001board members uh and hello to those of you who are watching on live stream uh right now we are minus folks here in the boardroom today is tuesday november 9th 2021 it is a works day session and a brief board meeting agenda we do have a need for executive sessions there are two back-to-back item 1.01 is a call for executive session pursuant to ars 38431.03 a and 1 for discussion consideration of superintendent's performance standards and item 1.02 is the governing board may vote to discuss this matter in executive session pursuant to ars 38 431.03 a and 3 and 7 to receive legal advice from its attorney to discuss and consult with representatives in order to consider its position and instruct the attorney and representatives regarding negotiations for the sale or lease of real property those
002are the two executive sessions that are in order we can take each and have two motions or we can take them both in one motion what's your pleasure we are open for emotion i'm i move that we move to executive session for 1.01 and 1.02 thank you mr jetty is there a second i second thank you mr parker it's been moved and seconded that we move to executive de session to discuss item 1.01 1.02 on the agenda any discussion seeing none then we will vote all those in favor of moving to executive session please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries five zero we will recess to executive session [Music] so throughout like all of my schooling junior high and my first two years of high school i haven't really had
003like i was always kind of in the back of the class and i was able to do that because there were so many so i didn't necessarily form relationships or sturdy ones colleges they know that we are in the ib program and that's very unique so that helps us i'm really drawn to helping people i'm focusing more on psychology right now like a psychiatrist and that's going to be a lot of work i'm kind of just beginning to learn how to study and everything like so throughout like all of my schooling junior high and my first two years of high school i haven't really had to study i kind of just improvised like i was always kind of in the back of the class and i was able to do that because there were so
004many [Music] so throughout like all of my schooling junior high and my first two years of high school i haven't really had to study i kind of just improvised [Music] i'm an ib student i'm an ib student i'm an ib student i am an ib student i am good evening and welcome to our work study session this is november 9th 2021 we will convene a work study and then move into a brief board business meeting so we are at item 2 calling this session segment to order and we will move to item 3.01 update on communications and marketing and dr mccord i defer to you thank you dr santa cruz um governing board members tonight we want to just give you an update on what our communications and marketing department have been up to and
005will continue to move forward with i have their director of the department don antestenis and terry bradford bradford from our department as well and so i put together a presentation for you and before they start i just want to compliment them on the job that they have been doing for a long time and continue to do it they keep reinventing themselves and i think they'll highlight some of those things tonight so there you go thank you superintendent mccord president santa cruz governing board members thank you for inviting us here today to give you an update on marketing and communications for the district um as dr mccord mentioned terry bradford our digital media strategy and brand manager is here with me today to help present to you and we also have two other incredible team members
006who aren't here tonight but it's very important to mention them and give them a shout out both of them are new to our team and are already making a tremendous impact kaylee latham is our communications specialist and jonathan paulie who is actually a graduate of highland high is our videographer photographer so the four of us together are working together as a really great team we put up there a couple of logos which represent the fact that we have won quite a few awards locally with our arizona public school public relations association over the last three years and for the last two years we've won a number of national awards from the national school pr association um which we're really proud of so um this presentation today just a really kind of quick overview just to
007give you i know we've presented before but so some of it might be repeated and but the second part of the presentation we're going to show you some examples of work that we're doing this year and for enrollment for the 2022-23 year our stakeholders we work in everything that is communications and marketing considering who our stakeholders are is such a key part of the process through on considering what messages we're communicating with them to how we're communicating that when we're talking about both communications and marketing we always like to consider where the people are and take the information to them so they have as much accessibility to it as possible so we have our students we also have our employees our parents potential gps students and families in increasing enrollment is a big part of
008what we do the community at large and also partners and i think it's important to include in the stakeholders the 39 schools that we work with every day and also our 10 departments building relationships with all of these stakeholders is really important not only so we can understand what their communication needs are but also so that we can work collaboratively particularly with our schools and district departments to make a real impact obviously with four people it's limited so we're always thinking about how do we amplify what we're doing and work with all of the stakeholders um data is really important to us we're always measuring what we're doing to ensure that we're using resources effectively and efficiently and that what we're doing is actually making a positive impact um when we're thinking about what success
