001Mhm. >> I thought it was going to be like a lapel mic or something or maybe a Bob Barker microphone. >> GoPro. >> Yeah, ooh, better. All right, we're going to go ahead and get our start with our executive sessions. We've got three executive ex We've got three executive sessions tonight. We're not in a rush. We can just take our time. We've got three executive sessions tonight. Uh pursuant to all three are pursuant to ARS 38-431.03A1 to discuss the potential appointment of Carrie Castro as principal of Mesquite High School. The second executive session is the same but to discuss the potential appointment of Elise Torbert as principal of Gilbert Classical Classical Academy. And the third executive session is the same suit to discuss the potential appointment of Tyler Dumas as assistant superintendent of teaching and
002learning. Is there a motion to move into executive session? >> So moved. >> Thank you, Mr. Brainard. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Ms. Humphreys. All those in favor of moving into executive session, say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? And we are in executive session. We'll go ahead and go over to the first floor conference room. >> Mhm. >> on. We're waiting on one of Oh. Waiting on one of our board members and our superintendent. So, what we're going to do is we're going to turn the mic on if anybody has any jokes they want to come up and tell, you're welcome to. Just kidding. That was a joke. Um so, if you all just bear with us and give us a few minutes, we'll get started as soon as we
003can. Thank you. Thank you all for being here. All right. We'll go ahead and get started now. Uh want to already did, but I'll do it again. Welcome everybody to our board meeting tonight, March 31st. And we want to welcome everybody that's watching online. And we'll start by calling this meeting to order, and we will observe a moment of silence, and then I will lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. If you would all please stand. >> Thank you. >> 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 very much. We will do roll call. Miss Wilson. >> Mr. Chad Thompson. >> Here. >> Miss Shayna Murray. >> Here. >>
004Dr. Blake Robison. >> Here. >> Miss Jill Humphreys. >> Here. >> Mr. Jesse Brainard. >> Here. >> Mr. President Mr. President, all board members are present. You have a quorum. >> Thank you, Miss Wilson. We will move right into our approval tonight. Approval of tonight's agenda. Is there a motion to approve tonight's agenda as outlined? >> So moved. >> Thank you, Miss Humphreys. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Mr. Brainard. All those in favor of approving tonight's agenda as outlined Hang on. I would Hold, please. Okay, I would like to propose a change to our agenda tonight. Basically, a reorganization of our agenda tonight. I'd like to propose that we move action items 9.02, 9.03, and 9.04 to just after 4.01 Superintendent's Recognition and Awards. Are there any discussion or >> I'll
005take you a second first. >> Oh, would anybody like to second my motion? >> Second. >> Thank you, Mr. Brainard. Anybody oppose? >> No. >> Okay. All right, then all those in favor of approving tonight's agenda with the changes we just I just motioned and was seconded and say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Thank you very much. We'll jump right into the highlight of well, one of the one of the highlights. We have so many things going on tonight. One of the highlights of tonight's meeting, Superintendent's Recognition and Awards, and I'll turn the time over to Dr. McCord. >> Thank you, Mr. President. Governing board members, if you'd join me in front of the dais for this evening's recognitions. Can you hear me? >> Yeah. >> Woo! First thing I've done right all day.
006Um good evening, everyone. How are you? >> Good. Looks like we got a pretty vibrant crowd here tonight. Before I get to the recognitions, I want to acknowledge a few people in the audience. Uh first from our superintendent student senate, uh these are juniors and seniors uh throughout our high schools uh that um are part of the superintendent senate. We meet on a monthly basis and we actually ask them to come to some of our events so they can see what we do and uh so they can kind of learn about what's going on in the district. So, uh if Mary Maguire and Carter Carmichael, please stand up. They're both from GCA. Mary's a senior, Carter's a junior. Welcome. Thank you guys for being here. And then from our Aspire program, which is uh a
007group of individuals who are educators who that are thinking about becoming administrators one day. So, we have an Aspire program that we kind of put them through the paces. They get a see a glimpse of what that looks like and tonight we have Mr. Jeff Singer from Aspire. Please stand. And smile. There you go. Big smile. There you go. All right. Thank you for that. Uh tonight we're going to honor a few different categories. The first one is our AP Honor Roll schools for the 2025. Launched in 2023, the AP School Honor Roll recognizes schools whose AP programs are delivering results for students while broadening participation. Schools can earn this recognition annually based on criteria that reflect a commitment to increasing college-going culture, providing opportunities for students to earn college credit, and maximizing college readiness.
008The AP School Honor Roll offers four levels of distinction: bronze, silver, gold, and platinum. And tonight we have three schools that we would like to honor. So, from Gilbert Classical Academy, if you guys would come on up. Give them a hand. Come on, Mr. Dr. Hood. Now, Gilbert Classical Academy earned the platinum honor, which is the highest recognition. So, please give them another hand. If you guys would introduce yourselves and what you do at GCA and then you pass it down. I know, you were looking at me funny. >> Um I'm Dr. Hood. I'm the principal of Gilbert Classical Academy. >> Rebecca Jocelyn. I am a performing arts teacher and performing arts department chair. >> As Dr. McCord has already introduced, I'm Carter Carmichael and I'm a learner at Gilbert Classical Academy. And AP taker.
009>> Taker, pep head, all that kind of stuff. Hi guys, my name is Mary. I'm our student body president. >> I'm Vedra Colly and I teach multiple different things at GCA. >> Humanities, there you go. >> Humanities. Hey, give these guys a hand. What a great honor. If you guys would shake hands with the board and then stay for a picture, that'd be great. Well done, guys. Stay right here. It's picture time. >> Picture time. You guys stand in the middle, we'll crowd around you. >> Okay. Who wants to feel tall? >> That would be me. Well done, PCA. Next up, if I could have Highland High School, those individuals representing tonight. Come on, Chad. Listen, you can't argue with me from the stands. Goodness gracious. Yeah. Oh. >> I dropped my leg. >> You
010look good. You look good. Highland High School received the bronze 2025 AP School Honor Roll. Give them a hand. Introduce yourselves since you didn't know you were going to be up here. >> Yeah, exactly. I'm I'm Mr. Taylor, Chad Taylor, and I teach AP Human Geography and AP Art History. >> I am Brian Yee, principal at Highland High School. >> Hi, I'm Lauren Harmon. I'm one of the assistant principals at Highland High School. >> Well done, Highland. Shake hands. Stay here. Picture time. >> No, these shorts are going to be memorialized in pictures. >> Well done. Thank you, Highland. And last but not least, if I could have those from Campo Verde come up. Campo Verde received the bronze 2025 AP High School Honor Roll. Congratulations to them. If you guys introduce yourselves. >> Todd
011Dumas, principal. >> Jeff Singer, administrator. >> Erica Helfrey, administrator. >> Shannon Lang, counselor. >> Monique Dor, assistant principal. >> Sarah McManus, counselor and AP coordinator. >> Congratulations, Campo. You know the drill. Shake hands and smile. Yeah, this is this is usually how it goes. We are honoring AP, right? It's leave They didn't take that class. All right. Get in there and we'll scoot around you. Thank you, Campo. So, every year we have a district spelling bee. And um it's it's an amazing sight to see if any of you have ever attended that. Um how many of you in here think you're good spellers without using technology? Just raise your hand. See? Good for you. Good for you. Yeah, I'm not. And so, every time I go to the spelling bee or any spelling bee I've
012ever been to, I'm just always amazed and and uh really really proud of these students and what they accomplish in that arena. A big thank you to Dr. Karen Coleman, where are you? There you are. She helps coordinate uh this event and uh does an awesome job introduct introducing everybody and getting it rolling, but uh a lot of work that goes behind it. Her and some other people definitely put it together and And just real proud of it. Thank you for keeping that going, Dr. Coleman. So, tonight we have Usually, we have the first eight places, right? First through eight. And tonight, we have four people because everybody's got busy lives that have confirmed that they're able to be here tonight. And so, um I just want to introduce these students. If they would come
013up when they I call their name. In seventh place, we had Stella Nabood from Mesquite Junior High School. Yep, right here. And then we'll get all of you at one time. In fifth place, August Richards from Gilbert Classical Accelerated Middle School. There you are. In second place, Tom Solis from Meridian Elementary. And the first place winner of the spelling bee from Gilbert Classical Academy, KAYLANI TORBERT. UM SO, THIS IS what why they shouldn't give me the microphone. Do you remember what word you What word did you go out on? Do you remember? It's all right. We got to relive it. We're We're not just building We're building character, stamina, memory skills. Do you remember? >> No. >> Do any of you remember? >> Yes. >> Yep. I'll come back to you. This might jar your
014memory. >> Uh Iroquois. >> Do you know how to spell it now? >> Yeah. >> Let's hear it. >> I r o q u o i s. Iroquois. >> How about you? >> Risposta. r i s p o s t a >> Say that word again. >> Risposta. That kind of Wow. Anybody know what that means or what No, the origin? Can you use it in a sentence? No, I can't either. Well, that's a tough word. And Kelani, our winner, what word did you win on? Do you remember that? >> Antigua. >> Let's hear Let's hear it. >> a n t i g u a >> Antigua. Wow. Did you remember? She's like, "Oh, hey, no way." All right, I'm going to have you back at the next board meeting. I expect you to No,
