001foreign we'd like to welcome you is that on so hello John John Mikes oh there is that better okay sorry about that thank you everyone we'd like to welcome you to tonight's work study and brief board business meeting it's 6 p.m on Tuesday October 11th I've called this meeting to order and we'll begin with the presentation and discussion topics 2.01 FY 2022 annual financial report and school level reporting form Dr McCord thank you madam president governing board members uh welcome to everyone tonight we have a finance and operations treat for you this evening Bonnie Betts uh will kick it off our associate superintendent of business services and I'm sure she'll bring up some guests as the night goes on so it's going to be a short presentation it's going to be great just kidding um
002all right thank you ready thank you Dr you're welcome the board members um Mrs wood I wanted to just let you know that I'm going to hand over the annual financial report presentation to Ms Jackie matinin and I am here as the color commentator this evening so Jackie is all yours thank you that's me shouldn't be yeah do I have to connect okay thank you Miss betz Madam president Dr McCord members of the governing board we are here tonight to present the FY 2022 annual financial report or AFR please keep in mind that this document is unaudited our audit team from heinfield meets will be on site next week to wrap up their field work for the FY 22 audit and we'll present the final report to you in December before we begin I would
003like to send out a huge shout out and thank you to Ashley Miranda she was um she did most of the work on this annual financial report on the school level reporting and this was her first year doing these so I just wanted to say a public thank you to Ashley so today's report will include AFR details we'll talk about some of the fun balances annual teacher salary Food Service AFR and touch on the school level reporting keep in mind now this is all of FY 22 spend and activity this is doesn't contain anything as of July 1 2023 so we're going to take you back a year so we'll start with some ending cash balances you can see here that the m o fund is 54.7 million there's unrestricted Capital Bond and Debt Service
004as well please note that the mno fund balance does not represent budget balance carry forward this is our cash at the county this is our cash on hand which actually allows us to do business without borrowing with tax anticipation notes and lines of credit so we're fortunate to have that the unrestricted Capital Bond and Debt Service those balances should should be very close to our budget balance carry forwards notification how do we have we have cash sitting there which I I'm appreciative that we can use instead of borrowing money for the towns but how do we have cash sitting there but it's not part of our budget balance carry forward Eminem earns interest so some of it is interest and some of it is unrealized tax proceeds do you want to talk on that just
005a little bit so generally speaking we Levy the taxes in August but especially in Gilbert right now our the growth constantly is bringing new properties on the tax rolls so the tax rate that we set is applied against those new properties but we didn't account for that assessed value when we levied the tax rate in August so it's a combination of both and you should know that it has grown over the last you know five to six years and it was only three years ago that we were borrowing probably 20 to 30 million dollars a year on tax anticipation notes and then finally it's important to remember that the department of the the state legislature still has that mandated cash rollover where the state is holding over 35 million dollars of Gilbert Public Schools money
006until the the fiscal year rolls over in early July so it's advantageous for us to have excess cash I I have a question about that it's also um has to do with spending too doesn't it it's like for example if we were buying a some of the capital um like buses or whatever through not not through the overrider bond but for Capital that would have to do with our cash it would have to go against our cash as well and so probably the most notable example of that um Mrs eugetti is the federal monies right the fact that we have to spend the federal dollars first and then we get reimbursed right so we have to have the cash on hand to be able to pay those invoices and if you ever get into a
007or if we ever got into a bind though then and I'm not talking about what you were talking about earlier but there's there could be a situation where we would have to borrow money that could cause our tax rate to go up am I correct about that that's exactly true yes so just to finish up so you check you look at this every year as it comes in and you use this as well to help set the anticipated or the tax for next year right so if there's a large balance like we're seeing now possibly you might so a couple of years ago I did reach out to the county superintendent's office and asked can we go ahead and designate a portion of this excess cash to offset the primary tax rate at that point
008in time he said I would hold off I would recommend just due to the uncertainties associated with at that time we were in the pandemic but I do think that when we set the tax rate going into 2024 it will definitely have the conversation with him again okay thank you you're welcome so keep in mind of that 57.4 million we're anticipating about 30 to 32 million as our budget balance carry forward also so here we have grouped mno and unrestricted Capital they are the biggest contributors to our operating fund and so this is consistent with the financials that you see on a monthly basis Revenue increase year over year by 18 million due to an increase in enrollment um keep in mind that although it increased the m o override decrease because it's based on
009prior year ADM so that was about 1.3 million so to cover it covered that um and then here's an m o and unrestricted Capital expense comparison year over year um coincidentally enough expenses increased by 18 million dollars a large portion of that was a salaries increased as per the approved compensation increases the reason these benefits didn't increase proportionately is because of the two premium holidays that were approved last year and capital increased FY 22 was the first year that we were fully funded and we're allocating out to the schools and departments so just some notes Here mno spend increased 13.4 million from FY 2021 due to compensation increases and inflation an unrestricted Capital spend increased about four and a half million from prior year a large portion of that was adopted curriculum and then budgeting
010out to the schools and departments and again we're we're on a zero-based budget process so the requests come in and they're evaluated and approved so move on to unrestricted Capital expenditures by category so this Pie shows the 13.8 million dollars of capital expense you can see the adopted curriculum slice is quite large as 3.9 million dollars School furniture and Equipment classroom Furniture science tables musical instruments things like that at the school level moving around the pie we have the building and land Improvement for the schools that title is a little bit misleading that's our kind of our spend category but these would be things like non-bondable netting fencing ADA compliance AC compressors things like that at the schools and the other up at the top includes the building B upgrades the building a roof again
011other things that aren't bondable white fleet vehicles printers and copiers and our warehouse forklift any questions on that pie so we've shared some of these pictures in the past we just wanted to share them again because they're so fun and I'll go through them pretty quickly but here's our library furniture our athletic spend on scoreboards weight rooms which was desperately needed helmets and pads for football White Fleet and equipment and our Marquis any questions before we move on to other funds quickly can you give us some examples the White Fleet and equipment what were some of the replacements and what were you replacing how old was it what was the state of it what caused us to to need to replace that I would say that some of them we did we tried to auction
012the ones that we were replacing and they were from the late 90s early 2000s that included operations white fleet vehicles we did order a couple of new box trucks for the warehouse that are still on order so just vehicles that that were in really tough shape that needed to be replaced foreign s here's our federal grants up at the top we have a summary of our total federal projects from the annual financial report so you can see that we started the year with a negative balance and we ended the year with a negative balance this is very very common with our federal funds as they're based on reimbursement and again that's where excess cash really comes in comes into play so we wanted to highlight a few of them Title One and Two idea basic
