Gilbert Public Schools Board Meeting 08/09/2022

001board members are we ready to begin we'd like to welcome you to our work study and brief board business meeting tonight is tuesday august 9th 2022 thank you to those who are joining us here and joining us online we will begin i'm calling this meeting to order and we'll begin we'll go right to 2.01 presentation to discussion topics novel approval process dr mccord thank you madam president governing board members um tonight we're going to give you a couple presentations under the work study portion uh of course the novel novel approval process and update folks on where we are with our safety and security in our district uh the first one i'll bring up dr newman assistant superintendent of teaching learning we have this topic tonight at our last board meeting we had a community member

002talk a little bit about the novels that are out there in gilbert public schools and we wanted to make sure and we thought about like you know it'd be really good to make sure everybody understands what our process is to approve novel novels for our our students and our teachers at our schools so dr newman put together a little presentation for us thank you good evening madam president governing board members and dr mccord as dr mccord stated we wanted to share some information specifically about the approval process for our novels but i thought maybe it might be a nice idea to begin first with specifically our most recent adoption then my prospectus was the english language arts adoption that we did for our 7th through 12th graders our formal adoption was in may 2022 and

003as you know the implementation is this year so our students are just beginning with this product the decision at the time as you know during may when we did ask for approval for this adoption it was that we would not be looking at any new novel titles that were specifically with this adoption and primarily that was because we have a formal process in order to approve our novels and that process had already occurred in fall 2021 for the 22-23 school year so we thought it was important that even though there might be some that were recommended as companion novels we would not include those during this first implementation year during that time too i wanted thought might be a good idea to talk with a companion novelist so within our curriculum resource we have some

004recommendations for companion novels and as part of our academic standards it's really important for our students to synthesize information so while they're reading for example a story within their literature book online or otherwise what they'll also be able to do perhaps is read an excerpt from one of those companion novels and that way they're able to synthesize information perhaps about a literary element or perhaps about a particular theme and what they'll be able to do is synthesize from multiple sources and pull those together and that's one of the main components of the new standards in regard to some of that rigor and what's being asked of them that being said any companion novel that was recommended for each of our units there's generally three within the curriculum resource that they ask for we would not

005use any that are not currently already on our approved novel list so i wanted to be sure that we talked a little bit about that again all new all new novels will go through our annual review process so when we come back in november and we ask for approval of our course description book within that course description book there is also our gps approved novel list and at that time that would be implemented in the 23-24 school year i thought it was important also to note that the titles that were mentioned in our last board meeting are not included within any of the curriculum resource as a companion novel for our students or as part of any of the curriculum units that they're doing dr newman let me just so say that again so they

006will they would never be they're they're just a supplement or an alternative but they're not even recommended as the actual companion novel right those two titles were not in anywhere in any of our resources as a companion novel for us to use with any of our curriculum guides what those novels were listed is on the vendor sabbas on their website and specifically it does say within their they're selling books right not part of our curriculum adoption and our resource but they're also selling titles and books similar to any other book company and so it specifically says that these should be previewed please be sure that they match with your what the expectations are for your teachers in your district and also for your community and so again those were not that list where those two

007novels are are not part of the my perspectives curriculum adoption so may i ask a question um we're only using the novels that are on the reading list in our classrooms correct we're not using any novels that are outside of that correct okay thank you so the gps speaking specifically about the approved novel list as part of our annual as i mentioned before our annual course description book process and approval we always include a place where we look at novels and what we're currently using and if there are any new novels we review that list every year and that's what we bring to the board for approval generally it's in november for that following school year those novels are specifically with have an instructional resource or somehow tied to classroom learning so when we're looking

008and putting specific novels on that list we're looking at these would our novels and i'll explain a little bit more later but these are novels that are directly tied to what we believe would match what we need to do in regard to developing our students literary skills in regard to matching what the rigor is in our curriculum academic standards and those parts so that's what we're looking for and i'll talk more a little bit about that how it's initiated it actually can be initiated by a teacher it can be initiated by an administrator or it can be initiated by a parent and once that initiation begins they submit their request and it goes through a formal process that begins initially of course with that initial piece but then also there's an approval of all campuses

009so if there's somebody for a teacher on a particular campus that teacher then explains to the other campuses why this would be a good fit and when that teacher does that then all the department chairs the english language arts department shares for example at a high school and each of the high schools must approve before it moves on in the process once it does that it moves to our curriculum department and they do its their own review of and make sure that it does match and mirror what our instructional focus is for each of those grade levels and after that it moves to our course book description committee and the committee is there are teachers administrators curriculum team on there and really the course description book is looking for what courses should we add what

010courses should we delete what courses might we modify and so of course the novel part is just a piece of what all of that is once that mirrors we finish up with our committee it goes to our principal review and then it comes to you as the board um and any questions about that no so is there anywhere along that place where a parent could weigh in on the review process are they on any of those committees or yes okay uh committees no but there's a place when we initially do it before a teacher or an administrator or even a parent submits the request part of that is the um opportunity and the requirement that we must have three community feedback forms okay so those community members they cannot be from the same household and

011those community members read the book thoroughly and then they go through and that's something that i'll talk about here specifically they're looking at what is the rationale for the edition like how does that fit in in regard from an instructional standpoint right the complexity of the text the text structure background knowledge of what students might know also it looks at that instructional design what are those learning outcomes and for our students and what is it that we're expecting them to do and how does this novel help move our students forward in their learning and then lastly that community feedback which is consistent more so with the values and the appropriateness so it asks for example you know devoid of inappropriate stereotyping devoid of violence and inappropriate sexual references and so there's a rubric that our

012community members use something that we're really pretty excited about actually was as part of the adoption we kind of like to go a little bit above and beyond what we're supposed to do and so through our adoption process we made sure that our parents had access to the online resource we made sure that we had the materials at multiple sites so that they're not having to just be inconvenienced to go you know just to district office but in addition we also did a parent night and that actually came from a parent who was on the adoption committee and she said you know it really makes sense if you're able to do this with a parent group and get feedback from them so during that time we actually received about i think it was seven um

013names and so we said to the parents if you're interested we're always looking for parents that would like to review and look to see what you know if this is matching if we're making the right decisions and and so we they all signed up it was really exciting to have seven so um that's even better we often will go back to our adoption committee team or often what we'll do when we're looking for feedback whether that be for community participation or otherwise what we'll do is we'll ask our principals you know they're the ones directly connected to our families and our community for recommendations and who might be good and we try to make sure that we have families from all sides of the district for example so we try to make that a little

014bit balanced as well so that's what we're looking at when we're doing the approval does that answer your question yes thank you okay i just want to go back to the previous page because we didn't really talk about the alternative book selection i think that's a really important point that parents and families need to understand is if if they're not comfortable with a book that their child is assigned to read that they can ask for something different right absolutely if families we do have our gps approved novel list our teachers know that they are not instruction they're not creating instructional activities or expectations of students for any novels that are not on that gps approved list with that we also know that a family may decide for one reason or another that that might not

015be a good fit for their student and so there's a process in place and we encourage them to speak with the teacher and find an alternative book that mirrors that instructional focus right so whether it be the literary element that they're focusing on or the theme or some of the other pieces so that they can still participate in some of the work that they're doing but they're just reading something differently all right it's always been gps practice that we post the course description book online and that is under um and i just have a screenshot just so you can see there because the course description book contains our approved novelist that is always included online for people to reference and view now we update it in the fall and so in the may become january

016you might have two so january 2023 we're just gonna we're going to have our 22-23 book and we're going to have our 23-24 book and then slowly as we start the new year we'll remove the old one but that is always there for individuals to see and our course novel list is published within that course description book dr neiman can i also say within that course description course description book is also published the summer reading is at the end of that book as well right it's a it's the page just after that and it specifically um is for each campus so a campus may choose a different book for the summer reading that being said all of those books must be on our novelist yes yes thank you for the sake of convenience we will

017start placing the novels separately also on the website um so i have a screenshot here thanks to don and the stennis and um there will it will just say approved books or approved novels and we'll post it separately now that being said i also want to make sure that we will still continue to post it in the course description book it's important because that's where it belongs and that's where it kind of it should sit so that our parents are able to see that when they're choosing courses and they're looking for what would be a good fit for their students or the best instructional choice for them but for the sake of convenience we will place it also in a separate place on the website and that really concludes my very short presentation if you

018have any questions for me any questions i think oh yeah miss you jetty yes i have a question um right now there are 12 people watching the meeting and i just wanted to know we've discussed this many times before how do we get this information out to the public i think we could probably include something in one of our newsletters maybe even this short presentation or a link to this uh segment of this meeting just so if people have inquiring minds as to how this process works they can go there i think that's a really good idea thank you dr mccord and i i think also it's um appropriate for parents to look at the classes that they're choosing for their students and i specifically remember with one child i went and talked to the