015I'm just kidding you. >> When the guy like pronounced the word, I wasn't really sure what he was saying, so Yeah, that's probably why I got out, but it's okay. >> Welcome to me if I was in the spelling bee. I don't I don't Hey, a lot of courage, a lot of studying, I know. Uh, more than anything, a lot of heart. So, congratulations. Please give them another hand, and if you guys would shake hands with the governing board and take a picture. Right here in the middle when you're done, and we'll crowd around you for a picture. >> You got it, Dad? >> Well done to our spellers. Thank you, guys. Congratulations. And last but not least, uh if I could have Brian Hutchens, please come up. Hi, Brian. >> Hello. >> How are
016you? >> Good. How are you? >> Good. Do you know how to spell? >> No, I don't know how >> We're going to You're going to have your own personal spelling bee right now. >> N O Well, that's not why you're here. You're here, Brian. You're a counselor at Mesquite High School, correct? >> Yes. >> And you have won the AZSCA School Counselor of the Year Award for 2026. Congratulations. >> Thank you. >> We're real proud of you. Uh we we work really hard to make sure that our schools are staffed appropriately with our counselors, and we're never fully there in my mind. So, I know what you guys do. I know I have some around the room, and it is amazing. It's not just changing schedules for those of you that wonder. Their work
017goes in all different directions. And more than anything, you're there for our kids, and that's what matters to me most as a superintendent. So, you winning this award is a big deal for Gilbert Public Schools, big deal for Mesquite High School, and it's just a win for counselors in general. So, congratulations. Thank you. You shake hands? >> Right in the middle of >> Right in the middle, buddy. Here. You're it. Congratulations again to all of our people. That concludes it for this evening. Yep. All right. Wow, so many of you stayed. Usually that's where the everybody goes, but not tonight. All right, we're going to take care of some action items out of order here, as we mentioned earlier. And we are going to, let's see, start with 9.02. I approve Carrie Castro as principal
018at Mesquite High School for the 2026-2027 school year. Is there a motion? >> I move that we approve Carrie Castro as principal at Mesquite High School for the 2026-2027 school year. >> Thank you, Mr. Brainard. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Ms. Murray. I Is there any any comments or anything anything anybody like to say? Okay, then let's do it. All those in favor of approving Carrie Castro as principal at Mesquite High School for the 2026-2027 school year, say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? And that passes. Thank you. >> Hi, Carrie. New principal of Mesquite High. Congratulations. Would you like to come up and say a few words? Yeah, no. Let me Let me Let me rephrase that. Come up and say a few words. You got to turn the microphone
019on. You need me to show you how. >> How do you do that? Is that good? Oh, that's good. Oh, goodness. Okay, my heart's beating real fast, so um I just want to take a moment to say thank you to the board. Um thank you to Dr. McCord. I've been with um Gilbert for 5 years now, four of them at Mesquite Junior, and I love that school, and so it was a big decision. Um but I know I'm supported by so many, Marcy Taylor and everyone else in um superintendency. But um I'm very excited. I want to thank my my crew that came from Mesquite Junior, and then we have crew from Mesquite High, and Shawn Lynch, the current principal Mesquite High, because he gave me my first admin job ever. So, I'm super thankful
020to um continue what I've started at Mesquite Junior and continue on with a lot of those same kids because next year, every kid that came through Mesquite Junior to Mesquite High will be someone that I have been the principal with, so it's very near and dear to my heart, and I love that community and the staff there, so um and my family, I like to thank them, too, cuz I just feel supported on on all areas, so thank you, and um I'll do my best. Thank you. >> All right, 9.03. Uh is there a motion to approve Elise Torbert as principal of Globe Gilbert Classical Academy for the 2026-2027 school year? >> Uh I move that we approve Elise Torbert as principal of Gilbert Classical Academy for the 2020-2027 school year. >> Thank you, Dr.
021Robinson. Is there a second? >> I second. >> Thank you, Ms. Humphries. I will call for the vote. All those in favor of approving Elise Torbert as principal of Gilbert Classical Academy for the 2026-2027 school year say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? And that passes. Thank you. >> Congratulations, Elise. Come on up. >> Mike Microphone's always going to be tricky. >> It's okay. You can take it out. >> Oh, it goes lower. I'm truly honored to accept the position of principal at Gilbert Classical Academy. Thank you, Dr. McCord, Dr. Ryan, Ms. Taylor, Mr. McIntosh, members of the senior cabinet, and members of the governing board for giving me this opportunity to serve the students, staff, and families at Gilbert Classical. I firmly believe that Gilbert is a special community. Gilbert Public Schools is an
022exceptional organization, and GCA is an extraordinary school. I'm both humbled and excited to join this community as we continue our pursuit for excellence. During the interview process, I had the opportunity to watch the video of Dr. McCord you passing the torch to Dr. Ryan in this very room. That moment has stayed with me. The respect for the past, the excitement for the future, the strong sense of team, and the genuine connection among all stakeholders was palpable. It speaks volumes about the culture here when building trust, collaboration, and a shared commitment to students. I'm especially excited to build upon the strong foundation that Dr. Hood has already established at GCA. Because of that foundation, the school is already exceptional, and I look forward to working alongside with the community to continue to strive to make GCA
023the number one school in the state. Thank you very much for the opportunity. Appreciate it. >> Thank you very much. Moving on to 9.04. Is there a motion to approve Tyler Dumas as assistant superintendent of teaching and learning for the 2026-2027 school year? >> I'd like to motion that we approve Tyler Dumas as assistant superintendent of teaching and learning for the 2026-2027 school year. >> Thank you, Ms. Humphreys. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Ms. Murray. All those in favor of approving Tyler Dumas as assistant superintendent of teaching and learning for the 2026-2027 school year, say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? And that passes as well. Thank you. >> Mr. Dumas. >> Quick question. Do you remember when we had a conversation before you came over to Gilbert Public Schools? >>
024Yeah. You weren't going to come at first, were you? >> I wasn't. No. >> No. But here you are. And how blessed we are to have you. So, congratulations. >> both ways, absolutely. So, good evening, President Thompson, members of the governing board, Dr. McCord, Dr. Ryan. Thank you for your trust and for this opportunity. I'm honored to serve in this role and support the continued work of teaching and learning in Gilbert Public Schools. I'm grateful for the leadership that has taken place and brought us to this point, and I look forward to building on that as we move forward. I want to take a second to recognize my wife, Paula, my children, their constant support, and they always ground me in what matters most. At the Campo Verde community, and to our staff, students, and
025to our families, thank you for allowing me to serve in this community that I actually call home. And all four of my children have attended Campo, graduated from Campo, so it was a meaningful very meaningful place for me. So, I'm grateful. I'm excited, and I'm ready uh for all the work ahead. Thank you. >> All right. Um I just wanted just take a brief moment and uh underscore what Dr. McChord said. We are truly blessed here in Gilbert Public Schools uh to have the best administrative staff and staff in the entire country. You thought I was going to say state, but it goes beyond that, and we are truly um can we are I I'm continually impressed with the level of professionalism and the talent that Gilbert Public Schools attracts, and it's because of you
026and because of your hard work and your dedication. So, thank you very much, and these appointments are just just another reason why Gilbert Public Schools is the best school district in the country. So, we're going to go ahead and take about a 5-minute break so that people anybody that wants to say congratulations to the uh appointees can do so, and then we'll come back and continue our board meeting. >> Usually you'd hear me coming with my shoes. It's like hollow floors. >> Hey. >> How are you? See, perfect. >> I know, that's why I said it. I did. >> You all get the car? >> Yeah, they are. >> They're going to be like popping in there. >> What do you guys do? You know, like when you go in a wedding and the >>
027Right. >> Announce the bridal party and everybody goes "Ooh." And then he got to do a move. >> Go. Robin's like "Oh." >> Not happening. >> Of course there's a million. >> Right, million. >> Online right now. I've seen the I I I stream it. I see the number at the bottom. >> Oh, the number counts? >> Oh, yeah. >> Yeah. >> Six viewers. One of which is going to be my wife. >> Right. >> I've been like Sean will be I told I told her a week ago. I said, "He'll be over here and you'll start seeing him." I kept telling her Put a timer on it. I told her I didn't tell her how to ask her. He'll start. >> How you doing tonight? >> I'm well. How are you doing? I got
028to go. All right. You're so sweet. >> Yeah. >> You're everything. You're the district. Oh, I watched the driver. >> Yes, I know. >> As soon as As soon as Don says, "Good evening." >> Okay. >> So, we'll see how many of them are. >> I appreciate how this one is like >> I thought I just had my one and then I came in all >> Christian >> I thought So, I like just the idea of going just to see her cuz I love her. >> I've been waiting for this day. >> Sure you are. >> But I've still been waiting for >> Okay. Welcome back. We're going to go ahead and continue our board meeting and we'll move into 5.01 or five superintendent's report and I'll turn the time over to Dr. Shane McCord.