013and preschool and then sr3 we had 11.6 million dollars of expenditures and ended the year with that negative the completion reports were done in September for these Federal projects so we expect to see the payments in October or November and state grants again just a summary of our state projects and then the projects to note vocational education cceip which is our college credit by examination incentive program and allocated up to the high schools and then our results-based funding and here's our cash fund Revenue comparison um you've seen grids like this before what we really wanted to highlight here animation for Bonnie is the 19 2019 Revenue that was our last quote-unquote normal year compared to our FY 22 Revenue so we are coming back we're we're the revenues are on their way up there are
014field trips happening there are fundraisers happening there's our people are renting our facilities again so Community School you can see is up quite a bit two million dollars from prior a year I would also think that because pay increases come out of those revenues because a lot of those programs are self-funded that would impact some of their revenues on the on the long term is that correct [Music] it would more impact our fund balance I guess moving into the new year right yeah yep any questions there so we wanted to touch on the FY 2022 average teacher salary this is a required field for the annual financial report for FY 22. this is the grid that was shared on the FY 22 third revision for the budget so you can see the 57228 but I
015also thought it was important to share the figure for FY 2023 so this is from our adopted budget this 66 869 is an estimate for 23. we will pull this data again this month and provide an updated average teacher salary to you in a revised budget but I thought it was I thought it was important to focus on both that's the last time I'll talk about 23. the rest of us 22. any questions there just that that's great that we've been able to do that and keep moving forward and prioritizing our our teachers and all of our employees salaries I think that's a good thing there were some years where we had very slim raises and this is um good that we can provide something that's more in time with what it should be so
016we'll move on to the FY 2022 Food Service AFR this is a separate document that is required to be completed and sent to the stage this grid we've shared with you before in our annual financial report presentations one thing I wanted to point out is the 313 500 over there all by itself and mno expenditures we are required to do a calculation to figure out what our mno match is for 510 for this program um we there is a a an expense reclassification if you will the expense stays in mno but we move we change the function in amino to reflect that it's a food service expense in utilities and then also in included in the total expenditures is the 1.5 million dollars of transfer to indirect which is also allowable so this next three
017slides we really thought it was important to show um the Food Service program as as a standalone program with one fund and really how the pandemic affected the Food Service program not just in revenues but with universal free meals so this slide shows the revenues and you can see in 19 our last somewhat normal year there was a dip in 20 of course and then 21 started the universal free so you can see the dark blue bar is revenue that's total revenue the light blue bar is federal revenue from the reimbursements from our meals and then 22 was full full year free Universal 21 we had hybrids so it was a little bit lower but 22 was pretty remarkable there's over 22 million dollars note on this slide to the the tiny little yellow bar
018in 21 and 22. we still did offer some a la carte choices for our high school students but you can see the the huge difference between 19 and 20 and 21. we were not receiving any local Revenue because every breakfast and lunch served was free this slide shows the revenue from the previous slide and expenditure so with more meals served the expenditures go up again the revenue is is pretty remarkable and the fact that we were able to serve so many meals which is a perfect segue to the next slide which shows our number of meals served so you can see the breakfast and lunch in 22 that total is 5.3 million meals served last year which is pretty remarkable any questions on the Food Service AFR say again the number of meals that we
019served 5.3 million wow wow and this year I know we're not talking about 23 but just for a second have we seen more like 2019 again since the universal is no longer in place it's a little bit early to tell usually the participation is pretty low at the beginning of the school year we'll know more probably in about another month but right now we are trending a little bit lower than 2019 activity okay but still within um within a stone's throw I guess yeah it's pretty comparable so next up we'll have a we'll talk about school level reporting this was new in FY 2020. so we have a district-wide report and it's important to keep in mind that there are a lot of expenses that aren't allocated or defined at the school level that includes
020Utilities District office Personnel supplies our warehouse supplies operations expenses Food Service Transportation Etc so it's important to know that that that's at the district-wide level so the percent of reported district-wide expenses is 27 percent of the total spend in other words 73 percent is spent at the district schools even considering everything in the first bullet also of the total district-wide spend of that 27 41 is associated with transportation and operations and we know that they are very um closely tied to the activities at the schools and the individual school reports there is a separate one-page report for each school on the agenda item uh and you again utility spend is not reported at the individual School level and once approved the school level report will be posted for review under our finance page I also
021wanted to add to it when this was new in 2020 we we shared a comparison a side-by-side comparison of two schools of similar size um but very very different in program so the intent of this report we believe is so that the public can see a per pupil spend um school by school it's not really comparing Apples to Apples because of the program differences um we can do that again and share that with you at a future meeting and and pick some schools that are comparable in size to show to show the difference how much the difference of programming can cost in the per pupil spend I I would appreciate if you guys would do that again it's been a couple years and I think that would help us again as I looked through those
022numbers just to help see put some actual like daily things daily things that are happening in our schools to those numbers that we can see on that report sure be happy to okay thanks the other thing I wanted to add so at the district level or the district-wide report that's at the front of the the grouping of reports um just because we're not accounting for the spend at the schools doesn't mean it's not occurring at the schools so I just wanted to make sure that was clear we do account for all of our utilities at the district level but we all know that there's electricity being put provided at um at Neely at some times yes and all of our elementary schools Etc so I just wanted to make sure that that that we're even
023with this within that with not allocating out it we're still showing that 27 is at the district level and 73 percent is at the school so remember all of our itinerant teachers that are not doing business at the at the district office at all are actually accounted for in that district-wide spend so just wanted to make sure that was clear any additional questions we do have appendix after this we are not going to go through those slides those were posted to help folks navigate through the annual financial report if you had any other questions I'm happy to have an answer board members do you have any questions I just want to comment that I know this is a lot of work and I really appreciate our effort to be transparent and to show our community
024where the taxpayer funds are going and that I wish that every education entity that's receiving taxpayer funds had was required to have the same transparency so thank you very much for the next steps is we will be this is on our agenda for tonight okay wonderful if there's no further questions thank you very much we really appreciate it thank you all right that will now take us to 2.02 FY 2022 Bond and override report Dr McCord thank you madam president governing board members again I'll turn that over to miss betz and her team they will talk to you about our override and bond spend report good evening again so not to to mean to be overwhelming but yes there are a lot of slides here most of it is just contextual that you've seen the