019ap english teacher and decided that that probably wasn't the class for my child and we ended up taking english 101 and i think she took i think at that time it's just english 101 but that was a great class for her and a great fit for her other children did they take ap english so i think it's um when you're looking at the reading list you know it it's your choice what class your child takes and you might deal with some of those issues by choosing a different class and that is one of the reasons why we include it with our course description book because we do want to make sure that they're tied together so that they're able to see that full picture when they're making those choices i think i think the most

020important aspect in my mind of all of this is that we do have a process and it we just whenever we do a curriculum adoption just because maybe something's included in that we still narrow it down to what we feel is best for our students in gilbert public schools and so i appreciate the process that you and your team go through dr naman one more question so um if if it's on the approved list it could be though that maybe it's approved for ninth graders but maybe uh at one of the schools maybe the seniors read that book kind of by their tradition is that something that you could explain a little bit absolutely we do allow um if a novel is approved at a particular grade level sometimes i mean novels can be read

021multiple times right those of us that love to read know that and so we we do allow them to read it at a grade higher we but the rule is that they may not read it at a grade below so for example if it is approved at 9th grade our seventh and eighth graders should not be reading that if it's approved at 11th grade our 10th graders should not be reading it but our seniors or any grade above wherever it's approved that's acceptable for them to do that now they also have taken account they don't want kids to read the same book two years in a row either so there's other parts to it but we let that um happen on a campus because campuses choose different novels you know we don't read novels every

022day right so maybe two a year perhaps and so they can choose within all of that list which ones they want to use and then these are specifically what the class and teacher will use basically as class study in class occasionally there will be an outside of class novel that they can choose from and there might be another list or different but there's a bunch of options for that as well right and that's more about choice what we've recommended in a lot of our teachers i am i just spoke with jenna crowley buck who's our english language short coordinator today and she said um one of the department chairs that one of the campuses did a really nice job of a letter um out to parents and specifically said please look this list over please

023let them know that you're okay with the book that they're choosing and because we do want parents to be able to make those choices um in regard to those because that's independent reading that's not tied to an instructional activity in the classroom that's just a separate thing so right okay well i appreciate that any other thoughts or questions okay thank you very much we appreciate you thank you all right that will take us to 2.02 safety and security dr macquarie thank you madam president governing board members we have coming up here uh director of safety and security mr al kane and our assistant superintendent of secondary schools marcy taylor tonight we'll talk to you a little bit about our safety and security measures in our schools is [Music] you know we've put a focus on

024that for a long time and hyper focused this summer on some specific areas because of things that have happened in our country as well as most recently in uvalde texas and we strive to do our very best to make each of our campuses as secure as possible but there's a lot of things that go into that it's not just a lock on a door or you know those types of things there's a lot of things that go into that and i think this presentation will highlight a lot of things we do on a daily basis in gilbert public schools so i'll turn it over to you too all right madam president governing board members dr mccord thank you for this opportunity for us to be able to share this evening what we've been working on

025in gilbert schools for the last few years and particularly with a few new things that we rolled out this year related to safety and security i think a lot of this work really started four years ago when al kane was hired as our director of safety and security and he came from a law enforcement background so came in with a little bit different lens on how some of our procedures and some of our physical safety processes and equipment should be brought forth in our district and it was kind of nice to use a fresh set of eyes i guess on some of the things that maybe as educators we get used to or accustomed to i promised i wouldn't embarrass him but i think it took him a little bit of time to uh understand

026how our budget works and how projects in education are financed and so the bonds that we needed to approve and the rfp process the bid process going through all of those procedures in order to get some of these big projects completed so it was he's done a great job though of getting to know his counterparts in the other districts and establishing trust in our district with our campus administrators and then getting to know our operations department tech services departments finance departments so forth because we need all of all of us together in order to accomplish the goals and the mission that our safety and security department now embodies so that's just kind of an introduction i believe that the trust and the customer service that they they now utilize in our security department really has

027been instrumental in leading all of the new things that we're going to talk about tonight so i'm going to let al start with the first couple uh slides and then we'll kind of tag team tonight okay madam president uh governing board members dr mccord thank you for having me here tonight and marcy thank you for not embarrassing me too much so up there on the slide you see physical and procedural security why well the first question is why do we have it in general well quite frankly from a rational perspective our schools are in generally a safe place for staff and students to be but we all know anything can happen anytime anyplace so all the measures that we're going to discuss tonight we've put in place to target harden and strengthen our campuses for

028the overall security of our schools and to keep everybody safe so we're going to cover both of these uh different aspects of security so under physical security um there's separate several bullet points here that we're going to hit i'm not going to read them all because we're going to talk distinctly about each one on this list so we'll go right into it and go into the secured entry lobbies our goal is to control and know who's entering and remaining on our campuses originally there was no access control when i started we'd go up you could go up to a campus and walk right through the front door and walk right through the school visitors had the ability to enter our schools and walk directly anywhere the upgrades we've created created we created a secure vestibule

029vestibule in the front of our schools where they go into the this vestibule and there are many security features in place to in so that they're in place so that people cannot just walk right through the school these are some of the bullet points of those entryways visually pleasing storefront lobby with uh past limited pass-through we did not want a prison-like setting we wanted a visually appealing setting when people walked into our campuses uh it's the second bullet point says storefront branded to match the school i think our so working with operations we put these storefronts in place and then the schools have done a tremendous job of branding them to match their school and i think they look tremendous very welcoming along through with in this process is uh bullet resistant glass remote activated

030door releases card access a raptors visitor visitor management system as well as a dedicated camera for that lobby which has a microphone included so if we ever had to go back and review archived footage there's audio to accompany that to date we've completed six of our schools with uh canyon valley gca and paterson presently under construction and we also have a walk scheduled coming up for mesquite junior high so we are moving forward presently we've completed all our highs all of our traditional high schools with uh two non-traditional ones presently under construction so one of the bullet points contained within the secured entryway is bullet resistant glass here's some photos here on the left is a photo of when we actually went out to one of the local ranges and saw a demo of the

031glass being utilized uh dr mccord was present we had a nice video but we took it out and didn't want to embarrass him uh on the right is a finished product and the one the one thing i like about it is from the naked eye it just looks like normal glass but it really it does have the same protection as that you see on the left side another feature for the secure entryway is the raptor visitors management system as you can see in the left of that slide that little device that's a scanner when people enter our schools they're asked to present a driver's license or a state id the the admin clerk or whoever's working up the at the front desk will take the id run it through the scanner it runs the visitor

032to our campus through the national sex offender database and it also enters them into a dashboard which is depicted on the top right and that that is a means to keep track of who's on our campuses so it's kind of dual dual purpose we have it to to run the person against the database but we also have it for emergency management purposes uh if a if we had an incident where there was a tornado and we had a destruction at a school and the fire department came in we could pull up that log and know who's physically on that campus at any given time this here this is a photo of a front entry at mesquite high school prior to any work being done as you can see it's pretty welcoming in my opinion but

033also anybody could walk right through the front door of that school i mean they'd have to go around the desk but if there was one or two people there and they were busy working answering phone calls on the computer it'd be very hard for them to stop a visitor to our campus i think even before then wasn't that desk off phil it was off to the left side it was wide open yes going in so good that is the same area that you're seeing there that we had in the previous slide but of course that desk is now gone totally and all the features that i've just discussed are built into that entryway this here is a photo of gilbert high school before any work was done this photos kind of taken off to the

034side the entry doors are to the right and people walk in and there's not even like unlike mesquite had the front semi-circle desk there's no desk to stop anyone here they would actually have to stop and go into the on their own volition to the administrative office to check in and now this is the entryway for gilbert high school they walk in there's nowhere to go except to the front desk to check in at our school another system that we've been working on on physical security side is our enterprise camera system again when i started we had cameras at many different schools if they had a camera system and they were just old and outdated and camera systems came from all different places costco best buy radio shack just different places and they were not

035enterprise uh so thankfully we uh got approval on a bond and we partnered with benson systems and we purchased a motorola product to bring our securely system our surveillance system up to the modern age when we're completed with this project which should be about another two years or so all gps sites will have an integrated enterprise connected surveillance system which will be monitored on site and also fed to our district security operations center cameras we plan on sharing them with the local police departments respectively as well and those will only be viewed under emergency situations all cameras have built-in analytics used for appearance searches for quick locating of people and property which uh the schools that we have them in already i'm receiving rave reviews from those analytics alone they're helping find property that was