029>> Thank you, Mr. President, governing board members. Good evening everyone again here tonight and those that are online. Uh just some things that are going on in Gilbert Public Schools this week. March 30th through April 3rd is Pave the Path Week. Right? There you go. That's what I was waiting for. Um in our elementary schools and I'd like to thank our preschool and kindergarten teams who are supporting over 800 preschool students to spend time inside kindergarten classrooms doing activities with kindergarten teachers and students to support them and their families in their move to the next level, which is kindergarten. And uh we'll hear from some of our preschool folks this in a little bit. Just a reminders the school calendar survey is out for staff and families for the 27-28, 28-29, and 29- 30 school
030years. The survey end needs to be completed by Tuesday, April 7th. And this Thursday at 4:30 p.m. at the DoubleTree Gilbert, we will be celebrating our annual Employee of the Year event. Uh this is an evening where we honor teachers, support staff, and administrators for their tireless dedication to our GPS students and community, and congratulations to all those being honored. And coming up, this is the month of the April is the month of the district art shows. Thursday, April 9th, is our high school art show held at Gilbert Global Academy from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m. Monday, April 13th, is uh and through Wednesday, April 15th, is our elementary art show held at the Norwood Furniture Complex downtown Gilbert from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. And the junior high art show will be held on Thursday, April
03123rd, at the Gilbert Global Academy again from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m. Uh so, please come check that out. You have no idea how talented our students are till you see that work up on the wall. We have Battle of the Books, April 21st at Mesquite Junior High, uh and that will be at Mesquite Well, again, at Mesquite Junior High, and it begins at 6:00 p.m. And last but not least, April 20th through the 24th is our Support Staff Appreciation Week, and we just want to thank all of our support staff for showing up for our kids and our staff every single day. We thank you. Back to you, Mr. President. >> Thank you, Dr. McCord. We do not have any requests to speak to the board tonight, so we're going to move past that and
032go right to section seven of our agenda, 7.01, Teaching and Learning Academic Spotlight. Dr. McCord. >> Thank you, Mr. President and governing board members. I will turn this over to Dr. Ryan and his teaching and learning team. >> And I'm actually going to ping-pong this on over to Dr. Martin as uh tonight's presentation is from our preschools, and uh Dr. Martin and the Community Education Team look after our pre-K programs in our school district. Dr. Martin. >> Thank you, Dr. Ryan. Thank you, governing board members. I'm excited tonight for our preschool team to be here to share with you some of the exciting things that we do with our three- and four-year-olds that only uh compounds the academic excellence and the great things that happen in Gilbert Schools kindergarten through 12th grade. So, I'm going
033to invite up Dawn Koberstein, our director of early learning, to start off the presentation, and I know she's going to introduce the rest of the preschool team. So, and preschool has been here in Gilbert Schools for over 40 years, and so um what they've done the last few years is uh just build upon that legacy, but make it even stronger than it ever has before. >> Great. Thank you, Dr. Martin. Is that on? >> No. No. >> Now is it on? >> Mhm. >> Now it is. >> Now it's on. >> You're all in trouble. I was told that I could get 2 hours, but I'll try to refrain from that. So, good evening, Dr. McCord, members of the GPS governing board, um board president and cabinet, as well as to all of our followers
034out there online and behind me. My name is Dawn Koberstein, and I am the proud director of early learning, overseeing the preschool programming here in GPS. I have some key members of our preschool leadership team with me today as we share with all of you some highlights of our preschool programming. Behind me, I have um Julie Stockton, who happens to be the coordinator of our Advantage preschool program, our preschool evaluation team, and our DHH, the deaf and hard of hearing programming. We have Robin um Gift, who happens to be our preschool instructional specialist for Advantage. Next to her, there is Eric Dachtler, who happens to be our Building Blocks preschool program supervisor. Next to him happens to be Alana Victorowitz, who is our preschool instructional specialist over tuition preschool. And last but not least, Kelly
035Garrett, our early childhood behavioral coach. We are all delighted this evening to be here and we're honored to share with you our preschool vision, provide an overview of our preschool programming here in GPS, and highlight some of our celebrations in preschool, as well as outline some of our priorities. Our passion, their future. We are a team of cognitive engineers who have a passion for early childhood education as we build brains for our preschoolers, or should I refer to it, we lay that strong foundation for a child's future. We want to be recognized as the highest quality of preschool programming of choice by our families here in Gilbert Public Schools, or better yet, the entire East Valley. Preschool truly is a pretty large department in GPS. We actually have 71 preschool classrooms that are spread across
036six spread across three campuses here in Gilbert and Mesa, and consisting of 116 preschool sections. That's considering that some classrooms have a morning section, afternoon section, and/or all day. In preschool, we have four distinct different types of program options. And we like to say this is our programs of choice. We provide a lot of choice for our families. And so, advantages are integrated preschool programming, while building blocks, K prep, and toy box are tuition-based preschool programs. And they reside strictly on the tuition of families. As you know, we have a dual language at Gilbert Elementary with our building blocks program. We have a steam program at Quartz Hill with our K prep, and we have gifted and advanced learning um focus at Ashland Ranch K prep. We also have full-day and part-day options, 5 days,
0373 days, or 2 days a week for families. And then at this time, I'd like to turn things over to Julie Stockton and to Robin Gift, who are going to share with you some highlights of our Advantage Preschool programming. >> Thank you, Don. Good evening. Thank you so much for this opportunity to highlight our preschool programs. Um there's no place I'd rather be than starting my day in preschool. This morning I was able to go to Val Vista Lakes Elementary and Burke Elementary to be able to um take the pre-K students to the kindergarten programs in order to highlight that pave the path. Um the excitement was palpable. They were so just thrilled to be able to experience that little bit of time in a kindergarten program. So, I began my day exactly how I
038wanted to begin my day. Um our focus aligns with the district's continuous improvement plan non-negotiables. As we continue to focus on student outcomes, this year we have intentionally prioritized the use of Foundations pre-K as well as I Ready foundational skills to strengthen early literacy and math. Through consistent daily routines, students are exposed to the same vocabulary and strategies. Um and this helps build confidence and support long-term success. And I want to emphasize early long-term success. So, that they hit Although they're hitting the ground running right in preschool, but then really and truly they're hearing and seeing the same things when they walk into that kindergarten program. We recognize that all students grow at their own pace and have unique strengths and needs. But and by providing intentional, supportive instruction, we ensure that every student has
039access to meaningful learning experiences and the opportunity to enter kindergarten prepared and ready to succeed. Oops, I went the wrong way. Right here shows some of our our state data as we are accountable to our families and to our district to show growth in our students. We are also accountable to the Arizona Department of Education, the state of Arizona. Right here this data was from fiscal year 2025 and um this is um uh showing the whole child um the all five areas of um development. So the first outcome is positive social emotional skills, knowledge and skills is also cognitive and um communication, and the functional behaviors which um encapsulates um growth and fine motor as well as adaptive um self-help skills. And as you can see over 80% of our students who entered below age
040expect expectations increased their rate of growth within age expect expectations or beyond by the time they exited the program. As you can see that is well above the state average. >> Research from organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics highlights the negative effects of excessive screen time for children ages zero to five, including its impacts on language, attention, sleep, and social emotional development. In response to that, we have launched a reducing screen time initiative this year bringing together educators and therapists to review research, discuss screen time with the community, and provide families with practical strategies such as our monthly family calendars that focus on engagement. Families receive a monthly calendar from their teacher, they participate in activities, and they return the calendar with the activity marked off and are entered to win a prize
041that Lakeshore has generously donated to us. We have some of our winners up here on the screen, and this um calendar is across all of our preschool programs, and we have had about 100 families participate in this so far. We have also encouraged teachers to reduce screen time in the classroom um and pri- prioritizing on hands-on interactive experiences that support healthy development. Um in the Advantage Preschool program, we continue our journey to create environments that focus on the whole child. Our approach is research-based to support inclusive practices. We know that children learn learn best through active, hands-on play, exploration, and interacting with peers to develop interpersonal skills. We are always intentionally designing opportunities for collaboration, knowing that peer learning strengthens both social and academic growth. And I'm going to turn it over to Eric and
042Alana now. >> Over the past few years, Building Blocks has been revamping its core principles and curriculum. We've added Learning Without Tears, Foundations, and concepts from i-Ready. We've also redesigned our literacy instruction and created a standardized literature library to be used across all Building Blocks programs. This year, we've also adjusted our staffing patterns to help create a more robust professional development program. As our K-12 teachers utilize Wednesdays for their PLCs, our Building Blocks teams meet every Tuesday for professional development. As this slide shows, the first semester was set to establish the essential foundations by hosting live professional development courses with several amazing guest speakers. Some of the highlights include Kira Hawkins, a GPS SLP, Kelly Jarrett, our GPS behavioral coach, Michelle Went, a K Prep teacher, Katie Metcalf, a GPS OT, and awesome coaches from
043Quality First First Things First. The second semester kicked off our teaching and learning collaboratives. We combined the Building Blocks programs into three regional cohorts. Each cohort consists of the threes programs, fours programs, and our combination classes. Since literacy is our main focus this year, we created smart goals for each cohort to work on. Programs take turns hosting the cohort members at their home sites. This provides a small, intimate setting for our Building Blocks staff, as well as allowing them to show off their classrooms and share ideas on their classroom designs. Now, I'll leave it over to Alana to tell you about the TLCs. >> So, I'm going to dive a little deeper into the Teaching and Learning Collaboratives, or the TLCs as we like to call them. Our TLC program implements data-driven early literacy instruction
044um that aligns with our district continuous improvement plan and our Arizona early learning standards. Kicking off our TLCs, we established a smart goal that integrated Foundations, Learning Without Tears, and Letters Early Childhood. Our goal was students would be able to name 18 uppercase letters and 12 corresponding sounds. Our TLC used a structured data document to monitor progress, identify trends, guide collaborative conversations, and select high-yield instructional strategies. This resulted in instructional decisions that were intentional and data-driven to support our students' growth. This slide gives you a snapshot of our baseline data from January. As you can see, at the initial data collection, only 57% of our students were proficient or highly proficient in naming at least 18 uppercase letters and 12 corresponding sounds. But, this next slide shows that with data-driven early literacy instruction, we have
045accelerated our Building Blocks student growth in foundational literacy skills, uh positioning these learners for long-term success as they transition to kindergarten. So, this graph shows that student proficiency or mastery of our TLC increased from 57% to over 72% in just one quarter, reflecting strong gains in letter recognition and letter sound knowledge. The most impressive part was that we had a 68.6% growth in the mastery of these skills. So, that was students exceeding what our expectation was. Why is this all important? According to the research of the National Early Literacy Panel and the National Reading Panel, phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge are the two biggest predictors of reading success for students. Next, I'm going to highlight some of the great work we've been doing in our various preschool programs. This year, we strengthened instructional quality across
046our Building Blocks N K Prep by refining curriculum, expanding resources, and building systems that ensure preschool students are fully prepared for kindergarten. We have refined and expanded the Building Blocks curriculum to include a scope and sequence for our 3-year-olds. These changes were based on teacher feedback and grounded in educational best practices. The Building Blocks program also implemented the gross motor calendar created by the GPS Motor Department in collaboration with our Advantage Preschool team. Its purpose is to provide motor development activities that meet our early learning standards. We also secured a um funding grant through Gilbert Friends of the Library and DonorsChoose, which was able to provide 15 of our 20 Building Blocks classrooms with full sets of high quality curriculum aligned literature. A plan is in place to fully equip all sites by next year.