025last four years in PR in making this presentation to you so I will go through quite a few of them very quickly there's just a few notable things I'd like to share in addition it's not just me Mr Castellano will be presenting information about the security and Technology spend Mr Trace Toby will be presenting information about the transportation's spend and then Albert will be providing the details regarding the operational spend so again we're here this this report to you is required by Statute however we're very happy to show the results of our spend this year it's been a very positive year and we feel that the work that has been done out in our schools has made a huge impact on the student learning so uh going back to the override commitments for fiscal year
0262021 recall that when you we have an override we because things change so quickly in school Finance it we're only obligated to make sure that we are following those commitments for that first year afterwards however we've made a commitment that we're going to continue to follow those commitments throughout the life of the override so looking at the override Revenue comparisons to Prior year looking at the 2022 override spend then presenting some Bond project Financial summaries the GPS tax rate history and then detailed Bond spend that includes the photos at the end of the presentation so the override so a 15 override was approved in November of 19. so this override is in effect through fiscal 2027 but recall that pursuant to statute if we are if we do not renew that override it will decrease
027by one-third starting in fiscal 2025. so in 2021 again going back two years the override generated 32.3 million dollars and then in addition recall that the amino override is calculated based upon the prior year spend so in fiscal 2021 if you recall in 2020 we had a nice increase in student counts and that was reflected in that that 32.3 million dollars in budget capacity going into 21. it was in 21 that our student enrollment went down significantly and so when we reporting on 2022 you will see that loss that Ms matinin shared of that 1.3 million because we were calculating the override in 2022 based upon the 2021 student counts okay just to make sure that's clear I have a comment to make and a question um I think that probably so much of this
028is so very important to let the public know what we're doing um the first one that you did and then I know this is by law however if it with the 15 of the immuno override generating 32.3 million dollars in budget capacity if we did not have that we would have to cut our budget by 32.3 million dollars is that correct that is correct and I think that's really important for the public to know that um we have if we didn't have it then we would be looking at cutting a whole lot of of programs and things that we don't want to have to cut so it's really important that we you know and I I think the hardest part of that is having people understand why and it's you know School Finance is so
029complicated but I think if the more that we can talk about it and get it out there as to the reasons why I think it not just keeping existing programs and people I think it also Keeps Us competitive with surrounding districts most of the surrounding districts have a 15 percent override and this was our first attempt at it and we're very thankful that the public voted that for us and so in order to keep the standards high in Gilbert Public Schools we need to continue on with that from this graph that we did actually have that circumstance that you alluded to Mrs eugetti where we lost the the full amount of the 10 override at that time in 2016. fortunately the taxpayer came back in November of 2015 and approved that 10 override but you
030can see the story being told by the graph in fiscal year 2020 was the last year we had the 10 override and in fiscal 2021 was the first year in which we had the 15 override so you can see where the levy increased at that point in time so the override commitments we made in 2021 retain and attract high quality Personnel social emotional supports these included the social workers at every single one of our buildings along with the Mental Health Counselors at our secondary schools and then the class size reduction allocation of two million dollars so note that those three things amounted to 18 million dollars but going from a 10 override to a 15 override amounted to about 10 million so even at that point in time we were making a commitment to continue
031to increase salaries across the board so that we can retain and attract the highest quality personnel I I do want to mention that when I first began serving on the board we did not pay competitively with other districts we were below and I think that it's really remarkable remarkable that we've been able to be competitive now and that we're in that in that with other districts so that we we aren't paying less so in 2022 this is our mno override spend so you can see the history I felt it was useful to see the 2020 actual versus the 2022 actual because 2020 was the year in which we were still at a 10 override so you can see the totals there at the bottom and you can see where we maintained all of the commitments
032that were made in that first 10 percent override and then in 2022 you can see that we still continue to increase salaries um even though our override dollars went down by 1.3 million dollars so that required us to move that 9.7 million dollars out of override and put it into other available mno uh sources so also you should note that um whenever we're talking about the increasing social emotional support or academic programming or post-secondary advising all of those lines are reflective of people and salary increases so we opted to just show that we haven't cut anyone at all since we've come back from the 2015 override and then the successful 2019 override so we're maintaining all those staff members it's just that we're reflecting the cost increases of those staff members under that first line
033which is offering competitive wages could I ask you to clarify something that you said at the very beginning when you said that we were by law have to follow what we say we're doing in the bond or the override excuse me for the first year but then after that we could do whatever we wanted however when we advertised for the the one these are the the what we advertised for absolutely and we have we're continuing we're not we're not changing any of the of the commitments that we made when we first went out for the override that's correct since the two November of 2015 that's correct the point eight percent for access to Arts Athletics and co-curricular are those like athletic fees and that type of thing or it's it's primarily um just being able
034to maintain the the salaries associated with coaches and um uh all those individuals that support those uh extracurricular activities thank you okay so um mno salary and expense increases this is exactly the same slide that Ms matineon shared with you earlier wanted to point out that you can see the salary growth from 151 million in 2021 to 158 million uh in 2022 exactly exemplifying our commitment to continuing to focus on competitive salaries in addition you can see the drop in benefits our benefit costs did not decrease but we had an opportunity where we could give a premium Holiday to all of our employees and and actually the district as well um because we had available resources in our employee benefit trust because we've been reporting positive results there as well so that it was another
035benefit to our employees and put more money into their pockets for those two pay periods because they were not required to pay their dependent care coverage during those two pay periods so again a focus on compensation overall here in Gilbert Public Schools maintaining those commitments that we made on the override so maintaining social emotional supports again have not made any reductions you can see that there's no increase here we've I've shared that we've used up all of the available mno override dollars but we've continued to maintain the number of ftes and social workers and Mental Health Counselors and then finally class size reduction made a commitment to allocate out at least two million dollars annually for class size reduction if you look down the teacher grade level content area Grid in the middle of this
036grid you can see that all of those areas are the most difficult ones to find and to hire math science kindergarten social studies we also included in here the site-based substitutes go back a year from now we were still in the throes of significant absenteeism due to the pandemic continuing and the site-based substitutes the those 12 FTE made a huge difference for our schools in making sure that we didn't have to double up classes and we're able to to facilitate the instructional learning of our students in spite of the significant amount of absenteeism that we saw last year did you want to add anything there no I would just like to to say and give kudos to otm and our schools just I'm impressed with the fact that we were able to find individuals in
