Gilbert Public Schools Board Meeting 09/13/2022

001are we ready yeah okay board members are we are we ready to start thank you thank you for being here we will begin this work study and brief board business meeting at 6 pm tuesday september 13 2022 and i have called the meeting to order and we'll go right to to the presentation and discussion topics starting with 2.01 marketing and communications update dr mccord thank you madam president governing board members welcome everyone to the meeting tonight uh first up for this evening we will bring up our director of communications and marketing uh don antestenis she's just gonna give us an update of kind of what we're doing and how we're moving forward with regards to that so done thank you governing board president um governing board okay move it forward okay thank you thank you

002madam president governing board member superintendent for the opportunity to come here this evening just to give you some updates on marketing initiatives and a little bit of a focus on enrollment campaigns going into well during the school year and for 2023-24 [Music] okay so quick overview our marketing goals are always to increase awareness within our community and beyond of all of the incredible opportunities that we offer for students both academically and extracurricular all the different programs and alongside that we're always looking to build a trusted brand and last year when i came and spoke to you at a governing board meeting we focused a lot on building trust with our community and the importance of that with all of the different stakeholders our students our existing parents members of our community and potential families also

003student retention and staff retention are always a goal we'll talk a little bit in a moment about some of the factors that influence enrollment and the experience of our existing gps family is a really key part of that and ultimately a marketing goal is always increased enrollment so with everything that we look at now whether it be data regarding enrollment experiences everything is a little bit through a lens of the pandemic so i thought it would be useful just to bring up this slide here which was actually the marketing mission statements that we had for 2018 2019 and really to highlight the division of retaining existing students recruiting new students and winning back law students and all of the different elements of the mission and our unique selling position are still the same so we

004really have this solid foundation to build on of academic excellence educational choice a well-rounded educational experience and also the different strengths that we have um and the position that our schools have within our community i did add in a couple of points in orange which i think are what as a department we're going to really focus on to deliver results one is working in partnership with our schools and departments so i think i've said it quite a few times and i continue to say it that enrollment is really everyone's business and a big part of what we try and do when we're building brand when we're bringing in different tools that our schools can use to communicate and market is we're trying to empower the people on our campuses and also in our departments to

005share the good news to constantly be putting information out there about why people should choose gps for their students education and we actually have now over a hundred staff who are specifically trained across the campuses as campus communications teams and we provide them with ongoing training and support they also have access to a whole wide range of tools and resources so that they can so we can all work collaboratively it's really key to achieving our goals um and then also just we're always adding new channels of communication for our parents it's always important with marketing to bring the message to people rather than expecting them to just find it out on their own so in addition to social media and newsletters we have the district app gold as a tool for celebrating school news newsletters

006and social media with regards to the unique selling position still delivering academic excellence for over 100 years and we have again that solid foundation and i think we're going to continue to have an increased focus on educational choice within gilbert public schools and really emphasizing that students and families can find what they're looking for right here um quickly just to show you this was actually the slide from last year when i came and spoke um and we emphasized what works and we talked about additions to our marketing toolbox which was gilbert gold as a means of celebrating and some new targeted campaigns like level up we also added in the campus communication teams and we began to really promote educational choice within gps more on that in a moment so some of the highlights from

007what we worked on during the 2021-22 school year for gilbert gold we actually published 72 stories um and just this week i think it's cause for celebration one of the news channels took a gilbert gold story that we had on our website regarding greenfield elementary and a kindergartner who raised funds for his teacher and just took the whole entire story and published it as a news story which i'm taking as a compliment unbeknownst to us yeah we see our schools you know how it is we see your your school district on tv and you're like hey this was great stuff so it was good yeah it was really positive and so that's really our intention with gilbert gold was to tell positive stories about what was happening in the district to increase morale to retain

008our families and also to spread the word about what's happening here in gilbert and our team were really excited we won a national school pr award of excellence for that as a marketing campaign great job thank you um also our campus communication team as i mentioned briefly um we have this team and i think it's important to acknowledge that it's not necessarily originally part of these team members job descriptions so we have attendance specialists administrative assistants principals teachers who are all actively creating newsletters updating our websites putting social media out there and we're extremely grateful for all of the work that they do we provide training monthly resources and we've created a quarterly newsletter that we send out to them with resources and tips and tricks and to make that part of their job easier

009um another highlight was level up and pave the path so if you remember from last year level up was initiated if that's the right term to support our sixth grade families and students moving into junior high and there were a number of goals behind that one was to retain 100 of our sixth graders we know that the most shopping around for schools happens at that transition and we also know that larger numbers of students are not at their boundary school when it comes to junior high so we were looking to retain all of those students and also bring in new families it was particularly important because last year was the time that the fifth grade i called him the fifth grade covert cohort which is not a good term name um but there was a

010we when we saw losses during the pandemic it was particularly at the kinder level and also at fifth grade and last year was when those fifth graders were coming into seventh grade so it was a smaller cohort moving up so we gave special attention to that and i think we were anticipating around a 300 loss and we really minimized that and attracted additional students in and excitingly as we were doing that community education and our preschool teams came up with pave the path and that you'll see we're gonna um do again this year that was designed to try and retain 100 of our preschoolers into kindergarten um and i'll share a bit more about that so those were the highlights any questions so far okay um so for enrollment i think it's important to identify

011that marketing doesn't solve everything and there are other factors that affect enrollment including reputation experience quality competition birth rate cost of living boundaries and programs alongside that we collected some data regarding our two requests so when families requested tourist school they complete a form and we added the question how did you hear about us we gathered about three months worth of data and this is how um which i find really interesting but this is how the percentages worked out so 30 was recommendation and i think that's when we're talking about the importance of customer service and the experience of our existing families that's really powerful and word of mouth is always the most valuable form of marketing second is internet and google search and so that just really highlights the importance of our um websites

012and keeping them up to date and having content like gilbert gold and the calendars up to date and that really matches how people find things nowadays so if you're looking for a restaurant if you're looking for purchasing a car your first port of call will always be the internet to do research and the same holds for schools the third twenty percent was other which was majority of people living within the boundaries of the school and campus signage was 13 driving past our schools and older students attend digital advertising and newspaper ads so for 2223 um the way that we try and do things as a team is build on what's successful so we'll continue to focus on what works and the additions from last year um and then bringing in some new campaigns which i'll

013briefly go through focusing on educational choice within gps those transition campaigns for retention and recruitment new program growth campaigns we had a number of new programs last year and over the last couple of years so really looking at how we can support them to grow and thrive with enrollment a kindergarten readiness campaign and then customer service so with choice comes potential confusion um for our parents and a key part of the marketing campaigns around educational choice within gps is going to be supporting our families to navigate the different options that are available to their students so that they can find the right fit for their child and their family if i click on this it should go to the website so this is just some initial work along those lines where we have um explore