047Lastly, we are finalizing a K prep scope and sequence, as well as a standards-based universal preschool progress report with plans to implement both in the 26-27 school year. Thank you for your time, and I'm going to turn it over to our wonderful behavior coach, Kelly Jarrett. Oh, wrong way. There we go. Okay, so you've heard extensive, exciting things that are happening in our preschool programs. In addition, we have ARC, and you're probably curious what ARC is, and I will tell you about that in the next slide. But also preschool parent series, uh we're actually help hosting one uh tomorrow evening on transition to kindergarten, and focusing on social-emotional. We also have uh the Pave the Path of Kinder, which we are in uh motion for this week. Uh we have our gross motor uh carts
048and outdoor classroom spaces that are engaging and getting that kinesthetic movement. And finally, uh expansion of quality first. So, ARC, three letter acronym. What it stands for is that collaborative coaching dedicated by Alana, Robin, and myself. I love being the K in ARC. It symbolizes a synergy that focuses on uh bridging um between our Advantage and other tuition-based preschool programs with a true reflection of early intervention success. This is through our uh proactive identification of student needs, unified supports for interventions, as well as our uh positive uh providing uh pro- uh professional uh growth with training opportunities. And with that, I honored to pass it over to Dawn. >> Thank you very much, Kelly. Well, I'd like to share out with you a little bit more of some exciting things happening in preschool. It's all
049about partnerships, isn't it? Um not only are we teaching our students, but we need to partner with our families. And sometimes we're not, you know, children aren't born with an owner's manual, and that's very difficult for parents. And so, we've worked really hard in preschool to offer something called our preschool parent series. In fact, if you're not watching basketball tomorrow night, I would like to invite each and every one of you a personal invitation, because tomorrow night is our preschool pave the path for our kindergarteners to help that developmental milestone for our families at Community Education from 5:30 till 7:00 p.m., and we can share with you all about what it you can do as a parent to help prepare your child for kindergarten. There's lots of little hidden secrets, and we'll share with you
050all of that if you join us tomorrow evening. And not only that, parents that are coming to this will actually have um our Dignity Health partner there, and they're going to be able to do some dental screenings, because having that dental care and that health is really important to lay that foundation for children. And so, that's why we work in partnership. We've also worked in partnership this year with Ascend in the Parent University to offer things like Love and Logic um for our families training in order to know how to handle things um as far as behaviors with kiddos. And we've also um had a program in January called Raise a Reader. So, there's a lots of amazing things that we've been doing all year to help provide support to our families. Something else in
051preschool that we're proud of is, after all, it's Pave the Path. In fact, this morning, just like Julie started off at a, um, preschool classroom, I was over, um, at Courts Hill as we had, um, actually Campo Verde High School, our Toy Box students, um, paved the path over to Courts Hill in order to see what it's like in a kindergarten classroom. I'm hoping right now, as I'm up here, 12 News is spotlighting that on one of the commercials, or stay tuned for that sometime this week. Something else I would like to share with you is about the gross motor. Um, we're really proud that we've added gross motor carts, um, to, um, 12 of our campuses this year in order to create those outdoor spaces for students to truly engage in learning. Um, we
052want to have this area because it meets the AZDHS guidelines and regulations, and the materials, um, the carts are full of materials that really gear towards those three to five-year-olds. It's amazing how much that, um, students, when you have those, um, crossing that midline, that really helps to develop the brain. Those are important things to be able to develop that whole child. Something else that we're proud of is we started with some outdoor classrooms, um, over at Mesquite Elementary, and then also at Superstition Springs. And so, there is a click to see a little bit more about how, um, that's looking for our students. It's exciting because students have the ability to really work with oral language development in a different setting, and really bring in some different gross motor activities. Things with jump roping,
053um, things with having comet balls, things that really work in lots of different areas of the body because that's important for children in order to, um, um, meet those developmental milestones. And as we shared, we use Learning Without Tears, things that when you're having the right Play-Doh and the right materials, um, it's important for to develop that brain, but to develop things like muscle memory in the hand, so a child picks up that pencil or crayon correctly, rather than holding with a fist, they're holding with that tri-point grip. Some other things that we're excited with partnerships is with the Quality First expansion. We've partnered with Quality First and First Things First um a few years ago. Um it happens to be part of that initiative um through the state um with the initial target of
054sites with multiple Building Blocks programs. Currently, three of our five Toy Box programs have come on board um with Campo Verde um high school leading the way with a five-star rating. We're looking to add Building Block um standalone sites um with our K Prep programming this coming year and bringing along our Advantage Preschool programs um over at Ashland Ranch, Boulder Creek, Islands, and Greenfield Elementary for this coming year, in addition to Canyon Rim, Highland Park, Neely Traditional, Quartz Hill, and Vista Lakes with our K Prep programming. Um we just received um three new Quality First scholarships to our four families um at Superstition Springs Elementary. So, that's where we feel this is really important having this partnership with First Things First and Quality First because although DES may provide um funding support for our lowest
055income of families, getting these scholarships helps provide that support for the next set of families that may need that help because unlike many other states, we're one of the few states um across the country that does not provide um tuition um funding for early childhood. On this next slide slide, um preschool as I shared is not mandatory in the state of Arizona. We're one of three states in the US that does not fully fund preschool. Our tuition-based preschool programs do not have boundaries, and we have many students who attend our schools on what we call open enrollment. Um through providing quality preschool pro- programs and options, we're working hard to capture families as they enter into kindergarten. This data here shows the number of families with children in our preschool programs who have not chosen
056to go elsewhere but to remain in GPS. Um notice how um the target has increased every year. I should say um the families that are staying in Gilbert has increased every year and our goal this year is to have a retention rate of 90% of the families choosing to be here. If we get them to love preschool, we get them for life. They will graduate from Gilbert Public Schools and perhaps they're going to stay here and raise a family in Gilbert Public Schools. As you can share, we're here tonight um my entire preschool leadership team because we're proud of the um work that we're doing. Um we're proud of the preschool options we have for our families and the intentionality of our teachers that are putting their heart and soul into what they do each
057and every day to lay that strong foundation for our students. We want to thank all of you for your time tonight as we share this passion for our preschool in GPS and we would love to take you on a tour or to visit a preschool classroom to see any of our various preschool choices um that we have right here in GPS. You can reach out to any one of us. Are there any questions? Sean, how did I do on time? >> I I do have a couple questions. Um one is I I really love everything that I've heard, especially um getting those outdoor toys and giving them opportunities to be outside and and push those gross motor skills. I was just wondering if you could tell me a little bit about We know that play
058is important for children and how are we using play-based learning in our preschools? >> Jill, I'm so glad that you asked that because play is a key foundation of what we do for students. Um but it's all about that intentionality. When you're playing with a child and let's say you've introduced vocabulary words um with some of our morning routines, with some of the books, how are we taking that vocabulary and we're transferring it let's say outside on a gross motor. So for instance, we were just reading a book of Peter Rabbit and there's the word mischief and we're we've teach the students what mischief means it gets into trouble. We're going to have a picture example. We're going to do a kineme or some kind of gesture to share that language with the child and
059then now we're outside and maybe something's happening and we're talking about how we're doing something and we might use that vocabulary when somebody's not making a good choice or getting into mischief with that or the kids are going to use that because maybe they're playing in the dramatic play and all of a sudden the the doll is all of a sudden it's going down. Oh, he's getting into mischief. He's climbing on the roof or he's not listening to his mommy and daddy. We're we're trying to use that vocabulary. It's really important and we can do that in that play opportunity. We're encouraging students to have interactions with one another and the research will say that we need to have 40 conversational turns per hour and that's what we're doing as a teacher to facilitate those
060conversations helping to facilitate those interactions which are key. >> All right, thank you so much. Appreciate it. >> And we really want kids to have that love for learning too. It just comes through play. Any other questions? >> I just had one question. Um I know you guys have recently expanded at a new couple schools like Greenfield Elementary and how do you guys make those decisions? Is there just like a need for additional building block you know from that from that schools or express need or how do you get to that? >> That's a great question. Um so for instance Brian Lockwood from Greenfield Elementary had reached out to me gosh back in August and said hey Don, I would really I've been talking to families in my community and saying and expressing I think
061I think we're ready to bring some preschool to have more preschool options and something we have advantage preschool but could we have something for the full day um families? And so we had a conversation. In November, we opened that up um to families, and really the families then tell us if that's what they're wanting. We're excited because we are expanding and adding Greenfield Elementary next year um with a Building Blocks preschool program. So again, when principals are trying to build their enrollment, um they look, we have conversations, we put that out to our family, to our community, and through that choice option, then they register. >> Great. Well, thank you so much, and I I really appreciate your presentation. I think that early childhood time is so important. I'm a Toy Box student myself, so
062I know how important it is, and um I just want to thank you and your staff. Thank you, guys. >> And I thought for sure you were going to ask me what my calendar looked like. Jesse, I will definitely make time to get you in a preschool classroom. You've got to see it in action. It's one thing to say about an outdoor classroom. I'd love for you to be able to experience that, the um rich um play that's going on, the conversations the students are having with one another, and the intentionality that the teachers are having with the things that they're doing in the classroom and with the students. It's really making a difference. >> Hey. There I am. Hi. Uh keeping us on our toes tonight with the mics. Um my one question Well,
063I have two questions. The first one, how is your attendance when it comes to the preschool parent programs and the parent university? Do you get a good outcome parents' end? >> We actually have In fact, um it's been increasing um over the years. We're having at least, gosh, 20, 25, 30 families. I know um we're expecting um 25 so far that are registered for tomorrow evening of families coming to our our event tomorrow night. So it's something um that we've been pleasantly surprised. Parents are asking for it. Um the nice part is when they come to the first one, they're like, "Can you do more? Can you have one once a month?" And I'm like, "Okay, I'm I'm not trying to kill my staff here. Um but um they're eager for it. Um after all,
064kids aren't born with a an owner's manual and I think all of us are trying to do the very best for our children and we just need some support out there. >> Yeah, I know as a teacher, one of the things that's missing that we have no control over is what happens at home. So it's good to see that um we're actively doing things to try and get families involved. Um the other question I have kind of tied so I was one of the questions I had written down was the retention rate for kindergarten. So I'm glad to see that that's rising and getting up close to 90%. Do you know data-wise, have you tracked are the preschool students performing above the students who don't attend preschool? Do you know anything about that? >> I
065am so glad that you asked that, Sheena. Um we actually are beginning to track that and so through our Tableau um system, um we're taking a look especially because of Fast Bridge, it's that beginning of the year assessment when we're looking at letter naming and initial sounds. Um I am proud to say that we're tracking um to know whether students have attended a GPS preschool, whether they have attended preschool at all, or whether they have attended no preschool. And with all of our programs, we're outperforming. Um the data is showing that um that our students are naming the letters, they're prepared for kindergarten. The teachers are noticing that by the data of whether they've um attended a GPS preschool or another preschool or have not attended at all. And so the data is looking very
