001we'd like to welcome all of you to the work study and brief board business meeting tonight tuesday february 1st 2022 at 6 pm and thank you for being here those who are here and those who are joining us on live stream or recorded later we appreciate your attendance we'll start tonight with the call to order which i've just done and then we'll move on to 2.0 one aggregate expenditure limit and gilbert public schools it's in a presentation and discussion topic so dr mccord thank you madam president governing board members i'm looking to hook up to the screen and maybe changed maybe john no hold on there it is i just wanted to see if you'd make the walk thank you i appreciate that here good man still not there yet don't sit down oh here
002it comes we should do this in unison 309 like the kids do in class right hmm there we go well welcome again to everybody thank you for being here tonight i just want to go through briefly about the aggregate expenditure limit in gilbert public schools if you've read the news or you've talked to anybody in education as of late there is uh something looming about how we're going to be funded or will we continue to be funded as we finish off this school year into the next year and i'll kind of give definitions of of what the aggregate expansion limit is we call it ael and then we'll go through and how that pertains to gilbert public schools what is ael well in 1980 arizona voters passed a measure that limits how much k-12 schools
003can spend in a school year which was done when the state implemented its funding formula again back in 1980 this limit is known as the aggregate expenditure limit which is the total amount that k-12 districts are spending as a whole each year the limit fluctuates based on the previous year student enrollment charter schools are not included in this because they did not exist in 1980 and most schools are most school funds are counted in limit with the exception of things such as esser federal grants budget overrides things of that nature so right now what is our limit well we're 1.1 billion dollars over that limit and how does that impact gilbert public schools well that's to the tune of 39.9 million or we can just call it 40 million dollars okay and we'll get to
004that again in a minute the aggregate aggregate expenditure limit has typically been a technical budget issue that's managed behind the scenes however it's been brought to the forefront of the conversation for a few reasons first the legislator was discussing this year's state budget it was projected that the expenditure limit would decrease because of decline in student enrollment last year because of the coveted pandemic decreases in school enrollment last year mean a lower spending limit this year second prop 301 was passed by voters in 2000 to levy a six tenths of a cent sales tax to support education it was set to expire in 2020 but was extended by the governor and legislature in 2018. voters exempted funding from 301 from the expenditure limit by passing prop 104 in 2002 however when prop 301 was extended
005by the legislature in 2018 a similar provision to exempt the funds from the limit was not included this means that the funding that the funding prop 301 generates over 300 million now has to be counted towards that limit lastly third over the past few years the state had been working to restore district and charter school additional assistance which was cut during the great recession as funding has been restored over multiple years which is a great thing it has added funding that counts towards the limit combination of these things have put us in this position for all those reasons uh the limit will be exceeded this year and into future years when does the legislature have to address this issue well the constitution requires the spending cap must be addressed by the legislature no later than
006march 1st what happens if they don't address it by march 1st 2022 school districts will be forced to reduce their current budgets for this year and then going into next year so what does that mean for gilbert public schools well in general for this year current year 2022 using available budget balance carry forward money to help offset that stop any additional spending immediately and hiring freezes which goes along with the second bullet as well but we kind of have to stop what we're doing to regroup to be able to budget for next year as well and then next year we have to right size to a permanent 40 million annual reduction so as our budget moves forward next year in subsequent years we just have to count that we're gonna be 40 million dollars less
007what does that mean well it could mean a reduction administrative certified and support staff for the next year increased class sizes for the next year unrestricted capital budget moved to mno and other potential discretionary decreases when you have a budget that's basically used and made up of primarily people you have to look at those types of things if you put it in perspective i know some districts have put it like their amount would equal x amount of days of school we could equate that to 40 million dollars to be between 700 900 employees all classifications so that doesn't mean seven to nine hundred employees would be gone that's just what 40 million dollars is worth in gilbert public schools so it puts some things in perspective we don't know yet where that's going to end
008up we've talked to some folks down at the legislature there i'm still wondering what's going to happen in the next couple weeks but we have no indication as of yet if action will be taken we're hopeful that it will because that that impacts not just gilbert public schools but again 1.1 billion dollars that's all of education in the state of arizona sheila if i'm understanding this right this is just a fluke that happened as a result of of everything else that's happened to us is there anyone down there that all at all that has i've been trying to you know follow in the newspaper and i haven't seen a lot about it which isn't amazing most of the stuff i've seen has come from the teachers association and things like that is there anybody that's
009even introduced a bill or i think there is i just don't think it's been heard yet is that correct there's there's no bills assigned to committee representative jennifer has filed two bills one to address the short-term um this year of the aggregate spending limit and the other one is to do away with it entirely i mean it's it's really outdated the way that it is calculated is outdated there's so much more that we're doing in our schools than we were in 1980. i mean technology special ed um a lot of extracurriculars there's our schools are doing way more than they were in 1980 so trying to calculate from that time to now is just very outdated so basically this could just be ignored too by the legislature and they do nothing that could happen that
010could happen um it has been overridden before but um in when that has happened they've had a bill filed before the session starts and it has been one of the first things that they acted on that's not the case this year so um i personally am writing to legislators and letting them know the importance of this in to our district i think it was done kind of behind the scenes real quick just you know we'd expect this to happen so we're just going to move it through and that just hasn't happened this year my understanding of reading the press i could be wrong was that these funds were actually appropriated essentially in our bank account but we can't spend them because of this that's correct right bud so it's the money's there but we're not
011authorized to spend it right so we would have to do a revised budget by may 15th uh to reflect the 40 million dollar deficit from the current budget level the one superintendent i attended the aspa bolts training on friday and a superintendent there and i think he's in a smaller district said for them it represents 58 days of school basically the cut they would take um so you know i think we're in a very hard place but i think other districts rural districts will really really struggle with this as well i think every district will struggle just for the mere fact that their priorities are in everybody's priorities are in different places but at the end of the day they always end up in people and so um that'll be difficult discussions and decisions if