036misplaced or stolen same with students that helping them with discipline included in those are ir infrared capability for motion area and directional alert settings we haven't gotten to the point of setting those up fully yet because we want to wait till we get the whole camera system in place there's just too much involved to get it to that point to begin with on the right there that's a close-up view of one of the typical cameras that we're installing at the schools and on the far left is that same camera put in place over at highland high school so along with the camera project we built a security operations center which was built over at my office which is located at tech services uh one of the reasons we built that was so that all cameras

037could be fed to one central location where the schools have access to their own individual campus sites the sock as we refer to it can also be used as an emergency command post during emergency situations instead of uh our executive cabinet having to go to a site if there was an emergency they could all convene there and have live footage and live views because we know if there was a major incident in campus there's going to be police activity there's going to be so many people on site they're going to need a place to convene and what better place to have where they have direct footage live and communications built in as well these cameras there's a view of the exterior of the campus as well as the interior of the building yes ma'am all

038right thank you you can go on over the summer we installed intercoms at all of our schools that do not have a secured entryway all k8 gca canyon valley these intercoms are also of the same manufacturer as our cameras that we're installing so they feed to the same software so when some when a school is able to pull up their own cameras they're also seeing the intercoms that's at their front door all right most of our elementary schools were a little better when they were built about having perimeter fencing i think because of the playgrounds we have done about seven fencing projects at our elementary schools primarily the outdoor campuses but then we've had to do complete fencing projects i guess we should call them they're kind of large projects at our at our high

039schools and our junior highs as well so all of the a la carte areas that are junior highs have been fenced in all of the schools that still utilize portable classrooms have been fenced the when we walked al and i walked the all the secondary campuses in june with the secondary principles and identified still some areas that need to be tweaked and adjusted so there's still some some changes but it's overall much much better there are still some upcoming elementary fencing projects as well most of those are just intended to replace or update some of the deteriorated perimeter fencing around our campuses but overall much better before when you drive by our campuses they tried to make them visually appealing i think albert's team did a great job of designing so that they're blending in

040with the campus and it doesn't look like a prison or something that's not very welcoming when when approached we're very fortunate to have sros at all of our secondary campuses we have a great relationship with both the mesa and gilbert police department and we appreciate their help in in helping to fund some of that on our campuses we also were able to thanks to your approval add 12 more security guards to all of our secondary camp campuses in total 12 in total that were distributed throughout the secondary and then we added three elementary security guards that are rovers so they actually have a region of our district and each of them have about eight or nine elementary schools that they rotate to each week and the feedback that we've gotten from the elementary principles has

041been extremely positive they've done a nice job of starting to be a visual presence on those campuses getting to know staff members and they are also a team that we could be dispatched out somewhere if there was ever a big situation or we needed extra support at one of our campuses they could be utilized in that way as well finally the additional pay that was approved this year has helped to maintain or we're hoping will help maintain some of the consistency with this position it's been very difficult to have a high turnover rate of security guards on our campuses i think every single one of our secondary schools last year had at least one vacant position the entire year if not more than that so hopefully with the monetary increase it'll provide some stability to

042this these uh staff members and they really are key on our campuses they establish very positive relationships with our students uh but also are the eyes and ears that are out there mingling and and really facilitating the safety pieces of keeping gates doors closed gates locked and those those types of things so we're very grateful for the additional cost and the additional staffing in these areas could you just talk a little bit about the training for our security guards and our sros i know some other districts we have never had an issue i'm not aware of one issue with any of our people but some other districts have wanted to move away from that because of concerns about minority students and discipline so can you talk a little bit about the training that we provide

043to our people to avoid those problems yeah that's um it's coming it's coming up but i'll answer your question sure um for the sros of course they're trained by the local municipality that they work for uh both be it gilbert or mesa police departments but our own security guards we hold an annual training day at the beginning of the school year and it covers uh many different topics from first amendment to uh de-escalation techniques and uh we we actually this year we had uh our our gilbert sro sergeant came in and gave a lengthy presentation on many different topics so we and at that training we also brought in all the sros for them to meet them all so i i think it was and like marcy said it's a great they have a great

044relationship between both our security and the sros and as far as uh training we've also included this year some extensive medical training for them which i'll when we get to that slide i'll go into that a little bit more they go through the same background checks fingerprint clearance everything that any of our employees would go through i think jill what you referred to a little bit was there some school districts that decided not to fund sros on their campuses and as marcy alluded to earlier gilbert public schools has had a long-standing relationship with uh city of mace pd and town at gilbert pd and we're very proud of of that relationship and that ability to work with each other so you won't see me bringing a recommendation like that before this governing board because i

045think it's essential to what we do here in gilbert public schools and and i think it creates great relationships with a lot of our police department and our sros and they get to know the kids and what's happening in the community and so i think it's a great bridge actually to what we do here so i appreciate that two additional physical security upgrades that have occurred over the last few years is one is our alarm system our intrusion alarm system around the district to be frank it's very antiquated and we had to upgrade many of our panels and keypads because it just wouldn't work with today's technology all the district phones that were installed are all ip phones network based phones and a lot of the old security panels didn't they didn't speak the same

046language so we had to update them and we're not a hundred percent there but we're pretty close now and then the second one is the addition of the informacast solution which presently we use it for our automated lockdown messages and towards the end of the slide i'm going to bring up the same informacast application on another topic because we're going to possibly go another direction with the software that has many different applications the security procedures just updates on those a lot of these we already had in place but they've been fine-tuned and tweaked and made more modern for some of the current issues that we've seen uh in today's world the we're gonna talk about each one of those two but the external uh doors and gates being locked so here's a couple pictures from

047this school year when we when al and i went out and walked the secondary campuses with the principals and there were a couple security guards that did it with us as well we identified points of entry on all of our secondary campuses most of them have three points of entry in the morning so there's on our high school campus for instance in the parent drop-off area in the bus unloading area and then in the student parking lot and each of those areas are identified as entry areas that have a stationed security guard there that's now checking for ids as well but once the school day gets going those are all shut down locked and then all students have to enter through the office with the exception of some of the identified passing ways during passing

048periods that students go out of the building for to attend seminary class or a portable class that's in a portable or an athletic field then those are also manned by security guard throughout the day then so that when they're returning back into campus they're again checking to make sure only our students with their ids are are returning onto our campuses so this has been a little bit different this year but it has rolled out actually very successfully the id badge process i think was it was dreaded a little bit by some of our administrators because they believed it would be a battle we've always had in policy that staff need to wear id badges while they're on campus but we're really reinforcing this year that we need to model this because now we're asking our

049students to wear them as well and in the student handbook we've always had that they would have an id badge that they would have it with them on campus but we've never required them to wear it so we supplied the breakaway lanyards the sleeves and then almost every one of our secondary campuses printed temporary badges that they rolled out the first or second day of school and started to have kids become familiar with how they were going to enter the campus and that they needed to have that id badge visible on their torso from the waist up if they don't want to wear the lanyard they can clip it on we also have created a template for a consistent badge badges throughout all our campuses so there's a couple pictures up there of a junior

050high one a high school one and then our gilbert public school staff id as well so that anybody can very quickly identify that that is the correct badge we've tried really hard to encourage our departments that when they're on campus to be wearing their badges as well so that security and other staff members can identify if they are an employee of ours so this was rolled out in a very consistent manner i think our administrators on the campuses took it very seriously um as far as their the process that they used to explain for the this requirement or expectation to students we are also trying to be very consistent on the process we use on our campuses for students who forget their badge for a day or they lose their badge so we're trying to

051maintain that consistency so it's not one campus that's doing it one way and another campus that's not enforcing one of those things i think all of our secondary campuses have their a lot of them have already had their picture day and received their real identification badges but most of them are scheduled for sometime in the month of august there's two elementary schools right now that are piloting id badges as well the rest of our elementary schools will roll out second quarter so i think the more that students become accustomed to having this be part of their school experience they and starting at a younger age they're just going to get used to it our administrators we met with a group of assistant principals this morning um high school this morning in junior high this afternoon

052and they so many of them said it has rolled out already at the beginning of the year uh more cleanly and um successfully than they ever imagined that it would uh they feel like that it actually has created more order and structure on their campuses which was pretty nice to hear and that they have not had a lot of battling of any families or students are i would say just speaking with the junior high principles they're probably between a 95 and 99 compliance rate of their students right now and our high schools are hovering around 90 percent between 90 and 95 so it's pretty good considering we're only in the third third week of school there's a couple more pictures i think yeah of kids showing their badges and security guards giving them thumbs up