066favorably in all of the areas in any one of our four preschool program options. >> That's great. I definitely encourage you guys to keep tracking that and um at some point I'd love to see the numbers on it cuz I'm a huge early ed- education person, K3. I know how important that foundation is. So the early on the earlier on you can track that and nail those kids and make sure you're you're helping fill those gaps the better. So >> Great. So you and I are going to plan a meeting in maybe August and so that way I can share with you the numbers from all of the work that we've done this year when we get that beginning of the year data, I would love to share that with you. >> Love doing data
067dives. That sounds great. Thanks. >> Thanks. Anyone else? >> Thank you so much for your presentation. I've got a couple of comments. I love the partnerships with organizations like First Thing Fir- First Things First and and Love and Logic. My wife and I have actually taken the Love and Logic courses. Game changer for parents. And so I'm excited to to know that that we're helping parents who are exposing parents um to to that. The other question I guess the question I have is there is a percentage of our students that want to go into early education as a career. Are there opportunities for our high school students to get involved with maybe either on a volunteer basis um or an assignment basis, maybe for some credit uh to get involved with the preschool programming and
068has anything been done yet and is or is that something that we could look into? >> Mr. Thompson, I am so glad that you asked about that. Um first of all, our Toy Box preschool program, that's CTE. So that career and technical, we have that opportunity for our high school students to be able to learn what it's like with child development and be able to lesson plan to actually go into the Toy Box classroom and they're actually delivering lessons that they've written that are aligned with the Arizona early learning standards um under the direction of our CTE um directors or the um teacher in that CTE program. So it's really exciting with that. Then many of them are falling in love with it and then they're have the opportunity to become student workers in Toy
069Box, especially their junior and senior year. Then um many of them are reaching out to me this time of the year and saying um the directors and saying, "Hey, can you help our student workers to get a job for the summer working through our VIK before and after school program through our summer camp opportunities, um, which is a great way, um, for them to begin putting their skills to practice in another area and not maybe just with preschoolers, but perhaps with, um, elementary age students. Um, we also work, um, collaboratively with the, um, Chandler, um, with Paradise Valley Community College, um, because now that they've become, let's say, a student worker in our programs, um, such as through the VIK before and after school program or student worker at the high school, they're going to
070have a registry number. And guess what? We're working to develop a pipeline, um, and we're really trying to work on ironing it out so they can see what that path might be where we can help them to get their college paid for, um, through some grant funding, um, that Paradise Valley Community College has, Chandler Gilbert Community College has, um, in order to to get their CDA and eventually perhaps maybe even their bachelor's and become a teacher. Um, and then there's other opportunities once they graduate from high school. Perhaps many of them are coming back and working in our Building Blocks Preschool program or Advantage Preschool program or even in K Prep as a child educator assistant or a para, um, para specialist. So, we're really excited about those opportunities because now they're getting paid, they're
071getting some experience in that classroom while they're also taking classes and again having that registry number. We've had a number, gosh, Erica can give you data where, um, those teachers that are in our Building Blocks eventually they've got that skill set and eventually they may become a teacher in one of our Building Blocks classrooms and eventually becoming certified and becoming K Prep or even, um, in our Advantage Preschool program. So, we're really trying to work on strengthening and developing that pipeline for families and students. >> Thank you very much. Is there anything else from the board? All right. Thank you so much for that presentation. It was very enlightening and enjoyable and thank you for all the hard work you guys do. >> to emails from all of you with calendars and you know, syncing
072our calendars up with any one of us. Seriously, we would love to have you and take you out to see our preschool programming. Thank you again. >> All right, we're going to move on to 7.02, my favorite part of the agenda. Our monthly financial report for month ended February 28th, 2026 fiscal year 2026. Dr. McCord. >> It it is that special time of the evening when the numbers get crunched. We'll turn it over to Ms. Bonnie Betts. >> What's uh Holy cow. Hold on. I don't know what happened. Can I have some technology >> an article about you, Ms. Betts. >> technology help here? Cuz it's It's not showing what's on my screen. >> Just throw it against the wall. >> What the heck? I guess I had to It's I turned it off. It's
073Yeah, at least it's education. What happened? It's always me. A little bit of excitement in the evening. Just to keep you guys all awake now. Do what happened? You got There it is. All right. Uh please excuse the delay. Good evening, governing board members, President Thompson, Dr. McCord. This uh presentation is very quick. It just represents the activity to date through March um through February 28th, sorry, 2026. Um so, I'll I'll go through the the presentation. Um As always, we always share the district operating funds. We did want to share a little bit about the state grant funds. Talk a little bit about our enterprise funds and a couple of the other district funds. So, maintenance operations, you can see that the available balance now has grown from last month by about $3 million. This
074is reflective of the time frame that we're in. We're reducing spending the the final uh deadline for maintenance operations spend is um April 10th. And uh so, the unencumbrance of open POs is leading to that $16.6 million uh amount. And then in unrestricted capital outlay, the available available balance is 40 million if if you remember, we did budget to expend about 30 uh 32 million dollars. Uh you can see that we've only spent $23 million or encumbered $23 million to date. Uh we are expecting to see a few more purchase orders come in before the end of the school year. Um and then we'll just keep you up to date on that as well. Uh the state grants, just um a little uh information about instructional improvement. We use the instructional improvement fund across the
075school district both at our schools as well as our departments for primarily for professional development opportunities. So, a year ago about this time, we were anticipating an available balance of about $1.3 million in instructional improvement. And you can see our available balance that we're expecting at the end of this year is closer to 825,000. So, we're watching it closely. It is, um, a fund in which there could be some significant, uh, variations year over year, as this is the fund that's funded through the, um, uh, Indian gaming, uh, partnership with the state of Arizona. So, uh, just keeping keeping our eye on that dollar amount there. And then, finally, the school safety program that consolidated just to share the available balance is $2.3 million, but please know that, um, what's in this, uh, budget right
076now includes the full 3 years. It's a 3-year grant. And so, we were just talking about it earlier, uh, Jackie Matinen and Amber Morgan and I, about whether we should just budget for the current year, um, just to make sure that we're not overspending in the current year. So, we may we may change that for the final budget revision. And then, the enterprise funds. This is the time in which we really scrutinize how much we're spending versus how much the revenue that we're getting. Um, again, both community education as well as nutrition services are working really hard at right-sizing all their programs, uh, also driving up revenues. And so, the available balances have increased month over month in both of those enterprise funds, as well. And then, other district funds. Finally, just a reminder of
077career and technical education. Note the estimated revenues that had was changed, um, last month at 973,800. That is all the revenue that we have received to date from EVIT for all of our satellite programming. If we do not receive any additional funds, we would end up with about $5 million for next year. Not knowing how this is going to turn out, uh you can see that that $5 million would be fully exhausted if we spent the same amount of money next year as we're spending this year. So, again, we are watching that spend also very closely. And that's all I have. If there's any questions, I'm very happy to answer any of them. Uh in addition, Jackie Matton and Amber Morgan are back back of the house. Of course, they are the ones who complete
078this report, and so if you have any questions, uh they too are here and available to answer them. >> Any questions from the board? >> I I do have a question. So, um if you go back to that previous slide where we where we were talking about CTE, and so we have received um a small amount of funding, but we have five 5,000 students taking CETE classes on on campus in our high schools. >> Correct. It's a little bit higher than that, but yeah. Uh yep. >> Okay. But, um because we don't have that intergovernmental agreement, they're not passing forward the funding. >> They uh they we received funding through August 31st. >> Okay. All right. Okay, well, I hope it gets resolved. >> Me, too. >> Thank you. >> Can you go back a
079slide or two, please? Uh one more, right there. The school safety program uh grant, so the available balance is about $2.3 million, but you said that's for all 3 years. Is that do we get updated info on what that's going to look like 3 years from now or is it updated every year? How do we I get I guess what I'm asking is how do we plan on spending that if we don't know what or do we know what the next what what the 3 years after this current 3 years is going to be? >> Um we do not know what the 3 years after the current 3 years will result in, but we have I think this is the second 3-year period that we've had and it has funded our um primarily our school
080resource officers, but we will continue to apply for the same grant year after year after year, but no, we do not know what what the funding amount will be 3 years from now. >> And we're in that process right now. And so uh Mars Taylor and I and uh Susie Cadena met with lieutenants and sergeants uh from Gilbert PD and Mesa PD to talk about what the needs are. And of course, we would like SROs at all of our secondary schools and uh on the Mesa side, um it's a little more difficult for the mere fact that they don't have the sheer number of officers to be able to outfit that, but we're going to put in for that request anyway. And if we're granted that and they can't backfill that with a police officer,
081we can also utilize that money uh for possible capital needs when it comes to cameras, maybe some different infrastructure related to uh entryways, things like that. So, but it's a wait and see until we figure out where that lands for us. >> Thank you. And then if you'll go to our to a couple slides forward to the food services nutrition services Um I'm glad to see that those balances are up. I know that was a concern uh because they had been declining for a number of years. We recently approved uh uh, meal increases me cost of meal increases, but then I know that nutrition services been has been working really hard at uh, what you said about right-sizing. So, it wh- where would you attribute this increased balance from? I know it's a combo of
082both, but is there would you give greater weight to right-sizing or greater weight to the increased cost in the meals that is uh, resulting in this increase increased available balance? >> So, so, folks, so, please know, uh, Mr. Thompson, that that available balance of just under $6 million is still a drawdown of fund balance from last year. And the pay the uh, meal price increase is not going into effect until July 1 for 2027. So, um, so, but we're monitoring it closely. Meal prices and equipment prices and um, all that continue to to increase. And now we've had a significant increase in fuel prices, which definitely impacts nutrition services as well. Um, so, I'm not sure what's going to happen a month from now regarding this. Um, but uh, so, most of the savings though
083is really attributable to the staffing, the right-sizing of the staffing. So, monitoring and making sure that we have the right number of people um, in each of the kitchens based upon the number of meals that are being served. >> Thank you very much. >> You bet. >> As always, best part of the night, you didn't disappoint. Thank you. All right, uh, moving on to our consent agenda. Is there a motion to approve tonight's consent agenda as outlined? >> So moved. >> Thank you, Mr. Brainard. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Ms. Humphreys. All those in favor of approving tonight's consent agenda as outlined, say I. I. Any opposed? Thank you very much. Moving on to our action items. 9.01 approve new superintendent employment agreement for Dr. Jared Ryan. 2000 I'm sorry, July
0841st, 2026 through June 30th, 2029. Is there a motion? >> I move to approve the new superintendent employment agreement for Dr. Jared Ryan effective July 1st, 2026 through June 30th, 2029. >> Thank you, Ms. Humphreys. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Ms. Murray. Is there any discussion or I guess I'll Is there any info we need to be updated on, Dr. McCord? >> Nope. The attorneys have looked at this and um it's good to go. >> Okay. Are there any questions or discussion amongst the board? >> Well, I think this was a really good process and I'm very happy that we landed on Dr. Ryan as our next superintendent and I appreciate the way the board worked together. It came together pretty well and pretty quickly. One of the fastest easiest hires
085that I've had to go through. So, I appreciate that. >> Thank you. Anything else? All right. Then, I'll call for the vote. All those in favor of approving the new superintendent employment agreement employment agreement for Dr. Jared Ryan for July 1st, 2026 through June 30th, 2029, say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? All right, thank you. We've already taken care of 9.2 through 9.4, 9.05 employee benefits trust EBT medical and dental insurance rates for 2026-2027 school years. Is there a motion? >> I move that we um increase as recommended the employee benefits trust medical and dental insurance rates for 2026-2027 school year. >> Thank you, Ms. Humphreys. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Mr. Brainard. Dr. McCord. >> Yes, Mr. C. Thank you, Mr. President, governing board members. I believe as Mr.