012we have to go down that road if i understand it too this spending limit does not request additional money it is already money that has been issued to the districts all the legislature has to do is say yes to exceeding the cap that is correct it would do nothing to we wouldn't have to raise taxes to anything like that anything else so the money is there it's just the will to allow districts to do that it does have to be a two-thirds vote by the legislature so it isn't important that every one of our legislators understand the importance of this to the community and to our students and to families and staff if if it didn't pass and we weren't we had to cut this amount of money it would in my opinion be a
013nightmare but where would the money just go back into the state general fund it would just be in our bank accounts we would still have it because it's still it's ours we just can't use it wow it would be larger than the cuts that we had to make in 2009 and i was one who came down to the board meeting in 2009 and thought i need to learn how education in arizona works and understand and i in 2009 this room was packed with very angry parents and people teachers mad at the school board and i think that our understanding has moved past that to understand that it is the state legislature that holds the purse strings for arizona and to understand this correctly it's not it's not changing the size of the purse it's changing
014the authority that we have to spend and so there we would have money to pay for all of the things that we need but we would not be allowed to spend it unless the legislature acts and again it takes that two-thirds vote and that's happened two or three times in the state legislature so but that i think that the point i was trying to make is that there's no gain for anybody if it doesn't if they don't do anything but there's a loss for us so there's not i mean the legislature or the state budget's not going to all of a sudden gain all this money that they can use for something else so it's just a total loss for us and all the other school districts in the state that's correct i think it's
015also significant to note that the legislature would be treating [Music] two entities here to four known as public schools differently those in the typical public school configuration would be subjected to this loss of funds but those in the charter area would continue as they always have this could be fairly catastrophic catastrophic i mean if you think about it and my concern is the impact on students and our employees we already have a teacher shortage in the state significant shortage we have to lay people off um we might not hang them back uh serious stuff it is very serious and and take a lot of people with their heads together to figure this out in this room i don't mean to start off the meeting like this is kind of a downer we'll pick it up
016bonnie will talk about current money here in a second okay just right but i do want to say legislators don't hear from their constituents if they hear from their constituents and their constituents let them know that education of their children is important you know they they realize that they're up for election every one of them in november so i think that there is power in communicating to your legislator so i'm hopeful thank you dr mccord i'm i'm glad we had a chance to at least just understand what this is since we've been hearing this kind of swirling around and hopeful that we will see some progress made in the legislature by the march 1st deadline so president wood is there any movement in terms of our publication on our website and letting our community know
017how dire this circumstance is for us i know that some districts around us have placed factual information about the impact on their website for their public to review is that in the offing so we have we have some fact sheets that um and some factual information that we'll have for our administrators that we can post on our website don's already cued it up i told her to hold off until actually have this presentation tonight so something will go live tomorrow clarification the my understanding is a decision has to be made by the legislature no later than the first march and the cuts will go into effect on the first of april is that correct i think they we have to have them done just within the fiscal year correct because we have to send in
018well by may 15th because that's what we sent in our revised budget all right thank you thank you for those comments with that we will move on to 2.02 fy 2022 revised budget number two dr mccord thank you madam president governing board members now we're going to talk about this year's budget and a revision for this year's budget which is also an action item so i'll turn it over to bonnie bits and her crew to present present tonight so good evening governing board president wood dr mccord so tonight jackie will be making most of the presentation i'm just here to provide the color comment commenting i wanted to point out as dr mccord just shared the information about the aggregate expenditure limit that this budget revision does not address that potential loss at all so
019this budget revision is in is going to be approved um maybe just for a month depending upon what the legislature does by march 1st so we will bring that final revised budget back to you as dr mccord shared by the 15th of march so um i'm sorry 15th of may sorry the 15th of may excuse me yeah that would be really really tough right really tough yeah so um i'm going to hand it over to ms batten thank you miss betts can you hear me okay madam president dr mccord members of the governing board as ms betts mentioned we are here tonight to present the fy 2022 budget revision number two tonight's report will include an mno and capital update on our budget changes state and federal funds update a few of our enterprise funds
020and some other cash funds also an update to our average teacher salary please note that the items that we'll talk about tonight in today's report have been highlighted in yellow on the budget document for easy reference those of you following along at home this slide shows overall the capital and mno budget detail changes this can be found on pages seven and eight of the budget document our average daily membership increased um 1468 students over adopted please keep in mind that we had a manual reduction um of 400 on when we adopted the budget assuming a 400 student loss we are currently above the the that number by 1 468. the weighted student count has also increased by 1 789. these figures are as of the most recent ade reports dated january 14th the revenue control
021limit has also increased by 8.63 million dollars that is due to our increase in student count also again these figures are from the most recent ade reports our transportation revenue control limit hasn't changed from the adopted figure of 9.289 our mno override again no change there although there was a slight slight adjustment for the first revision but we're back down to 31.003 million budget balance carry forward that has increased significantly by 18.22 million to the 42 million this is due in large part to the final expenditures from the fy 21 afr that was not reflected in the adopted or the revised figure the m o general budget limit has increased by 26.831 and the unrestricted capital budget has increased by 2.15 over adopted again due to the finalization of expenditures from last year this slide
022outlines what we talked about on the previous slide the increase in adm and weighted student count the increase to the revenue control limit the budget limit due to the rcl and budget balance carry forward the budget balance carry forward increase due to the final expenditures and then capital increase due to the final afr are there any questions on this before we move on i just wanted to add that remember that the unrestricted capital is based upon prior year student counts which accounts for the fact that it was only increased by the budget balance carry forward even though we had increases in average daily membership so i just wanted to make sure that that point was made thank you moving on then to state funds and federal grants the first line there is your cap is