014gps and we have these different icons representing some of the different choices available and then different ways that families can explore the schools scheduling a tour attending information nights focusing on the different options now we'll try and get back to the here we go um so i think it's important to highlight when we're talking about choosing our schools and looking at the different options that we do have these really strong neighborhood elementary schools and comprehensive junior highs and high schools offering already a really wide range of academic and extracurricular opportunities and then we also have um more program specific or alternative curriculum options whether it be traditional dual language accelerated options so really making sure that we're providing parents with the full selection and helping them to understand um how those are different and connecting

015their student potentially with the different options so highlighting that there's choice highlighting the choices educating on the choices and supporting the families to navigate and then also last but not least helping them secure their choice so that's a really important part with regard to enrollment um would be the tours and we're always working with our front office staff to make sure that they're responding quickly to tour requests that they're um following up afterwards to check if the families have any questions and to um support them basically to get them over the line to be enrolled for the next year we're constantly putting out information this is just an example of some of it so for example for gilbert accelerated middle middle school we had information nights highlighting what the school offers each school has their

016own promotion materials and and we're also create videos um this is just a brief example um which i can show you which is to highlight for a canyon rim so i think canyon room is a good example because it offers two choices within one school so again how do we help parents to understand what that means what is the difference between traditional and the conventional classroom would it be a good fit for their student and their family so this is just an example of some of the content we try and create hopefully [Music] [Applause] i'm in third grade at canada in third grade we started learning long division i enjoy specials like pe library computers art and music we have specials every day and today is library [Music] we do good in class you can

017become cougar in the month and get a pizza party in fourth grade one thing we got to do was go to the movies for a field trip and do a recorder concert at canyon room we do fun things like the fun run and the talent show in fourth grade i enjoyed learning about magnets and electricity and how light bulbs work we're learning about money and right now we're talking about saving money every year there's a crew carnival and it has a bunch of fun stuff kenyan room's just a really fun school to be at so yeah just trying to each one of our schools is so different it has its own personality and experience so always trying to show visually what does it look like in a classroom and ultimately the students tell the story

018the best every time okay so with the transition campaigns which we're calling them as i mentioned the aim is to really retain 100 of students that we already have within gilbert public schools and to recruit new students and families and also i think it can't be underestimated it's to support our existing students and families so it's a customer service if you want to use that term um as well so pave the path as i mentioned was introduced in the 21 22 school year um really huge thanks to the community education team and the preschool leaders for that and the way that worked was and all of the preschoolers had the opportunity to attend kindergarten for the day at their school they received water bottle stickers information to take home so they went home to their

019parents and hopefully shared great experiences about being in kindergarten and then we follow up with support on how to enroll for the following year and the goal with that is for them to enroll at any elementary school in gilbert public schools we do see movement and from the preschoolers they're not necessarily going to attend the preschool that they have the school that they've been at level up the same that was the projected loss potentially of 400 students because of that fifth grade cohort and actual loss of 86 which was a significant achievement and meant that we did attract a number of students from out of district um the goal is to retain 100 of our 6th graders we do do um as part of level up we will contact directly all of our outer district

020sixth graders to make sure that they are staying with gilbert public schools and then i think last time when i was here we talked about could we introduce something for the transition to high school so the working title right now is next level um there's still conversations to be had with our secondary principles to get their input into what they currently do and what will work for them but a similar uh goal will be 100 retention over eighth graders um attracting new students and and then also providing that support piece for the families to navigate the different course choices electives that kind of thing so here's just a little bit more information you can see there and there was the again the front office staff did a phenomenal job with pave the path contacting directly

021by phone every single preschooler to welcome them to the school and to support them with any enrollment questions and then level up which consists of the level up days where the sixth graders visit their junior high also the family preview nights and then plans for next level another big focus as i mentioned is going to be building enrollment at the new programs that have been introduced a big part of this is actually raising awareness for the first year of any program it's completely new and to an extent it takes a little bit of a leap of faith for the students and the families to enroll in something new that has not existed previously um so we're working with for example gilbert accelerated middle school students and the ib students and the accelerated students at the

022five elementaries k-6 to follow them throughout the year and then also the performance academy to really help for we're basically asking the students to help us create content so we can tell the story about what the experience is like of being in those programs so that then we can share that with families and they can watch that content they can read about it and they can hopefully see their student in these different programs and that will make the decision easier for them um and then of course celebrating successes so i have another video as an example um this is what we've we've picked four um gilbert accelerated middle school students that we're following throughout the year so we're basically interviewing them every four to six weeks to get their insight on what their experiences and

023this is one of the first ones [Music] we all really know each other i know mostly everyone's name here the fact that it's a small classroom it just feels more intimate i guess because we're all talking to each other we know each other's names the teachers i thought that they would be like middle school teachers but they're high school teachers it's pretty cool because now we get to see other kids from on the campus and we get to like hear about what the high school teachers teach they're on level kids or like their older kids and it's pretty cool so that's just one example but we're trying to focus on creating content around some of the um concerns that parents might have so for example you know it's a real highlight for the student and

024you can see on her face that she's being taught by high school teachers so the idea that for some parents that might feel a bit nerve-wracking but actually being able to see it from the point of view of the student that that's actually the value that she's getting from it she enjoys that so um we're excited to keep building that content and as we do we're learning a lot about the programs and from the students and and what they enjoy um similarly for the performance academy we're working on a day in the life video right now following them at mesquite l in south valley and then going to legacy just really trying to tell the stories and to help our parents give them all the tools so that they don't miss out on these different

025opportunities that are open for their students um kindergarten readiness so um we're bringing back some of the tools that we used for kindergarten enrollment prior to the pandemic and one of which is the kindergarten readiness fairs and that was previously held at the greenfield library so we're looking at how can we kind of supercharge those efforts and work as a team so the marketing team is working alongside community education preschool teams and elementary to create an event that will then be tied into the other initiatives so for example pave the path is going to be probably around i think early march that the preschool students will go to a kinder classroom and then one week later we'll have a kindergarten readiness fair so we'll be able to say to parents you know your student had

026this opportunity experienced that you probably heard about it now registered to come to our fair they do vision screenings they'll get an opportunity to learn all about kinder and we'll have a q a session with kindergarten teachers so we're really trying to integrate everything and to make it as easy as possible for our parents to navigate noting of course that kindergarten is really key for us because that's where a lot we're welcoming a lot of families for the first time to gps so not only haven't they haven't experienced our schools potentially they don't know anything about our district so events such as that we're really we're building trust with the brand we want to provide them with community resources and really welcome them to the gps family and provide them clarity with the options because

027there's options and choices at kinder we have a huge range we have the dual language five accelerated campuses with kindergarten traditional so there's a lot of different options for them to navigate not just choosing kinder and the goal of course is increasing enrollment um when we look at data and analysis of you know over the five years ten years kindergarten is definitely a vulnerability for us and all surrounding districts so that's an area that we're going to put a lot of focus and that is my conclusion any questions i i have a couple things a couple questions i really appreciate the collaboration that we're building a team and helping the schools to be involved so it's not falling just on the shoulders of a few people you and two or three others that's that's not