009looks like this is kind of the broad overview so increasing enrollment is a huge part of that and that's obviously something that we can measure and prior to the pandemic we were really excited to actively have supported various initiatives and the district as a whole to increase enrollment and that's something that we're actively working towards again now student retention of course is really important and both communications and marketing really feed into that because we're trying to work on things like building trust and making sure there's transparency and connecting with people our students and our parents to remind them what's so special about gps and being a part of this family similarly staff retention is really important and communication can really support that and last but not least trusted brand branding is something we're going to
010reference a few times during this presentation and terry is going to give you some examples of how we really leverage the branding that's been established for the district as a whole and how we're continuing to build upon that and maximize its impact so that whenever anyone sees the gilbert public schools logo they're connecting with it and it represents trust and it represents a gps family academic excellence and everything that's delivered by the district um so as a kind of overview with everything every single piece of work that we do whether it be a full-blown marketing campaign a communication a letter a email a newsletter or a piece of content that we post on facebook we're always very very intentional so we're considering okay does this build trust does it support the gps brand that we're
011building does it represent gps values is it going to actively connect with stakeholders in a meaningful way and last but absolutely not least does it support the strategic operating plan any decent piece of communication or marketing should always constantly and always and everything that's coming across be linked to the business plan or in this case the strategic operating plan for the district so as a team we're really familiar um with that plan what the goals are and we're always questioning in our team meetings okay we're going to write a story about this how does that link into the strategic operating plan what goal of the district are we serving with that piece of content so again being really intentional and really strategic and that really filters into our process i've got strategic at the top
012there and again it's it makes it worthwhile um and it makes it impactful consistency is really key and is probably one of our biggest challenges within a district where we have 39 schools with very individual personalities we don't want to change that and at the same time there's certain elements that we especially those that represent the district as a whole we want to really get this consistency of content and there's various initiatives that we've done i think one is a good example where we have a shared drive on google where we provide all of the schools with graphics related to key things like veterans day for example or the covet testing site so that they can use the same images and the same content in their school newsletters so then parents are seeing the information
013coming from district they're seeing the information coming from their school it all looks consistent and it's reassuring it's trusted that's something that's really important and that we've worked on um accuracy of course is important and sustainability um i'll talk about the tools that we use in a minute and anything that we're introducing as a district and to the schools we want to make sure these are long term solutions so that when we're training people on how to use them this is going to serve the purpose for a length of time we're not going to keep switching things out on them impactful i've mentioned that previously and i think because we have a small team it makes it more important to us like we don't want to waste our time we want to make sure that
014what we're doing actually makes a difference for the district branded student-centred and collaborative we've seen our greatest success with the campaigns that we've done when we work directly with departments when we work directly with um the schools and we work together that's a key piece of our process so the fifth member of our team would be the technology and the platforms that we use to achieve what we do and we really couldn't achieve as much as we do without these and we're really appreciative when terry and i joined the district four years ago at roughly the same time we completely overhauled the websites um and probably the majority of these tools weren't actually being used and i think what we've just been through with the pandemic if we hadn't had these tools in place we
015would have experienced very different challenges with regard to communicating the website and the mass communication system for emailing enabled us to create the families hub on the website which became this go-to place for every communication that we sent out we were directing our parents there they knew that if they needed up-to-date information with regard to what was happening with our schools they just went straight there the mass communication tool for email also is now used for alerts if schools go into lockdown it's also we work with the safety and security team using it for tip line really leveraging as actually a small number of tools that are all integrated some more newsletters i'll talk a little bit about them in a moment but some more newsletters are integrated with our blackboard email system and we
016purchased a district license so the schools don't have to worry about that so all of our schools now can use some more newsletters to keep in contact with their parents and their staff social media we have peach jar for digital flyers synced google calendars and branded media assets and guidelines don can i ask a question so when it comes to social media posting items on social media is there certain times of the day that are more effective than others yes social media is something that we are really going to be focusing on this year going into the second half of this year um we were just talking about this recently that as um as new parents come into the district we're seeing a lot more of the parents are on instagram than were previously and