023your classroom site fund this is an adjustment made to a correction to the allocation and the fund 020 instructional improvement this is a slight adjustment based on our actual fy 22 allocation the following lines are are grant funds title 1 title 2 idea and preschool these adjustments are based on our carry forward because of our final completion reports for fy21 these were all estimated at the time of adoption fund 228 is a new fund 227 and 228 the this is part of the american rescue plan idea in preschool a total of 1.3 million dollars it's about 94 000 of that in preschool in idea basic it will be used for contracted services for teachers ots pts speech language pathologists private day school tuition and the preschool grant will pay for some paraprofessionals salaries and benefits
024fund 346 s or 3 we've talked quite a bit about this this adjustment is just based upon the final allocation figure and then fund question mark we don't know the fund yet from ade this is the education plus up this is a fairly new grant again from the cares act this will be used for global academy teachers salaries and benefits we'll use about 2.5 million dollars this year and the remaining balance next year and again just a recap of what we talked about on the next on the previous slide any questions on those funds there's a few other funds that we wanted to talk about other budget changes we have nutrition services again we estimated our figures for the adopted budget keep in mind that we have universal free breakfast and lunch through september 30
025we have anticipated revenue including budget balance carry forward for this new figure of 18 million and we anticipate um that to be pretty steady through the through the year with a 4.3 million dollar difference over adopted 520 community school we have seen um an increase in revenue here as well so we're very excited about that we've anticipated revenue in that revised number two column so we've seen an increase there and this is new this year fun 960 we have self-insurance the employee benefit trust in our general ledger now of 32.7 million dollars do you want to speak to that at all okay any questions on that before we move on i guess my question is why is why are we now including the trust in our general ledger whereas in the past it wasn't so
026we had a third party provider that was doing our financial statements every month and because there was a disconnect between the communication about revenues so we would fund the trust based upon the premiums being charged to the school district or the employee and that would be accounted for during payroll runs so often the information didn't get properly disseminated to this third party provider for the financials and we were always a little bit off so we opted to move everything in in house we have a a new accounting analyst position she's responsible now for taking over those financial statements every month and now the information is very clear we can see it coming out of payroll and then it gets deposited into the same bank account actually it's just that we're accounting for it in our
027general ledger makes things way more clearer and understandable and allows us to monitor um much more closely what's happening with our employee benefit so it's our third party um still managing the trust for us and we're just doing the financial end or we've taken the management of that as well we still have a tpa a third party administrator that administers all the claims associated with our medical vision short-term disability insurance eap all of those components and the and of course we still have our siegel consultant who gives us input on what the rates would be etc so the only component that we brought in-house is actually the creation of the monthly financial statements and they notified us last may that they were actually closing shop and no longer going to be providing services to anyone
028so um it was a good time for us to take over those responsibilities okay i appreciate that information thank you also if i could add um it's been my experience as well as miss betts that the employee benefit trust is in the general ledger this isn't new to either of us that's been our experience in previous districts this slide shows some cash accounts we were excited to share this as we kind of hopefully are post-covered soon these funds are primarily school-based so the first one is our civic rental there has been an increase in revenue and then we also account for anticipated revenue there same with auxiliary operations tax credit and donations and we've seen an increase of course based upon the increase in activities and participation this year and fund 575 is our unemployment
029fund when we came on board it was quite a healthy balance and the currently for the last few years there has not been an employer contribution to this fund we will monitor that of course closely as we had about four hundred thousand dollars in claims last year so that was that's important that we last year we had a budget of one just under 1.1 million dollars and we had spend this is from the afr of about 400 000 last year has been our practice when you adopt a budget we just roll over budget to budget until we have the annual financial report results so i wanted to make sure that it was clear that that four hundred thousand dollars in claims was from last year not in the current year so we're seeing minimal claims
030in the current year and finally we have the fy 2022 average teacher salary update this grid is from the cover of the budget you have seen this before you can see we have a 5.4 percent increase over last year and a 22.4 percent increase since 2018. i just want to bounce really quick to the next slide so we can see the breakdown here the average teacher salary including the two percent that you approve to the base um brought the salary up to 54 105. that to same two percent plus the three percent one-time payment brings it to 55 728 that same two percent to the base plus the three percent one time plus the 1500 one-time payment brings the average teacher salary to 57.228. do we have an average length of service for our teachers
031i mean i know that these are probably not one isn't tied to the other but do we have an idea of how many years would be an average for our teachers that they've taught um i don't have that data right now with me but i can definitely make sure that i get that for you that would be awesome because i think it's important to note that this is you know a more experienced teacher and been in the profession for several years that is all we have this evening do you have any questions i had one question i'll just start back on as we went past it sorry slide four at the bottom bullet it says unrestricted capital increase due to updated student counts and final afr but then miss betsy said that we didn't it
032doesn't reflect it's based on last year's the previous year students counts anyways do you want me to answer that go ahead okay so um the uh the student counts for last year uh were updated at the end of july for the final recalculation so this budget did include a slight increase in the average daily membership from last year yes thank you for asking that question though it does clarify it thank you thank you is there any other questions board members okay well thank you thank you miss betts and we will we will act on this we'll have an action item on this later tonight that's correct so thank you all right that takes us to 2.03 ela and mandarin adoption dr mccord thank you madam president governing board members tonight we bring up is it
033dr cox come on up jenna coral pop how are you guys ready to have some fun liven this thing up guys here we go that's exactly what we need to do here we go all right thank you guys all right good evening dr mccord president wood and members of the board we're excited to present to you tonight on um an update with the curriculum adoption and um so i'm going to go ahead and just jump right in so we've been busy this last semester and we're wanting to start with uh just kind of providing a brief update which will lead us into where we're at but before i do get started so that i don't forget i did want to just take a moment to thank all of the committee members that have been a
034part of this process up until this point because it has been hours and hours of work jenna has led our ela miss fry has led our mandarin and there have been plenty of parents um teachers from all of our secondary schools there's a lot of people that have been involved in giving feedback reviewing work um when i say hours it really has been a lot of time so i just wanted to personally thank everyone that's been a part of that process can you introduce the i'm sorry i don't know i need a name i'm jenna corelli buck i am the secondary ela coordinator all right thank you thank you jenna all right so we the last few years our english language arts standards have been updated through the state and there has been a shift