086McIntosh has uh informed you in the past, um this year the employment benefit trust EBT committee as well as the employee uh benefit trust board voted unanimously to recommend a 21.4% medical premium increase for the 26-27 plan year. This premium increase results in an increase in budgeted expense to GPS the amount of uh a little over $3 million. Included in the 21.4% premium increase are additional premium cost share to employees enrolled in the trust plus and trust savings $1,800 plan all coverage tiers and the employees enrolled in the trust savings $2,500 plan, which is the dependent coverage tiers. Note that the total uh determined increase in the medical plans, including the plan design changes, is 24%, but due to the health of the employee benefit trust, a 21.4% premium increase was recommended. The potential drawdown
087of EBT reserves is approximately $671,728. And two, the EBT Committee as well as the EBT Board also voted unanimously to recommend a 1.7 increase to the dental insurance rates for the 2026-27 plan year. >> Thank you, Dr. McCord. Any questions or discussion? >> Yeah, I I just wanted to say, you know, I'm on the Employee Benefit Trust Board and seeing those numbers was pretty staggering. I know this is not easy for our employees for this much of an increase. I think um but for if you look at the numbers and look at the stability of the plan to be able to pay for those claims, um you know, it is necessary. I hope that we can look at options to, you know, make maybe have more stability in costs for our employees. Um but, you
088know, I just I know this is going to be a tough one on a lot of people and I'm glad that our Trust Committee and others kind of worked to um make this, you know, impact them employee the least as possible. So, I just want to say that. >> Thank you. Anything else? >> Well, I I do think it's challenging. We're in a challenging circumstance nationwide. And I think that uh I appreciate the hard work that the Finance Department has done and the um Office of Talent Talent Management has done to keep this um as low as possible, but it is is a very concerning. It's it's a lot more out of someone's paycheck um than previously. Um especially when we've had some really good years where we didn't have a lot of increases. But
089I think this is just a nationwide problem, not just our problem. >> Yeah, I'll I'll just add to that I that I I understand that the increase is is hard and and challenging and and we feel that. Um as my fellow board members said, but also more specifically, the percent increase for our GPS plan is considerably lower than the percent increase of of neighboring neighboring districts, and a very very smaller discount than or sorry, increase than the percentage nationwide uh of just general insurance plans. And so, it is a very tough environment, but in that tough environment, I think Governing Board Schools has done a a very great job um at minimizing the impact, even though we understand it is it is still uh an impact. Thank you. >> Thank you. All right, if there's
090nothing else, I'll call for the vote. Uh all those in favor of approving the Employee Benefits Trust EBT medical and dental insurance rates for 2026-2027 school year, say I. >> I. Any opposed? Thank you very much. 9.06 Paging and Notification System Upgrade Logicalis. Just kidding, I know it's I know it's I know it's Logicalis. Is there a motion to approve the paging and notification system upgrade Logicalis? >> So moved. >> Thank you, Mr. Brainard. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Ms. Humphreys. Uh Dr. McCord. >> Thank you, Mr. President, Governing Board members. Uh we we ask that you approve this replace the end-of-life paging and notification systems at three GPS schools to include an elementary, one junior high, and one high school utilizing the I Uh, the one GPA cooperative contract. Uh,
091the pilot project purchase involves transitioning Gilbert Public Schools from aging analog systems to a modern district-wide IP-based mass notification system. Installation will include deploying IP digital displays, multi-colored strobe lights for visual alerts, and weather-resistant uh, POE pluses audio horns for outdoor areas. The implementation process will include professional services that includes the installation of CAT 6 CMP cabling, hardware deployment, bell schedule setup, and full zone testing. The estimated cost of this is $1.5 million, and that'll be funded through E-Rate. >> Can you say that last part again? >> I can say it six times fast. The funding portion? Is that what you're asking? >> Yeah. >> Uh, estimated cost is $1.5 million, a little bit more, $1,569,051, and it's funded through the E-Rate reimbursement, correct? >> Funded, yeah. >> So, that one point that's that's not
092the cost of the entire replacement. >> That's just for the pilot program at these three schools. >> Okay. >> Can I >> And I have two gentlemen here that are a little more technical than I am. John Castellano and Scott Hasty. And a little taller. >> Yeah, go ahead. >> Can I Can I >> Yeah, so So, that was that was one of the concerns I had with this was um, what's the word word pilot I guess associated with it. And uh, that the one one and a half million dollars is is a big ask for a pilot. So, if we I asked clarification, but if I can just have you guys clar- clarify for uh, everyone listening and and all my fellow board members that that it's not an actual pilot per se. This
093is This is full implementation at these schools. So, it's it's actually a full implementation at some of our schools. It's a pilot in that we're going to learn from it for implementation in future schools, but this would be the full cost at these locations. And I'll just I'll just If I can just speak to cuz I did have uh questions and concerns and and I just want to speak to those and and um and they were resolved for me. So, I want to let everyone know kind of my thought process on this. Um So, one I mean, this is a a pretty incredible system that does a lot of a lot of great things. Um but it's it's also not just a uh an elective want upgrade. Like we we have our current system that's
094that's kind of falling apart at the end of its life cycle. Um specifically um at some of the schools that we chose to adopt first. So, so this is a needed upgrade. Um and and again, this is a a full replacement at these schools. And then at future schools, I think the implementation and the and the roll out of that will depend on funding sources in the future. And so, uh depending on what funding sources are available, we may be able to do a quick roll out. And if if funding resources aren't available, we'll be more judicious and conservative and and do a slower roll out based on on the life cycle of current schools and and the funding available. And then through the E-rate uh E-rate, is that correct? That that these are uh
095partially reimbursed. Is that Is that No, or can you tell me more about the E-rate and and the funding on that? >> Sure. This project is not E-rate eligible. However, the E-rate reimbursement funds we receive through that program for our broadband, our network, and our uh internet systems, and some prior projects with our network. Those funds, that's what we're talking about those funds. Those can be used for this purchase and that's what we're we're taking advantage of here for this. So, just to make that clarification, right? The project itself is not E-rate eligible, but the E-rate reimbursement funds are eligible to be used for this. And I'll ask Ed if you want to add anything to that or not. >> If If I can just make sure I'm understanding. So, so other things, the things
096you just mentioned are reimbursable. So, we pay up front for those things, we get reimbursed, and then those funds that we got from the reimburse, we can then apply towards this. >> Correct. And you saw on the slides earlier the E-rate fund in the in the dollar amount in that fund right now, that's what Yeah, we're just talking about there. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Mhm. You're welcome. >> A question that I Sorry, my mic is kind of funny. Um I I would like you to explain because part of this process is that we're making a ADA compliant. So, explain that part about why that's important and why we need to do that part of it. >> Sure. And And just quickly, just so so everyone understands. Um so, our our our intercom system uh
097at this point, our our newest one would be 19 years old, right? So, a large portion of the project is the cabling and the wiring, right? Cuz when those were put in, obviously IP uh stuff wasn't really even around, if if you will. So, we can't use that existing cabling for this entire system, right? So, that's a large portion of this this project. So, that takes a uh uh uh it is a large amount, for sure. Um the ADA compliant, so uh all of the classrooms will have small display panels and they'll be equipped with a strobe light, uh which which hits that area right there. They'll also be strobes in different areas of the campus as well. So, I know that was a question I asked when we had the bond discussion. Um but
098there will be placement of those. So, you would know if the school is in lockdown cuz those strobes would be visible even outside of the classroom. >> Okay, thank you. What is the physical installation process like? Is this something that can be installed in schools overnights and weekends, or are we talking about tearing open walls and replacing extensive wiring, and it's going to have to be done over the summer? What What are we talking here? >> Yeah, this wouldn't be during the day school day project. It would either be at night during the school year, um or summer time projects. With this particular project, um we would hope that it would all be completed, well, it would be if we move forward, before the start of next school year. So, it would be a summer
099time project for sure. Um there's not a lot of ripping of walls open other than, you know, the old speaker systems in the classrooms. Those would be replaced for sure. So, um but as far as in being too invasive, that's about it. Cabling though is, you know, all runs up above us, right? And that, like I said, is a large portion of this project, but it would involve removing old cabling. Like, we don't want to leave any old stuff up in those ceilings, right? You remove the old, replace with the new when when it comes to the cabling piece of it. >> Okay. >> Scott, do you want >> Yeah, and I just want to add that we can get both systems up at the same time. So, we won't have any downtime. >> Right.
