yeah i thought that's what he said okay yes all right okay sorry maybe i will say okay okay thank you thank you awesome thank you any other questions all right i'll make a motion to approve the resolution to authorize the expenditure and delivery

160of the installation agreement a tax-exempt equipment lease purchase agreement an escrow agreement related documents and authorize the assistant superintendent of business services to approve and execute the agreement and any affiliated documents motion made by jay leonard seconded by chris christie christie pritchard thank you let's go ahead and vote and we pass thank you very much appreciate the presentation let's go ahead and move on to action discussion ifor the governing board resolution to honor in honor of the dysart unified school district centennial dr kellis thank you mr president members of the board and members of cabinet it's not very often that um i personally would recommend a resolution to the board nor is it typical for the dysart board over the history in recent years to adopt resolutions but this is a big deal um as

161we celebrate our 100th anniversary and well it only comes around 100 years and so we want to break tradition and request that the board approve this resolution and if the board would indulge me i would like to read the resolution that's unified school district resolution in honor of the dicer unified school district centennial whereas for 100 years the dicer unified school district has been a valuable asset to the northwest valley by providing an extraordinary education to preschool through high school students and whereas nathaniel martin dicert first established dysert public schools by donating land and convening a governing board on july 1920 as a one-room schoolhouse with one teacher and whereas in its early years dysert district served elementary students until 1962 when it opened its first high school dicert high school to accommodate growth and

162whereas the dysart unified school district was officially established as a consolidated k-12 system in 1977 and in 2001 hyper growth created an influx of residents which greatly increased the demand for new schools the district has since grown to serving over 24 000 preschool through high school students at 20 k-8 schools and four high schools a preschool and one alternative program and whereas die search schools offer a quality competitive education to the community has 17 schools with an a or b rating from the arizona state board of education and have had eight schools designated as a plus schools of excellence by the original arizona education foundation over the past 10 years and whereas the dye cert unified school district offers abundant choices and innovative programs to the community attracting jobs and economic opportunities for the northwest

163valley and whereas dysart plays a key role in training for the future workforce of our community by offering award-winning career and technical education programs signature programs and college prep and testing opportunities and whereas dicer unified school district will commemorate its centennial with special events and activities during the 2020 2021 school year and now therefore the geister unified school district governing board reaffirms our desire to continue to provide a quality competitive education to future generations within the dysart community we hereby recognize july 22 2020 as the start of the 100th anniversary year of the dysart unified school district and invite our students parents staff and community to participate in activities and events to commemorate the dysart unified school district's centennial year and with that administration request that the board approve this resolution thank you and thank

164you for reading that that's an amazing document any discussion i need to celebrate yeah what kind of events are we doing mr president miss tanner um we plan on having a host of virtual events [Laughter] i'll virtually be excited then i'll make the motion to approve and adopt the resolution in honor of the dysart unified school district centennial second motion made by jay leonard seconded by jen tanner let's go ahead and vote and it passes unanimously thank you i'm excited about that thank you so much for putting it together let's go ahead and move on to action item j1 request for future agenda items anybody going once going twice all right we'll go ahead and move on to action item k1 motion for the adjournment of the meeting and i will make the motion to

165adjourn second motion made by jay leonard seconded by tracy for our seat belt oh sorry don densmore motion passes will adjourn thank you everybody it's great seeing you