Gilbert Public Schools Board Meeting 9/10/2024

001e e e hello hello goodbye e e e okay e e e all right like to call this meeting to order uh our work study uh the work study portion of our meeting will call to order tonight it is September 10 10th 20124 want to welcome everybody that's here in person um and the hundreds of thousands of people that are joining us online uh we are going to start with 2.01 GPS celebrations Dr McCord thank you Mr Thompson governing board members um we're going to let things change over back there Sarah's Flying Solo in the back so we're going to give her some Grace and here we are okay so tonight we wanted to share with you some celebrations from um last school year and things we're working on or heading towards this year uh

002we'll mix in some Athletics some academics also some technology and we'll finish it up because no board meeting is complete without Bonnie going over some numbers so poor thing but it'll all yeah you'll be good no we're we're excited for it uh I'll start off and all all of my colleagues here are going to present different sections and so uh we have uh assistant superintendent of secondary schools Marcy Taylor assistant superintendent of teaching and learning Mr Jared Ryan associate superintendent of Business Services Bonnie Betts an executive well Chief technology officer was a pretty close is that is that we're calling you today okay Mr John calano that's right um CTO there you go CTO all right starting off with some celebr ations and Foundations um who we are so we are over 100 years old

003as a school district as many of you know we service the town of Gilbert as well as a portion of East Mesa about a third of our districts in the Eastern side of our of our boundaries and uh we're very proud that we serve both those communities we have 39 schools preschool through 12th grade we have over 31,000 students for the 2425 school year we have 4,000 plus staff members and we are an a-rated School District uh by the Department of Education and we are one of three a districts with more than 15,000 students so that's that's pretty noteworthy and we're pretty proud of that if you look off to the right there 23A schools 12b schools 92% of our schools are a or b letter grade and 11 schools increase their letter grade um

004this past school year we don't believe the new letter grades will be out until November uh November 1st and so but we look for good things coming out of that as well next um Dr mord yes sir before you go any further um could you give us a brief synopsis on the application process for our schools that they go through to apply for uh these letter grades so the letter grades are not from the state department are not application based they're based on performance and they're based on a lot of different things related to a formula but when you look at the next page for this one that you're talking about probably uh we have A+ 15 A+ Schools of Excellence that's for the Arizona Education Foundation and each year there is a long laborious

005application process for our schools to go through and there's certain requirements that they have to meet and then they submit those applications and they're reviewed by a certain group or Committee of people and if that application deems worthy of a site visit then a team of people come out and they basically check this is what you wrote on your paper is this what's actually going on in your school and they go through probably a two or two- day process and then after that they'll submit whether or not they believe they are worthy of an A+ uh notification and so um most of the time that's what happens and they are and so we're pretty proud of it we've we've gotten to the point to where we've had numerous schools go through this process so they're

006very big on helping other schools get through that process as well and so it's very uh we we think it's prestigious and we think it's worthwhile and I think it really gives the school an opportunity to showcase what they're all about and so we also have two National Blue Ribbon Schools and we were V Ved best of the best school district by the East Valley that includes Gilbert Mesa and Chandler and then we got the N award for music education for the fifth year in a row and that's districtwide n is National Association of Music merchants and uh that's a prestigious award for our music programs and then we have a 2425 a teacher of the year semi-finalist Jenny feedler agular um she did not make it to the top five um but we're g

007to Tout all the great things she does and we'll bring her to a board meeting to recognize her at some point in the near future because uh we truly believe that uh she represents uh the great things that happen in gilberg public schools and she made it to the top 10 she made it to the top 10 correct we're very proud of her and I think she deserved yes academic highlights I'll turn it over to Mr Ryan Mr Ryan I'll drive you just tell me give me that nod yes sir Dr McCord governing board thank you so much this was kind of an exciting process actually Bonnie just said a little while ago how much fun she's having going through this presentation I think we learn as much about other departments and all the great

008work going on across the entire School District um through this process which is super helpful for us um initially I'm going to focus on AP examinations some of what we added here is coming back to you from previous discussions AP exams and AP participation has certainly been a point of conversation as you know we've we've started programs at younger ages including acceleration and traditional and gifted identified and whatnot and how that builds and so um one of the questions that came up was regarding Student Success so as you grow AP participation can you continue with the level of success and so kind of reporting back on that um over 2200 students took one or more AP examinations last year this is an increase of 16 163 students with 54 46 more exams given a year

009ago um this is up over a thousand from 2 years prior and our total pass rate meaning a three or above actually increased by 5% and so I think what we're seeing is a number of students in our community are are absolutely capable of being successful in in rigorous courses and demonstrating that now on a uh more Global basis and so we're excited to see that the College and Career Readiness index as Dr Co presented during our last governing board meeting and she went through the specific details within that rating that's one of the ratings that's actually tied to the state label that Dr McCord was pointing at earlier with the a rated schools this is a piece of that so the college readiness College and Career Readiness index receiving all 20 points in this

010area within all of our schools for the first time ever is a huge accomplishment once again this includes um International baloria act performance CTE completers IND certifications and a variety of other things um the advanced placement uh in international borate so there are some new Honors that college board is actually um identifying students who are achieving at a high rate percentage of students who are taking part in advanced placement courses the percentage of students who are passing those courses um typically we're looking at graduating classes and what have they done through the course of their four years the international borate program um also as you know is expanded to Patterson Elementary School with our primary years program U moving then into Gams which is our Gilbert accelerated Middle School on the Gilbert High School campus

011um and then the international Balor program diploma program there at the high school um what we're seeing across the board if we go back in time just a few years we were at between 54 65 seats depending on the time of year within our IB program and now at the high school 602 um seats are filled in students are participating in the IB program so we've seen tremendous growth at well over 100% annually um as the students have become more comfortable with the concept and we begun um kind of building that program at a younger age and so the teachers are fantastic the administrators on campus are fantastic and the parents are are supporting it um at tremendous levels um one final piece with regard to an AP AP diploma uh the Capstone diploma which

012is available in each of our high schools other than Gilbert High with the IB Program um this consists of students completing AP seminar AP research four additional AP courses scoring three or higher and three or higher in all of them and we had 29 students this year complete that uh very rigorous series of courses and and and I think demonstrating at a high level that um across the board math science English and social studies along with Performing Arts Visual Arts it's exciting that they're all kind of coming together other in that way the accelerated programs as we mentioned um Gilbert accelerated Middle School 112% increase year-over-year in terms of participation and enrollment expanded accelerated classrooms k6 moving from five to eight campuses across the school district um for the first time we're seeing more students

013enrolled in our accelerated programs in a few of our campuses at the in the primary years then we're seeing um otherwise and so that's that's exciting that's a good sign in terms of families supporting students academically and and really pushing them to be successful at a high level um gifted programs Robert burcher um did a great job along with a team of of individuals and really going through our elementary schools and identifying um particular particular groups of students who maybe were previously unidentified as having gifted capabilities and really needing to be served in a different way and so uh newly identified 607 students across our elementary campuses who qualify as gifted and so um that's a wonderful thing and we're we're working hard at identifying the best ways to serve students moving into the future

014so that is our academic update and if you have any questions I'm happy to answer this oh I'm sorry our these are some of our graduation rates and our Dropout rates really positive trend data that we're starting to see um out of both special education as well as our CTE program um this is exciting because we talk often about connection to schools and the importance of connection to schools and ultimately then what we see in terms of graduation rates and so we know that that's one of the critical components is not just having students here but ensuring that they're successful um programs like our career in technical education programs we're seeing a 96.6% graduation rate uh we attribute that to the connection with teachers connection with Community Connection with industry um and so Doug Daly