035in instructional strategies and so therefore we wanted to make sure that we're staying abreast of current topics and making sure that our curriculum aligns with what those instructional shifts are and so it led us to the point of wanting to pursue a curriculum adoption for our english language arts 7th through 12th grade and those instructional shifts include regular practice with complex texts the reading writing speaking grounded in evidence from text both with literacy and informational text and building knowledge through content rich non-fiction so you'll notice throughout the presentation with ela that these instructional shifts really are at the core of what we were trying to focus on throughout the entire committee work and there with it being english there were many times that we had to we get excited and there's a lot of material
036that gets teachers excited but we kept that at the center point so you'll see that throughout so with the timeline this process really originally had started briefly last year and then kind of got put on a halt just with everything going on and we realized that we wanted to tackle it with a fresh start and lens when we had everybody back in schools and whatnot so in august jenna was able to send out a call for resources so that process i had previously given you guys an update on that a call for resources goes out to as many vendors as we possibly can get out to and then a notification for committee participation so in that august september two month window we are getting as many responses from vendors and we are trying to get
037as many people together to make the strongest committee possible and then into the month of october we were receiving quotes and samples of the curriculum and the committee meetings began in november the work groups started and in the work groups i'm going to dive into that a little bit in a moment um but they there's a repeated review and extensive rubrics that are used and so um it's a little bit of a lengthy process in november the the end of uh november that ended with vendor presentations so i will go into that briefly as well um once we have our finalists we bring the vendors of the curriculum in and they do an actual presentation on all their materials and dive in so that we can make sure that we have the full picture and
038then once we had all of that completed into december the evaluation by the whole committee all of the data that we've collected all of the resources we had looked at all of that was compiled and brought to the entire committee for a final review which leads us here today which is the recommendation for pilot and public review by the end of this presentation based on what the committee would like to move forward with so when i talk about the curriculum work groups the full committee involves all the stakeholders that i mentioned prior and with the curriculum work groups really it ends up being a group of experts so you want people that are representing different groups so with those for this committee we had representation from our junior highs our high schools and then we
039really with ela being content that all students are required to take we wanted to make sure that we were representing all of our students so we brought in our ell curriculum coordinator our gifted and special programs coordinator and an instructional coach from our special education department as well so we really thought of all the different students that go through our ela classrooms and brought in somebody that has a content or knowledge expertise in those areas what those work groups do is they have the expertise of the curriculum the standards the details the specifics and so they were able to based on the full committee's review of the curriculum they then dive into to a secondary uh rubric which is really more of an in-depth process that takes having some expertise and knowing what you're looking
040for so with that uh we also wanted to make sure that we had a set criteria so from the very beginning i mentioned the instructional shifts which are the arizona academic standards so you see those listed there within the presentation in addition to that criteria we also included that we wanted assessments that measure mastery of standard to include formative and summative so we were looking for a curriculum that had both of those and then we wanted to make sure that there was a focus on differentiation for all learners which goes back to your enrichment intervention ell sped all different types of learners if they're advanced ap ib all the different types of learners from the top and then our students that maybe struggle with the language or have a learning disability and then the final
041criteria is digital resources that support the teachers planning and student learning and i will say going into this year in this committee work this was a a big one for our teachers and so we wanted to make sure that that was included in the criteria we have now been through the world of knowing that we have to be prepared to teach in all different modalities and where we want to make sure that we have a solid curriculum that supports our teachers with the work that they have to do and the different forms of activities that need to need to be created on the daily for all different levels of learners so after we received back from the call for resources we received back curriculum from many different vendors out of those these four were the
042four submissions that met the base criteria to even be considered for gilbert public schools curriculum so that was the first process and then we dove in deeper to reviewing the four submissions so over the next few slides what i've prepared for you is just some data from the work that jenna led with the committee and it's really going to just paint the picture and i'm just going to say it from this very first slide you're going to see a trend with those four submissions it was very clear to us that there were two finalists from the beginning when we started to collect every piece of data and so what we saw i mean the visual representation in itself was that mcgraw-hill and saves continued to be on the higher end and it wasn't even close
043to the other two that had met the original criteria in addition to that um we i pulled out a few data points so the first one is the text complexity and quality these are the ones that i wanted to highlight in tonight's presentation for you are the ones that were the priority and main focus but you see this trend in the data points on all of the rubric criteria but i just wanted to put some together for you so the range in quality you can see again mcgraw-hill and saabas at the top of the data there and then moving on to questions and tasks to support learning same trend and then writing to sources and research which was a a big one as well in making sure that we're meeting those literacy and informational texts
044the informational text that our students see in all content areas is about 70 75 of what is on standardized testing it's what colleges are putting in front of them that informational text piece is a huge component and so to see the focus there yes our ela teachers are teaching english language arts but when you think of the informational text that they can use to support cross-curricular as well that was um something that really surfaced as a positive with the two finalists that were chosen and then moving into the language and vocabulary uh we saw again just uh it really it clearly was the two all the way down but these were some indicators that led us to um easily choosing who our two finalists were going to be so at that point sabes and mcgraw-hill
045were our two finalists and that then we came back together as a committee and we had a work group that then we wanted to dive into the act the in-depth pieces so up into that point you have um it's kind of at face value because we're looking at the curriculum and we're kind of looking at it like from an outline perspective and so the next phase is diving into actually looking at the activities looking at the online resources diving into the supports that they say are there for teachers and actually letting the teachers get their hands on it and practicing and we gave as much time we set it up we went through meetings with them and then we also set it up at location so they could go and we had we had coordinators