028manageable um especially in keeping our website fresh and updated so i really appreciate that um one question i have is we put a lot into explaining what our traditional classrooms are like i would really like to see us put something into explaining we call them conventional classrooms i prefer collaborative classrooms but classrooms have changed a great deal in the last few years and i think that explaining what a collab a collaborative or conventional classroom is like so that people don't look at it oh this is what i did when i went to school because it's really not it's really changed a great deal and i i would just like to see some more emphasis on that and i don't know if that's where we talk about you know where you're talking about the elementary schools

029but definitely um you know we're doing a lot of things differently than we were 10 years ago yes yeah definitely and i think that's an important piece is not to lose the um conventional classroom collaborative classroom to not to lose the value of those classrooms and the schools the neighborhood the community schools um and like i said the comprehensive high schools the junior high and all the different options that are there as well that's going to be a really key part of what we're looking at this year for sure okay and then i wanted to ask about i mean it said newspaper ads only one percent are using but have we used many newspaper ads i mean it might be very small because we haven't used many newspaper ads we do we do um regular

030newspaper ads in the local newspapers um primarily gilbert sun and then also east valley tribune in the area where our schools are in mesa and then we also do ads in for example like the morrison ranch magazine eastmark doesn't have paper they it's in their newsletter so we continue to do that it's a solid foundation of marketing that we wouldn't want to lose no that's i understand i just wasn't you know our our newspaper market is a little more fragmented than it was you know years ago yes um well the value of print advertising and digital advertising is when people frequently see our brand and see the information and then maybe they drive past the school so it's not always just the one factor there's multiple factors in there so having that visibility is important

031too all right thank you don congratulations and and my compliments to you and and your team i said this the last time you presented and and you have done just an incredible job of keeping gilbert public schools out in front and in the public view without asking you to dump dirt on things because this is exceptional stuff it's quite innovative and it promotes the district well from my point of view but in the pr department as it were what are some of the challenges you face and what some of the challenges the schools face as we really search and look to refine those things that we're doing and innovate where we can well thank you first of all one of the challenges is always going to be competition i always say we have the most

032charter schools in the world here but we have i think it's 18 within our boundaries and 26 additional within a mile and that hasn't changed since i started here five years ago so that's an ever present and then also increasing competition with surrounding districts particularly when surrounding districts are experiencing enrollment laws for the first time so they're switching up how they market so that's one challenge that we face i think the number of schools that we have and our campus communications team approach has significantly helped with that and that i cannot thank those people enough for what they do every day and how receptive they are to me constantly emailing them with and can you please put this on your marquee and but i think we've streamlined the processes for that to make it easier

033for them so for example we create graphics and verbage that schools can drop into their newsletters so we're always trying to look at how can we make people's jobs easier while delivering what we're trying to do and and building those relationships is key to that um but really what they do is exceptional because as well i'm always saying when we share information as a district people read it but when they share information as a school people really read it and and definitely value it more because that's such a unique special relationship between the families and their child's school so just always emphasizing those things and working collaboratively definitely helps and we'll keep building those partnerships again thank you thank you thanks again uh and if you need an example uh the my next-door neighbor recently

034bought the home next to me and uh they explained that they had done a tremendous amount of research on gilbert public schools before they moved here from out of state back east and this was the reason that they bought the house there so that's uh you know that's that's something that people do now in the days of the internet and everything so it's working thank you thank you i just want to say that i think that the campus teams that you've built um are phenomenal and um but i think you know having your support you can have all the campus teams you want but when you what you're telling us that you're doing for these campus teams is invaluable and giving them the tools that they need and i i think this is just absolutely

035amazing and thank you oh thank you i also just wanted to add my thanks to all the board members for the great work that you're doing and i love that you're getting i think the key is the good things have been there and we continue to improve and want good things happening in our campuses but that we can now that you're talking about them that they're that the news could pick up a good story that was happening at our campuses because we know that those are happening but it's hard to get that word out and to keep that focus you know on that so i appreciate that and i also love that you're focused not just on attracting new students but really taking care of the families that are here and retaining students i think

036that's i think that's the key is to make sure that are we meeting the needs of the students that we have both through customer service through marketing and then through just communication letting them know what our choices are letting them know that they have the opportunity to find a program that fits their child's needs if it's not exactly at their neighborhood school which most you know there's great programs all throughout the district so i guess along with that i was i was also going to ask you this is a little bit different but um i know that in the past we had done some ideas of trying to have opportunities for feedback with current families and parents to provide kind of a two-way channel of communication and i just wondered i know with kovid we

037kind of just there wasn't room or time and really it wasn't appropriate in a lot of ways because we were trying to avoid that but as far as just the in-person feedback so i just wondered did you have any thoughts on that going forward yeah absolutely i think it's actually in the strategic operating plan to build those opportunities for two-way communication and um as we started this school year i think the first step with that has been to really welcome our families back onto our campuses and there is a phenomenal number of events happening i think we just had grandparents day and so building those opportunities for the our parents and families to be on campus and is kind of the beginning and then working on opportunities kind of throughout the year for introducing and

038we've been researching different ways that we can build two-way communication i mean we have the superintendent councils we did just introduce um one thing we've been trying to do is add in our parent newsletter opportunities for them to so to nominate for example for like the chamber of commerce excellence awards perhaps we previously went out to our staff community for those nominations but adding our wider community into that but yeah there's definitely more work to be done on that and there it's an important focus that's great and as i was thinking about us i was thinking we do have there are opportunities in place and i think we just keep working on it i know like i just got an uh text or email today for the site council at our at our school you

039know every school you can go and participate in the site council ask your principal or teacher when that occurs that's a place for feedback there's the online web comments that we provide now on our official board meeting yes once a month besides coming to board meetings that's another opportunity or emailing your school your principal the board members when you when you have a concern so i think we do have things in place and we actually are working on a gold story right now about parent involvement where kaylie latham who i i didn't met kaylee latham communications specialist johnson paulie videographer couldn't be doing any of this without them but m kaylee actually went out and interviewed a number of our principals to look at what's happening on individual campuses to start to build that conversation

040as well oh that sounds great i appreciate your work toward that as well thank you thank you we will be putting out a survey at some point this year we've talked about it in the past and with everything that's been going on you know i think we'll get more solid results in a year like this year this year started off phenomenally uh and it i don't know how to put it it feels much more normal than it has in the past and so um i think you'll get better data in terms of just honest opinions about things and so um we'll be putting that out we just don't know which time yet oh that sounds great well i appreciate it again thank you thank you for all that you do and your team please thank