015and his team have done a fantastic job The Faculty members on campus um students and families of really um not just participating in that program but ensuring um that they get the other side of the stage um graduation rates and special education we're seeing percentages increase annually we're seeing Dropout rates decrease annually um specific statistics are in front of you um and 100% of our CTE programs earned quality ratings during their on Department of Education evaluation so proficient or distinguished ratings so we're proud of every one of our programs it's hard to highlight in just a few minutes uh the number of things that are going in a great Direction um once again we know it's it's our families it's our students um and the teachers on our campuses and administrators doing all of the

016work so uh we're just proud to to celebrate a few of the accomplishments tonight good evening everybody governing board Dr McCord as always thank you for having me um we have a few highlights that I want to share tonight um each one of these bullet points uh cannot uh uh have been done without the collective whole of tech services um our our inner departments um they cannot operate as silos right we have to work with one another because every uh department is so dependent on one another so I want to thank all the tech staff as always for the amazing job that they've done um just a few highlights we're very excited to have the data and research team finally all moved together Under One Roof at tech services so um a big thank you

017to maintenance and operations who helped us this summer um take some existing space um but we were able to move um we had a number of people around the district that worked with data not just Ryan Nelson and tech services or our programmers or our student information system people but a number of people in different areas uh and we felt that bringing them together Under One Roof would make make a collective Powerhouse um and and that they are it's amazing to see under Ryan uh Ryan's leadership um how they've so quickly come together and are focused uh kind of moving in the same vision and I mean if there's a piece of data in the district that team can do something with it and it's not just student information data I mean we could take

018any Department's data which is really the the powerful piece right there's a lot of backend of the house things happening um and that team can take that data and if we can collect it we can disaggregate it and get it back to them in a in a meaningful format that would allow them to actually better their Department as well of as of course always down to the student in the classroom so it's been really great to see that team come together and it's almost like you have to have them pump the Brinks every once in a while because they could put out so much stuff that it would be overwhelming quite honestly so we're happy to have them together so that's been a great big highlight for us um we wrapped up I've talked about

019this before but we wrapped up our districtwide um Network refresh so every switch and wireless access point access point in the district has been refreshed as late last year so that that should be a kind of a seven-year project for us moving forward hopefully technology doesn't move too quickly where we'd have to go quicker to refresh um but we're sitting really well there so we're very happy about the work that Scott hosi and his his team has done um that same team also just finished a phone upgrade for the whole District so we didn't physically replace phones but we replaced the back in and push that all to the cloud so none of that resides on Prem anymore so it's allowed them to do some some really neat things with with control of our phone

020system and that's of course tied into to everything whether it's our security systems um it's it's a cohesive system now so that that went really well um we also finished up a two-year um staff uh uh laptop desktop computer refresh so we finished that up at the very end of last year and this summer and we do that cycle in a fiveyear refresh so four years from now then we'll we'll start over with the elementary teacher laptops and desktops so so we're sitting sitting pretty good there there so we're really really happy about that work uh and as always we did we finished our our second annual GPS girl stem powered event we plan to do that again this year sha a and her team of ties do a wonderful job of of putting that

021together uh and that's where we bring a few girls from every school in the school district together for one day of stem activities um it's always very well covered by the press and I know some of you have dropped by as well so very very proud of that we will continue that um we also just started the The District copy or refresh so we have our three pilot schools going there and then we'll continue that over fall break and hopefully before Christmas time we'll be done districtwide of replacing uh all of the copers in the school district so a lot of full District stuff going on it takes a lot of logistics and coordination Jim Woods does an amazing job with that and keeps us all on track so wanted to give him a shout

022out as well so yeah we're we're we're happy rolling along and enjoying our time so thank you for letting me share that all right Dr McCord governing board members again as everybody has said thank you for letting us share I get some of the fun pieces the outside of the classroom opportunities that we are so fortunate to be able to uh share with our students they have so many choices and so many ways to get involved so this is just a list of uh last year's state championships we are competing different schools compete at different levels but we're part of 6A we have schools at the 6A level 5A level 4A level and 2A level uh and every year we're very fortunate to have lists like this of state championships and that's not always the

023case in a lot of districts so uh these were some of the examples that were uh from last year and our current fall season is off to a good start now as well I think the next page has more on there um highlight was the the last one the last bullet point there the Gilbert High School boys 110 M High hurdles and 300 meter hurdles state champ uh Vance neelsen then went on to not only break the state record in both but he was the National Record Championship uh or hel holds the record in the 300 meter hurdle so it was pretty exciting and there was a lot of press surrounding that one as well uh we have a very competitive Athletic program at our comprehensive Junior highs as well so we're fortunate that that

024feeds into our high schools and we have extended that um those opportunities now for our junior high students to four different seasons so we have four seasons and each of our Junior Highs are now recognizing a male and female athlete of the quarter at each of their schools and then at the end of each year they get together as athletic directors and look at how many of the winners have participated in all variety of different sports and kind of add in there all the things they're doing outside of the classroom as well and in the classroom and select a female and male athlete of the year so we're going to start recognizing them at board meetings this year as well so you will be able to uh meet those uh female and male athletes of

025the quarter from each of our Junior highs uh let's see next one of course performing arts and other programs uh we would have a long list of accolades to con uh I guess recognize our Performing Arts departments on all of our campuses as well uh they continue to get Superior with distinction when they go to any sort of marching band competition when our orchestras our choirs our theater groups all perform in uh competitions they are usually ranked right at the top uh so that would again go on for several pages but a couple things to uh point out the state championship with our AIA robotics uh team at Desert Ridge High School and they qualified for the world championship that was held in Dallas Texas it's the it was the 2023 Vex robotics world championship

026and that was last year so it was pretty cool to see them go on to be able to travel and share a different type of competition other than just through Athletics or Performing Arts uh all four of last year's Gilbert sister cities representatives were from Gilbert Public Schools so we know that when the town goes through the process of selecting their sister City's represent Representatives they include pigley schools because they're in the town of Gilbert's boundaries some of the Chandler schools as well uh so we like to some there's Charters that apply as well so it's nice to see that last year one was from Camp overie two from Gilbert High and one from Highland uh right now the application for the summer of 2025 is open so we are trying as hard as we

027can to get the word out to our Juniors and they're coming back they're bringing back leean China for the last few years since covid uh we have not I think the last time was in 2019 that we had Representatives that traveled to Lesean and since Co they've only been going to our other sister city which is uh antram Newton Abbey Northern Ireland uh so they are resuming the China travel now and they are planning to select six Representatives so we're in the process of making sure that that word gets out uh to our high school campuses uh Dr McCord already mentioned the N award for music education this was the fifth year in the row and what this organiz ganization it's a national organization that uh recognizes the best communities for music education districts so

028pretty prestigious again that's an application process that our district goes through and has been recognized uh by that with that award for five years uh we have opportunities for our students to display their art at our school district art shows uh most of you probably are familiar with the elementary one that is held each here at Norwood furniture and then our uh secondary art show has been the last few years has been at HD South so that will uh continue again this year and then the last bullet on there um was a pretty cool opportunity La last the year last year is it last year yeah that uh Disney would again it was an application process uh you had to earn the rights to produce Disney's Frozen the uh Broadway musical and they selected one