053as they're coming in and i think the key to making sure that this was successful was to try to find as many ways that students can use their id badges as possible on campus so i know on our site on our secondary sites they're using them in the library they're using them in the bookstore they're using them in the cafeteria we're now using them as students get on and off the buses so the more ways that they have to use that id card i think that helps reinforce the the you know the consistency in wearing it as well next topic is lockdown and fire drills there's been a lot of discussion in the media of whether lockdowns are blocked down drills are good or bad well statistics still show that a lockdown is still one

054of the most effective tools to prevent injury in a threat related incident how we conduct them here in gilbert public schools is we have four lockdowns per year we require three of which the principal schedules and one of which i conduct on unannounced from my office go out there and go to the school and put it on lockdown myself every classroom has an emergency response guide which details the specific actions that the teacher should take within the classroom and all staff are trained and are empowered to order lockdowns for themselves if they see a potential threat on the campus and then fire drills i don't have a whole lot to do with them but they are federally mandated and each school conducts their own fire drills our tip line a tip line is just an

055another approach we've put in place to promote student safety and well-being the tip line is designed to provide students and parents and also parents with a safe and anonymous way to report a threat or potential threat to a student or the school itself it also means to provide information on any other topic which may affect our students staff or the school themselves they can select there's many different topics in the drop down when they submit a tip anything from bullying to threats to the campus to threats of self-harm uh even facility related issues as well as compliments on the on the left hand you see a that's a photo of the that's about a 12 by 12 size sign that's all over our schools and on the right is a four inch by four inch

056sticker which has been placed has been placed in about six different locations within within each of one of our school buses so the kids and can access the qr code and as far as submitting a tip via use of the qr code they can do it through their mobile device it's uh the tip line app is also on our mobile application for gilbert public schools as well as on each school's web page and the district web page reunification uh well what is it quite simply it's the controlled release of students to their parents due to abnormal circumstances at schools these can happen on-site or off-site and we have a plan in place pretty lengthy plan in place actually we have multiple teams across the district designed to handle different parts of the reunification such as

057the infinite campus team which their their role is to run the parents id to find out who they are if they're the authorized parent to pick up that student we have technology teams in place to respond to the school if we if we need to set up mobile stations for the computer use for the infinite campus teams we have extensive information on our websites and last year we actually conducted an exercise reunification exercise where we evacuated an entire grade level from an elementary and had them sent over via our transportation department to one of our high schools uh it was a opt-in program because parents had the option to opt out and i think we had about 89 percent of the parents opted in and the parents all came and you know picked up their

058children and went through the different steps as you can see in the photos there the bottom was just some signage we had placed around the campus and the top is actually our check-in station when the parents arrived i received some very fair valuable feedback from the exercise we conducted and from that feedback we actually made some modifications to our plan and i think we're going in the right direction the next one might be to actually don't scare you marzie but actually try a whole school eventually one of these days all right this is a new app this year the here comes the bus we worked with our transportation department and have really i think updated what some of our safety concerns were with kids getting on and off our school buses and not really ever

059knowing who is on them so in cases of emergency if a student is missing or if there was an accident you never knew you knew which kids were on that route and could potentially be on the bus but you didn't know exactly who had gotten on the bus that day or gotten off and where so this is an app that parents and students can put on their phone to identify in real time where that bus is located where their child they can put in notifications the parents so that they can get information on where exactly and what time their child loaded the bus got off the bus so again they're using their student id badges to scan as they get on and off the bus and we not only can use that district-wide for safety

060reasons but parents have we've received some really positive feedback uh from parents and students who like to see where's my bus like how much longer is it going to be and try to get there on time to their bus stop so for the students you said there's only two elementary schools that are wearing their id badges so the other students are they just carrying those id badges with them for use on the bus and in the cafeteria or they actually started using them on the bus when we piloted it last quarter at the end of last school year at gilbert elementary so yes as the elementary schools continue to get their id badges then they will start scanning on and off the bus as well but our secondary students have already started doing that and

061then the pilot's goals as well well it is helpful because i do remember the you know office being concerned this is back in the day before we had this technology and you know where is that student and how do we locate that student did they get on the bus did they decide to walk and they they're working went home with a friend yeah it happens quite more often than people probably realize plus the time i forgot my own daughter so i had to get a phone call next topic emergency operations plan or eop state law requires each school site to have an eop which meets minimum state requirements our district has one district-wide eop which is rather lengthy and quite honestly not very user-friendly as such we've created a site-specific eop which is just a

062few pages long and it covers all the information that our emergency responders would need if we had an incident at one of our schools and as the slide says we review them annually and i usually go over it when i meet with the principal throughout the year this kind of touches on the question you asked earlier about training at the beginning of the school year we do a full day training for all the security guards and again we cover we have the sro sergeant came in and gave a presentation covered many different topics uh including de-escalation uh just we had a lot of new guards this year and they quite honestly didn't know what they would be expecting so i think he did a tremendous job of walking him through different scenarios they might have

063to deal with and how to positively respond to them uh we've caught we covered um uh first amendment uh review with them as well and then and as you see in these photos we did a extensive medical review with them all so this starting this year all of our security guards carrying a medical bag with them and in that medical bag is basic first aid supplies stop the bleed equipment including blood clotting agent and tourniquet including also in that bag is a one dose of narcan all the guards receive medical training from our director of health services as well as well as many volunteers from the dignity health chandler regional medical center the hospital also not only did they donate their time and expertise but they also donated many of the medical supplies which our

064guards are carrying all right couple other additions dr mccord asked us if we would start a safety and security committee this year and we plan to meet quarterly with different administrators from each levels a couple of our lead security guards an sro some of the district administrators that could provide us with some feedback um problem solve any scenarios that have arisen and especially this year with some of these new projects and procedures that we have rolled out troubleshoot some of those things share ideas so that we can take them back to the campuses so the first meeting that we will have for that is at the end of august the websites we've always utilized our website but really al's department has done a nice job of creating an internal one for our employees so for

065instance all of the security guard training that al just talked about there's some of the documents related to each of the trainings that they received that day cpr kind of a quick uh at a glance one pager first stop the bleed so then go back and refer to that those are internal documents only um obviously uh the you know the camera system and the intercom system those are all new and his department has got had to go out and you know we can say yes they've all been installed and they're working great but there's been a lot of training that has taken place as well with our office staff so that's appreciated but it's nice to have references or sheets that they can refer back to and that website has is really nice for that

066internally and then the external website for our families to be able to take a look and find how we utilize the anonymous tip line or what the requirements of the id badges are going to be how we operate our safety drills so both of those are available and continue to be updated by our safety department and keeping that current online is has been a priority for them just like to add when it came to the intercoms for video camera systems for elementary we met with benson systems on monday june 6th and there was a group of us that met with them and i just want to thank them they they really prioritized gilbert public schools and they had every one of those cameras installed by the first day of school and al and his team

067and albert's team were instrumental in that and then training our folks and yeah it was clunky a few places a few times getting used to it and and getting used to routine but as i've gone to school since the first day of school people have already fallen into the groove and i think by and large people appreciate that and again just a thank you to benson for acting so fast at our request for sure so some a couple uh future projects we're considering i spoke earlier about the informacast solution that we presently use we presently use it to as an automated announcement system for our lockdown drills or lockdowns and quite honestly this application has far more capabilities than we're using it one of the examples which we're actually going to test it tomorrow is

068so we we train and we empower our staff to put the school on a lockdown if they see a potential threat to the campus how do they do that though right presently they have to use one of the desktop phones to do that what if a staff member is out in the playground or out in a field or you know a ball field or something or in a gym or something how did how did they initiate a lockdown do it due to a threat well built into the informacast application it has the ability to install the app on their phone and they can place the screen lockdown from their phone that's called triggering they can trigger the lockdown from their phone and at the same time all the other staff members on that campus that

069have this application installed on their phone would receive the message so if teacher a put the school in lockdown every other teacher would instantly receive that message we can set it up on their cell phones on their desktop computers it'll hit all all phones in the in the classroom at the front desks it can also hit the marquees in front of the school which is very beneficial if we have transportation coming onto a site and they don't know what's going on in that campus we can also install strobe lights so that when it's activated the strobe would activate so our local police department would know there's an incident at that campus and could respond that much faster it's just there's many different systems built into this informacast that we're just not presently using yet so

070we're gonna start actually tomorrow and start reviewing some of these and the second potential future project is a physical access control system also known as card access swiping into a building we have a couple of these at some of our sites and pretty soon we're going to start looking at different alternatives to this and moving on from there so as a conclusion school safety truly is it's a shared responsibility by all it's it's not just a al or al's department or marcy it's everybody it's everybody from the from the staff the executive cabinet teachers custodians all the way down to the students it's a shared responsibility from from everybody to keep all of us safe while we're at school and i just like to say none of this none of these upgrades have could have