041them as well get down real quick before you leave can you talk about just the communication you talked about our newsletter parents talk about the newsletter to staff as well as um what we just started with our high school kids yeah absolutely so connect create care goes out every two weeks to our parent community and always has over 40 000 views um and we're using that as a tool i think our community has become familiar with that as a source for um important information and also celebrations with gold and then the same every two weeks we send out gps together to our staff community which has always over 4000 views again putting key information and also celebrations in there and then last but not least we a goal for our team this year was to

042look at connecting with our student stakeholders so um kaylee latham worked we met with um san francisco school district and because they've done something similar and then we pitched to marcy taylor and dr mccord the idea of a newsletter to our high school students from the district to go out to those 12 000 students it's called in this together we did our first edition and we're working with the superintendent's council a student council they're writing introductions and so the student voice is in there and um i haven't looked at the latest numbers but there was a surprising number of high school students reading it so that we were really encouraged by that and there was important information in there we find that what they're looking for they just want factual information that's going to help

043them make good decisions and they want to know what the district is doing and how those decisions are made so yeah the the the council the student senate is a phenomenal group and when i say that you've got just a mixture of kids from every one of our our high school campuses and we talk about building relationships with people and how key and how important it is and for many of these students on the senate they are very open and honest and you want to talk about feedback right we'll talk about surveying staffs talk about surveying parents well this is direct conversation with kids and they don't pull any punches and i love it and and they're very complimentary and but yet they'll tell us straight out like i don't even know why you guys

044do this or why were you thinking about doing that and we love it we love it we walk away from every one of those meetings me marcy and doug daly and we just it really makes us remember why we got an education so long ago because they are definitely the reason why we do what we do so that's the best feedback i think we've gotten uh in a long time so we're appreciative that so this newsletter that uh don has put together and kaylee it is really something that is born out of that communication with them and pitching the idea to them they're like yeah that'd be great we'd love it and they're involved and so it's it's kind of like a bit of a student newspaper except from the district level so it's great

045well done thank you shane how many kids do you have from each school yeah usually we have two two uh they don't always show up at the same time but we the first meeting of the year usually is right here in this room and then we rotate to each school and part of that is the hosting school has to give a presentation about their school and then they take them on a tour and then we have certain things that they have to do do a little update but they have become friends and they didn't know each other before they sat down and um i don't know i i would keep them all day long if i could so i know marcy would she just smiles from here to ear when she sees himself and then

046they come to some of our meetings like they'll be a part of and they'll come observe either a gef breakfast or a board meeting or some other event and you've heard me introduce them in the past will continue to do that thank you for that presentation we will now go to 2.02 community education fees dr mccord thank you madam president community board members next up we have mr jared ryan our executive director of community education as well as strategic initiatives and part of the role related to community education this is a self-funded program so everybody knows community education is and they have all kinds of different programming as well as facility rentals that are fee-based and so over x amount of years they constantly have to look at what fees they charge and how does

047that keep up with inflationary rates supplies all those types of things and actually we have to analyze are we charging the right amount to ensure that uh we're keeping up with what we need to to make sure we're still self-funded so mr ryan will be giving you a presentation on that tonight thank you dr mccord madam president governing board i appreciate the time to come and speak with you regarding community education and some of the um some of the adjustments that we're looking to make for as we move into the 2023-24 school year um first off i i always feel like i'm kind of busy through a day and then i listen to dawn talk and i realize i don't do a whole lot so dr mccord needs to find a few more things for

048for me i think so don and her department are incredibly impressive and so the work that they're doing um not only is on campuses but has a direct benefit to community education and everything that we do matter of fact earlier today she was with our team discussing youth athletics and some strategic adjustments we can make or initiatives we can put in place to be able to promote to be able to get word out and make sure that all of our families know what opportunities are on our campuses to represent their community and represent their schools so i appreciate she and her team for what they do um it's kind of a beginning portion of this i wanted just to go over briefly what it is that that we offer in terms of programs and why

049we're looking at them on an annual basis and what different pieces of information we take into consideration when we make recommendations regarding fees both in tuition when we talk about preschool before and after school care camps anything during intersession that will now be coming up as well as our fees for renting our facilities so just as a brief outline the the bold portions are what we'll be focusing on this evening vik which is very important kids our before and after school service program summer and holiday intercession camps as well pre-k for those that aren't familiar we have four different kindergarten preschool options kindergarten prep building blocks toy box and advantage we'll get into the kind of the differences and what those programs are and and why we offer such a variety of preschool programs enrichment

050which is our after school primarily as well as intersession and summer skill specific options primarily from outside vendors that we partner with and nathan paquette does a fantastic job of finding needs on campuses and addressing those with some vendors as well as some of our own staff members gilbert youth athletics which we began just a few years ago with with your blessing and has been fantastic for our community as well as in facility management and all the rental of our facilities as they're available on our campuses we want to make sure community is able to to take advantage of that opportunity so those are those are the programs that we're mainly talking about in bold this evening as we talk about tuition rate adjustments we all know what we've experienced in the last couple years

051and not only with sickness but now on the financial side of things and unfortunately every time we go fill up a tank of gas or every time we go eat a meal or any time we do just about anything else i think we all feel it and we feel financially we feel it from the standpoint of stresses on our on our families and on our homes and in our bank accounts and we've really tried over the last couple years to prevent that from trickling down to our families and our community because we know from the school side of things if we can keep things as financially accessible as possible that it just goes a long way to making sure that they can live um with less stress in their lives and over the last couple

052years we've been fortunate we've been blessed to receive grants we've been blessed to have workforce employment grants blessed to have early childhood grants that we've been able to point towards some of these increases in staffing costs and whatnot and and those are kind of starting to run out and so that's why we're coming at this point in time this document talks about the tuition rate adjustment and in the pieces of information we look at our current hourly rate of pay so total volume of employees and what it's costing us to attract and retain those employees is first and foremost that's our biggest cost that's our biggest out of out-of-pocket expense and as we all know the employees within our organization are experiencing those same increased costs in their lives and so for them to be

053able to to live and survive in in our town and live in gilbert and the things that we've been experiencing our rate of pay has had to increase to be able to attract and retain some of the best out there our curriculum costs we analyze on an annual basis so we look at everything from arts and crafts to our science projects to our cooking projects the things we're doing before and after school as well as in our camps as well as in our preschool classrooms food supplies our azdhs requirements we've received a couple questions related to these requirements and so when you're licensed program there's certain specific elements that must be within those rooms in order for them to be licensed sometimes we move rooms from time to time as campuses grow or as campuses

054experience reduction in student population when that occurs then we have to make modifications and adjustments to classrooms if there are specific things that licensing auditors are looking for as they're observing our classrooms obviously we need to make those adjustments and ensure that that we're meeting all the requirements and there are costs associated with that and of course finally maintaining competitiveness with surrounding programs we don't ever want to put ourselves in a spot where we feel as though we're not competitive or we feel as though we're not giving our families an opportunity to access the care that they need based on based on cost and based on out out pricing the market so we want to make sure that we're always competitive that way mr ryan sir just quickly do you have any well i'm sure