029high school from every state so there were only 50 that were selected to perform this and Highland High School was uh selected to do that and it was an amazing absolutely amazing show if you had the opportunity to take advantage of seeing that so I think that's it for me thank you so after all that fun stuff now's the numbers um so um good evening governing board members uh Dr McCord as you know we could not achieve all of these uh great successes without having resources available to um to be able to to help them along uh so to speak so I wanted to share the the largest highlight that we share annually is our district spending report reflective of the 23 school year that's the last year in which we had this presented um

030again in comparison to all of our East Valley uh school districts we still are ranking number one in terms of dollars into the classroom I think that's an indicator that we put our money where we say we are going to put them and support our academic achievement as well as our Athletics and Performing Arts so you can see that our um dollars uh in the classroom were 73.3% um which outshines everyone on that list so uh to move on to the next slide um wanted to make sure that you all knew that that we as a leadership team are very intentional with how we allocate out our our limited dollars here in gilber public schools um and that we're also uh in the finance department are also very careful about ensuring that we are accounting

031appropriately for all for each individual dollar so uh gfoa and ASO International excellence in financial reporting we've got 37 consecutive years of receiving this award um in addition we have been focused on cash management and investing over the last couple of years so in unrestricted Capital we just initiated a process by which every dollar that comes into the school district first is allocated to unrestricted Capital the reason is is because unrestricted Capital earns interest that we are able to increase our budget capacity so we've so as the the first money is coming in we get to determine where it goes we're putting it into unrestricted Capital because of that of last two years we've earned over a million dollars that's real money a million dollars in interest earnings to um extend our budget capacity and

032unrestricted capital in addition as you know we've had a a pretty good run with our self-insured employee benefit trust as you if you recall um I think it was two years ago that we moved to uh having the employee benefit trust within our own accounting um environment and we created with the governing board uh policy and investing policy we have been utilizing that and to date over the last two years again we have exceeded $1 million in interest earnings keep in mind that that absolutely allows us to control how much we have to increase premiums on behalf of our employees and makes us more competitive in terms of what we're able to offer to our employees moving forward uh Risk insurance premiums we began this in the 2020 school year uh based upon information that

033we received from our insurer they said you know if you went to a high deductible plan on your Risk insurance you actually could benefit so we've been monitoring it um over the last five years now and to date we've seen Savings of over 2 and A5 million or about a half a million dollars annually again just to reiterate that means we avoided paying a half a million dollars uh half a million dollars worth of insurance premiums every year for the Last 5 Years um in addition we went ahead and uh had an opportunity to to prepay our insurance um with the risk retention trust uh they require us to put a certain dollar amount down because we are at a high deductible but because of that we are able to earn interest on that as

034well so that's about a $60,000 um increase in in our available resources and then finally uh we took advantage last spring of a new statute allowing us to prepay our Arona State retirement um so we were able to put $20 million in as a prepay and in the short four or five months we um actually earned uh over a half a million dollars and to date we've exceeded over a million which means today the value of that prepay is now $21 million so again these are all very intentional moves to to give us an opportunity to drive um additional earnings that give us more flexibility into the the future so on the next slide I wanted to talk about facility management and then an intentional Capital spend so again as you remember you all approved

035going out um and uh procuring a master Capital planning process we were able to do that we did a facility condition assessment uh analyzing all of our facilities so today just to give you an idea we are nearly 5 million square fet under roof our total current replacement value of all of our assets is $1.8 billion and then most notably 75% of the portfolio uh was U actually built in 19 in the 1990s and the 2000s which means our average age is 32 years old so that's the time in which there has been a lot of uh stress and needs for reinvestment so going to the next slide because of that you can see on this one this is actually the bond spend since the uh associated with the 2015 uh and 2019 Bond Authority

036so this is since 2016 and you can see that we've distributed the monies across all of our schools um and you can see in addition that this graph if you look at 2021 and 2022 in comparison to the prior years we've really quickly spent the dollars um we had high needs we had an ability to take advantage of extraordinarily low interest rates during that time and so we went ahead and were able to manage the acceleration on behalf of all of our schools so on the next slide you can see this is our bond spend by grade level again an indicator that we are spreading out the um the spend across all of our schools on an as needed basis and then finally I think the next slide is the last one um so minimizing

037taxes and tax there's a couple of slides here as I indicated before we accelerated that Bond spend in 2021 and 2022 prior to that we were spending maybe $5 to $10 million a year and then um in speaking with Albert he said yeah I could probably spend 20 to $25 million a year so since that time we accelerated that if you remember the interest rates were less than 1% that means we were able to sell our bonds out on the market and the investor the overall aggregate interest rate was less than 1% that our taxpayer had to pay so it was extraordinary savings so you can see um again our tax rate history today in comparison to 2016 we have dropped um o over a dollar per $100 of assess value uh even in 2016

038when we did not have the override the tax rate was about um what is that up there about $6.50 right and now it's a right now it's $5 $20 so we've been able to take advantage of assess value growth and also take advantage of the fact that because we've accelerated the spend we were able to sell our bonds at an extraordinary low interest rate which decreases the tax rate for our taxpayers can I just add a a note here I I want to point out I mean what you've just said we're in a very good financial position but we've worked really hard since 2015 to get here uh prior to that because of circumstances and not having our bond and not having our override we had some very lean years and I think that um

039we've done tremendous work to put us into this um position it wasn't overnight and certainly Mrs bets you've had a lot to do with that but um we have worked really hard I think as a board and as a district to make sure that our kids have financial resources and it's it's not it wasn't overnight it it took a lot of work and effort it's the work of all of us yes definely all of us so um this is just an um a table of the tax rate 2023 to the current year so you can see uh from last year to this year our change in the tax rate is nearly 42 cents per $100 of assessed value a significant reduction in our tax rate uh going into this fiscal year and the next slide

040so this is a an indicator of how the acceleration of the spend and the sale of our bonds U made a huge difference on our taxpayer so because of that we anticipated when we did the voter in uh the voter information pamphlet in 2015 and in 2019 that we would have interest earnings of about 70 million but because of the acceleration our interest earnings again this would have been interest that our taxpayer would have had to pay because of that we actually saved our taxpayer over $27 million in interest payments into the future so again just being able to be aware and taking advantage of the circumstances having a terrific operations team that was able to to manage the the spend at a high level along with um John castalano and the technology department so

041we've been able to um to absolutely make a positive impact on our taxpayer as well and very much meeting the needs of all of our students districtwide I think that's the last one oh this is just our M budget at a glance just to show you 287 million is our M budget right now we expect that to fortunately be a little bit higher because we've seen growth and we have additional carryover um but that's what we look like today and then um and then this is um this is just a conversation about uh what what would happen if we are not successful this November uh so we'd have to reduce uh nearly $12 million going into the 25 26 school year and then in year two another 11.7 million so a total of 23.4 million

042and then finally in school year 28 the full 35 million again to try to put that into perspective uh you have noticed that we reported in June 30 that we were estimating a carryover in both unrestricted capital and maintenance and operations of about 50 million well over the next three years if we just drew down fund balance we would um we would have a need of $70 million here and we only have 50 so we would be in the negative by 20 million so it's an indicator that that the uh that the override is extraordinarily important for us and then uh this is what we're sharing with all of our staff members these are some of the items that are kind of on the on the list of what we're anticipating um may be reduced

043so keep in mind that class sizes um are always um uh something to consider so if we increase class sizes by three students that would realize the savings of 3.6 million if we eliminated the school and Department Capital allocations that came back in 2021 when we finally received all of our unrestricted Capital if we we we would potentially make a um a recommendation to eliminate all our part of that uh District Department level decreases programmatic decreases again none of these are decided upon but $2 million and then finally that draw down of fund balance please remember that we do not have um any bond dollars left they're all accounted for and so red uh drawing down fund balance to $1 million is still a little bit uncomfortable because we have 5 million square fet that