071been possible with our gilbert community and the bond approval as well as uh the efforts from many of our gps departments especially tech services and operations and i think together we all continue to working at this and we'll make our schools and our district offices a far safer place for everyone to work and learn that's it well i just are there any questions i just wanted to say i mean i just think so much effort has gone into this and i appreciate dr mccord's leadership by even thinking that it needed to be done and having the idea that we should hire somebody to focus on this and and the things that we have accomplished in these last four years it's just tremendously different from what it was before and you know i i wish we

072could have the days when anybody could wander into school but in order for students to be safe we need to have these these safety features in place it kind of reminds me of when i went down to my bank and i was like why why do you have glass now it's kind of hard to talk and they said well we got robbed three times this summer and i was like okay we're not a small town anymore and we do have to consider safety and you know our students are and our staff are extremely valuable we don't want anything to happen to them we want a good culture where people feel included and that's probably a whole other presentation but we also need to have these things in place and i really appreciate the work that

073has gone into it and the vision that's gone into it and again because this wouldn't be possible without bonds all of this is due to our voters but thank you dr mccord for having that vision of you know seeing that something needed done and moving forward with that we're pretty fortunate to have people like al marcy jason the whole crew all of our administrators and they are constantly looking for different ways to improve security at the same time it's it's it's actually very sad that one we have to have a presentation like this and that we have to go to some measures and so we walk a fine line of making sure our schools are are welcoming as well as secure and and it's difficult but and and sometimes we're very reluctant to to take

074that step for a lot of different reasons and but as time has progressed um it's become more and more obvious that there's some things that need to be done i remember being an assistant principal with dr santa cruz and i was over safety and security fire drills and we actually conducted the first lockdown drill in gilbert public schools history and it was quite an event 3 200 kids you know i don't know 250 employees and um it was an eerie sensation eerie feeling and now we do it four times a year and it's we've done a lot of different things and that's 20 years ago and so um i'm again sad that we have to do those things but they're extremely important because we want families and kids and staff feeling at ease when they

075walk in because we know if you have people that are restless teaching will be difficult as well as learning and that's what we're here for is teaching and learning and so hopefully we'll continue to make improvements and nothing is perfect everything that alan marcy talked about this evening will not necessarily prevent things from happening are they intended to help slow them down and to help deter definitely but we will never be able to say that nothing can't happen on our campuses but we want to make sure that people know that we take it serious and that we're doing the things that we should be doing and would like to continue to do more to make sure that those feelings of being safe and secure in our camps is intact so thank you guys for what

076you do thank you did you have something dr sanchez yes uh dr mccord the administrative team and mr kane having been a part of first generation of trying to establish some kind of security procedure in this district the evolution is impressive and safety and security is something that continues to evolve we will probably never arrive but we're probably closer than many in establishing a state of the art security for our campuses and our students staff and so i'm truly impressed with how we have established a system that will be a rival for many and i thank you for that i again nothing is ever fail safe but we're certainly approaching something that works for us and we will probably see more features as we evolve beyond today and this year so very impressive stuff thank

077you miss you jetty did you have anything to add just that i want to thank all of you get all this because it's very very impressive thank you very much i appreciate it thank you we will now adjourn our work study do i have a motion so moved thanks dr santa cruz there's a second i don't think we need to vote on the journey of a work study well let's do it anyways okay all right second oh thank you thank you miss humphries it's been moved and seconded that we adjourn the work study um all this in favor please vote by saying aye aye aye aye any oppose with nay excellent we are adjourned officially one way or the other so now i'll call to order the brief board business meeting um for tonight mrs

078wilson could you please do bro call for us dr charles santa cruz here mr bill parker is not present miss laurie wood here miss sheila eugetti here miss jill humphreys here madam president you have a quorum thank you that takes us to the consent agenda items 5.01 approval of consent agenda items board members may have a motion so moved that we approve the agenda items is presented thank you mrs humphries is there a second second thank you dr santa cruz it's been moved and seconded that we approve the consent agenda items as presented all those in favor please vote by saying aye nope you're good and any opposed with me okay that has been approved thank you very much now we move to our action item 6.01 phase 2 energy project led lighting upgrades smart

079irrigation and artificial turf dr mccord thank you madam president governing board members last time we met there was a presentation regarding this action item our director of operations mr albert dutch over with some assistance from representative from schneider electric presented this topic to you and we wanted to bring it up for adoption this evening i will turn this over to our assistant superintendent of business services bonnie bets and we'll give a short refresher on what was presented last time hmm good evening governing board members dr mccord president wood as uh dr mccord stated this is just a very short presentation by mr brandon woodward from schneider electric he was not able to be here a couple weeks ago he's here this evening in addition we wanted to share a little bit of input that we

080received from the master capital planning committee last night some of the questions that they asked and then we'd also like to actually ask mr brian yee to come up at the end just to give him his perspectives he was at the meeting last night plus he is highland high's principal and has some unique perspectives regarding these projects so with that i'm going to drive and mr woodward will tell me when to go to the next slide thank you yeah thank you madam president board members dr mccord appreciate the opportunity to be here tonight uh the slides you're going to see are very similar borderline identical to what albert shared two weeks ago so i'm going to do my best to keep them as brief as possible and lean on you guys for uh if you've

081got any questions to please ask away as i'm going through this so let me go to the next slide so schneider electric has been a innovation and sustainability partner for the district for several years now we had a really successful first phase where we focused on lighting at 17 junior high and high school gyms across the district and building off the success of that project we were looking at what's next on that priority list looking through these four priorities as our our top initiatives with what we're looking at with the type of projects we do obviously you want to save energy save water and save money it's at the top of the list but also increasing mno staff efficiency making sure we're giving albert and his team the resources and tools they need to be

082as effective and efficient as possible also modernizing district facilities updating them to newest technology newest systems and lastly on here was we want to make sure it's got a high visibility to the community things that we're doing they're going to highlight gilbert public schools and the unique schools you have and the four items we landed on are there to the right i'm going to spend just a minute on probably each one of those i've got a slide for each one and so probably the most visible is the led sports field lighting you can see some of the challenges you're up against on the left there but you've got the same lighting system you've had since these schools were built and the the short of it is the uh these are old inefficient systems that are

083uh very challenging and expensive to maintain elder can attest to that and very inefficient so we're recommending a full led replacement of your sports field lighting focusing on the the high school football fields and the those fixtures are about 60 more efficient than the existing systems you have currently you'll see a lot of the other modernizations and benefits there um major controllability increase for albert and his team to be able to control these remotely from a phone from a tablet and be able to have it instant on and off capabilities with that and something that was brought up at a previous board board meeting was adding these led lights the directionality of these is that's a concern we want to make sure that we're focused on not adding light pollution and so these led lights

084took the words right out i knew it was coming i thought i'd beat you to the punch uh so these led lights um truly are remarkable and uh you can you can't see it very well from that image but i'll tell you what when you walk these sites afterwards it is remarkable at how directional these lights are far more than what you've got currently so that's a big focus of ours and we're always dealing with dark skies initiatives and and members there so this is something that will significantly decrease the light pollution from these fields i do have a question about how long the light bulbs will last the led light bulbs that you put in yeah and so these fixtures are and you can see an example of fixtures down there in the bottom

085left there is a 10 year warranty uh bumper to bumper meaning parts and labor so if one of these goes out in nine years not only gonna replace the fixture they're gonna actually do the work to replace it which is a lot when it's 50 feet in the air and so 10 year warranty but there's no reason these fixtures won't last 15 20 plus years okay thank you yeah of course and then the last piece on here that bottom bullet the rgb which stands for red green blue is the color changing component of this you can see an example of the fixture there this is what will be added to the football fields and along with a dynamic lighting solution meaning you can do all sorts of creative flashing and strobing situations for touchdowns or

086for band events or any number of things and this of all the things that we're looking at tonight this bullet probably has had the most conversation amongst committees and staff members because if you look at everything we're doing i think it's really easy to see wow this is something we desperately need the rgb is something that i think you look and go this is an enhancement it's pretty obvious this is an enhancement to what we have um but this is something that is very much here today and i think will be a standard moving forward for a lot of these districts so i think that will be the standard practice here in the very in the next few years and the district has an opportunity to do this now while you're doing these other lights

087at a significantly reduced cost to what you would do if you tried to play catch up in two or three years and add these lights it would be so cost prohibitive to run new wires rent lifts do everything to do this it's kind of if you're not going to do it now this is likely something that won't get done for many years and to your original question this is my first grader will be playing under these lights in 10 years or watching from the stands more likely and so these these fixtures that are going to be here for 10 to 20 years um adding this technology now i really think is going to differentiate and provide a lot of value and creative things you can do from whether it be red white and blue for