100>> Anything else? >> How long How long are these systems expected to last? >> Well, this new system Well, I 20 I hate, you know, 20 years is a long time for for our current ones to last. Um you know, with this new system, the IP part of it is is what doesn't last forever, right? So, obviously, we're looking at 10 years minimum with this system. Again, and there's software pieces though that are part of these new systems, so that sometimes plays a part in it. But yeah, the cabling again is is good for a long time. The endpoints is what then you have to start looking at, right? So we always look at 7 to 10 years for any new implementation and we can as a minimum and then just go from there. We
101just have to see. >> Does the company have any kind of um I don't want to say deal. I feel like that's a bad word. It's getting late. Um just when it comes to replacements, do they have warranties on it or things like that just in case it cuz 7 to 5 to 7 years is very long, so >> Yeah, if I were looking at 5-year warranty up front for for anything to start with. Um but we are looking at different pieces of this, right? Cuz Scott's we're lucky to have Scott and his team. So they can do a lot of the work afterward that's needed. So we did look closely at that cuz that does change the cost. The software piece of it obviously there's a licensing piece there with that, but we can
102do a lot of that work in-house once the system's installed. So we can take care of that, handle that piece of it. >> Okay, thank you. So that was my question. Is is the company providing the cabling, the hardware, and are we doing the work or are they doing the work? >> So it'd be a a turnkey project. So when they walk away, they will have installed everything, help us configure transfer of knowledge so that we know the new system and can maintain it. >> Okay. All right, thank you. >> Sure. >> Anything else? >> Yeah, I I just want to um to again say that I mean I had a lot of questions on this on this and um and I I want to say a healthy skepticism on any dollars that are spent
103outside the classroom, right? We want to maximize the dollars that are going to the classroom in Goochland Public Schools does a great job at that and I just want to thank you and your team for for one making our dollars spent in the past on the past system run as long as it has and for all the work and and researching and and a thoughtful implementation of this system and um and thank you. Thank you. >> All right, if there's nothing else I'll call for the vote. Uh all those in favor of approving the paging and notification system upgrade Logicalis, say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Thank you, that passes. Moving on to 9.07 fiscal year 2025 single audit reporting package. Is there a motion for Is there a motion to approve the fiscal
104year 2025 single audit reporting package? >> So moved. >> Thank you, Ms. Humphreys. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you. Dr. Roberson. Uh Dr. McCord. >> Thank you, Mr. President and Governing Board members. Uh we will bring up Jackie Matnen. Is that correct at this time? As well as Bonnie Betts. And I think are you guys going to tag team both 9.07 and 9.8 .08 but obviously you have separate roll call votes on both. >> Right. The the presentation will cover >> both the single audit as well as the uh compliance questionnaire. Um but the vote will be separate for each of those agenda items. And also just one reminder we're not asking for approval of these two items but just a roll call vote for accepting them. So just to help you
105out there, um, President Thompson. >> Then let's let's redo this so it we can consolidate. Um >> No, we have to vote on this. >> I I understand. >> Okay. >> But we can make a motion for both of them and then separately vote for each one individually. >> Uh, no, I don't I don't think we can. I don't think that's parliamentary procedure. We're going to we'll make a motion, vote on the motion, and then make another motion and vote on that motion. To my understanding. >> Okay. Okay, let's Okay, then let's um is there a motion to accept the fiscal year 2025 single audit reporting package? >> I think I beat the previous motion, so I will say so moved. >> Thank you very much. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you
106again. All right. Ms. Madigan and Ms. Betts. >> Good evening. Uh, we are going to present the FY2025 single audit report and the USFR uh compliance questionnaire, that's uniform system of financial records. So today's report will include the FY2025 single audit report required for districts that spend a million dollars or more in federal funds and the USFR um compliance questionnaire, which is kind of our playbook, the nitty-gritty of our daily work. Um, and then we'll talk about best practices. I'll turn the single audit report over to Ms. Betts. >> So we're going to go right to the second bullet there. Um, so this single audit did result in an audit finding. As soon as we were notified by the auditors of this audit finding, we did convene a special meeting of the audit committee to
107make sure that there was a large understanding of what happened. You can see up there um it was related to the timeliness of reconciliation with the uh county treasurer. So, a couple of details here. Uh we did have a a key uh person turnover over the summer. And um when the new person um took over, she did notice fairly quickly that the the beginning balances had not been updated at the county treasurer's office. And if you remember, we had to go ahead and have you approve a revised AFR. So, I wanted to make sure that it was clear to all of you that we actually did find it and make corrections to the to all of the data um at the county treasurer. It's just that we weren't timely because we're required to do it
108um monthly. The other thing uh that I think is important here is that when we have an audit, it's important that the audit discover any fraud, any issue um that we should all be aware of, and also to kind of test our internal controls. So, throughout this process um we did find that we needed to add some additional internal controls to avoid uh this ever happening again. And so, we're pretty confident that with the internal control changes, which uh Ms. Mattingly will go through here shortly, uh that this uh particular audit finding will never um surface again. So, I just wanted to share those details with all of you. >> Just to piggyback a little bit, um the this the step that wasn't completed was the cash reconciliation at the county level in um going
109from one fund to another. Um our general ledger was reconciled with our bank statements, so there was there was monthly reconciliation happening. It was that final step that was not. >> Thank you for clarifying. >> So, our corrective action uh we created a a checklist in FY2019 um that encompassed all of the different steps with the different bank accounts um involved in the monthly reconciliation. We have updated that and I'll show show that to you in just a moment. Um so, now it includes those final detailed steps of the cash reconciliation at the county. Um so, every month I will review it and talk with staff and go through the the reports um and then also um log in and see that the that the transactions have already have have actually occurred monthly. Uh prior
110year balances will be rolled to the current year by November 15th. That was also part of part of the issue. And this has already been implemented. And here is the checklist. Uh the highlighted rows have been added. Um we've also added some detail to the other lines, but those four were the pieces that we have added for this new process. Part of the internal control. Any questions before we move on to the USFR compliance questionnaire? >> Do appreciate the transparency and um the attention to detail that we found this mistake and we we've cleaned it up and we've going forward we won't have that problem. So, thank you. >> Of course. So, the FY2025 USFR CQ includes 170 yes or no questions. Those are the only two options from the drop down for the auditors.