044we have to be concerned with and if we lose a chiller or a cool a cooling tower yeah 5 million square foet yeah um and so uh we're very careful about anticipating how much to draw down fund balance just because of that I think it's important to note that all of his cabinet members are going out to every campus and going over factual information regarding uh the override and so we do share this slide we also preface it like this is what these dollar amounts would equate to if this was a route we would go um and it it it does open some eyes out there because it it makes it a little bit more real for those sitting in the audience and so uh it's not an intent to scare them but it is

045an intent to keep them alert about what's going on and and what these override are paying for and so uh that's why we share it well sometimes it doesn't seem like $12 million is very much but when you start putting specific things up there it kind of gives you an idea oh my gosh it is quite a bit of money well and this would just be the first round if if we lost so yeah I mean think of doing that three times it gets harder and harder each time so thank you guys are there any questions you may have for us we wanted to we we did this presentation with our uh with the Gilbert Education Foundation uh Business Leaders breakfast and we thought it was important to share it here with all of you

046as well uh I think it gives a a quick snapshot of where we're at and what we've been doing and it also ties into how important those things that we are doing uh relay uh rely on the dollars that uh we use and I believe we use them extremely wisely within our district so we want to make sure you guys have the same information as well so I I personally want to say thank you to each of you for putting this presentation together and and showing uh the board this tonight um it's a testament to uh to your uh to Gilbert public school's dedication to our students and their families and our community um just by looking at this present presentation tonight it's clear that that uh that there's there's a there's a place for

047just about everybody all of our kids that live within the district boundaries here in GPS and we understand that um that uh it's not going to be Gilbert Public Schools may not be a fit for 100% of the kids out there but but there's no denying that we are making you guys are making every effort to make sure that we can accommodate and um a and offer opportunities to uh to just about anyone and so thank you very very much for that we know that that it's it's more than just a a presentation on paper um but it's what you guys do day today uh and what you guys um the the vision that you share with each of the schools and the administrations and the teachers and so thank you and um a small

048note about the uh the financial uh about Miss bets's presentation tonight um the voters do have a decision to make in November um and it's a it's a tricky time our economy is much different than it was last time we made this vote uh and it's I I think it's uh it's weighing heavily on our voters minds and on their pocketbooks but from this presentation tonight the things that I couple things that I've uh that I've observed is um is the the the complete transparency that you have with us and with our voters on where their tax dollars are being spent um and the other uh comment that I'll make is in regards to uh this slide right here about the tax levy savings I don't think that anyone based on on what you've presented

049tonight and based on these facts I don't think anyone could accuse Gilbert public schools of of not spending every dollar wisely may not everyone might not agree with how dollars are being spent and that's understandable but I don't think there's anybody that can disagree that that we're not that we're not trying our best to make every dollar accounted for and to make sure that every dollar is is being spent with our students and our District's best interest in mind and so I commend you for your hard work and for uh making this available to us and for just doing a doing a fantastic job I think that's this is a a tremendous presentation that I think every uh everybody that's interested in this uh in this ballot question could benefit from learning and or benefit

050from seeing and uh and getting a better perspective of of uh the the the stewardship that the good stewardship that we are um that we are uh utilizing their funds with so thank you very much uh Mr Thompson I just wanted to add something um I I I really appreciate the voters and the support that they've given our district um and I know when we were able to pass our override in 2015 and we had some of those Bond dollars to buy new buses um that at the beginning of one school year we had quite a few bus breakdowns so um getting new buses was very helpful and we haven't had that problem since we've been able to replace those buses and I remember um I think it was about 2018 we had to purchase

051new curriculum for elementary La uh and we had to negotiate doing those payments in two separate years because we didn't have the money to keep up with the governor's promise of 20% by 2020 and to purchase the curriculum so we had to kind of work with the company that we was delivering that curriculum to us and they were you know gracious to us but again over time we've been able to rectify those deficits and build a very solid Financial Foundation but it has taken us a long time so I want to appreciate the voters for that and appreciate the hard work that everyone here has put into making those Maxim ing the use of those dollars thank you miss humph any other questions or comments from board members I I just wanted to add my

052comments as well um this was exciting to see this and I think that Gilbert Public Schools is a value proposition for our community and this override is a value proposition with over 31,000 students and think of who we've how many we've served over the last five years um or four years since our last override and the things that we've been able to do what you guys just showed us the impacts on each student as well as our 4,000 employees who have directly been impacted by the funding that we've received both from the state as they've increased that 20 x 20 but by the override and we've been really deliberate and focused as a board these past eight years on providing competitive salaries for our teachers and and all employees and I think that we uh

053our students directly benefit from that because we have the very best outstanding employees it takes competitive salaries to attract the best and to keep them here and I think that's one thing that an override if our community our local funding will will help and support us with that and has in the past that helps us be able to provide those competitive salaries which are so important to have the outstanding employees that we need that's where I think that's one of the biggest differences that we can have in students lives is having those outstanding teachers being able to support them with um training and with materials and with resources it's critical it's exactly what all of us want who live here in Gilbert this is the kind of District that we want we're one of the

054best in the state when you say that there was only by the state standards and their grading skills we are an a district they determined that they we made the cut off from that with all of the work that we've done and it that covers a broad amount of academics Financial graduation rates I mean you name it all kinds of things it's it's a it's a great way to show all of the individual work we're doing with each student on each campus and we're an a district one of only three a districts in the whole entire state that have over 15,000 students in their District truly one of the top in the state I mean I celebrate that we're we're doing great things and what I really love is that we are continuously looking to

055improve every time you come back and talk to us where how are we getting better how are we helping students how are we helping teachers where can we look to improve how are we Gathering the data to again help teachers staff districtwide find ways to improve and give our students the best opportunities that they can have I think we know we're fiscally responsible financially conservative all the things that you shared every single one of your strategies though has been very Del Li conservative so that you don't put anything at risk but that we can use the funds that we've been given that we are so grateful for and and maximize them in the best ways that we can to put them again toward our our um salaries toward our students toward our facilities being what

056they need to be for students to have the learning opportunities I think again we've shown that through focused and deliberate efforts we've given our students tremendous opportunities and ability to succeed um outstanding academics College and Career Readiness outstanding extracurricular opportunities Arts music RTC um I can just go on and on there are great things happening throughout our district and it's a great place to be I especially appreciate again that we care about our students are are we care about our staff we believe in them and we again again have made this we've made this area a great place to live and an great opportunity to come receive a tremendous education no matter what you're looking for there's opportunities and we want to be the best at what we're doing and everyone's working toward that so

057I'm just I'm just thrilled to celebrate with all of us and commend everyone who's put so much time and effort into not just creating this celebration it's this celebration presentation but who actually created the content that we can celebrate and then also just look at our financials and ask our public to look at the facts and again to support us as you have in the past which we have been we've taken it seriously we've appreciated the funding and we've done it's again we've made the most of it we've turned around and it's been a a win for your dollars so thank you guys thank you very much so we're going to move on we know you people have to leave this room we don't want your heads to get too big so we're going to