088the national anthem across the field or you've got desert ridge graduation and you flood the field red for graduation there's all sorts of really creative things you can do with this that technology any questions on this or albert anything you want to add to that i think i'm good um unless you guys have any questions it does bring a lot of additional features just as brandon pointed out [Music] one thing i want to point out too especially with this light system is it gives us the flexibility to control each individual fixture which will control the light output so we were kind of talking back and forth beforehand and and why i like this option was during graduation as we know each one of our facilities is now our comprehensive high schools is now hosting their

089own graduation as we know with graduation again we just had to secure we just had a security uh uh preview um there's challenges keeping kids off of the field um but to do so there has to be staff ultimately 24 7 roughly for about two to three days up until graduation to make sure nothing's untouched well what do we do we leave those lights on well this gives us the capability to reduce the light output so that we could have those security capabilities but we do not flood the neighborhoods with with what we would present during a game day we could actually with these fixtures on a pole we could have saved just in just for instance one pole may have 20 fixtures we should put that out there we can control 10 of those

090fixtures to project that light where we need to and we can reduce the light output as well so we're not getting 100 light output we could throw that from 30 to 75 percent of that output um so in cases like that that really enhances and and and it brings value to that feature to where we have to use that and again it goes back to the the light pollution question this gives us that flexibility to we truly can control where we're projecting that light onto the area of neat so just wanted to add that little piece to it so i do i do have a couple questions um what is the sorry i've heard different figures of what the cost for the additional i don't know what what are we calling that rgb um what

091is that additional cost on top if it instead of just having all white lighting yeah so to add the rgb uh it's less than four percent of the project price about 250 thousand dollars okay yep yeah and then the other question was um just um figuring out how much light we need so that we're we're putting enough light there for our purposes but we're not over doing it there are a couple of auto dealerships in town that seem to be extra bright and so i just want to understand how schneider is calculating that making sure that we're not providing more light than we need to yeah and so a couple ways we do that number one is we do a full photometrics which what that is it's you can pinpoint every square foot of that

092field and exactly what the foot candles would be at every square foot so a full photometric is being done for every one of the fields that we're recommending this number one number two your your existing lighting levels are are very low like they're they're very low for today's standards um and your fixtures only have on and off and that's it these new fixtures have the ability to increase the the light levels for game day for example so you can run this at 100 or 50 foot candles which is what the target is but also for non-game days if you're just doing a practice or you only use part of the field as albert mentioned you can either use you can either turn half the lights off right from a phone or you could even decrease

093the percentage and turn everything down to 50 10 whatever you wanted to do so uh i think you'll be very pleased with the the light pollution from going from your current system to leds uh truly one of the big factors that's we're considering here yeah in the direction one of the conversations we had to have was hey albert by adding these lights you're going to lower the lighting levels on the surrounding areas on your tracks for example because it is i mean it goes from light here to there's a line and there's dark right next to it because they are so directional which is what oftentimes the dark skies are concerned with is the light pollution the up light these are like a spotlight exactly where it needs to be and nowhere else okay so

094what are we doing about the track or is it covered it's it's cover it's just not you're not getting the light pollution like bleed you you were previously we had we looked at the photometrics there too okay thank you of course and also just real quick i'm gonna go ahead after santa cruz um just to that point i mean this is where the utilization of our our walkway lights and those things would come in and just to brandon's point um our focus is on the field but the reduction of spillage currently what we we do have now so if we turned off say concession stand lights and walkway lights there's areas around those stands that would be lit up as if they did have active lights working on them right now so this actually would

095reduce it and it would actually put the function back in the hands of of the building and perimeter lights to to give us those walkway and and so there's still safety features so it's not we're not going i just don't want it to be a misconception as far as we're going completely black you know out into the out into the walkways or where stan or spectators will be so they still will have appropriate lighting as well so all right thank you brandon and albert just a couple questions one what would you calculate is the energy savings consumption in comparison to the current systems that are being utilized in relationship to the system you're proposing and uh let's go past the 10-year mark as well as the second question if we needed to purchase replacement fixtures

096or bulbs as it were for that array on a poll or several polls what's the cost for those replacements yeah so i'll answer the second question first the the cost of replacement if you look at how albert's team is currently repairing these it's renting a lift once a year and doing all of them and then if one goes out that next week it's out for 51 weeks so it's pretty cost prohibitive to do that these these fixtures you'll have the same cost that you would now 10 years from now after that warranty um i can't say what the cost would be for that but it's uh i just i don't have an answer i don't know what that would be it's more roughly twice of what your current lighting fixtures would be but also it

097has 10 to 20 times the lifespan of that okay that's a replacement of this fixture correct okay yep yeah if that if that were to fail after the 10-year warranty right okay and what about uh energy consumption yeah so the going just from your current fixtures to led uh they're 60 more efficient if you ran them the same amount of hours not to mention if you start implementing some of the dimming capabilities and you dim those down on game days or turn them off you have so much more controllability you'll probably be turning them off or on less than you are currently so if all things all things even you're going to reduce your utility use on that by about 60 percent i would anticipate that i'll probably be north of 70 after you start

098using the dimming some other factors and these lights are on demand they're instantaneous whereas some of them take a little while to heat up right there's a warm-up factor which also adds to your energy costs absolutely and so if you think back to super bowl 47 a very forgettable super bowl uh with the exception of the lights went out that's the superbowl the lights went out they were out for 34 minutes because of a power outage that technology they have is the same technology you have and so what happens is if you lose power your lights have to cool down because they're really hot they have to cool down reset and then warm back up so it can take 30 plus minutes so that event was the best thing for led for nfl because quickly

099these teams started realizing we can't have 34 minutes of dead time so they quickly switch those out same situation here to where you can click that on and off from albert's ipad versus having to wait for 30 minutes for them to warm up cool down so i just need a clarification on your answer to dr santa cruz so if in 15 years a bulb goes out we would we would still have the same process we'd still have to rent a lift replace the bulb and hopefully the the plus is the led lights last for many many years so it won't be as frequent yeah and that that's to that exact point um roughly as far as what the fixture will cost in 10 years from now obviously that's an unknown but there will be that

100process of having to get the lift but again to your point um that that fixture would last longer than our current um technology um and then just to the point of the energy savings i just want to know one thing another caveat to the system is it does have light harvesting so as we get into these as we come to sundown those lights will actually the intensity of the lights will increase to get to the full capacity uh that we need to project that uh proper foot candles to the field so as we get to sundown or dusk we may not need a full set of lights on that will that will increase itself until it gets to the until we get to the point we need it to be for full lighting of the

101field so what was that i'm sir does it do it on its own yes or do you have to increase it no it's it's set up for a dust till dawn set up and then we're able to increase that that forecast so that's great so you're able to harvest that that light in a sense to to bring that on so you set that up and then it'll it'll ultimately intensify it'll work to that based on the light that yes yeah or dusk i'm sorry so okay so probably the most expansive scope we're doing is exterior led lighting so beyond just the the sports field lighting this is all of your high schools and two junior highs looking at every exterior fixture and converting that to led similar to your sports foot lighting you've got old

102inefficient systems that are not putting out as much light as they should and it's caused some safety issues that have been brought up in the past and you also have there's a few areas on here that are either under lit or unlit that we'll be addressing the three you'll see there are sand volleyball you've added some sand volleyball course to several of your high schools over the years due to the rapid growth of that sport but those a lot of those don't have lighting at all so when the sun goes down they're forced to stop adding led lighting to those areas and then the other two gilbert high school if you think along along elliot the north side of the school there's a long parkway there that has no lights and if you drive by

103there it is very very dark so where that really becomes a concern is that in the winter months i mean toy box that's the toy box drop off so in the winter months when you're dropping off very young children toy box it is pitch black so that's one area we will be adding lights along that drive along with the north parking lot at gca that was built after the fact and built without lights another safety concern so adding lights in in that parking lot i think when those areas were built there just was not funds for lighting absolutely i think that we were pretty you know doing what we could but that's a good point i we do need some lighting there yep and so same thing as your the sports foot lighting these ones

104are significantly more efficient than what you've got now very long lifespan to where you're not going to worry about replacing these for many many years also it just improves the the safety the look the feel of your school modernizes the look of the exterior any questions on that uh so this is one that is the definitely the least visible to the community but the highest impact to the the m o team and i'm going to start with this quote there from johnny gutierrez on the maintenance team he estimates they're spending 16 to 18 hours a week manually controlling these irrigation systems at these schools and so if you think about your house you've got the irrigation box on the the side that controls your grass and the watering for plants uh these schools that we're