037some of these categories to begin with um for the mere fact that it's nice to be able to uh listen to principles when they call saying hey I really need help in this particular grade level or this particular subject or core content area at my secondary school and were able to say yes please split your classes go ahead and do that the problem lies in finding those people to be able to fill those voids and so um please know that we continue to do that as we move forward and the key the principles were giving them the ability to hire earlier and earlier each year and will probably come out and let them start hiring for next year here very shortly so they have some folks locked up and able to go and ready to
038to start educating our kids for the following year so I I just have one question um site-based Subs I understand that we have one at each school and two at the high schools so um we're only listing 12 here so this is last year remember and so in the current year we have 59 okay site base Subs we've increased those numbers this year we've also found that it's just become um I don't know if it's more economical but it's definitely uh stress more feasible for our schools to have these individuals ready to go on their campuses and then if they're not ready there they don't need them that day there's always a need at one of our schools and we're very a lot of school districts have have inquired about this because we think it's
039one pretty Innovative too it also is a way to encourage people to go into our Pathways program and then all of a sudden we have permanent certified teachers that are ready to go and teach our kids so we like it the other thing I wanted to point out about last year in pulling data from November of 2021 and comparing that to data from like end of January early February we filled about a hundred vacancies during that time frame so it was a tough year to find people so we were still hiring even in January to fill some of our positions okay so moving on to the capital bonds so we are still in the midst of two Bond authorities the 2015 Bond Authority and the 2019 Bond Authority this is where there's a lot of
040context data here that I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on you've seen these numerous times over and over again um this Grid in particular was in the 2015 pamphlet this was in the 2019 pamphlet these are the commitments that we made way back when um and then now I want to share the district-wide spend summary so note this is our 2015 Authority note that to date we have about 5.5 million dollars of that 2015 Authority left and all of that is in technology and transportation what I wanted to point out here is remember that the the one-to-one initiative was for 712 and it was scheduled out all the way to the end of 2023 so that technology amount that 3.7 million dollars will complete that commitment that was made in the
0412015 Bond request the 1.7 million dollars you'll find from Mr Toby later that um nearly or over half of that has has now been spent because we ordered buses over a year ago that have just arrived and so that those invoices will be paid in 2023 not in 2022 but largely they're they're gone and spent so this is the 2019 Authority note to date that we have um just about 50 million dollars of remaining balance in this Authority we have about eight million dollars left uh sorry 18 million dollars left that we have not yet sold note the 100 million dollars versus 82 million um so 50 million plus 18 million is what we have left available to us however you'll find shortly that of that 50 million dollars about 30 million dollars is already
042encumbered and expected to be spent here in the current year already so we are going through the bond dollars fairly quickly quickly meeting the needs of our schools and getting a lot of projects completed I also Circle this uh this the cost of issuance uh detail up here these two amounts so the transferred to bond debt because this cost of issuance is outside the authority if we didn't have to spend it as a cost of issuance we are obligated to send that money back to the bond Debt Service fund offsetting expense to our taxpayer so when we present the next monthly Financial to you you will see that about another two thousand dollars will be transferred to the bond Debt Service that will then zero out those two figures there any questions before I move
043on and then the final summary showing a remaining balance of 55 million but again I shared some of this so of this left 1.3 million dollars it's already encumbered spent in fund 631 going into the new year and 22.8 million dollars in coverage spent in funds 630 leaving only 31 million dollars left unencumbered of that only about 20 million dollars is left in facility and renewal keep in mind that every year we spend we have been spending the last two years over 25 million dollars during the summer to complete necessary projects at all of our schools so I wanted to make sure that you all were aware of that Miss Spitz before you go on can I just ask you so we have it looks like we have sped up the spend compared to what
044we had originally maybe anticipated especially on the 2019 compared to go back there sure maybe just speak to that a little bit how how did that come about and you bet so at this point in time if you recall we we were focused on our tax rate and we wanted to make a commitment to the taxpayer that we will not sell bonds if it's going to increase the tax rate Associated Tax Rate and even the levy itself the total dollar amount it would not impact that in this new Bond program so at that point in time because the assessed values had not grown at all between the years of 2009 to 2015. we were obligated to to share with our taxpayer our electorate that that the maximum amount of what that tax rate could be
045so in order for us to achieve a flat a flat tax rate we had to commit to not selling until 2023 which is reflective here so however back in at the end of 2020 interest rates were extraordinarily low at that point in time we really wanted we knew he had the great needs we wanted to expedite the uh the bond projects so we had an opportunity to sell about 35 million dollars worth of bonds in August of 2020. that interest charge we would have seen I think we were estimated like a four or a five percent all in interest rate and at that point in time the interest rate was 0.71 percent so it was an amazingly the right time to do it and then fast forward again in February of 2021 I think last
046February we closed on the second series of the new bonding Authority and at that point in time the interest rate all in was about 1.7 percent it was going up obviously from 0.7 up to 1.7 today those that are out there trying to sell bonds the interest rate is at 3.5 percent so the Expediting of the sales have saved the taxpayer allowed us to get the resources in quicker so that we can meet the needs of our schools quicker so that was the result of all that thank you that's I think that's good use of our funds and especially the needs were there and we've been able to spend and have those improvements going on which we know the costs have an inflation have only gone up for for all of these kind of construction
047projects and materials so we probably also saved some money and actually got a bigger bang for our book because of that as well so I'm appreciative of your watching that and making sure that we didn't change the tax rate or Levy just like we committed to but instead we took advantage of really advantageous yes opportunities so thank you I just wanted to comment I mean I feel like um going into the schools and seeing these Renovations and changes I think it really is a point of Pride for us and I was actually in a building that needs Renovations and there's having some problems and I thought how great it is that we aren't dealing with burst pipes or things like that that delayed maintenance would force us to deal with so I appreciate that work
048that we're able to do that I appreciate the voters for allowing us that opportunity so we're very very fortunate to have supportive voice yep but note that our total Bond spend then for the for last year was 29.4 million dollars and again in comparison to last year it was about 25.3 million so this is the total spawn uh the Total Bond spend by functional area um so technology security and Facilities renewal there is no transportation in here right because the buses didn't come in in time to reflect under 2022 um and so then uh can't talk about bonds and overrides without talking a little bit about tax rates wanted to share our assessed values so again to your question Mrs wood the the low interest rates as well as the increase in the assessed values