058end this portion we're going to move on to uh agenda item 2.01 curriculum implementation updates Dr McCord thank you Mr Thompson governing board members we thought it'd be a good idea just to bring you up to date on uh some curriculum implementation that's been going on throughout the district uh you guys gave gave us the time and effort and money to be able to do some of these things last spring we're very grateful for that and um we just wanted to share with you where we're at with that as of September what is it 10th so uh let me give you guys this and I'll turn it over to you Mr Ryan Dr McCord governing board thank you so much a few things were said in this last presentation that just um really pointed to

059what these fantastic ladies we're going to be sharing with you tonight which are uh responsibility um really taking serious um what it is that the governing board has approved and given us authorization to ensure that our classrooms and students and teachers are are well equipped to take on the needs of of all students and when we said that earlier it really struck a chord because this process process has been very um deliberate in terms of ensuring that all students regardless of level meaning grade level um or level of learning meaning everything from um a self-contained special education classroom through a gifted or an accelerated or AP classroom conventional classrooms every student deserves to have quality teachers in front of them which we're grateful to have and blessed to have along with curriculum and resources that

060they can learn from and be prepared for the next level and so uh tonight uh Jenna Corelli Buck our Ela secondary coordinator Len bomb our math secondary coordinator and Crystal Udall our elementary Ela coordinator are with us math math coordinator sorry are with us and um you know what's exciting about this team and you mentioned attracting people to our district gen joined us and she's fantastic Len and Crystal have been with us and we're keeping great people and I'm going to turn it over to them because this is their show this is their their work and I'm just extremely proud of what they've been doing as of fall 2023 the uh math adoption committee started making new selections of new resources in the spring we were fortunate to Pilot that for K12 material and began

061a partial Elementary training to kind of set the stage to um get ready for the big implementation and then as of fall we had a full 712 implementation and additional Elementary trainings for a lot of our teachers moving forward our elementary training will be completed by the end of 2025 here you can see that um our wave two which began in July um this school year 435 teachers were trained which is 65% of our current teachers um in December we'll have another 115 teachers approximately trained and in the end of 2425 we'll have another set of 115 thus totally 100% of our elementary teachers being implementing program at one time so I have a question how when you say trained how long do they spend in training on this curriculum thank you that's a good

062question the first training is a full 8 hour day the next training is another half day and then the next training is another half day so there are three trainings three touch points if you will after the initial that they come to and we'll have further trainings to help gain more knowledge and use of the program and utilizing it to its fullest intent all right thank you appreciate that and for our Junior highs we went with a full implementation so all of our seventh and eighth grade teachers were trained in a similar fashion um and we're rolling next we want to see what's happening in classroom so we're here to share some strengths that we are seeing across the board in our K8 area we see that the use of curricular materials is being utilized

063we see teachers using it we see slideshows being happening we see uh manipulatives being used we see students using the works workbooks talking about the text and moving into having lots of conversations the conversations are deepening with the mathematics intentional instruction is happening and teachers have some clarity of how they are to move through getting this new curriculum and maneuvering and so that's been exciting to see that the teachers feel sustainability and being able to help students in a very intentional and direct manner um student discussions happening are happening at deeper levels and there's a safety in that feeling safety meaning I feel safe in making mistakes and I learn from mistakes and I grow from them so whereas answers were only just right or wrong now we're learning how processes help us learn to

064get exact answers so that is exciting to see um at the elementary level we are seeing the my path and learning games influency flight being utilized by students and I'll share more of that in just a moment at the junior highs we're seeing the same amazing results I've had the opportunity to be in almost 100% of our Junior High math classrooms um so far this year I haven't been in all because some teachers were absent or lack of time on a campus but I've been in a lot of them and we're seeing the same things this student discourse is phenomenal and it only helps with our literacy initiative um the academic and content vocabulary that is becoming a consistency across our district is going to help us grow our students students learning all the way

065through K through 8 um so all of those things are great and the other thing I wanted to share specifically is yes we're using the personalized instruction at the Junior High um and the data that we're getting from not only the diagnostic assessment but that personalized instruction which is my path teachers and students are learning to utilize so that is evident in classrooms in the junior highs I I just wanted when I looked at the curriculum I do remember one of the things I thought was outstanding was so way that um the curriculum was designed to help students talk about math to each other and to share and to problem s together and I thought that was very outstanding a very different way of learning math than maybe it had been taught in the past

066but just to ask along with that teachers are still though the primary instruction givers and are helping and then facilitating discussions but then bring it back and let's have a teacher say great great idea this is good and kind of move it forward with is that true with teacher absolutely you are spot on and helping to guide students into that leveling of how do I get further in my Educational Learning how do I move through the mathematics to get to the pieces that we need for the ONG grade level standards to be full and robust so they like they're not just wandering talking trying to figure it out but they're like teachers are the facilitators of discussions and help students see the differences in the levels of the mathematics so that they can always always

067continue to raise the level of mathematics within their classrooms so yes they are very much the facilitator and director help me understand what were you talking about the ma my path sure my path is individualized instruction based on students needs so every student that goes into I ready gets to take a diagnostic that diagnostic will then place them in four domains of mathematics and we'll level them so that they can have specific instruction on things that the students need to um help strengthen and enrich on so the teacher will see that Diagnostic and then say okay right off the bat I know I need to focus on these kinds of things with this with this group of students and with a totally different group of students oh they're kind of have a hole with these

068kinds of things so it kind of helps them way it helps them see instructional groupings absolutely what's beautiful about uh this diagnostic is that it helps the students with the levels that they're on so every student at the table can have very individualized learning paths along the way and then the teacher can take the on-grade level material that they're learning and scaffold what are the prerequisites to help me support what students might have some weaknesses on if there's students that have all the prerequisites met how do I enrich and it will give them guided instruction to help those instructional groupings okay absolutely I would like to add to your question because you asked about classrooms what do they look like what do they sound like and I think an important part of this implementation has

069been leadership training because it does look and sound different from math classrooms of maybe when we were in school and so that that training is ongoing as well and our leaders are learning what does a good math classroom look like and sound like so that's also occurring here fluency flight are for grade levels 2 through five and so after students have learned strategies in K And1 so they use fenic flight to to help them maintain and learn more strategies to help support them here I want to give a shout out that the um Pioneer Elementary actually has met by a very large supply the amount of Target days to be on the my path I'm sorry the fluency flight instruction the target days would be three days a week minimum or 30 to 49 minutes

070a week so they're targeting with that and they are also now realize we're in wave two we don't have 100% of our teachers trained 65% of their students are actually getting on fluency fly and learning that is a huge significance so I just wanted to give a shout out to that and saying that our programs so the online components that were're bought with this program are being utilized and being enriched in the classroom so we are very appreciative of our not only our textbooks but the online components that help and support um students along the way that being said um another piece that was supported by our board and uh we were able to purchase were manipulatives I know what the first two pictures look like are just a couple of blocks however the activity

071was to create a creative play school I'm sorry preschool bench that students might come and observe and then measure the surface area so here they got very creative and I love that fifth graders were able to take these tools and utilize them and see surface area and a new light rather than just a word problem that told about it so it's exciting to see those tools being used in all of our grade levels um next picture you'll see kindergarteners who are using that math discourse and talking about uh the materials in their hands and being able to talk about mathematic content um the next picture you see is a teacher working in a small group from the materials it I was talking about the instructional groupings here that teacher could find that instructional groupings were

072those exact activities they needed and be able to supportive um students not only do workbooks in I'm do work within workbooks but they also are up and moving and being able to talk with one another and having that rich discourse and so that's a picture that is shared there and then you will see on the next um slide sorry your mic thank you you will see on the next slide that the same is true in secondary and I wanted to emphasize these pictures of active learning where students are up and engaged with each other um at the whiteboard um on different activities throughout the day next as promised we said there were three touch points this is a picture of some teachers what a this is a a sampling of our teachers at the second