105looking at have over 50 of those irrigation boxes spread throughout many many acres so his team they're spending i mean it's almost a half a full-time employee all they're doing is going out and manually adjusting these for games for changing in weather and perfect story ironically enough when albert was presenting this two weeks ago uh you gotta tell that story get a text from who was it uh we got a text from a renter at or i got a text from a renter at highland junior high school and literally as i sat down and i pulled out my phone that's exactly what they said they said hey albert can you help us out we're running softball practice and um sprinklers went off so you know i have to dispatch our evening technicians but you know

106with this with this capability it gives us that that um we expedited action there at the touch of a a button to isolate that or to adjust those schedules or to review those schedules even to the point of verifying when we know events are coming up or last minute events come up we could we could do that at basically at the in the palm of our hand so it's moving all those systems to smart systems being able to control it remotely from phone ipad again giving you instant control also allows you to there's some significant water savings associated with that not over watering getting alerts etc so that's what we're looking at there for smart irrigation so um i believe you told us that this particular project is the one that provides us the greatest

107savings is that correct yeah greatest savings especially for the the cost of the others um over a hundred thousand dollars a year just in the smart irrigation savings alone it's pretty significant on not only the water saving side but the the maintenance saving side for albert and his team and then the last piece to this uh is artificial turf and so this is one where uh we talked about several different schools where we thought this made sense um we really refined this down to the top three schools where we thought this was going to have the most impact because with artificial turf it's a square foot game it's the more square feet you're doing the more the cost is so we are really strategic on exactly where we did this and uh perfect example of

108why we're looking at this if you look at the far left picture that's gca and it's it looks like grass but if you look closely it is about uh four to five inch weeds it is all weeds minute it just doesn't look good it really decreases the the curb repeal of the school uh not to mention that you see that iron fence there but in order to water this grass you are also watering a metal fence what happens when you put water on a metal object day in and day out you can see the picture on the far right from one of your other schools you are rusting these these fences along with watering the buildings watering the sidewalks etc so you've got a large maintenance expense on these things that you're you're ruining with

109the water contrast that to nearly traditional you can see that that is artificial grass there it goes underneath the fence looks fantastic year-round significant water savings significant maintenance savings and also look you can see the desert ridge high school layout of where we're doing artificial turf on the green spots and then xeriscape or desert landscaping on the the yellow spots but if you look you approach that that school right now you look in the grasses most of the year it doesn't look good it's just not green uh and that's part of our arizona climate transitioning that to this artificial turf is really gonna increase the the curb repeal the look and feel of those schools you said something i liked dessert landscaping um so what is the criteria between when we use artificial turf and

110desert landscaping so we and we put a lot of thought into this and there's uh because it is more cost effective to do desert landscaping per square foot than it is artificial turf and so we looked at these areas and we're looking at key entrances uh the downside is it's it looks it looks much better with the artificial turf and i look i use gilbert high school as an example the exterior xeroscape there the rock there it doesn't look nearly as good as if you go to nearly traditional look at how good that artificial grass looks there so we are really strategic on which areas can we use that are going to be lower traffic it's not going to get trampled is going to be able to provide the most visual value and also is

111maybe a challenging area for them to currently water without watering nearby areas which is why we landed on those areas okay i appreciate that i do think we live in a desert so we should get used to desert landscaping grass is not native to our area and considering our water situation going forward we're probably going to be having a lot less of it and i'll tell you what and i i we've talked about this possibly even being a pilot project because as you start to see more and more mandates from the town of gilbert there's a note up there activated first stage of their water supply reduction management plan doesn't mean much yet but it's a warning that there may be more to come and this is going to be something that i think many

112districts are looking at very heavily districts and residents very heavily here in the near future yes before you go on that do you have a figure of of this tote of the total cost do you have a rough figure of what the turf how much the turf and desert landscape is yeah just under 800 000 okay for the those three schools okay thank you yep and so as an overview you can see here the scope matrix on the right we are doing very significant improvements at nine of your most highly trafficked schools so you can see where we're doing each of the improvements and the blue boxes there to the right and then looking to the left of the financial side of this like i mentioned we are absolutely looking at a lot of the

113capital improvement projects you're doing don't have a savings impact of this this one does so this will save over 360 000 a year on utility and m o side and over the life of the project almost 13 million dollars in life cycle savings which those savings are what's funding the 6.7 million dollars in modernizations that we're recommending tonight and then as i shared we shared this presentation with the master capital planning committee last night we asked them just to give their input to us regarding the projects and ask their questions so if i could just share a bunch of the questions um that were asked and some some concerns that were raised so regarding the lighting as you had mentioned mrs humphries one individual lives in the desert ridge area and he commented about the

114glow over the legacy sports complex so he was expressing concern very much so about the bleed out of lighting and lighting pollution and then he asked if our fixtures were including hoods or shields to help directionalize the the lighting and so based on that question we verified with schneider that the on the field lighting because they are so directional and the heads are actually designed appropriately where the leds are actually inset a little bit further to make sure that they're more directional so the the recommendation did not think it was necessary to put those hoods or shields on them however there are areas in the second part of the project where we are encroaching a little bit closer to neighborhoods and for those particular locations the shields or the hoods are being added to the

115light fixtures so we are addressing those the other thing is when um albert was talking about that we have to remember that legacy has 30 lighted fields out there and we're talking about just our stadium lights but that was a a significant concern one of the other comments too was the cost of the rgb lights and why would we do this now and we could spend 250 thousand dollars on something else and i think that in response to that what's happened in my career is that we make a decision today and then two years from now we want to make the different decision because it's becoming more commonplace and so then what happens is we actually end up spending more money so even with our marquees we're doing marquis on a regular basis each marquee

116is meant to attract and enhance the building exterior and each of those are uh on average i think we're spending forty to forty five thousand dollars on each of those marquees so just consider that as you consider the cost of the rgb lighting the other concerns were about some of it was how did you choose schneider electric what process did you go through and albert and i explained our history there and the fact that we did go through a couple of energy performance contractors and vetted them uh and then of course we did that trial with schneider back in november of 2019. so um all those the all those questions were were asked and we provided answers the other one was why did we choose ephesus so ephesus is the lighting fixture i think i'm

117saying that correctly ephesus is the lighting fixture provider for our application so a couple of reasons why we chose that is that the fixture more matches what our communities are used to on how these lights look on poles in addition it was a very cost effective solution there were other providers that were mentioned that were very cost prohibitive and so based upon those those particular issues we landed on our recommendation from schneider which was the ephesus lighting so uh there were also the final question that was i thought notable was well how do our school leaders feel about whether they would use the lights and the rgb lights and and what that what was their take on the project overall and so brian yee was there last night as well and he did agree to

118come this evening and so i'd like to call him up if it's okay and and have him provide his perspectives being a long-term principal at greenfield junior but now the new principal at highland high so brian can you come up and join us you can sit next to dr santa cruz there thank you sir very much good evening madam president governing board members uh thank you for the opportunity to be here um it was exciting from my perspective to hear about the options for highland high school and to continue to make it the premier high school in in the state of arizona and my first thoughts my my responsibilities as the principal at highland high school is to ensure whatever enhancements on the campus that it benefits as many students and staff as possible not

119just a select group or area and i feel obviously this will enhance any sporting events for our girls and boys teams in our stadium the um opportunities to do whether it's the player intros halftime introductions the natural anthem spotlighting and using something excuse me that is state of the art language that was mentioned earlier this evening that can enhance those opportunities for students but i also feel our music programs can benefit from this opportunity and but i that was my first thoughts and so my first then uh reaction was to contact and speak with our band director our assistant band director which i spoke with this morning and it took them first initially by surprise and how that could be utilized in their performances and their initial thoughts were no we can't use something like

120this due to our festival rules and regulations but then as we started talking about it more we as a district would be one of the first districts to have this light option in our stadiums and as we start utilizing that in small ways and showing how it can be used we feel other schools and stadiums would follow along those lines and down the line in the future this would be technology that can be used by many other campuses for future festivals etc i didn't want to limit it to our campus conversation so i reached out to the person who i feel is one of the most knowledgeable people in the music educational world and mr chip durham who's here tonight i spoke with him and wanted his insights and thoughts and initially his reactions were

121the same as our our band folks but then as it marinated and i think as he spoke to others he saw the possibilities of this technology for the programs and how it can be used to enhance our students and our programs at highland high school and each of the high schools within the district it's very i find it similar to the benq boards that are being installed that initially there is some hesitancy on using those in the classrooms but then as teachers have become more comfortable and receive training and utilize that technology they become masters at utilizing that and enhances their teaching craft and i feel that's my responsibility to provide the training and the resources for our staff to fully utilize this technology in in many different ways and i think really the sky