049here in Gilbert Public Schools really helped us to achieve that that earlier sale of bonds and therefore earlier Bond projects getting completed but you can see there even going into the new year our total full cash value increased by over six percent and our our net value uh 5.3 percent giving us those opportunities to keep the tax rate low and then this is the tax rate Trend since 2015. you can see the continual decrease overall of the tax rate you can see the bump between 2020 and 2021 again that was due to the 10 override to the 15 override but that gives you a snapshot of our tax rate history and with that I'm happy to set us to hand over the presentation to to Mr yeah I'm nervous as he's sitting here next to
050me um Mr Castellano so I will be very happy to drive for you John I appreciate that thank you madam president members of the board Dr McCord thank you for having me uh here tonight um I'm going to uh quickly go through some of um Mr Allen Kane our Satan security director uh security spend for last fiscal year um this big shoes to fill he is also a national director and safety security director so I will I will do my best there there's been last year was around 6.6 1 million most of the security camera system obviously and I know he's been here and talked to you guys recently about a lot of that so some of this maybe review again when we started this project we've technology Services worked very closely uh with Mr
051Kane and we also have a network technician from our department that we actually embedded with him and Benson throughout this entire project so it keeps us very well connected on all the technology pieces as well obviously there were a lot of reasons for for needing this we had security cameras that came from as old as Radio Shack to Costco it was just all over the place so it was not an Enterprise level system so there was no Central management whatsoever and from a safety standpoint that's obviously needed to be addressed so a large RFP was done Benson who is a local company we partnered with and as well also show you some pictures of the Vigilant entrance video intercom system which I know he shared with you as well prior to this um this is
052a picture of the sock the security operations center this is at technology services along with Mr Kane's offices so it's nice to have them close right there and we can assist with any technology needs but if you haven't visited the sock I definitely recommend that you hook up with Mr Kane and go on there and check that out it is amazing technology and and what can be monitored across our district from the security operations center the vigilon camera system is what has gone in and you'll you'll start noticing those around at other places if you haven't already just from seeing it at our place they're used across the country and number settings but all seven of other high schools are completed at this time two of the five Junior Highs are completed and he expects
053the final three to be completed by the end of the year and then two elementaries are completed at this time and work on that we're remaining we'll begin in January they have just completed the entire Greenfield and Elliott Corner we call it so Greenfield Junior Elementary Global Academy and the tech services area so that's just been completed now they're they've moved on to the next but I'm not exactly sure where they're at right now this time so and one thing I wanted to add is that at the very beginning of the project we had an opportunity to buy we were worried about supply chain issues and we had an opportunity to buy large quantities of the cameras Benson was willing to store them in their warehouse for us until we could actually Implement them and
054install them in all of our buildings so that accounts for the fact that the whole budget was some somewhere in the neighborhood of 9 to 10 million and we've already spent 6.6 million even though we haven't gone over to half of our schools it's because we did that pre-buy of all those cameras which paid off for us yeah that that's crucial to keep the project going um the video uh intercom systems I'm sure you've all experienced these by being out and visiting our sites and he shared these um the only elementary schools that Neely does have the secured front entry so there's not one there and then the Patterson for an entry is in progress as well as well as our five Junior highs in the GCA and Canyon Valley um I do not have
055those security interests as well so they they don't have those there but um yeah the feedback on these I'm sure you've heard as well but um it seems like community and everyone has adapted very quickly to those and they seem to be working very well from a technical standpoint they've been pretty Flawless too once once they get used to using them so that's it for security stuff you have questions I can try my best to answer those or definitely can relay those on to Mr Kane if you have any that's what we committed to on the bond when we went out and asked for that and that's what we've been working on and went through the whole RFP process have worked to make sure that this has gone in a efficient and responsible way and
056that's and you guys have done good reporting back to us Mr Kane's been here several times so I appreciate that thank you sure um we'll move into technology Services piece as always I want to thank our entire technology services staff they're definitely the best staff ever and they've been working hard the last couple weeks to to try to get some stuff done uh can I argue with that a little bit oh yeah you can argue but I don't know if you're going to win this one but our 2.8 was was our spend in the last fiscal year a lot of this stuff is stuff you've seen over and over every time I come here but we've tonight the consent agenda will be the last spend of that on our refresh for our elementary teachers so
057it's kind of crazy to think we're already at that point to where we're refreshing those devices that that uh I feel like that was just yesterday that we were purchasing I know it's time flies so that will be the last part of spend that we will spend that money on and since that Elementary refresh um it's gone it's a little over four years ago I know before yeah and a half so um it was like 10 I think it was a long long time long long time so we definitely have a refresh cycle now and as long as funds stay good then we will be able to stick to that but um we're doing our best because that's important those are our teachers devices and our student devices so um cabling obviously every time I
058talk about cabling but we did finish the top bulleted schools uh last fiscal year those are complete we did because of supply chain again we it's still difficult on certain pieces of Technology items to get so the bottom schools are bulleted we purchases the purchased the parts for those but they won't be finished until this current fiscal year so those are in progress or just finishing up as well so you would see those the next time um our co-location I talked about this quite a while ago um so we definitely need to get back here and update you on on our co-location which is our data center downtown that is going very well we have most everything set up there now on Parts again held us back to finish that but that is nearly complete
059this was just some of the parts in the routing systems that we needed for down there but with the work that's been going on with our network with Cox they've even redesigned some of our fiber Rings here in the district and so redundancy now is is is there so we're super excited about that and hopefully you never have to to use that that way but it is prepared there our secondary internet connection is there our phone system is there as well and so we feel really comfortable on how we're set up now so the bond dollars definitely allowed us to be able to do that foreign initiative continues our take home at the secondary level so I'm again that's uh the funding came from for those devices we did have to replace some Chromebooks and
060purchase some more for loaners as well just like always and the same with staff laptops as those refreshes get a little bit closer we do have some that just kind of die out and so we have to buy Replacements so we also replaced a lot of well all of the very old Antiquated devices in our elementary libraries and even some of the high school with chrome boxes so it's basically like a Chromebook but it's more like a desktop so we have replaced all those and they're they're pretty solid and work very well so that was part of some of that spend as well there so our 290 2019 bond this is where you're going to start seeing some of our av refresh because we did start that last fiscal year um we did all the