046and teachers that they went and spent hours diving through this stuff and um at the end of that they put there was another rubric that they completed and submitted and then we collected all of that the next step is we brought in the two vendors from these two curriculum uh vendors and they presented to the entire committee that presentation allowed for our committee to ask questions and to just really watch them go through it because even though the the prior step you're getting to go hands-on but until you have training and you're there there are those questions and and to have a vendor go through that is telling in itself as well so the vendor presentations for this committee were they were huge and they really that's where you really saw the excitement start to
047kick in um for the potential of where where we're going to be able to go so at the end of the vendor presentation there's another rubric that we have everybody go through and at the end of that the saves vendor came at a average criteria score 53 and mcgraw-hill was at a 50. we combined the vendor presentation um with the rubric scores and i want to go through some of the rubric scores uh just like i did with the initial cut to kind of just show now that we're focusing on the two so for the text and complexity text complexity and quality you'll see that saves was several points ahead of mcgraw hill and again there's some places where they were and neck but savas was still leading in the different data points and then
048there's others that here's another one evidence-based task in question where you'll see there's a 15-point difference and then moving on to speaking and listening the gaps on some of these indicators start to really lengthen and you start to see a bigger gap and then one that i really wanted to just point out is going back to the resources and helping teachers to design their instruction their lesson planning the resources that they have to meet the needs of all different learners you'll see this was actually the data point that stood out as being the largest gap and this is when i think teachers they didn't say it at this point but you just kind of saw their eyes lighting up and where they they started to sway one way because up until this final review i
049i think everybody really saw i mean they were two very competitive vendors um from the very beginning and then that led us to the average score this is the full committee now and savas was at 60.08 where mcgraw-hill was at the 57.62 and then out of total points just to show you another visual representation of that rather than percentage points which leads us to the next step where we brought all of the data that we just shared with you in addition to all of the other indicators and we presented everything from the beginning through to our entire full committee this now has our parents in the room everyone and we just shared the process what had happened because we break up into the work groups we brought all that work back together and presented that
050and at the end of that final meeting we landed with 95 percent of the entire committee would like to move forward and are recommending that sabas be the curriculum that we pilot and open up for public review and i know that this is a percentage pie chart but i just want to put emphasis at this point because we did lose some committee members along the way just because of uh different reasons but which tends to happen but at this point the sabes that's 20 individual committee members voting all the stakeholder groups are represented in there and the blue that four percent is only representing one person and that one person actually missed the final meeting and so when we had the rich conversation of the excitement and the data and dove into it um i
051really do believe if that one person was sitting in the room they probably i mean it was a collective decision so i don't know that i've been through committee work where we've ever gotten this close to kind of a 100 agreement so we went from it was very competitive the whole way but this last meeting was neat to see everybody on the same page so then that leads us to our next steps so we would like and tonight we're hoping to get the board approval to move forward on a pilot in a 60-day public review so what that would mean is following this meeting we would begin our 60-day public review we have different locations which i'll touch on in just a moment where the curriculum will be set up parents community members any stakeholder
052can show up they can pick it up they can look through it they can fill out a survey giving their feedback and comments all of that will be collected and brought back to the board at a later point and we will begin training our teachers that are going to pilot at this point we are excited to have representation from almost all of our secondary schools we were originally going to just try to pilot with a couple teachers to not disrupt and everyone has gotten excited so pretty much everyone wants to pilot it but we don't have the resources to allow everybody to pilot and so we are trying to share the wealth to get it piloted in as many of our secondary schools as possible and part of that would be getting the materials delivered
053as soon as possible as well and then moving into march we would throughout this entire next window of time we'll be collecting qualitative and quantitative data and feedback if that's through surveys checking in with our pilots jenna is going to personally be checking in as the english coordinator and then we're going to be sending out surveys and collecting data from the parents of the students that are being piloted to the students specifically and also to the teachers that are doing the pilot so we will get feedback from each of those stakeholder groups that are piloting and learning with this curriculum firsthand to bring back to the board at our next meeting and then that will continue through um april as well and then in april um we will conclude the public review compile all of
054the data and bring that all back to you guy to the governing board in may and at that point hope to make a recommendation to the board for an official final approval of the curriculum to move forward and i've said that we would like to start training immediately the day after we get board approval hoping that things go that way um so that we can take advantage of may to get as much teacher training done as possible and then into june we will continue with professional development training deliver all district-wide materials and then we also jenna is working on a plan for our study conference to present there as well so we're trying to think through different training modalities because we know we're in a position where we've got to be creative and have different
055options that way as well and then that training will continue into the next school year as well there will be a professional development plan for our new teacher induction for teachers that for whatever reason need additional training it's going to be a little bit of a journey and we're going to set goals around that as well so this timeline takes you through june but a lot of the things that i'm mentioning really will be a continuous effort on our our curriculum team's behalf and then with the public review i just wanted to share that currently for ela these are the four locations that we will be setting up for the public review pending the board's approval tonight we will have communication ready to go out tomorrow to our community to let them know that these
056locations are where they're set up our schools are going to help support this communication through their site councils their newsletters because we want to really receive feedback from our whole community and not just where we're piloting it and so there's going to be a lot of communication that supports getting our community members to these locations to provide some public comment so i have a couple questions um so next year we would pilot and then we would if we um decide that this is a worthy endeavor we would roll it out the year after in 2022 so going back to the timeline really quickly um and i know it's kind of hard to see um i hope that it's better on the paper or would we be sending this out to everyone in the 20 in