073training they received the first one in July here they are at the end of August having the training number two and they are giving feedback that our trainers that are coming to share information with them are fantastic and so just a shout out to teachers who are learning continuously and being able to have that positive outlook about this new program so that's exciting so what are we doing in the elementary area to help support mathematics and our teachers in the implementation of I ready well the biggest piece is we want to ensure that consistency is across all of our schools we want consistency with our scope and sequence our learning Maps our unit overviews so it was very important to create comprehensive scope and sequence components for curriculum documents that met conventional needs as well

074as accelerated needs um we also have 65% of our teachers that are trained that is more to come I'm going to all visit all instructional coaches giving them further support and trainings as they are getting ready to do Cycles with their coaching Cycles with their um teachers and getting that next wave of teachers ready for their training that will happen later in this school year um we have further follow-up trainings for the first group that happens in November we have administrators who will have further training they had their first one in may they will have another one in October and one more to come after that and then we are very much looking forward to wave implementation three that starts in January so right after the New Year any questions about IR which is our

075K8 I I do want to thank our teachers because this is a new curriculum it means that they have to to learn new things and teach new things and redo lesson plans and and just really adopt a new a new system in some ways that is different from what they've been done previously so I want to thank them for that hard work of implementing it in the classroom absolutely so faculty members have been incredible um site administrators have been fantastic particularly at the at the elementary and junior high level um Dr Cox and Robert burer have have led the way and been just positive all the time Relentless in pursuit of just greatness in the classroom and the support's been fantastic but ultimately students are learning and parents are supporting and so I just want

076to really thank our parents because it also looks sounds and feels a little bit different and that's that's hard for us to wrap our minds around sometimes as well and so they've been fantastic reaching out to teachers reaching out to campuses phone calls come our way and so um it's not a new math or anything along those lines this is just simply active engagement in the classroom the materials maybe look a little bit different sound a little bit different and so uh them really being committed to this process has been extremely helpful as well yeah if I can ask this um I actually probably have this question on all each of these things that we're going over but I know that we're looking at the implementation and training of our teachers and classrooms are measurables

077that we're watching to see if this is a successful implementation and how it's affecting our students but I guess what other measurables do we expect to see to show that this um I ready and math implementation is successful and is meeting our students needs and is I guess resulting in students learning and GR so other things we're looking at we have District benchmarks that we have um already in place we are looking at how these Diagnostics also follow along that beginning middle and end of the year how do those measure how does it look for that projecting for that Summit of piece so that is another measurement that we will look at and see how it Compares I will share also that um I I don't want to say for the first time I haven't

078been around Dr McCord said over 100 years right but I I I did I did I did begin here in 2003 and since 2003 there hasn't been this level of consistency across all of our campuses so the level of data that we're able to look at relative to student growth student proficiency um the diagnostic and where students are and how we can engage with them as Learners where we we haven't had access to this at this level before and so you'll hear also now from Len as we progress into the secondary level and then as well from Jenna and the ELA side this consistency across it supports professional learning communities it supports the grade level teams and the information that they're looking at the student grouping is vital to the student growth and development as

079well so um we're just excited to be able to I don't want to call this a benchmark year but truly establishing for the first time in a number of years the consistent across all grade bands is then going to give us the information necessary to understand how we need to to move forward and engage and you as you said earlier continue to improve I think for the first time we're really going to have access to that information at a high level so just to add to that there's been conversations across different um departments such as like special education we've heard from special education teachers as well as District members about how much conversation how many conversations have happened and how much clarification has has come together because of the use of one curriculum in the

080past social education has had a very different curriculum than what we have had and so there's been no commonality and now we're bringing it together in commonality in our elementary and our secondary world that to me is immeasurable having those conversations where we have more relatable communication between our departments and on campuses and those students that are shared between teachers that's true I've got a a couple of questions when we first rolled this out or talked about rolling it out and how we were going to implement it one of the concerns that I heard from parents was um switching curriculums in the middle of a student's uh educational career would be would be difficult and so we talked about a phased implementation um and I think think the concern was more was more prevalent among

081parents of uh kids on the older end of the spectrum maybe the Junior High kids um maybe maybe the fifth sixth graders but mostly Jun fifth sixth Junior High um and so my question is what have you seen in regard to those students that have been doing math a certain way or doing a certain math cre curriculum for you know four five 6 7even 8 years and then switching what has their experience been like and have you seen any hiccups have you seen um anything that would that would cause us to maybe need to look at giving kids that are struggling kids in that group that are struggling extra attention what have you seen there yes I can address the Junior High um I will tell you that through all of the classroom observations that

082I was able to do I already was obviously you being utilized in 91% of those classrooms now I wasn't in there for extended periods of time so I might have missed some but they're really diving in the teachers are are diving into I ready and they are utilizing it and what's happening is yes initially we knew it's it's a new approach um students need to get comfortable talking with each other um but even this curricul um has a unit zero that is designed to get kids comfortable with each other and just communication in the classroom so all of those parts of this curriculum as designed have really increased the comfort in the classroom and we've seen I I've seen in junior high classrooms because I went early in the year and then I've I've been

083as recently as last week I've seen an increase in that discussion and that collaboration and that comfort for students so I believe that teachers knew that challenge was going to happen and using the curriculum um but their own expertise as well I'm so proud of our Junior High teachers for sure um I'm seeing all of that occur and yes there are still challenges are there still students who are hesitant sure um that could happen in a in a room full of adults so the teachers are are working to overcome the challenges they're working in their plc's with those challenges um the campuses are coming to the district with those challenges and we're providing help and training in every way that we can and and so I don't see any as you called it major hiccups

084um there are bumps there are certainly bumps in the road in an implementation but the teachers and the students are working together um in ways that I hadn't seen in the past and so I believe that it's it's going very well at the junior high thank you um my other question before we move on to secondary Ed is specific to the younger the younger students um and I'm going to use my my own experience to try to illustrate what what I'm what I'm asking the the the the intent behind my question um so it seems like a number of years ago we switched to I think it was it core Common Core common new Arizona academic standards and and the the big complaint that that I recall hearing and and having was that it was

085different than any way that the parents had learned math and so it it kind of it it created a situation where parents were having a hard time helping their kids with math at home and my own personal experience just my my my son is in third grade um and he's coming home with math homework that I'm looking at and I'm thinking okay I know how to do this and I start trying to help him and he said no dad that's not how to do how to do it that's not how my teacher told me to do it and there's there's two or three different ways that he's supposed to demonstrate that he can you know be proficient at at at math um and so I just kind of have to sit back and and watch

086him struggle and not be able to help him because it's not the way that he was told that he has to do it as a parent that's extremely frustrating because it's like no here's how it's done here's how it's been done for decades um and really the goal is just to get the right answer um and so so that's the experience that that that I had and I know a lot of parents have had parents want to help their kids you know with their homework when they come home but the fact that parents don't know necessarily how things are being how their students are being told to execute these problems makes it almost impossible for parents to help and so my now to the question part is have you received any feedback from parents in

087regards to this program being um being helpful to them in being able to interact with their kids at home doing homework and being able to help them I can say I have not had feedback from parents that's generally not usually where who I hear from but I hear from teachers and they're reaching out for what is it we send home for parents how do we help parents to is their parent portal the answer is yes there is a parent portal yes there's a family letter established for every single unit that the teacher is teaching that goes home to the family that's family friendly that points out what are they doing and on the flip side has an activity that the parents can help and do and support so they can have an understanding of what