055you do but what is the total number of staff who support the community ed programs do you have and between 230 and 250 depending on where we're at with our staffing and so we'd like to be at 250 right now in the 230s so if anybody out there is listening and has a desire to work before after school care or preschools we are hiring um if we can just put in a little plug for that right now that'd be great and that number represents the largest amount of expenditure out of the budget right yes sir um the next page and that's a great lead into to the next document which is it took an actual staff member that we have um and really looked at what our average expenses were two years ago and where

056we are today really trying to ensure that one the fee increases that we're looking at are in line with what our actual costs are as well as making sure that there wasn't a large discrepancy between certain classifications of employees and so after doing that i just pulled one and this is an average uh look at it at an employee in one of our classrooms so this particular case is a site leader in one of our preschool classrooms this is a non-certified position this individual is the preschool classroom lead teacher as a site leader the individual is hired on august 20th or i'm sorry august of 2020 at a rate of fifteen dollars and sixty cents thanks to governing board approval and support there that individuals received a two percent increase on august 20 uh or

057august of 21 a dollar fifty increase in september of twenty one ten cent and three percent and march of and then the final increase of two dollars in july of 22. um at this point in time the employees at twenty dollars and four cents per hour and if you look on the column on the right 4.40 per hour increase equates to a 22 increase in pay for that for that individual so as we were breaking down information and trying to determine what was reasonable in terms of expectation of increase in tuition rates as well as then balancing our budget to ensure stability we never want to run into a situation where we can't offer something to our community and so this isn't a requested increase to generate more revenue um in terms of profit but

058rather just to maintain our same margin of profit um and by looking at our revenue and looking at our expenditures and balancing that way may i ask a question i i think probably the information you're giving us right now and we let's let's say when we gave the two dollar an hour raise that was because we got the money from the state for and so we gave it to everybody but technically this group of people didn't don't generate any of the money so they still benefited from them and i think that's wonderful but i think that that's an important issue here when we're looking at having to make some increases because we couldn't say to this group of people we're not going to give you the two dollar an hour because you're not part of

059the big pot am i correct in thinking you're 100 corrected our philosophy has always been all for one one for all when it comes to those pay increases as much as we could right and when you're self-funded that even like with title one funds right um that eats into those types of things and so um that's why he's here tonight yeah but you're right it eats into his bottom line which generally takes care of himself because he's having to make up that two dollars an hour without having generated any more income exactly any questions related so when we started down this path i feel like i was a bit naive and believing that we could have some type of blanket increase right 10 15 20 whatever it would come out to but across all programs

060and that would have um that would have been easier that would have been nice to be able to to have but as we began digging into each one of our programs in each one of our entities what we began to discover is that there were some imbalances in there and there were some areas where we're really behind the rest of the community and there were some other areas where we were right with what the rest of the community expectation was in terms of what your other options were out there as well as then the employee costs associated with it so the next document really just points at that a little bit of a discrepancy or a little bit of a difference between each of the programs beginning with our advantage preschools which was what's known

061as a monastery so same program advantage preschools a 10 increase toy box 15 percent and these are our recommended amounts building blocks school day 10 extended day 15 the reason for that adjustment is what we realized is the time that students would be with us beyond typical school day until they were picked up sometimes 5 30 6 o'clock the rates that we were charging for that extended time wasn't nearly enough to cover our cost of having staff there with those students there are also some building or some ratio considerations that we have to keep in mind the ratios with your three-year-olds is different than the ratio with your four-year-olds which is different than your traditional vik ratio and so as we work to balance those when your preschool students stay later into the day and

062are offered extended care your staffing ratios have to be adjusted accordingly which then expenses go up are are the staffing ratios done by us or is that some of some things from the state state licensure yes speak to those a little bit just give us three or four examples of those ratios sure so the difference with a three-year-old class as an example your requirement is thirteen to one um we can go all the way up to twenty to one as we get a little bit older into the middle years of elementary school or an older elementary student so the difference between the 13 to 1 to the 20 to 1 is significant when you talk staffing on a campus an example would be neely where you might have 90 to 100 students after school in

063your balancing your your staffing depending on age of student as well as other campuses or maybe you have 30 or 40 students staying after and you may have seven three-year-olds and 28 fourth graders those 28 you still have to have two staff members four because you go over that ratio number so um it's balancing another place this comes up in discussion um that is a challenge to to communicate clearly is some families and some employees some parents receive their schedules on a weekly basis at different times and we've had this discussion numerous times of trying to figure out the best way of cut off times to sign your kids up for the week or cut off time to sign up your kids for the month because as those students are being signed up we're balancing

064ratios rose and her team over in our otm side of our office do a great job on a weekly basis of making sure we have appropriate staffing at each spot if we don't have those accurate numbers then we end up overstaffed or in some cases under staff just depending on on what might be going on and so it's the best way right now sunday nights you have to have it in by a certain time and then we plan for the week and we get everybody deployed to their area for the week but beyond that it's a little bit of a challenge so those are the reasons that that occurs and we try to make sure we're not as i said overstaffed and we certainly can't be understaffed anywhere and i think we had a bit

065more flexibility three four five years ago i think we had more subs we could call on and we had more people that were available to move around and right now we're real tight staff wise and so it's important that we we can do this thank you absolutely just because we're on the preschool page um which one of these which of these preschool programs have certified teachers because i know advantage does short advantage in kindergarten prep as well as your toy box director so your toy box director is certified that person splits time between high school students and the preschool students the two paraprofessionals that then support that program are not certified okay we do have certified teachers within building blocks but it's not a requirement it's just a blessing when we're able to find people

066that really want to be in the classrooms and we have a significant number of people working toward credential right now and while we hope they get there we just hope they stay with us once they do so yeah thank you absolutely those percentages visually i know this this page has a significant number of of programs and and it's a lot to take in initially on your left side you have building blocks you can see the variety of options as i stated earlier we try to have an option for every family whether they're looking for half day full day nancy who works in our office and takes most of our preschool phone calls is fantastic at ensuring that families have a choice and and have an option for exactly what they're looking for tuesday thursday options

067monday wednesday friday full time monday through friday as i said half day full day three days five days you name it i think nancy can come up with a program that works for you and your family which we're blessed to have that um the um are there more options we probably could look at in terms of expansion in the future probably that question comes up sometimes from families who still feel like we can we can offer a few more things but for now we're really proud of of the four programs we have the sophistication within those four programs the curriculum within those programs and what's being offered there's a document you'll see in just a second which compares our rates to local rates around us so how these were created as i explained earlier was

068based on a few things staffing costs local pricing and rates we looked at surrounding school districts we looked at surrounding private organizations we tried to find a balance between each of those and understand how their billing and their cycles were working um and and we feel like we're in a really good good place um matter of fact when i've when i've had this discussion with other people they've been surprised that were the rates even based on these recommended adjustments where they still are comparatively speaking and while while there's some sticker shock certainly for families particularly when you have multiple students or multiple children overall when compared you'll see in just a second we're in a really competitive spot and actually below most of the people that that we compare to locally in terms of sister