017then we have a section of our parents are on facebook um and then also twitter so really there are different times where we get and we we're kind of constantly testing so what we've both been doing these last few weeks with the introduction of gilbert gold which we'll talk about in a moment is we've been testing how we share that content and how much content how much verbage we add how many images and then also times of the days because it's all related to algorithms and and so that we get the most engagement which is the aim and we're always looking for organic engagement that's not paid for but we do use social media for paid ads it's really effective and particularly with targeted campaigns so for example if we're trying to target a geographical
018area like eastmark perhaps and we're promoting um say the canyon rim kindergarten prep traditional program or something like that we can really target in on a geographical area so that we know that we're not wasting that spend and we can also get a lot of data to see how many people viewed it how many people clicked through so it's great for that too okay so we couldn't do a presentation without mentioning enrollment it's uh integral well it's really goes across everything that we do so every communication every piece of marketing every story that's told every press release every flyer it all can contribute to enrollment because it all contributes to building the brand and telling the story of gilbert public schools which helps retain students and families and also helps attract new students and families
019um i put three words up there that i think are really important targeted again kind of gone are the days of just doing blanket promotion to drive enrollment uh because we have these new tools so we have the digital tools with social media where we can really target um specific areas and also what we've seen is most effective for enrollment is telling the story of our individual school schools not just district so that means that if we're sharing content about ashland ranch we want to make sure it's on their website that they have that content to share on their social media to put in their newsletter and that when we share on district social media we target their geographical area and working across all of the schools and it's also strategic so part of that
020is considering programs at different schools and also different schools that we know have potential for growth whether that be new communities being built or a new program being introduced so we're always considering okay how can we have the greatest impact what can we leverage that's happening in these different schools to drive enrollment and last but not least enrollment is everyone's business this is something we talk about a lot with the schools it needs to be considered as all of our responsibilities and an opportunity for all of us to support enrollment so when we're working in partnership with the schools we realize that we're asking a lot of them sometimes so if we were saying to them look um you'll see on here one of the things that we know that works is scheduled tours on
021campuses and we know that that is a big ass because it takes the time of the people on that campus to respond to the phone call or respond to the email request we ask them to respond within 24 hours we ask them then to schedule the tour have someone deliver their tour maybe involve students because we know that when students are involved that helps significantly so we want to make sure that they're supported in doing that we check in with them like what can we do to help how can we make that possible because we know that when i first joined the district i spoke to all of the schools and they all basically said if you get people on our campuses we'll get the enrollment as soon as the families are in the school
022and they're experiencing the atmosphere and they're seeing the kids and they can really connect with it so so over the last four years we do know a lot what works the websites the districts and the schools websites communicating frequently and keeping our community updated tours community promotions some of the things i've already talked about programs and uh also there's certain things i think dr mccord mentioned about evolving when our team for communications and marketing well for many areas in school districts what we've experienced over the last 18 months kind of changed things and shifted areas of focus shall we say and that was very true for communications we became very focused on frequent communications keeping our community as up-to-date as possible and we maybe moved away not just gilbert public schools but i think all
023school districts moved away a little bit from celebrating from sharing the good news from focusing on the achievements of our students and staff and our community as a whole so at the beginning of the school year our team got together and we talked about okay well what do we want to keep from what we've learned over the last 18 months and our experience what do we want to build upon and how are we consciously going into the 22-23 school year and there's just three things up there and you'll see a bit more when we go through the examples jumping around a little bit gilbert gold we'll talk about in a minute and that's a really that's an effort to really move towards good news of which we have a great deal um new targeted campaigns
024again we'll share a little bit about that and the other one that i think is really important to highlight is online reputation management which maybe doesn't sound as interesting as it is but um terry's going to talk a little bit about the search engine optimization but how we're represented online as a district and as individual schools is so important in a time when people spend a great deal of their decision making time googling and looking at reviews before they set foot on a campus right so that is kind of the first the first time that a lot of potential families come across our district and our schools will be online so we want to make sure and work with the schools that when people read those great schools when they visit greatschools.org or niche and