061distance learning rooms as well um so that our secondary schools can offer um programs from school to to school within and outside of the school district but the AV refresh will be the biggest spin here in this piece so it was about 1.5 million and I'll talk a little bit about each of those so I want to spend a little bit of time on this slide so those numbers in the middle um this has been a huge huge project um similar to the to the camera system project these are very very complex projects but this touches every single classroom in the district and so um the five of us uh there are four of us internally and you probably knows Robert ebright who's usually here in the evenings but myself and Jim Woods our project
062specialist and then Sean abley who is our instructional technology coordinator and then Lindsey Baker from CCS our vendor that was chosen um we were the ones that went on the walks and walked every single classroom in the school district so that was took a while but it was actually very educating for us to be able to do that and just to see all the different classrooms in the school district but we completed that in about four months and the principal was required to go on those walks with us because if there's any location decisions to be made they were making them not me or us it was their call because those are their campuses um but things were pretty standardized across the district so that went very well the training piece uh I just want
063to take a little bit of time um there's extensive training that goes into this for our teachers so the way the crews work is during the school year they work at night so they come in and a teacher's projector basically disappears overnight so they're still working to the end of that day then they come in the next day and they have their new interactive panel there before we even get to the school the ties or Sean abley herself visits the school and we do a 30-minute training because there's only three things that are focused on how they can connect to that new panel hanging on the wall just like they would their projector how to access the white board which you'll see some pictures of and then how if they have a document camera existing
064in their room they still really like those a lot of teachers do and so we teach them how to hook those up it's a 30 minute training it's mandatory and the principal has to have everyone there but there's no mistaking it the next morning when they arrive they'll be able to connect and then we also have ties and customer care technicians there as well to help them so nobody's left unattended the next day to try to connect to their device there's plenty of help there so that's the initial training and we also have the on-site ties that can provide training as well at any time the secondary schools already had the distance learning there so if they wanted to go and use a board they could the the opportunity excuse me was there for them
065and then Ben q and CCS follows up after the installation and does a longer training they'll stay the entire day and meet with every teacher or they'll come after school before school it's the preference of the principal and however they decide to have their teachers there or drop in is is up to them and then of course by request the ties will train at any time so multiple multiple ways to to get training for these new devices we've also trained all the curriculum or like the name wrong the new coaches instructional coaches thank you we're also all trained on these as well and so we have 14 Schools completed at this time all the junior Highs are completed Campo Verdean Gilbert High School are completed and then a small number of elementary schools so we
066expect to have the project done by May at the latest but the goal is to have the entire District done in April so it's it's moving along quickly now thank you this is this these are secondary students so there's a lot of secondary students won't use these but they've really taken off with these I love the guy in the second to the left there he discovered he could write on his assignment there was Hamming it up so um but either multiple students can use the board at the same time as you can see so our secondary kids have actually taken off with these more so and even pushed some of their classroom teachers to use them in different ways so that's always engaging and great these are some of our elementary kiddos and the great
067thing is they can split these boards up into three parts and the teacher can send different things to the board for them to work on it and so that's just an example of that on the far right it's hard to see you can connect up to nine other devices to these boards to present so you could have nine students connecting their Chromebooks to these boards and they will all show up at the same time so nine gets a little crowded but they can use them for presentation they can also whatever is on the board can be sent to the Chromebooks in the classroom as well so if there's a student sitting in the back or says they can't see or whatever it may be they can send it the opposite direction so it's been really
068really interesting to watch and of course our teachers uh have really jumped into these he drew that himself creative there but um it's been great to also see the specials teachers use these especially the music and the different special areas even in the coaching there's pretty mapped fields and courts and whatnot so it's really been amazing to watch this and I I can't say enough about the partnership with ccs and how smooth this is gone knock on wood it's going very well so if there's any questions about any of that I'd be happy to answer those for you any questions board members no I've been to some of schools with those and seen the board can be moved down so that Elementary can actually reach it and then and then move back up or just
069shift it down and shift it up really easily yeah the elementary schools are all on motorized mounts okay so they'll go down as low as 24 inches off the ground and then up as well and I've seen where teachers can do notes and all this stuff and then save it and then send it to their Google classroom or whatever so that that's available for whoever wasn't there that day it's just a really convenient I've been really impressed with it and now we don't have the overhead projectors at all it's this is everything connects to every single classroom yeah and Elementary libraries yeah thank you any other questions board members okay thanks thank you thank you Mr castellana so Mr Toby thank you good evening okay good evening again um before we get started I want
070you to look at that picture because if there's any doubt what's at the end of the rainbow it's a school bus all right got a cold so um talking about the supply chain issues that's hit the buses pretty bad we're ordered some of these buses over a year ago some were like 10 months ago we've still got some on order that are not here yet um but that's kind of the world that we're living in at the moment but the ones that we got in recently in August we got three new 84 passenger and those are the big buses with the flat noses that you see running around just like this one in the picture they do have luggage compartments they've got everything designed so that we can use it on field trips Sports trips
071music trips as well as just daily routes um you know obviously we bought them for Arizona so they've got dark tinted windows and they've got a really really big AC system on it um I was teasing with Bonnie but they've got 121 000 BTUs which doesn't mean anything to anything but if you look at a car has 12 000 it kind of gives you the perspective of how much AC these things have because we realize that's a huge huge thing for the students nowadays is they see you on the buses um but they've got big engines they can travel up and down the hills they're built for you know more suited for what we use them for put it that way um let me go back to the thing that that was 523 408 of
072where those three big buses the other buses we got were the six which we call type A buses which are the smaller activity buses that coaches can drive the non-cdl drivers can drive okay and then we got six of those um they're 14 passenger because if you go into 15 passenger that's the CDL limit so it's as big as we can do and still standard of CDL restrictions but you can see the inside of them they're pretty nice to sit in for the smaller teams you know that they can get back and forth they're all gasoline engines so if you go out of out of town it's easier to fill them and things like that than the diesel that you have to fight with and there again they got tinted windows and great ACS um