088is happening with the students so um as work is done in the workbook it can take they can take it home and see it and what is happening um this program actually has tutorials as videos that can be sent home also so that's another way support So teachers are reaching out what do we do how do we support if they haven't already figured it out many already have so um the next question that I'm getting and this beginning today what do we do what do we send home for parents and there are reports that can go home to parents that talk about their students specifically how they've done the on the diagnostic and give some suggestions on other supports that can they share and give as well okay thank you as we move to secondary

089um I'm going to speak a little bit about the um into a by hmh um which is our other large population um implementing the adopted materials and and I wanted to just bring these three photos to assure all of you and the public that we're still utilizing and it is teacher-driven um pencil and paper we are doing engaging activities just as we were at the junior high by having students communicate with each other and and problem solve um and then there is this online component the digital platform so we are utilizing all of them in our classrooms and these were recently taken in our high schools we are also in the process of um developing the remainder of our comprehensive scope and sequence we have first semester materials for our teachers so they can see

090where students are headed this semester um we are going to develop second semester um this week so very soon um this is our year to create our common unit assessments and they will begin using them next school year um again there's talk about ensuring consistency across schools and this new resource is is doing that again I'm seeing a common vocabulary in classrooms it's going to allow our students to go from one course to another and continue using that vocabulary and growing that vocabulary um we have had um training for teachers training for leadership um and lots of District alignment conversations um with Improvement plans and the instructional framework so all of that is happening with our secondary adoption as well can we just go back to the can we go back to the previous page

091that had H I just wanted to know the those an acronyms the yes yes hooton Mifflin hardcourt is the publisher and into Ag and a traditionally stands for algebra geometry Algebra 2 okay thank you you're welcome we are fully implementing this into a program in our high schools and again I have been on the high school campuses as well as the junior high campuses um I mentioned earlier that 91% of our Junior High classrooms it was evident and obvious that the I ready was in usage that's a little bit lower for our high schools and and again first year of implementation um we walked into some classrooms and they were assessing so it wasn't evident and obvious and so um it is not as As Nice of a percentage I guess I would say but

092we are are expecting that percentage to increase throughout the year as teachers get more confident and comfortable utilizing all of the aspects of that resource um and it is um research says that it takes teachers three years to be become comfortable with a new resource so I'm glad that I'm seeing what I'm seeing in the classroom and that teachers are helping each other and we're continuing our training to get that reach of that comfortable level yes so recently there was a follow-up training that had been organized and I was fortunate to be in a room with Canyon Valley Desert Ridge High School and Highland High teachers and during times where there were group discussion going on or um a break in the action I would walk around between the groups and talk a little bit

093and the feedback was hugely important and So within the classrooms where you're seeing the 20 23% maybe not evident what you're seeing and what you're hearing are teachers who are really trying to figure out best utilization of some of the resources uh one gentleman from Highland High School you could just kind of see him he he said there's so much that I'm trying to figure out what the perfect thing is to use with the perfect lessons so sometimes I'm going back and I'm pulling something that I know that I've utilized prior so it's not a bad thing it's just he's spending time really learning the resource and so I think to miss bomb's Point um a year or two and he even mentioned he said next year will'll feel different right like next year I'll

094know exactly what to use where to use it our PLC will know what resources is the best so the 23% I don't take is is a bad thing at all I think that's a reality I think that's a reality of learning something new reality that once the students are in front of you though I have to go to something I'm really confident with right and then I'll come back and I'll continue learning the other and so 77% evident utilization of classro I think is really positive at this stage of the game with those follow-up trainings occurring um I mean this just occurred two weeks ago right so they began they're using they come back in they receive another training they're together in their plc es and their and their disciplines and um you see a

095lot of really hard work being done but it just takes some time so be proud of that yeah yeah I absolutely am and I I am well aware of all of the hard work that is happening on all of our campuses um the one thing I would say is the bullet up there that says working through challenges by campus the campuses have been very communicative and and desire help in the areas where their teachers are struggling and so I've been able with my um secondary instructional specialist to go to the campuses to provide some of that assistance um it's nice to have another body to reach more campuses and more times um and so that's all been good the two main challenges that I'm hearing are um the number of resources and teachers are working

096super hard to be intentional in their selection of using those resources and so that's some of the challenge for sure um and pacing the first year of a new res Source pacing is a challenge and some of it's based on their needing to be intentional about all of the resources that are there and learning how to utilize them together um in a CO in a cohesive way um so for teachers implementing with Fidelity we're seeing the same things that was mentioned earlier with the IR increase in discourse and and discussion increase in productive struggle a lot of student voice being heard in the classroom student to- student conversations um um and problem solving conversations and so all of that is is evident within our high school for the into a as well can I ask

097really quickly so when you say all of the resources available what do you mean by that so this adoption for our algebra through Algebra 2 classrooms has that digital component it has a workbook um and it has a textbook and so in the past our teachers have utilized a consumable work workbook that was our most recent adoption and that was it and so bringing forward the workbook and finding ways to utilize it to best serve their students um and the digital platform for sure um it has its challenges because it's something that's new and any program that you are given especially um inputting math answers um it may have a way that they want you to enter the data and so teachers and students together are working on okay well I thought I entered the

098right answer and if it was written on paper it's all good so let's figure out how we have to enter that and that's just learning the platform um but those challenges um are I think important as well as students move forward and are going to be tested digitally um and so all of those experiences are going to help our students grow so you're saying all the resources within just the this new adopted curriculum absolutely okay where do teachers go or where should teachers go if they have questions about putting this all together you know they've had the training they're working with their classes and now you know the rubber hits the road and where do they go when they need help with some of this well luckily they have a math specific instructional coach on

099their campus and then they can also always reach out to us at the district so the um secondary math specialist as well as myself are great resource and we are more than willing to get out into the classrooms that's our joy okay so we're going to move into 712 English language arts curriculum um you may remember this I'm glad you guys brought this all up that research says that after 3 years people start to get more comfortable with it well here we are in year three of savis my perspectives okay so we did Implement that in the 2122 school year Well we did an initial training in the 2122 full implementation 22 23 so this is our third full year um and because of that uh our teachers are now feeling much more confident in

100the variety of materials that are within that program they have the student consumable they have the digital aspect of it um they're really starting to get a feel for how that balances out and when to use what where depending on what the needs are so um I've been in quite a few classrooms already and it is at 98% for sure I was on a high school today walking through English classrooms and it was 100% everybody was using my perspectives it was clear to see that the ninth grade teams had been talking because there was clear connections I mean obviously the conversations are different in every single classroom you go into because the kids are different but you could tell that these teachers were having conversations in the ninth grade team and so so it was

101it you could see the connections there and that um I think is going back to something that Mr Ryan said is that's a place where I don't think Gilbert has been like I might see this in one campus I'm going to also go to another high school campus and I'm going to see a similar thing and a lot of the conversations and that continuity has really helped our teachers sort of feel empowered they feel like their support system now is much broader they know they can reach out across campuses and they can ask questions because they finally seeing how it all fits together so it's it's been really cool um so again uh I think I talked about this last time I was here with you all about how English was the lucky lucky subject