025or just google itself that the star ratings actually represent how good our schools are so we'll be doing a lot of work on that do you want to update a little on the search engine optimization so uh starting here um there was a lot of work to be done on the websites so that went along with seo as well and so cleaning that up has been pretty much a full-time job the last four years and basically with seo it just means that how are people finding us when they're searching and how well is our content doing um on the search and so um we've had some really good success with all of the search procedures that i've gone through which is keywords and optimization with our content but really we're trying to drive everyone to
026our website first and foremost to make sure that we strategically create ownership of our own content so that with that content we can actually have other searches and build upon that perfect thank you so really what we want people to be searching for as you know schools in gilbert arizona and gilbert public schools comes up first they go straight to the website they're really impressed they don't look elsewhere they schedule the tour they enroll you know that's the ideal that we're going for so considering all these different points where people can discover us and how can we put our best foot forward and represent gilbert public schools in the best way so now the slightly more interesting stuff which is some examples of what we're working on for 22-23 so as i mentioned one of
027the when we met as a team and talked about what we wanted to do and focus on for this year and storytelling came up as a really key theme and celebrating and sharing all of the incredible things that happen in gilbert public schools and our job is actually really easy because there is so much great content there are so many great things happening it's easy to market something that is actually successful and good quality um so for us it's just about telling the stories so we worked together and we stole dr mccord's connect create care and added celebrate um as the fourth c and we brainstormed together like what is this going to look like and what can we call it terry's going to talk a little bit more about the process but really gilbert
028gold is about good news it's about representing the gps experience as a student employee and member of our gps family so if you look at any kind of private sector research about marketing what actually makes people make decisions what drives them to just to decision making is experiences and feelings and emotions so by us telling the story we're supporting people to really fully understand what it feels like to be a student in gilbert public schools what it feels like to be an employee and what it feels like to be the terms we use a member of our gps family it's also about that retention piece so it's about reminding our employees reminding people who are already part of our community why gps is so special it's written content video and photography we post it on
029district website and school websites we shared on social media and we have a gilbert gold section in the family and the employee newsletters and i would love it if terry would just walk through a little bit how we created it and why it's working sure so i'm really excited about gilbert gold i think it's something that we've been missing um and it really encompasses everything that's good about the district um in a really cohesive way that's exciting just to read and disseminate so basically with gilbert gold intentional thoughtful and engaging brand provides a holistic approach to building trust further promoting the goal of excellence in our district and programs so for me i designed gilbert gold with a visual cohesive approach in mind really to strengthen the positive gps recognition with a storytelling focus my
030strategic approach to the naming of the new campaign and design custom graphics and elements that are translated from the district branding that i created years ago completes a fully branded marketing campaign that translates into a focused positive promotion to a variety of district initiatives so the success relies on our team collaboration really it's so many of us and the additions of our two new talented team members kaylee and jonathan they've really been instrumental with hours of research interviews writing photography videography editing so that we're able to share the stories uh through our newly branded gold section of our website newsletter and social media so really the success of our efforts has shown in a positive increase really from launch which would be really just about a month ago and it's been about 600 percent community
031engagement and increase um within our social platforms like instagram so we're really proud of the new initiative and campaign and believe that the long-term impact of owning and building our gps narrative so that's gilbert gold we're excited thank you that is really exciting and it it really wouldn't be possible without um the addition of well it wouldn't be possible without all of our team members and that's what i particularly enjoy about our team is everyone gets to play to their strengths kaylee came to us from abc 15 and has a phenomenal ability to tell stories to interview she's out in our schools and jonathan's out in our schools every day three schools a day talking and interacting and really gathering this great content and as terry mentioned the container is the branding so you'll see
032the branding really emphasizes some layers on top of the gilbert public schools branding so now when people see gilbert gold again it elicits this feeling of positivity um and that's what we're going for and so just i think what's nice about that is that those folks haven't been in public schools they haven't had the experience and so when i've been with them out at campuses or at events their eyes just light up and they're like god this is really cool and and it's nice to see that because that excitement gets poured into something like gilbert gold and so they really are they've bought into what we have going on and they're they're part of the team they're part of the family so they want to promote it really well absolutely absolutely that's really that's exactly