069campuses and privates gilbert public schools employees have a discount on all their rates and that would continue if you go to the local competition document the next page you'll see um you'll see where we are in comparison building blocks extended is on the top left 645 tudor time 760 creme de la creme 1086 that's for the three day extended hours preschool half day k prep 3 40 kinder bugs 590 kinder care and then on the right side five day extended hours um you'll see where you were at the same spot as sunrise and then significantly behind the others this is also pretty consistent with surrounding school districts we're still in a very competitive spot even with these recommended adjustments and i think that that's something that in speaking with dr mccord and cabinet members that's

070something we want to be able to make sure that we maintain a really great opportunity a good option for our families and make sure we never get to the point where we're pricing them out of this out of this this area so mr ryan are these translated to monthly rates or annual rates these are monthly rates any questions related to preschool we're going to move into vik i just said one i mean when we're talking about tuesday thursday or monday wednesday friday is that usually like a three-year-old this tuesday thursday and a four-year-old is monday wednesday for id so it just depends on the family need so initially we'll go through and eric and his team and julie stockton and her team will go through when there are certain needs that families have our goal

071obviously is to serve the need of the community but also balancing our classes is essential and so um it's a challenge if you have a classroom with 14 kids and eight of them are tuesday thursday only if you can't fill in the monday wednesday friday spots so it's a little bit of a balancing act a lot of conversations with families trying to find the perfect you know spot for them to be earlier dawn mentioned that some of our preschool students will attend a campus and they'll move in kindergarten to another campus and sometimes that's the reason that's the cause the fit in terms of preschool they possibly are looking for a k-prep traditional campus that's located over in the school they want half days that's great we'll get them there then ultimately they might come

072back to the campus that's just down the street from them four k through six okay all right thank you did they get a discount for more than one child or is it ten percent for a sibling discount yes sir tuition rate adjustments for vik and camps this is a place that we're seeing significant increase in costs because of the number of hours that these employees are with us so vik mornings is a challenge because it's a brief period of time and so finding staffing and and motivating staff to be there for an hour and a half in the morning is a little bit of a challenge or in the afternoon the hours are a bit more defined and great especially we notice when fuel costs were driven up the motivation of somebody to drive to

073work for an hour and a half and then leave and then come back we've also begun partnering with our preschools so community education i'm i'm really proud of our leadership team and how they've come together over the last couple years and internally we don't really view it separate as preschool and k prep and building blocks and we're kind of one team and how do we establish really some some job opportunities for people that are full-time to get them there and keep them there where they can move from one program to another and that hasn't always been the case and it's something i'm really uh pleased with and has assisted us in in finding and attracting and keeping some great employees so the tuition rate adjustments for vik and camps primarily when you look at camps

074the individuals are there all day long and so when you're working an 8 hour day and we have this increase by 20 22 23 in terms of staffing costs that's where it's really making a change in terms of our tuition moving forward once again all this said over the last two years we were prepared to come two years ago and have this discussion and and obviously some things have happened and we were fortunate to receive as i said earlier some grants to support so really this has been pushed back a couple years because we've been able to to utilize those funds to offset these costs but the tuition rate recommendation for bik am would move from 192 to 211 pm 260 to 299. some organizations that we we've looked into add am and pm directly

075and that becomes their total we don't do that our am and pm we still have a discounted rate if you do both and your children are full time because we know that that cost gets really steep really quick and many of our families are working families that need before and after school care and so we've we've maintained that the holiday camp rates we were at separate rates for holiday camps and summer camps those though are run the same the staffing is the same the ratios are the same field trip costs have gone up fuel costs transportation costs and so for us to maintain the same level of service um there needs to be an increase or an adjustment to that fee that that is paid do you have um do many people use the option

076of vik half day when we have update for teachers that's a great question um thank you for asking it's those are our busiest days we have staff that are that are working and and they need to be working and then we have parents obviously still at work and so we'll see a greater number on those wednesdays our staff's done a great job of finding more student workers who are available because the high schools students some of our seniors have half days and they're able to come and work and we're able to find some college-age students who are also looking for work that can come more mid-day and then work through the end of the day and so um that along with sean mcintosh and missy udall have assisted us with finding paraprofessionals on campuses so

077as teachers are going into their plc's not all of our paraprofessionals have specific assignments during that time and are able to stay and assist us with with care the biggest thing is that we never want to have a waiting list we always want to be able to serve every family in our community that needs it um that wants it that that is asking for it and um sometimes i think that the worst times we have is when we pick up a phone and we have had to say particularly in the last couple years i'm sorry i don't have i don't have enough qualified trained adults to have there to be able to make sure that your kids have the experience they're supposed to have we're really in a good place right now a much better

078place than we have been i'm optimistic even with with conversation that was going on today with some paraprofessionals that are also going to be assisting on those wednesdays as well as the upcoming parent-teacher conference days that's also those are also big times for us so the the the trick is to sign up early so that it is have a spot it is it's signing up early registration some people were surprised registration for preschool opens november 1st for the following school year and we have specific locations where the reputation of the teacher and some things drive enrollment and all of a sudden you'll get a phone call in mid-spring and they'll say well what do you mean it's full it's been full for three months you know and some of those more popular programs and popular

079teachers certainly are looked after and those spots are coveted absolutely they've come a long way in terms of registering kids in community education used to you had to go in every week and pay in person and there weren't a lot of options and then when you sign up for camps you would come here and like being at a bank because we'd put up ropes where people would come in and out and um now they're able to do this much sooner and be able to have parents plan for their summers in a lot of different ways and so yeah it's it's really good it's very nice i mean people don't generally walk in the community education building anymore very rarely it's usually just all online so it's nice very rarely the communication the communication is quick

080um the systems are in place and vreeland does a fantastic job of creating the classes opening registration communicating it in advance our campuses do a wonderful job of communicating when when registration is going to begin that was portion of the meeting earlier with regard to gilbert youth athletics how do we ensure notification all the families of when registration is going to open on a quarterly basis when new as new sports and opportunities begin so same thing with preschools same thing with camps we don't want to catch people off guard we want them to be notified but even above that we want them to have a space a place no matter maybe when they realize they need it and so that's our continual work to identify to identify new employees to come on and to train

081we now have somebody in charge of professional development within our department we have two personnel in charge of recruitment retention and identifying new employees and having them go through the process to make sure that they can be started as soon as possible we've been partnering with colleges community colleges and our early childhood teacher prep programs at our high schools and so the team's been been diligent ran a job fair a couple months ago and it was just a few people got together and said we can do more and they found a way and identified new staff members to come on so every new staff member that comes on after they're trained and they're in place that's another 13 to 20 students that we can give a thumbs up to and get them in and on