111It's either yes or no. We had 10 no answers of non-compliance this year up from nine last year. The five in budgeting, accounting, and financial reporting were due to the audit finding. Uh property control and student attendance are very common. We will most likely um those will probably surface on every USF RCU unfortunately. And then transportation support I'm going to leave turn this over to Miss Betts, but I also wanted to give a shout out to my team because we had areas of 100% compliance including information technology and procurement and expenditures. Procurement and information technology take up a large chunk of that 170 questions. So kudos to those to those folks. Miss Betts. >> And then the details regarding transportation support and and Jackie will go through some examples of how we're going to address
112those in best practices. But the transportation support again having turnover and knowing that the vehicle inventory report and the routing report happens once a year. Have a new person doing it. The follow through basically I can lay that out on my shoulders was not complete and however we did know it before the auditors found it again. We were in the process of trying to correct it and they said no no no don't correct it we still have all of your all of your paperwork. That we're still going through. We don't want to have to have you submit corrected items. And so we told them that's fine as soon as you're done with the audit we will immediately do a 15 9 15 request to correct that data so that our data is correct well into
113the future. So and I'll I'll go ahead and spoil it a little bit for Jackie but one of the things that we found is that as we are having key positions turn over it's imperative that we not necessarily rely on the prior person who's leaving to make sure that they're training the new person that there has to be an extra step from us as leaders to come in and make sure that the training is complete and all these individuals have the information they need to be successful. So, that that should negate any of these problems well into the future. And with that, I'll give it back to Ms. Batman. >> Okay. Thank you. So, some of our internal control best practices, as Ms. Betts mentioned, ensure staff is trained when turnover occurs. And I have
114here budget manager as a key role and Amber Morgan was here earlier. She was remarkable in in bringing us current with our reconciliation. But not just that she wasn't necessarily trained properly by the outgoing budget manager, but now we're documenting processes. We have cross-training. You know, we all know a little bit of the process. So, so push comes to shove, we can recreate it. And then transportation, Ms. Betts talked about that a little bit. And then I will be reviewing the report for transportation just to as a as another set of eyes from a financial perview versus a transportation. And then trust and verify, we've also implemented some some steps. Uh you know, for example, when the budget is uploaded, we actually save the do a print screen and save that into the file. Things
115like that that that weren't necessarily being done because we trusted only. And then also ongoing training across all areas, internal training between one another, conversations about best practices and compliance. We have opportunities for professional development with ASBO and also Heinfield Meech puts on some workshops and those are very valuable as well. That's our audit firm. >> Anything to add there? >> I do want to add one other thing. The other thing I wanted to make sure that it was clear, the route report and the vehicle inventory does play a role in our budget because that determines our transportation support level, which is a budgeted item, as well as our transportation revenue control limit, which is why it's appropriate for the director of finance to be reviewing the report before it's submitted to the Department of
116Ed. Just wanted to make sure that was clear for all of you. >> And again, there are action items. We need a roll call acceptance of the reports um separately, so that's why we're here. Any questions? >> I just had one question. I know there was something about um marking attendance. Um I think that was a a no on it, and it was a no last year. I know that's hard because it's more campus issue. What steps do we take to try to make that um resolved? >> Uh Joanna Catanzaro is our um student attendance supervisor, and she or student um student attendance supervisor. Um and she does train her staff, all of the attendance clerks and the registrars at the schools, ongoing. Um new staff, she holds special training for. That said, there are
117nuances with reporting student attendance that can be very um tricky. Uh we are we've not lost any funding because of these types of findings because they they oftentimes will offset. One is overstated by a half a day, and then understated by half a day. So they're they're typically even, uh but there are ongoing trainings, and it's it's a it's a complicated um process, for sure. She does a great job. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Anything else from the board? All right, then we'll call for a vote for 9.07. Ms. Wilson. >> Ms. Catanzaro. >> Uh yes. I Sorry. I >> Mr. Chapman said >> I. >> Mr. Jesse Brainard. >> I. >> Dr. Blake Robison. >> I. >> Ms. Shayna Murray. >> I. >> Mr. President, all board members have accepted. >> Thank
118you, Ms. Wilson. Uh 9.08, is there a motion to accept fiscal year 2025 uniform system of financial records compliance questionnaire as presented? >> So moved. >> Thank you, Dr. Robison. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Mr. Brainard. Uh is there any discussion on this? Okay. Uh then we'll call for the vote, Ms. Wilson. >> Ms. Jill Humphreys. >> I. >> Mr. Chad Thompson. >> I. >> Mr. Jesse Brainard. >> I. >> Dr. Blake Robison. >> I. >> Ms. Shayna Murray. >> I. >> Mr. President, all board members have accepted. >> Thank you very much. 9.09, policy development. Uh is there a motion to approve uh the first read of policy 2-101, duties of the superintendent? >> So moved. >> Thank you, Mr. Brainard. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you,
119Ms. Murray. Dr. McCord. >> Thank you, Mr. President, governing board members. Um policy 2-101, duties of the superintendent. Uh there are several uh additions of the word governing before board, uh but the major addition to this is the last line where it says the superintendent contract shall be posted on the district's official website after approval from the governing board within 30 days of approval. That is an addition. Um there are uh there is something possibly going through the legislature that uh would ensure something like that, but and just for history's sake, for example, when I started in 2017, my contract has been posted on our website since then, but this will just ensure and put it in writing for ever and ever. All right, thank you. So, I want to um say I think this
120is great that we are putting this this into policy before it's mandated by the state. I think it just underscores our dedication as a district to be transparent and I want to thank Mr. Brainard for suggesting this and for and for championing this measure. So, thank you. So, thank you. So, thank you very much, Mr. Brainard. >> I I I just think that, like you said, I think our public schools does a really good job about being transparent and open. You know, this is the current practice that we've had and if we can just, you know, make that practice continue on, I think it's a good idea and more sunshine's always a good thing. >> No heat though. >> Perfect. Any other discussion or comments but from the board? All right, I'll call for a
121vote. All those in favor of approving the first read of policy 2-101, duties of the superintendent, say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Thank you. 9.10, first read of policy 5-217, graduation. Is there a motion? >> So moved. >> Thank you, Ms. Humphreys. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Dr. Robison. Uh Dr. McCord. >> Thank you, Mr. President, governing board members. I will turn this policy over to Dr. Ryan um because he can explain any kind of pertinent changes to you. >> Very good. Thank you, Dr. uh President Thompson, Dr. McCord, governing board. Thank you. Uh we will be uh making some adjustments to this graduation policy. So policy number 5-217 titled graduation um essentially it's clean up from um years of adjustments including um adjustments to the civic score requirement for
122passing, but I'll kind of go through item by item here of adjustments. First off, simply the label of Gilbert Public Schools minimum graduation requirements as a title to this. Um adding in subsections of English language arts, dividing out social studies, mathematics from our graduation requirements uh as well as listing out the courses by order in which students are taking them to meet graduation requirements throughout their academic career, making it easy for our families and students to understand. Um as you progress through the the uh adjusted policy and numbers, we do have a couple adjustments specific to Gilbert Public Schools from the state um the state minimums including uh the addition of the word laboratory for lab sciences, but also in Gilbert we ask for two art or CTE credits um which then along with pairing
123with the one credit of physical education the elective total then becomes five. So those are just a couple adjustments from uh what is outlined from the the um requirements in terms of a Gilbert Public School requirement. Um this civics exam, as mentioned, the score has been adjusted from a minimum of a 60% to now a 70% in order to meet the graduation requirements. Um the minimum um so the paragraph below it outlines the 22 credits, but now we're aligning to the minimum that the state requires. So the state which shall include a minimum of course of study prescribed by the State Board of Education. The other addition is the assignment of academic credit for transfer students, including foster care students, shall comply with the requirements of ARS 15-701 .01 and ARS 15-70 1.04. So it's
124just to ensure that we're in compliance with all state statutes. Below that, the only other adjustment is with relation to Gilbert Classical Academy. Gilbert Classical currently requires 28 credits for graduation. That is being adjusted to 24 um with a couple of adjustments, including service learning requirements being embedded within coursework for students, along with adjustments to English credits moving from 5 and 1/2 to 4, math from 4 to 5, and uh removing a 1/2 credit of history and social studies from the requirement along with one less elective. So that's how you get from 28 to the 24 required for um for Gilbert Classical Academy. We're removing the elementary language in this, as there is a separate elementary policy which embeds this information for uh placement moving forward in your academic career in elementary. And then um
125the only other is information related to a passing score if and when a student moves in, transfers credit in, and it needs to be um assessed in a particular area in order to receive credit for that course. Um sometimes courses are transferred in. Um the language is the same, the course is the same, it's an accredited school, it's a simple transfer process. Other times the um the course name might not be the same, it might not line up perfectly to what our um course outline or syllabus might say. Um it might be from an unaccredited or it could be from a an online school of some type and how those are all transferred in may look a little bit different. And so um students from time to time need to take our assessment and score
126a 60% or higher in order to receive credit for that class. Bless you. And the last portion is we removed language which used to exist and be pertinent related to Arizona online instruction with relation to fees and that no longer applies. So those are the adjustments. >> Okay. Thank you, Dr. Ryan. >> I I did have one question. Um just on the first page, the um American history where the the name of the course has been changed, is the um information in the course changed at all or is it just a new name for the same course? >> It's it used to read American {slash} um or just American history. Now and then in parentheses on the back side said including Arizona history. Now we just embed Arizona so it's American {slash} Arizona history, but
127the content has not been adjusted. >> Okay. And then also um are we doing those classes in a different order Um as far as when when students take them because the world history is now first and instead of the American history. >> Now world history and geography is typically a sophomore level course. American Arizona history a junior level course. Government and economics are each one semester courses which students take their senior year. That's the the traditional. >> Okay, thank you. >> Um the the the the verbage on PE I think you made the comment of okay, I just wanted to >> So the second read when we bring it back to policy, we will add physical education rather than the the PE. >> Okay. >> Anything else? All right. All those in favor of approving
128the first read of policy 5-217 graduations, say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Thank you very much. >> Mr. Thompson, before we leave the action items, I'd just like to ask all the board members, please don't run off after the meeting. You got to sign his new contract. >> Oh. >> So we can post it on the website. >> I got somewhere I got to be. >> All right, 10.01 future agenda items. Is there anything that any board member would like to submit for a future agenda? Okay. As always, if anything comes up, feel free to reach out to me or Dr. McCord and we'll make sure that we handle those accordingly. Board reports. I have nothing for the audit committee tonight. City of Mesa Liaison, Ms. Shane Murray. >> Uh nothing to report on
129the City of Mesa, but I did kind of want to shout out Meridian real quick because I went to their 20th celebration Friday and I volunteered and it was a really really great event. Huge turnout. Kids had a blast. So I'm hoping that they'll continue that tradition moving forward. It was really fun. >> Thank you. Employee Benefit Trust Trust Board member Mr. Jesse Brainard. >> Nothing to report. >> Thank you Mr. Brainard. Gilbert Education Foundation and Town of Gilbert Liaison Miss Hunt Jill Humphreys. >> Well, the Gilbert Education Foundation did do their scholarship judging. I haven't heard the results of that. I don't have anything to report for the Town of Gilbert tonight. Oh, but they are having their state of the town tonight, but we missed it because we're having our uh board meeting.
130So there's that. I just wanted to give a shout out to I've been able to visit a number of schools and um every time I go I'm just really impressed with the hard work that teachers and students and staff are all putting in. It's just so impressive what our students are learning and gaining every day and it's I just want to celebrate them and especially the hard work of teachers. The more I learn about what teachers do, the more I think they should be paid way better than they are. They are not and even our preschool uh workers are not um paid nearly what they are worth. So just a shout out to that. You have my heartfelt thanks. That's all I have right now. >> Thank you Miss Humphreys. Uh Legislative Representative Dr. Blake
131Robinson. >> Nothing to report. Thank you. >> All right. Thank you. Agenda item 12.01 meeting dates. Dr. McCord. >> Thank you Mr. President Governing Board members. our next meeting is April 14th. We'll be a board work study and brief board business meeting. We will more than likely have an executive session at around 5:15 for that evening to appoint the next principal of Boulder Creek Elementary. April 20th is our board policy committee meeting at 4:30 p.m. And April 28th is a board business meeting and based on some of the appointments this evening, we may have more executive sessions to appoint more principals. Right, Ms. Taylor? Right. And that's it. Thank you. >> Thank you. Brings us to our last agenda item, adjournment. Is there a motion to adjourn? >> So moved. >> Thank you, Ms. Humphreys.
132Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you, Ms. Murray. All those in favor of adjourning tonight, say I. I. Any opposed? Thank you very much. We are adjourned.