102that got to do the comprehensive unit evaluation stuff we did all of the scope and sequence first and we implemented it this year um for the first time we brought all of our English teachers together at the beginning of the year in July 160 of them maybe in the camp of verie cafeteria and I was able to address them as a group um they sat with their full Ela teams they sat with their uh building leadership they had instructional coaches we had our special education people there as well all of them were at the table and they looked at our scope and sequence and our unit overviews and we talked about the common unit assessments and so they were able to start the year sort of as a GPS team and then they went back

103to their campuses to start this implementation and it really um made a big difference I think it's something that we're going to try and do um moving forward where we sort of have that place where we all get to touch base so instead of me trying to bring in different teachers for trainings at different times of the year just having that one you know and it was only like three hours it wasn't a ton of their time just to sort of really get them fired up and then they go back to their campuses and they're ready to go um it was it was really cool I loved it um one of the I'm so professional sometimes I'm sorry um so as English is the first one to do the common unit assessments um we are

104implementing those common unit assessments through the digital program realize svice realiz which is where the materials are held digitally um because they do have a remarkable uh Assessment program so we built the common unit assessments for the units at each grade level and we needed to see if they were going to work and I don't know if Mr our chief technology officer he's not here anymore the data and research team has been unbelievably helpful with that so um we created a pretest for the first common unit assessment which is coming up at the end of the first quarter and I sent it out to all of our teachers grade 7 through 12 everyone had a pretest for their particular unit and I said if you would like you can give this at the beginning of

105the year and it's going to give you some baseline data and then we can compare it to the CUA when you take it at the end of the quarter and what I really want wanted to see is what's this going to look like in our systems and it was amazing they all got it I was able to share it with everybody everyone was able to do it digitally and you can see the participation that we got across grades 7 through 12 with a preest and our teachers the response I got from teachers was extremely positive because now they had a common data source that was very specific to the standards and skills that they then could zero in on in that unit moving forward and they were able to identify some of those gaps uh

106so it was really important which is leads me to the impact on instruction having these common data points has really motivated a lot of our grade level teams and I'm starting to see a much um more effective uh much more effective conversations happening in our plc's at the grade levels because they're finally comfortable with materials they they're feeling good about it they have a data point they can work with um they're sharing with each other about how they're using different kinds of things um I'm kind of rambling at this point but I think the thing that makes me happiest is now we have you know five four Junior highs and five high schools and Canyon Valley and Gilbert Classical in the grade levels that use it finally feel like they are part of a bigger

107team and they aren't so individualized it's important that they have their own you know communities and and and all that kind of stuff but now I think our English teachers nobody feels isolated anymore they're not alone they are really starting to depend on each other and that kind of collaboration has really increased some of the professionalism that I've seen and their willingness to learn it's been really extraordinary I've had a lot of fun you know last year but this year going out on campuses this year has been really awesome don't ever AP don't ever apolog ol for rambling I personally appreciate your enthusiasm that's it are there questions from you I'm going to have questions um so when we look at how students are doing I mean are they i' I've just seen at the

108elementary level that kids are doing really well how are kids doing at the secondary level with um being able to write better and being able to understand and collaborate and uh do those those processes that are important yeah the the collaboration piece in my perspectives is key um but not only just in my perspectives which offers a lot of that our professional growth and development team and the work that we've done with our instructional framework and the focus that we've put not only on um our Clarity map so that kids are very clear about what they're learning and why it should be very clear to them that what they're doing um but the focus that we've had on instruction over the last three years too um has been in fact Mr Ryan and I were

109in a classroom recently where we got to see my perspectives in action but the teacher had really created an environment where kids were working with each other they were moving from one place to another and they were utilizing sort of those executive functioning skills and those problem solving skills that I mean you have to be have literacy skills to be successful but you also have to be able to work with people and you have to be able to communicate with others to have them understand clearly what it is you want or what you're doing and we're seeing more and more of that they're really starting to marry the instruction with the materials okay and taking it above and beyond and really tailoring it for their particular group at whatever campus they may be okay thank

110you I appreciate that Miss humph I think also um we'll be very excited when we get to November 1st um after the state has kind of gone through and finalized all of the details related to school labels or there will be a number of data points we'll be able to kind of point at and look at growth year-over-year from from over the last two years three years with my perspectives obviously it's early with our math implementation um but I think everything from Lexile level um literacy skill uh we've put into effect this year the uh led by Wendy Peterson and Jenna we have a middle years literacy initiative with a great team of folks that been brought together specifically for that purpose um the pgd team has grown exponentially because we've identified Specialists from across

111the district with true skill and not only content but as well as instruction and so we're leveraging our resources a bit differently ensuring that we're on campuses um as much as possible and so everything is working in concert together there's purpose intentionality behind each of the decisions that are being made with the Personnel that we have and so extremely optimistic um in what we're going to what we're going to see November one this year and then fast forward another year or two so um really proud of the work of these three and the teams that they work with that's awesome thank you I do have one more question I just know in past Generations we said oh boys are better at math and girls are better at language arts what are you seeing in the

112data because in my mind it's not a gender thing it's a teacher having a great teacher and helping you along that path so what are you seeing in the data as far as that goes well in my home women are always correct and and and then when I come when I come to work I think it continues I share a wall with Dr Cox and on the other side is Mr burer and Dr Cox wins and so that's the way and Sophia as well so um no I I mean I I think that particularly on the math side this is new right and so I think we're too early to see if if things are really changing I think participation is what we see that we would like to encourage more participation um from a

113particular um subgroup and subpopulation to participate whether it be engineering stem Fields um you know on the literacy side or the literature side I think as well and and so I think participation we're still seeing um areas of Improv M that we need to identify ways to to to build participation you saw earlier tonight when John was talking about the stowed events and so I think that that's what we're seeing more often than anything is a lack of participation um from specific subgroups than we really are uh a lack of ability or that we're behind I would say I did see today even um in a in an English classroom where um they had been reading a novel in conjunction with the unit they were using uh with my perspectives and she had them doing

114a uh a silent discussion and so every table had a question and the kids were going around and they were writing what they thought and then they would go around and then they'd respond to what somebody else had written and then the groups would get together and talk and I went up and there was four young men sitting at this table and they started arguing over whether or not um the C which of these two characters had better qualities as a leader and it was really robust conversation and so I'm going to say you know if young men you know can't care about or respond to literature I would say well no these four had very strong opinions about these things and I I I think sometimes the instruction that we're seeing in our classroom

115is seeing those skill sets being encouraged and so you see more everybody's participating not one or the other we don't see one gender necessarily dominating the conversation that's my experience okay well that's that's really good to hear I really appreciate that so thank you thank you any other comments or questions all right thank you so much well done to everyone thank you guys thank you all right appreciate uh both of those presentations tonight and the work that went into preparing those uh we're going to adjourn our work study meeting this evening and move into our brief board business meeting uh we will first call that meeting to order and we will ask Miss Wilson to do roll call Mr Chad Thompson here Miss Lori wood here miss Ronda pagee here miss Shila ug jetti is

116not present Miss Jill humph here Mr Thompson you have a quorum thank you Miss Wilson moving on to agenda item five the consent agenda items for consideration discussion Direction and possible approval is there a motion I move that we approve the consent agenda as presented thank you Miss Humphries is there a second second second thank you thank you Miss Paige uh we will now vote on the consent consent agenda genda items all those in favor of uh approving uh consent the consent agenda items as presented say I I I any opposed and those pass four to zero thank you and now we'll move to number six on our agenda adjournment is there a motion to adjourn so moved thank you Miss Paige in a second second thank you Miss Wood this all those in favor

117of adjourning say I I any opposed all right this meeting is adjourned thank you very much