082our campuses before and after school so okay so moving on to facility rental rates dr mccord and i have talked a bit about this as things have changed over the course of time with relation to facility rentals this is something that i think all of us wish we could make more accessible to our community and and have available for them to use and for our kids and our young kids to be in our auditoriums and in our gyms and on our fields there are a lot of costs that come with that and there are a lot of internal things that we have to do and a lot of internal staffing that we have as relates to that and so here i have what we would say would be our most utilized facilities provided a document

083to you prior with every every piece of of property that we rent and and how that's rented and the prices associated with that on the actual presentation there are a few examples and as i said these are our primary spots the high school gyms junior high gyms high school stadium fields uh baseball softball and auditorium those are our our big ones those are the ones that we get the most requests for and so you can see the current versus proposed you can also see to the right the comparable low and comparable high those come from our surrounding districts municipalities as we look to see what other like-kind facilities are being rented for we wanted to find where are we in terms of the low to the high and make sure that once again it wasn't

084something that we were pricing out our community and it wasn't something that we were also taking a loss every time somebody was turning up the ac in an auditorium and so we need to be diligent with that as well so the high school gym the current is 42 dollars this is per hour the 42 dollars an hour and the proposed rate would be 52.50 which is approximately 25 percent increase once again as we looked comparable venues locally they range from 30 to 60 dollars i can tell you through conversation nothing finalized or approved but through conversation this is something being looked at across the board at our neighboring districts as well um in terms of two specific people i spoke with at neighboring districts that said this is something that has to be adjusted where

085they are as well and so nothing official and approved on their end yet but i know it's being looked at across the board junior high gymnasiums same level of increase about a 25 percent where you'll see a large adjustment is with the high school stadium field to be real honest we were just behind that's one of those areas when i said before i wish it could have just been a clean blanket everything's 10 percent 15 percent 20 whatever it might be there were just certain areas where we were not keeping keeping up with what was in general going on across our community so the high school stadium field is one of those examples the comparable low at 50 dollars comparable high at 200 our proposal would be a 100 an hour varsity softball baseball from

08621 to 30 and auditorium from 63 to 80. that is not the total cost because utilities are also added in which is connected on on the next page mr ryan before you go there is it because you're going to speak to that i think in your next frame here but is it your impression that the proposed increases particularly when we're talking about fields uh will cover the cost of maintenance and fertilizer and lighting and fencing and all of the things that could go in disrepair as we utilize these facilities so what i'll say is that we feel as though it will contribute to the overall cost i'm not going to say it will cover the cost of our thought is it will cover the cost of the rental portion of it however we still have

087obviously them being used throughout the day um the costs that or the the revenue generated by us will not cover the two maintenance and grounds crew that are there full time the fertilizer throughout the year the water throughout the year the upkeep and just the manpower alone but we feel as though this increase will support the rental side of it and the rental proportion of of that use so what we need to do and you know as well as anybody from working on the campus we need to ensure that our campuses it's not a detriment to the overall campus to have teams and youth teams and and auditoriums used by churches and outside organizations we have to ensure it's not a detriment to that campus and the funds coming back into that campus can be

088utilized to ensure that it's kept up to the standard that we would expect for our students and so it's that balancing act of making sure that those funds are there to support a portion of the funds that come in go directly to athletics apportion go directly to the school district itself and a portion will go to the campus itself so as things maybe find themselves in disrepair or needing to be taken care of we have some funds set there to be able to take care of those things i think that's important that we take that into consideration because the district already has a budget line for maintenance costs and and repair costs etc so to contribute to that is is an important feature and uh i think it's an important piece to highlight to our

089public absolutely thank you sir the outside organizations nonprofit and profit that use our facilities uh do they provide their own security or are we required to do that so depending on the rental purpose we determine if there's a custodial need or a security need based on that then there's a fee associated with the requirements so let's say an outside dance company comes in and has an auditorium and a couple classrooms that are adjoining there's going to need to be custodians there's so many people in and out and so we will determine that that will then be we use a program called facilitron for individuals to go in from the community to identify if a facility is open and available to rent it then has to go through an approval process so it's not something as

090simple as the community member can hit go and they they they take the hours that they want instead that goes to a campus it also goes to adam crang and christy odle within our office each of those entities approves and then also determines what additional support may be needed on the campus to ensure when everyone arrives back on a monday that we're ready for school mostly those individuals are our employees that then um we'll get in touch with and we'll ask them to work additional hours over the summer over the over the weekend to support all right so the proposed facility utility and staffing rates um once again same um same um kind of process and looking at our local rates in our competition as well as looking at what our expenditures and costs are

091gem and field supervisor custodian and security miss betts took some time and worked with her department to look at what the average cost would be for our average custodian as an example to work on a saturday and what that ultimate cost would be to us and then to ensure that we're covering those costs the current is 30 our proposal would be moving to 40 dollars per hour for those individuals gym utilities one of the pieces that we'd like to propose that would be new for us is a differentiation between spring and summer months versus fall and winter months as our utilities are significantly different for say a gymnasium or an auditorium in the summer than it is in the winter so we have specific dates set for those as well you can see the comparable

092low and comparable high there is an example our utility costs i would just say we've been a little behind on adjusting those over the course of time we've been at 12 an hour for a significant period of time and so we're recommending an adjustment to that depending on when they're used uh field utilities moving from twelve to twenty dollars if you'll remember back in probably 2008 or nine is when and i i could be wrong but it's right around that time school districts used to get excess utility funds and uh gilbert public schools the time i think that was to the tune of three to three and a half million dollars and that's when we started um a little bit before they kind of phased it out um that's when we started charging for utilities

093and looking at some of these rates i don't know if they've changed since then and so we know utilities remember ever yeah raising rates on that so in my time on the board yeah so so that's kind of a little history any questions at all related to a few questions that have come in that we just wanted to make sure that we went ahead and outlined financial support for families in need this is specific to before after school summer holiday camps that type of thing we are des licensed programs families in need can apply through through the state and have different levels of qualification than we support our families with within the preschool areas we also work with our campus social workers so as they identify families that they may believe are in need for

094a variety of reasons that may come up in someone's life they certainly contact us and we work with those families to ensure that we can support them one of the grants we have in place right now also allows us to support families in need so our goal is always to make sure that that's not the reason a child can't be taking care of her or a parent can't take care of the things that they need to take care of difference between all the kindergarten programs you know jill asks a question related to certification requirements within specific programs we have lab settings at our high schools we have as i said before full day half day three days five days and so each of those has a has a has a niche each of those has

095a population of people that really look to those is the thing that's the right fit for them and each is very expensive very important to us traditional is something that's relatively new over the last couple years k-prep traditional which we've rolled out on the the campuses where we it feeds into our traditional programs at the elementary schools and then the waiting lists once again our goal is to never have a waiting list our goal is to be able to serve everybody in our community and primarily that's based on two things and it's either space or staffing and i shared with you a few of the things that we're doing to try to generate interest in working with us and thanks to you all and the support and and some of the financial pieces we've really