057the next school year this is a very weird yeah we are going to begin the pilot um this next quarter so the pilot would happen this school year the training would begin in may and then we would be rolling out this curriculum next school year i think this is a bit faster than um prior adoptions because i feel like timeline has changed completely yeah because usually it would start in the spring and go through the pilot in the fall and then you do that and that was our initial plan and then we have covet but we also heard from our community that we really need to move forward with an ela curriculum adoption well a fourth quarter pilot isn't unheard of but it is unusual okay so my next question is i would like you
058to review the history because my understanding is the last time we had a curriculum adoption for ela for seventh and eighth grade in ninth grade and ninth grade was let's see 11 years ago i believe because my daughter was involved in that pilot um and for high school 10 11 12 it's probably been 20 or 30 years and we have taken the time to look at that in review um and our truly at this point um we understand that the semester that we're starting in was based on feedback from our community and wanting to get that that ball rolling um sooner than later so i i do believe that at this point um even though it is taking place since we started in the fall and we're piloting in the spring which is different than
059the the last year or the last adoption however we really do have a very solid outlined plan to support our teachers in getting this going and if i can go back to even in the committee we had many english teachers and just even if i can point out the evidence of we were at first being more cautious with where we were going to pilot um and our teachers are reaching out like they are ready for this and they are wanting this and so um i i had to put a cap yeah we did we did so i'm sorry i just don't remember having a new ela curriculum in high school in the entire time that i've been in gilbert so that's been 20 years so i mean no wonder teachers are like please give us
060these materials help us to i mean because our whole process of the way we teach has changed dramatically in that time the standards have taught the fact that we're going to do presentations and speaking and writing and reading that's all very different than it was 20 or 25 years correct very true so and that actually led me um that was the perfect time for questions because that concludes what we have prepared for the ela portion are there any questions that we can address for the board tonight miss you jenny yeah um i have to actually so based on what mrs humphrey said tonight what we're voting on excuse me is allowing you to pilot it until the end of the year and then in may it'll come back to us correct my second question is
061having been in education as many years as i have mcgraw-hill's been around a whole long time i've never heard of is the same publisher as ready jen okay okay and one of the conversations that we had is for the first time ever we're going to have curriculum alignment from k-12 k-12 they're gonna have ready-gen and then you move into my perspectives which is their secondary program and so there's a clear especially in those middle grades four five six going into seven eight that is going to be a crucial bridge that we're going to finally be able to bring together so just off the did they change their name k-12 savis bought out pearson so they're just now saw this okay pearson i think now deals in some other education but not in uh k-12 curriculum
062anymore that's correct dr santa cruz thank you you answered my question before i asked it i was a magic guy i've been told that so the alignment is there materials are actually coming from the same vendor aligned with to be able to have consistent teacher support and training especially the k3 arena is really its own beast as you know learning learning to read is very different than reading to learn but those upper elementary grades leading into the success that's needed once they get to junior high is crucial and and christine who is our elementary english coordinator we talk about that all the time being able to bridge that gap because for a lot of districts draw sort of line in the sand and it's like kids move to seventh grade it's like oh you're on
063your own but now we can make it a smooth transition and the expectations are going to be there and so maybe our kids won't struggle as much when they jump into those secondary environments so that is a really exciting prospect for sure my compliments to you because in all the years that mr eugetti and i have been in the district i'm not sure we've ever really approximated that kind of alignment so kudos to you mr parker thank you for all your work my understanding is this is an existing curriculum that other school districts are currently using yes and as we all know it seems like everyone has a controversy over curriculum so had have we had any complaints or anything from other districts or parent groups or anything no no our our parents that were
064on the committee were great and um when i discussed that from the beginning until now uh these mcgraw-hill has and um sabes are two that are probably the longest standing so in the beginning there was um opinions about the two and as you see the progression of the data um all of our parents that were on the committee were very excited for this to be the recommendation that we bring forth you're welcome all right i just had one yes i i just have to add um the ready-gen i i went i was reading in the second grade classroom last year for the um read aloud weekend so i asked a question of the kids and you know when one little second grader popped up well in the text i saw this evidence in another list
065i was like oh my gosh these kids are really really learning in a a depth in a way that just wasn't available to us adults and it was just incredible so i'm excited to hear that this is a continuation of that and and i'm looking forward to reviewing the materials and i would encourage our community i mean there's been a lot of talk about what is the process for how we decide what's taught in the classroom and this is the process we have a committee with teachers and parents and administrators who go through and look at everything and make recommendations to the board we adopt it there's an opportunity to review the materials and look at them and give your feedback and then we will go through it again and pilot and and work to
066adopt and make sure that this works for every kid and i i really appreciate the way that you looked at um supporting all learners uh that was this i think there was a let's just say the pilot that my daughter went through was not fun she was not supported in her learning it was very very difficult we do have uh a variety of um special educators who are going to be part of this process whether they're in a co-teaching environment or whether they're in a resource classroom or you know for there's about four or five different special ed levels that are going to have access and be trained and use this as well so we can talk about the difference between modifying and adapting so our special ed teachers are also supported in this process
067um the extensions for those who absolutely did it so i i really appreciate that because it you know a pilot can be a little rocky and but i look forward to you know some really great materials because again things have really changed in the way that we teach and what we teach to our kids and you know they just um it's just amazing to watch them they are gaining skills and and gaining research skills and things at such a young age that i'm i'm just truly impressed so thank you thank you and are there any other questions anybody i guess i just wanted to ask and make sure you mentioned that we will do all we can to support the teachers as they transition into this and probably gain some ideas as we watch the
068pilot of how we can help the training and different things i just know again it's always it feels like yeah a big change and a lot of work and requirement but hopefully this will make it right better the the response that i got was i i because of everything that everybody's been through this year i really didn't expect this big of a response i knew just because of the quality of teachers that we have here at gilbert that there was going to be a lot of people who wanted to do it yes but i was sort of surprised considering how hard everybody's been working that oh yeah bring it on and to the point where like i was talking to dr cox about this is you know depending on this meeting like tomorrow like they're