122is the limit with what we can do with attracting students to our our campus through the use of this technology through the different events that we currently host and ideas that we've already started brainstorming about in the future for our campus and i was curious mrs wood you were there last night as well did was there anything else that you heard last night that you'd like to bring out and see if we can answer your any further questions that you might have i think you covered most of the questions that i heard last night i think the one i was thinking was the the ephesus versus the other brands concerned about the quality of the ephesus that there's been some i guess as different stadiums or maybe the legacy or something has put them in

123that there's been some oh i don't know okay but you feel confident in the quality and i do so so going through and looking and doing some research on it the it's so lights are judged by efficacy really and that's that output and the quality of those lights and what and all those culminations of foot candles lumens and and those things tied together and what that output is put on to the directive or the workspace or playing field and emphasis from from what i've seen and and what they could do in this specific system is put that uh put the most efficient quality of light onto those surfaces that we're looking to um provide for so we reduce shadowing and some other things like that so i felt comfortable in in the decision with with

124emesis thank you so keep in mind to mrs wood that there is a 10-year warranty so bumper-to-bumper as mr woodward had shared the other question that came up last night was about the driver going out but then the lights failing on so that it was constantly on instead of being able to turn off so i had asked um brandon if he could respond to that particular question okay thank you yeah and so the way that these are this is far more technical than you probably care to know but uh these fixtures are designed with two drivers so if one goes out uh these things will still operate just as they were intended to uh it's kind of a backup failsafe because if something's gonna go out on this fixture it's not gonna be the led

125more often than not it's gonna be the driver so um building these with dual drivers means that if one of those drivers does go out it will continue to operate just as normal the only thing that you'll ever notice is you'll probably get an alert on your app that says hey fixture 12 on pole 4 is has lost driver 1 and that's something that alerts ephesus to be able to go out and actually replace those fixtures before you even notice that they're off and i think as part of schneider electric's process regarding this project so they are pretty much the general contractor for this project so as part of their performance requirements associated with the cooperative contract that we are utilizing for this procurement there they absolutely have to jump through some hoops and verify

126that they're doing various things one of those things is going out for competitive bids and making sure that they're getting the best value for the product that they're recommending so not only do i have confidence that they're doing that but it's also a requirement for these cooperative contracts so those those types of things too i'm aware of that that make me feel comfortable regarding moving forward thank you were there any other questions i think i think that everything's been covered except i really want desert landscaping more desert landscaping less turf because i am concerned that once we do artificial turf there is a replacement factor so down the road some future board will have to consider that and desert landscaping is so much cheaper and it's drip irrigation so no fancy so it kind of

127brings up one of the questions of again the curb appeal and how do we make sure that you know it's appealing to everyone so that's something that we're going to keep keep facing and look forward to i had one other thought mr yi i was thinking about at some of the um maybe graduations or even some of the games i've seen maybe uh fireworks or different things i wondered if if these kinds of lights could maybe replace that maybe that could be an expense that could then we could funnel into the lights you know or some maybe some of the other things like that that we've kind of added to kind of bring some excitement and pizzazz to some of our i think it's the homecoming game that they do that at and maybe yeah

128we um we were just having that discussion yeah and that's all new to me as the high school principal so finding out that we have fireworks at the homecoming game but yes this would bring we weren't this would bring a different option that we would not have to incur cost for fireworks that we could do something different and i feel when these visiting schools come and they see that too that brings a certain type of excitement when hamilton or saguaro comes to our campus and and sees this kind of display it sets a different kind of tone and excitement for not only our crowd but for the visiting crowd as well thank i will say this is the one piece i've struggled with is spending that little bit more for the colored lighting because it

129is more of an upgrade instead of a need um but in the overall cost of the project it's a very minimal minimal amount and if it's something that we would want in the future i kind of feel like it's now or never and while it's a very minimal cost now i think it's better to do it while it's minimal instead of waiting and then somebody wants to go back not me because i would be like that frugal person but some future board member would say darn we need those colored lights we got to go back and do it for 500 000 and i'd be like don't do that so that's how i've come to live with it but we do need to be careful we have to consider our taxpayers and and their generosity but

130i do think that because it's such a minimal amount as and if we could save money in other areas we just have to be careful to be thoughtful of our taxpayers my personal opinion again my personal opinion again talking about the life of these lights i feel that expands the light of the the life of this project um again we're not second guessing ourselves two years three years five years down the line we're maximizing that life not only within the 10 years but beyond uh just similar to what we do with anything else i always will try to look to not necessarily what's keeping us in the present or maybe even in the past so like for like change i don't necessarily like to look at again with technology changes and that goes across the

131board from flooring all the way up to lighting and mechanical systems i don't necessarily need the true cadillac but i need something i would like something or i like to view it as getting something that propels us forward forward in the sense of we're already not necessarily we're on the cusp or where we move into that future rather we don't have to jump forward into it but we have a capability to move forward into it with the technologies that we do decide on our or choose to to purchase well i have to say that it went from four hundred thousand to two hundred and fifty thousand made it yes more affordable i know sorry that's okay it just was like if you take off 150 000 i'm good with that dr santa cruz yeah i

132just want us to consider while i do respect miss humphrey's issue as it relates to xeriscapes and desert landscaping and though some of those features can be beautiful in our climate for sure and would like to see us maximize that as much as we can there is an appeal for that building that's important for aesthetic purposes to our public beyond that though we've focused on the stadium issues and while that's an important area i'm focusing more on the maintenance issues with rusted fences and looking at candle and lumens in parking lots and drive areas and the safety related to that as i stated at the last meeting so for me that kind of outweighs what it is that we're focused on and that would be the the stadiums those are absolutely important features don't want

133to minimize that but we did see a cost savings chart on one of these slides and that is an attractive piece with a 60 savings on energy consumption i think our recovery rate financially there is pretty decent thank you miss you jenny do you have any questions for those members up here before we thank them no all of my questions have been answered by other questions okay well we thank you for your presentation thank you very much thank you all thank you i think she did maybe we can try and call it we can drop the mic moment yeah she's gonna vote i'm just waiting for miss miss you jetty we lost mister jetty so we're going to wait for a moment and then we'll and then i'll ask for a motion and then if

134we have any other discussions miss you jetty are you back with us yeah great thank you i'm sorry no you're wonderful i'm glad you're back i was going to ask for a motion for um 6.01 the phase 2 energy project which we just discussed board members is there a motion madam president i move that we approve item 6.1 phase 2 energy project led lighting upgrades smart irrigation and artificial turf thank you dr santa cruz is there a second thank you miss humphries it's been moved and seconded is there discussion i think that i gave all i had in the i just added my thoughts into the questions so okay i think i'm good thank you miss you jenny did you have anything else to add no i don't thank you dr santa cruz nothing yet

135okay i agree with what you guys said as well and i'm very appreciative and respectful of our funding um from the state from the bond and override and this particular project is from the bond and i know that we're scrutinized very carefully the dollars that we spend and by law we've we have explained how we will spend that bond money and this falls within what we presented to the public when they approved it but also i appreciate that we go above and beyond to make sure that we spend in a way that meets the very best needs of our district and we're thoughtful about it and so appreciative of the funding i also really liked as you mentioned dr santa cruz that this is a bond spend in which we will recapture our spend through

136savings from different energy savings from water loss for maintenance and utilities and that's exciting to me to see us spend money that will actually come back to us so um and i agree with you too on the the the lighting to have safety is important i think the turf it will be interesting to see this will be a good practice to see is it worth the funding to add turf or is it something where we could do more xeroscape or whatever as we keep moving forward so i think this might be a good a good look at that and and then finally the rgb um i think we can use it in a way that will bring i think it will make it worth its its cost and especially as we look forward so that's

137my thoughts as well but i really appreciate everyone's attention to this and reviewing it again and again as we've gone through so if there's no further discussion just i do have one more thought i do appreciate that we were able to talk about it and have the presentation two weeks ago and then review it again tonight so that we can really get our questions answered and i think it's important to just have that time to really think about it before we made a vote so i appreciate that we didn't just talk about it and then make the vote in one night so thank you for arranging the agenda in that way so that we could you know discuss it i appreciate the input for the um committee and their questions i just think something that

138is that's going to have you know it is a high cost we will recoup that money but it is a big project so having all that insight and information is very helpful thank you if there's no further discussion i will ask for the vote all those in favor of approving phase two energy project the led lighting upgrades smart irrigation and artificial turf please vote by saying aye aye aye and any opposed with me thank you that will pass appreciate that and then we have an adjournment of our brief board business meeting uh may i ask for a motion i move to adjourn thank you miss humphries is our second thank you dr sanders second thank you it's been moved and seconded that we adjourn all in favor please vote by saying aye aye aye and

139any opposed with me okay thank you we are adjourned thank you very much thank you