096been able to to keep some great people that we have and attract some new ones to come in so i feel like we're in a much better place today so any questions i i just have one about the after school athletic program and i i obviously that's not des so how do we help help with kids that maybe financially can't afford that sure uh very similar to what we would do with preschool um we actually um just maybe a week and a half two weeks ago i was approached by a counselor who happens to have a personal friend owns a business who said they want to sponsor kids and so we're continuously looking for ways to connect with outside business who want to sponsor kids and youth athletics and give them an opportunity to participate

097once again we've told every elementary principal as well when we go to meet don't let that be the thing that deters a student from being able to participate if you know something that would benefit a student and you want them to take part please call because we do have these outside we have an ability to bring in some outside support to be able to support to be able to take care of those kids anything else board members i it's difficult to raise rates because i know it impacts our families and our community members who use our our facilities so that is always hard to do but um remind me when was the last time did we raise the rates dr mccord had looked back into some notes and i believe five years ago was the

098last thing that's a discussion i looked on board docs and i think that was the last time when jack was here i think we raised rates and i don't think more than five years ago that was not nine years ago no no no for five years for tuition i know that we've done it since we've been on new yeah so but still probably been five years so again we're trying to do all we can to make sure that we aren't that we're allowing our you know we're allowing these programs to be accessible to our students because it's an important way to support our community members but also we have to pay the employees to come so that we have great employees there so this is where we're at trying to figure out how to how

099to make that all work so i appreciate your thoughtfulness and really basing it on the costs that we have and then if we can just make sure that our with the rentals that that money does go back to maintaining you know that that's what that's for is to maintaining those facilities that's important that we have and use that to to maintain them so dr santa cruz yes mrs wood just to your question because i too on the additional preview of the document was struck by sticker shock as it were and then i cooled off and realized it's been a long time since i've had to avail myself of daycare just daycare and when my two were daycare age i remember it was twelve thousand dollars a year and that was bare bones almost nothing other

100than a snack and a loving person and that was about it so [Music] i i appreciate what you've said about rates and yet five years is a significant amount of time and as we do the comparative there uh we're we're still significantly below many of our competitors i i cringe when we have to bring these types of things to to you or to look at just because it is difficult exactly from what you guys said these fees do get passed on and if it doesn't get passed on to the individual it gets passed directly it gets passed on to them indirectly if a club team's renting a field they're playing paying monthly for to belong to that club and if rates increase they're going to get increased somewhere down the line and so it is

101sadly the cost of doing business um but um and and we can look at it as do we we want to look at these every year is that something we do and incrementally do it every couple years i don't know if there's a magic formula to that but um it's something we can look at can i just say something to that um dr mccord please if just on a historical note many several years ago we had to do that we did something like this with the insurance trust because we had not increased it and then we had this significant increase and it was one of the most difficult decisions we've ever and this was be this was prior to me being on the board um so i think my suggestion would be maybe and i

102understand the last three years or have not you know we can't even think about anything being normal because it hasn't been but maybe from now on we look every year at a slight one so it's not quite the you know the drastic but i i also think that we don't have any choice i mean you know when we're going to give a two dollar an hour raise to everybody we have to find the money to to support that so thank you for your work on that well and before giving that two dollar an hour raise you had nobody applying for the positions you weren't able to offer the program you weren't we were really short on vik or the summer program because we were not competitively paying our employees they could go somewhere else not

103just in child care but in any number of things to to receive that kind of payment i still remember when ms betts brought it up in a cabinet meeting and we started having the conversation and she thought that it was possible and i remember thinking how excited i was because maybe now we can open some doors to more kids at the same point in time i wondered how on earth i was going to do it or we were going to do it you know and so it's twofold right but you're absolutely right if if the two dollars an hour hadn't occurred right now we would have far fewer students able to be in our programs before after school or in preschool programs if that happened there are specific examples of families who haven't been able

104to stay who had to go elsewhere because they had to have before and after school care thankfully we were able to bring them back and thankfully we were able to get an employee in the room but it displaced a family from their school because they had to have before and after school care so there is a bigger picture there that that it has a larger effect than i think we will ever know but there are specific examples of times when this has absolutely made a huge difference to families and been able to keep them in their neighborhood school so well i think just being competitive with the businesses around us because i mean obviously if someone is caring for our children in a after school program that's a very responsible position and if you can

105make that same money going down to walmart or or somewhere else where you're you i mean it is a responsibility at walmart but it's not involving children which is one of our most precious resources so we just want to be careful to get really good people absolutely in best positions when when vik specifically was started it was probably i think 2001 my first year as an elementary principal and we didn't know if it was going to be successful or not right you were a principal at the time too for elementary and um and then you know go to 2022 and people depend on it now i mean we've created something that people absolutely depend on and and instead of just saying yeah if you want to get it or not now people are like said

106banging on the door saying why don't you have enough staff what do you mean there's a waiting list and so we're feeling that demand in a different way and being able to pay them appropriately is what's important but it's also a program that's been around and it's it truly is and has been the backbone of community education since day one and uh being able to support each campus with the before and after school program is is vital so there's survival of that campus too well earlier you're talking about the the connection and the relationships three weeks ago standing there and a lady i have no idea who she is comes up do you work with kristen do you work with kristen yeah do you have any idea what kristen did for my son and when

107you talk about relationships that are still being created after school kristen stoltzman you know his has made a difference in the lives of hundreds of kids that have come through our schools and um anyway the values beyond um sometimes what we consider when we're making our decisions but it's certainly there and i've learned a lot in my few years working with community education that i that i didn't as a principal prior and so it's been great well thank you and i think it would be appropriate to add our thanks to all of your staff and all of those who work in community ed before and after school and preschool and provide these opportunities for our students and take care of our our gps students whether they're preschool or all through the years so thanks to

108all of you we appreciate it this will come back at the end of the month for formal approval um i don't foresee any changes and this will enable his team to be able to get everything ready for registration for the following year already so thank you mister ryan all right thank you that will adjourn our work study and i will call to order our brief board business meeting and mrs wilson could you please do roll call for me dr charles santa cruz here mr bill parker miss laurie wood here miss sheila eugetti here miss jill humphries here madam president all board members are present you have a quorum thank you we will now go to the consent agenda items 5.01 approval of consent agenda items board members is there a motion so moved thank you

109misty jetty it's been moved is there a second step thank you mr parker it's been moved and seconded that we approve the consent agenda items all those in favor please vote by saying aye aye any opposed with nay that passes 5-0 and that is all that we have on our brief board business meeting tonight so we will now move to adjournment 6.01 board members is there a motion i move to adjourn thank you second thank you miss humphries and miss you jetty it's been moved and seconded that we adjourn all those in favor please vote by saying aye aye aye any oppose with me we are adjourned thank you you