069pounding on my door can we look can we can i'm like can you wait until i please we have this important meeting but tomorrow i'm going to be sending out the first asynchronous information so they could start doing it i already have 16 dates set up for virtual training that's staggered so they can do it within their own time frames so we already have a plan that plan will exist ongoing to meet the needs of all of our teachers and recognizing that it has to be phased in and that we'll have to um i mean some of us get ahead of ourselves and would love to have it perfected and ready to go tomorrow but we recognize that like with anything there has to be a plan implemented there so i appreciate that we're building
070a plan great and i look forward to seeing how this will affect our learning and growing through junior high and high school and the opportunities you know and the things that come back from our students so that's if that's it wonderful just thank you again we sure appreciate all that you've done and we're really excited and excited to hear the excitement that you have and the committee had for it it's great so thank you very much thank you thank you thanks jenna and then i will um i'm just going to jump right in and transition and bring up miss souffrey our world language coordinator hi sue and sue led the mandarin adoption and this part of the presentation i'm going to go through a little bit more quickly just because a lot of the timelines
071and pieces that i explained of the processes that we went through were very much the same the nice part being new in my role is that i was able to have them kind of go side by side so feel free to ask any questions along the way but the procedure the process and the timeline has been consistent with what we just discussed in ela and um with the work group for mandarin just one of the biggest differences that i would like to point out is for the 712 ela that's every campus all of our students take those classes whereas with mandarin we're just very excited um this year that we were able to add and offer this opportunity to our students and so at this point now that we are providing this opportunity to our
072students we feel that it is important to formally adopt a curriculum which is what has led us to this point in moving forward and it is not it's since it is an elective language course um the committee did have less people um but we did have representation from the different levels and we did have a different stakeholder like there were parents there were junior high and high school so very similar to what we went through the size was just a little bit on a smaller scale and so um with that uh and we had administrate administrator representation as well the criteria for the mandarin does differ so i just want to take a moment to go through that we kept with the same outline the alignment to the arizona world language academic standards and just
073to share those with this group those include three modes of communication interpersonal interpretive and presentational we included the arizona college and career readiness literacy standards and the cultural competence components in addition to those standards we wanted to look at proficiency based assessments because moder or world languages have gone from more reading and writing to more of that presentational standards and so we felt that that was really important to include the differentiation of instruction for all students the scaffolding of learning between different levels and level one and two and moving on to our higher levels and then making sure equally that the instructor supports were there for digital resources uh appropriate practice and opportunities for our students and the different supports that all of our students could benefit from so the the bottom half of that
074criteria very similar to the the last committee so uh where mandarin i'm there's a little bit of a difference in the process because when sue when miss fry sent out for the call for resources and we received several and when we first at our first committee and we were doing a review of all of them um out of all of the ones that we reviewed i believe there were seven there were only two that actually met the criteria that gilbert public schools believed was an adequate criteria so that saved us having to get it down to the finalists these just became the two finalists because they were the two that had the highest rating so the two that we are looking at are and the um easy steps to chinese the second edition so our
075committee the work group went through the exact same process that i just discussed and they also went through the vendor presentations as well with these two vendors and i pulled some data just on some of the uh points to show the difference between the two curriculums similar to what i just went through but these hit on the different criteria so this one is looking at the alignment to the arizona college and career readiness standards and you can see that there is a 10 point difference that separated the two and then moving on to the proficiency based assessments there is a three-point difference moving on to differentiation of instruction you'll see a three-point difference as well and then again similar to ela but i just think it's really important to put emphasis on when it came
076to the digital resources which support the teachers and allow them to differentiate their instruction provide enrichment for the high-end students provide intervention and supports for our students that are maybe struggling that's all packaged within these digital resources and we were thrilled to see that the one vendor zhang mong was at 56 whereas the easy steps to chinese was at 35 so there's a pretty significant difference between those two data points and then when we looked at all of our data and again these were just some that we wanted to highlight to show where the committee was at we brought our full committee back together we looked at the vendor presentations and the all of the data points and it led down to a 30-point difference between the two vendors so with the two vendors that
077we looked at here the one that we would like to make a recommendation to move forward with a pilot and public review would be the zheng bang zhang bong um for the committee now the timeline for next steps is equally the same we obviously the piloting would be at less locations we do have a teacher that is currently teaching mandarin so there is the opportunity to add that in there and we've already started the conversations and letting her know that what the process is and similar we are ready to move forward tomorrow with delivering what is needed having conversations and moving forth with the public review and the pilot and for the public review for the modern language because we have less schools that will be utilizing this curriculum we have it set up at
078three locations um and also with having two at the same time we wanted to make sure that we had decent representation at the different locations both ela and mandarin will have a spot at the district office as the central location and we'll have it separated out so that there's not confusion between the two so that they um if somebody is wanting to review both that would be the location that they would be able to come and have the opportunity to look at both so i know i went through again i that one was a little bit quicker just because a lot of the procedures and processes are exactly the same but i want to turn it over to see if you guys if the board has any questions for me in regard to the mandarin
079recommendation dr santa cruz just a mundane question i apologize for my ignorance here but do we have representation from among all of our student body individuals who might be interested in mandarin because we are only at one physical location is that right or two okay but we're using the distance learning classrooms for two more high schools four campuses have the opportunity to participate in the community and do you have any uh idea of how many students are involved at this point are currently enrolled in union she has four full classes so i'm going to guess around 120 100 probably but more like 115. okay very good i know exactly but i could check oh i'm sorry first time up here at the table i'm sorry i was using my teacher voice it's all good i