073go back to the the money yeah so um they were about 417 955 for a total of 941 000 363. um we do still have five more buses that were part of the same purchase that aren't here yet three of those are special needs with a wheelchair and two of them are special needs without a wheelchair just are shorter buses to get door to door easier instead of the big giant ones that we use um so that's just another great picture of of what they look like and you see the dark tinted windows and there again just to try to make it comfortable for the kids as we're running down the road okay and the last picture is just what it looks like at six o'clock in the morning before the buses roll out so
074any questions oh and this this is all part of actually not part of this 2022 spend but they were bought that time but didn't come till now but we're so glad they're here yes yeah yes and helping the other five get here in a month is that the so that's what they're telling you hopefully in a month oh that'll be great yeah well thank you and again that's according to what we've what we told our taxpayers we would spend on this transportation and we're we're thankful to have those buses and have that support to have new taxpayers to happen and we'll be retiring some of the older buses as soon as they get here oh great auction those off okay thank you the other thing I wanted to note is that Trace actually has worked
075very hard over the last three years to right size our Fleet we have the right number of activity buses we have the right number of the big buses we have the right number of the 54 passenger smaller buses so you'll see that every time an order comes through it'll be different sizes of buses so he's really working at making sure that we have the right equipment for the needs for transportation here in Gilbert so it's been fun to watch for me to watch thank you thanks thank you very much and then Mr Dutch over here the last one my friend this is the area that I added 10 slides I apologize [Laughter] so this just is our overall span based on ultimately I have three categories in in my operational Department uh grounds mechanical and
076structure structural that each one of these projects falls under um here is just a spend based on age of the facilities we focus mainly again we've hit um we've tried to go on uh work with the older facilities um start with the 80s or 70s into the 80s and work our way to right now we're currently in the early or late 90s early 2000s we spent quite a significant amount at Islands Elementary renovating the exterior of the facility Roofing HVAC units as well as a couple other items there to uh bring that facility again that's one of our older schools in 1987. as well as Playa del Rey which is 94. we I noted this just because it did have a significant amount of work um thankful to um Miss Bix the the principal there
077because this facility we actually did multiple projects this is the first of its kind we not only did the restrooms we did exterior paint and we did the flooring usually interior we do one or the other in this case we actually ran two projects side by side and um I just would again like to give her uh a thank you because she was great to work with and she accommodated greatly um Desert Ridge High School this was another large need school we did exterior paint as well as um track renovation and flooring again um we touched 27 facilities so roughly 68 percent of of our educational spaces we touched this summer again this is another breakdown to spend per facility per site of each one of those 27 educational facilities and then here's a brief
078breakdown of the structural spend based on individual categories from restroom remodels to secured entryways mechanical summary the same just the breakdown of what we utilize in the spin associated with it so most of the mechanical you can see is the the lighting projects that you guys approved back in the 9th of August associated with the energy performance project that we we did with Schneider Electric in ground summary so ground summary is ultimately touching the athletic Services throughout our facilities Roofing so this project is you're going to see some slides here that were slides I think we saw back in May uh prior to the start of summer obviously there's a deficiency a failure with the roofing system at South Valley Junior High due to material delays the project was not able to kick off until
079just this uh fall break so October 5th we're going we're moving along and everything is going good so far so hopefully by the next rain we won't have any of these issues so okay I I think it's important to know just like Trace has dealt with and um you know we've been talking about South Valley Junior High roof for a while and when we finally got it sewed up ready to go you were set back because available materials and um you guys deal with this in operations all the time but I sincerely appreciate how you figure out ways to make it okay until we actually get the materials in to to help our schools continue to function as well as making sure our students still have a great space to learn in and our folks
080have a great place to work in so thank you guys for doing that you're welcome thank you I have a quick question so just this is just keeping things keep track of things in my mind so the South Valley Junior High roof if we haven't started it till right now is it part of the 22 Bond and override is this specifically the 22 does it I appreciate the question so it was difficult for me to figure out how to share that with you so basically the the financials are one thing they're really July 1 of 2021 to June 30 of 2022 reflective of an encumbrance period but that means all the work had to be finished by June 30. so we're in the middle of and then we're in the middle of the summer so
081we've always shared with you the pictures and everything reflective of the summer work that really does cross to fiscal years so what what we are showing you here and the financials are all from the governing board approvals that occurred during 2022. okay so in other words the financial grids that I showed early on include some of the projects that we shared in 2021 because we were finishing those up and paying off invoices so it's hard to explain that I appreciate the question but yes you're not going to be able to reconcile the financials to all this to all this you're not going to be able to reconcile it so I just want you to be aware okay so thank you next we move into fluorine um again as we move forward and try to modernize
082our facilities we look at different systems flooring has been key as we've started utilizing LBT instead of ECT creating as you can see with these um slides are before slides here uh poor maintenance or inaccurate maintenance and and additional failures so we've done upgrades this is Mesquite High School um you can see the lvt now on the in the hallways through main walk areas uh we did started we we did start utilizing epoxy flooring in the um science labs again to cut down on the maintenance costs no scrubbing um waxing stripping all that good stuff so we cut down time maintenance costs and amongst other things and again this is a front entry at Mesquite High Schools gym we kind of stole the idea from Gilbert High School's design and I think it adds a
083good touch to that to that front piece so front lobby there well I appreciate those pictures too being able to see the difference that we're making with the exchanges exterior paint again as we try to move away from older colors or outdated colors and and bring a more vibrant look to our facilities and incorporate some of the um school color or or some of the school branding into those facilities here's Playa this is a before picture this is actually uh after I got it on a good day so it's and yes we did paint the grass so that it really pops scared but yeah again giving it a more modern look um updated look with the other new color scheme Mesquite High School again here's the before had more of the mauve colors here's Ariel
084just so you get kind of a bigger or a wider perspective went to a more neutral gray tone with utilizing their their school color of the blue stripe throughout the campus [Music] um and that's the back end right here right yes this is off the Facing East and then this is the GM entryway I just thought the campus is such a large campus and it came out it looked so well uh similar to Desert Ridge High School when we painted that it made such a big difference from the for the curb appeal and then I had to get the power cat in there so restrooms uh this is something that Bonnie and I talk about so I think we've all seen the restroom remodels and we've probably seen enough toilets and urinals so Playa del
085Rey again um can't stand how Pat's Optimus Biggs uh this is her facility and again this is an updated look for her new uh her new restrooms so the restrooms are our biggest spend if you look back on the grid it's over 6.5 million dollars spent on restrooms this summer there's a few outstanding items on that but uh but it's a significant cost and everything is touched I mean we go floor to ceiling tile new tile the restroom is gutted new Cabinetry partitions and again there's always things behind the wall that do come up but this helps us with this modernization of the restrooms and gives more um appealing facilities portable Renovations this is something that's just that we've tried to focus on just because of the state of some of these Portables you can