080believe there's about 115 but i could certainly check on that no that's not necessary i'm just curious this is the first year yes and we really do believe that um adopting a curriculum and being able to promote that more and getting that out will i mean we really are going to expect to see exponential growth with this program um and it allows us to just be that much more competitive within gilbert public schools and i think for it to be the first year to have that many students shows the interest that our students are wanting to take advantage of this opportunity so so are we going to start thinking about a dual language mandarin program for elementary kids there are conversations and we are currently researching is that a question or a statement both right
081i would like to add that it is tied very strongly to the ib program at gilbert high school as well so they're they're promoting it they're integrating it into their ib standards and requirements just a follow-up to that so there is junior high opportunities at this point is it the same class at junior high that it is at the high school or is it a different like is it a is it mandarin one at the junior high or you could take mandarin one at the high school later right we are going to take a currently yes okay i like that i like the opportunities so i i think opportunities are good and i think to have them again in the high school is good and again with the distance learning at this point to offer
082to our other campuses when we can't when we don't have that many mandarin teachers i know that's a challenge as a matter correct yeah did you all right now i got to ask did you pick up any of the language through this process only the bad words although dr cox has done a great job pronouncing the title of the book which i struggled with for the whole first month i was impressed nice job i was mortified to say it wrong so i practiced all right any other follow-up questions anything else board members did we have input from i mean since we only have one teacher at this point did we give her input an opportunity to she was a member of the community okay she was the member of the committee she was the first
083member of the game did we have any native speakers that looked at it as well and um we did have parent representation um and what the parent actually is also an educator in um another setting and so and also a native speaker and a native speaker okay so we felt very confident um which was when we very first were getting going that was we wanted to make sure that somebody that was looking and um reviewing the materials did have that so we we feel like we had that representation amongst the committee well i really appreciate all the hard work on both the ela and the mandarin i mean these are really important curriculum adoptions and and putting us you know definitely in to the 21st century and i really appreciate that so thank you so
084much thank you all right thank you appreciate it good job thank you have a great night thank you all right board members this brings us to an adjournment of the work study 3.01 and we will now move to 4.01 to begin our brief board business meeting and i will ask miss wilson for uh oops that was called to order and then 4.02 i'll ask miss wilson for a roll call dr charles santa cruz here mr bill parker here miss laurie wood here michele eugetti here miss jill humphreys here madam president all board members are present you have a quorum thank you miss wilson we'll now move to 4.03 dr mccord proclamation for school counselors week yes thank you madam president governing board members uh i want to read a proclamation for you for national school
085counseling week that is february 7th through the 11th for 2022. whereas school counselors are employed in public and private schools to help students reach their full potential and whereas school counselors are actively committed to helping students explore their ability strengths interests and talents as these traits relate to career awareness and development whereas school counselors help parents focus on ways to further the educational personal and social growth of their children and whereas school counselors work with teachers and other educators to help students explore the potential and set realistic goals for themselves and whereas school counselors seek to identify and utilize community resources that can enhance and complement comprehensive school counseling programs and help students become productive members of society and whereas comprehensive developmental school counseling programs are considered an integral part of the educational process that
086enables all students to achieve success in school therefore we myself superintendent shane mccord and gps governing board do hereby proclaim february 7th through 11th 2022 as national school counseling week thank you to all of our school counselors yes and on behalf of the board i would thank all of our school counselors as well and that take this opportunity to thank them for all that they do thank you dr mccord we will now move to 5.01 with the consent agenda items i'd like an approval of the consent agenda item board members is there a motion i move that we approve the consent agenda items as presented thank you miss eugetti is there a second second thank you mr parker it's been moved and seconded that we approve the consent agenda items i would like to call
087for a vote all those in favor that we approve the consent agenda items please vote aye aye if there's any opposed please say nay okay that has passed five zero thank you and now we'll move to six the action items and begin with 6.01 fy 2022 revised budget number two dr mccord thinking about the president governing board members all three items under the action items tonight have been presented to you and we are requesting your approval thank you board members may i have a motion on 6.01 fy 2022 revised budget number two so moved thank you dr santa cruz is there second second thank you mrs humphries we have it's been moved and seconded that we approve fy 2022 revised budget number two is there any discussion as we already discussed it in the work
088study just previous to this and seeing there's no further discussion i will ask for a vote all those in favor of approving fy 2022 revised budget number two please vote by saying aye aye any opposed please say nay that has passed five zero thank you and now six point two english language arts the ela textbook pilot adoption for grades 7 through 12 which they've indicated that we will um the soviets curriculum correct okay um board members is there a motion i moved thank you dr santa cruz and thank you miss humphries it's been moved and seconded that we approve savis as the english english language arts textbook pilot adoption for grades 7 through 12. is there any discussion right similarly there's no further discussion as we've had an opportunity already tonight in our work study
089so i will ask for the vote all those in favor of approving as as indicated please vote by saying aye aye turned it off thank you any opposed please say nay excellent that will pass 5-0 thank you and then we'll move on to 6.03 the mandarin textbook pilot adoption for grades 7 through 12. i'm not going to be able to say that is it zen bong bong okay thank you that's what has been put forward is there a motion i move that we approve zen bong uh vice what was the company i don't remember anyways the mandarin textbook highlighted option for grades 7 through 12. thank you miss humphries is there a second thank you mr parker it's been moved and seconded that we approve the zenbong as the mandarin textbook pilot adoption for grades
090seven through twelve is there any discussion okay no further discussion i will call for the vote all those in favor of this textbook adoption please signify by saying aye aye any opposed please say nay okay that has also passed five zero thank you we are now at 7 the adjournment of our brief board business meeting and i would ask for 7.01 an adjournment is there a motion so moved thank you miss humphries is there a second second thank you mr eugetti it's been moved and seconded that we adjourn is there i'll ask for a vote all those in favor please vote by saying aye aye any opposed by nay okay we are adjourned thank you very much for the presentations tonight and board members for for your votes tonight as well i believe do we
091need to get signatures okay so we'll get our signatures thank you