086see here the exterior so again we peel that exterior shell off re-insulate as well as as add new siding to get given more of a weatherization as well as a a new facelift and paint job to to give it a more give it a better look again appealing to the facility and adding to that Aesthetics Millwork project this is technically the first of its kind that we've done site-wide this is at Patterson Elementary and similar to miss Bix I would just kind of take my hat off to Mr Blackburn not only did we do his restrooms but we tore every single one of his classrooms apart and added mill work to it so he he was he was very patient um dealt with a bit and like I said he he was great you can
087see it's important to say the teachers did it as well they they stored things and um corners of the classroom middles of the classroom but they they really their weight really paid off it looks really great no it didn't and yeah I apologize because definitely throughout every campus to be honest with you uh we LED just as we noted a little bit earlier that we led into the school year and and there was a lot of patients that uh went into these projects so with two weeks shorter we we kind of tested everybody's patience and resolves but yeah as you can see these these came out a lot better than what they were looking well and I do remember when I was there that they were talking about the age of their cabinets that the
088doors were sagging on the hinges because they've been there so long yes like 30 years old so I was there were you teaching third grade there at the time that's what I thought huh um our athletic venues again something that helps us with our curb appeal not only um our Athletics but our our PE curriculum this I thought this is Gilbert High School I thought was a good um transition because it actually shows to the to the north there or up on the top of that picture the um the new Surface and Below they were getting ready to to strip down the existing surface so it was kind of a good contrast between the two and we did add start adding pickleball courts into these facilities I'm glad to hear that yes we yeah we
089started adding um I believe Gilbert High has 10 quarts so that bottom half I believe the bottom half is what got the majority of them and you can see this is actually the before pictures of the um surface deteriorated surface um again here's another shot of Gilbert High School and I did get the picture prior to the line so they are there this is a Highland High School before picture um and the Highland High School after picture and again we added pickleball courts to Highland High School as well so and that's something we talked to at uh Steve and continue to talk to with the ads about incorporating that as we move forward into these facilities because it gives us that additional flexibility and taking advantage of some of those sports that are taken off
090or I guess have been taken off for quite a while track and field uh this is our Highland Junior High School high jump pit and long jump hit oh it's okay um Highland Junior High School so we resurfaced obviously you could see to the right it was down to the concrete again if you have a high jump hit set in the center so the athlete still has to run through so it again caused the potential safety hazard tripping Hazard for the student athletes thank you okay questions that's it well it's impressive what we've been able to get done due to your hard work so thank you I did want to share um the comment that Albert made about Playa one of the things that we miss often is the cost of mobilization so when you
091have an opportunity at Playa where you can do the bathrooms you can do the flooring you can do the exterior paint we actually end up utilizing our monies in a much more efficient cost-effective way so Albert's been driving those Concepts over the last couple of years and he's always looking for new materials and new ways to do business so we've made some improvements as he shared on the science science classrooms moving to an epoxy surface it's it's very affordable and yet very um what's the word last low maintenance and perfect for science classroom environment so I just wanted to to give him credit for all that work he's been doing is is that the same as the flooring that we put in the auditoriums OR is the flooring in the auditorium is a little different
092it's similar it's underneath the floor and actually we upgraded at two facilities so I think I know what you're talking about so there was epoxy on let's just say Mesquite High School and Highland High School underneath the seats this is a little a little bit better than what was originally there and we have upgraded those two since um well it looks it looks very nice and I feel like it will be much easier to keep clean definitely further questions or comments board members oh thank you for the presentation tonight thank you again to our taxpayers for the support of bonds and overrides that allow us to have classrooms and teachers that are conducive to learning to Great learning for our students we appreciate all of that and and work hard to spend the money efficiently
093and and in a way that addresses the needs so and and I just would like to comment tag on what you're saying is we're being proactive as opposed to being reactive that's very important all right well that will take care of our presentation and discussion topics and that will adjourn our work study so I would like to call to order our oh do you want a five minute break yup let's take a five minute break over on break Lizette Pierce raise your hand she's one of our Spire uh folks that they're required to come do some of these things but I can tell she's just invigorated Spanish teacher Mesquite High but thank you for being here okay yeah so cool it's alive together so you just didn't think okay um foreign okay thank you yeah
094yeah yeah hi um I'm feeling just right okay oh great Perfect all right we're back thank you for the brief adjournment we will now move to um our brief board business meeting I will call this meeting to order and ask Miss Wilson for a roll call Dr Charles Santa Cruz here Mr Bill Parker here Miss Laurie wood here miss Jill Humphries here mishita eugetti here Madam president all board members are present you have a quorum thank you that will take us to the consent agenda items 5.01 the approval of consent agenda items board members may have a motion I move that we've approved the consent agenda items as presented thank you Mr Jetty it's been moved is there second so thank you Mr Parker it's been moved and seconded that we approve the consent agenda
095items as presented all those in favor please vote by saying aye aye any opposed with nay thank you we will now move to our action items 6.01 FY 2022 annual financial report and school level reporting form Dr McCord thank you madam president governing board members we ask for your approval of the 2022 annual financial report and school level reporting form as presented by Mrs betz Ms Madden this great so we just went through that tonight board members may have a motion so moved thank you Dr Santa Cruz it's been moved as our second second thank you Miss Humphries it's been moved and seconded that we approve FY 2022 annual financial report and school level reporting form is there any discussion Madam president just a comment and I failed to make that during the presentation but
096just uh lots and lots of thanks to Mrs Betts and for her team that is quite comprehensive and quite diligent and all of those who presented tonight really have Illustrated to our taxpayers how their money is being spent and that we are true in fact to what we have committed to on their behalf so thank you to that entire team thank you Dr Santa Cruz anything further besides what we were able to discuss earlier tonight do you want Miss bets to come up and give that presentation one more time let's have her come back oh I don't think that would be necessary I don't think that would be necessary we would we do appreciate her willingness though I appreciate that well it has been moved and seconded and so I will call for the vote
097all those in favor of approving FY 2022 annual financial report and school level reporting form please vote by saying aye aye any opposed with Nate thank you that takes us to the adjournment of our brief board business meeting this evening um board members is there a motion some move that we adjourn thank you Miss Humphries it's been moved as our second seven thank you Mr Parker it's been moved and seconded that we adjourn all those in favor say aye aye any opposed with nay thank you and thanks again to those who presented tonight and for the opportunity to discuss [Music]