033what's happening there they're really excited you know so they've been writing articles for tomorrow's newsletter about the gilbert days parade um and the mesquite hat and that enthusiasm and a passion for the district even though they've only been here a month when is gilbert dave's parade that's on saturday november 20th are all of our schools represented in that indeed all 39 of our schools will be represented just needed to say that and everyone's invited to attend um so yeah their enthusiasm is really infectious and i think is being poured into the content and hopefully is being experienced on the other end that's what our goal is newsletters i thought it was really important to highlight newsletters because that they really came into their own during the last 18 months some of our principals did an
034absolutely phenomenal job they were adding video content in there they were really leveraging the tool to keep connected with their communities and you know we introduced connect create care as a weekly family newsletter that went out to all our parents and that still has an average of 35 000 views per addition which we're really proud of and now we've gone to bi-monthly with that and we're really focusing on celebrations and key updates and gilbert gold is a key part of it now gps together we introduced that as a newsletter for our employees this school year and we have an average of 5000 views per edition of that celebrations thank yous again key information and updates and really it is what it says it is it's about creating more of that feeling of togetherness and the
035schools i try to gather data on how many uh newsletters we send out a week and it's it's just too many it's amazing they're all of our schools our departments are using this tool most schools will send out a newsletter at least once a month to their parents weekly to their staff using s'more um and part of part of an unanticipated benefit as being for our departments and in purchasing the district license that has enabled us to and support all the schools and also the departments to share their newsletters with updates and also support so a lot of our departments are using it to to communicate to celebrate and to update and in considering this as a tool there's no way we could remove that now it's being used across every single area of our
036district it's fully integrated and our goal with consistency is that a parent who has students at three different schools they're seeing a very similar looking formatted newsletter with different branded colors for the school different information but it's a similar user experience they're not for some schools clicking on a pdf and then expanding it on their phone and not being able to read it so we're really proud of the impact of the newsletters so our next example is uh credit where credit is due dr mccord came up with the name for this and yes level up with gilbert public schools this is a really good example of collaboration and strategy um marcy taylor has been working with our junior highs to create level up days where our sixth grade students are um taken to their pipeline
037junior high for the day um and they have this experience that supports them as they move up to junior high so we consider it as a team okay how can we support that how can we support our junior highs so they're not left just thinking well what do we do how does this work so that there's some district support with branding and also how can we think about this strategically so uh when we look at data the area that we see our existing families doing the most shopping to consider which school to choose is from sixth grade to junior high so we know that the pipeline days the level up days they're getting taken to their the junior high that they would go to with regard to boundaries um and they're having that experience so
038for that they're gonna we're gonna have level up branding and also work with the schools to have their own stuff their kids are gonna get water bottle stickers level up with gilbert public schools but we also know that we want to support families with educational choice so long as it's within gilbert public schools so um with we're creating a hub on the website so gilbertsschools.net forward slash level up where the families will be able to go they'll be able to see all of the information for the pipeline days and how does this work and they're going to have you know explain that they'll have lunch in the cafeteria etc then we're also going to have you know schedule a tour if you want to find out more about other junior highs within the district we'll
039have the videos the virtual tours and links for them to schedule a tour inviting them to discover more and then we're also going to look strategically at out of district students so we already have a list compiled of all of the out of district students who are currently in sixth grade and will be asking the junior highs that they would be going to to call those families and say you know we appreciate you being a part of gilbert public schools we'd like to let you know that level up day is coming and the family nights are so just looking at every opportunity to make sure that we retain all of those sixth graders whether they go to the pipeline school or pick a different gps school and then also use it as a way to
040let other um students and families out there who are not part of gps know this is what we do for our students we're supporting them with that transition um so with the branding and ensuring that so i'll pass over to terry to add a bit more about the branding piece so with level up the visual branding was strategically designed from the award-winning thrive college and career branding that i created a couple years ago to visually create a cohesive student success pathway for elementary to level up to junior high then thrive into high school so that was really something that i was super passionate about and saw the opportunity to actually have that as a pathway um and then visually connect the two so it made sense to use the same color structure with the green
041and arrow to indicate indicate upward growth in instances and it lends itself to be easily recognizable for a student initiative is level up like thrive and it's clear and recognizable continuation of existing brand like i said before creating a sustainable foundation to build upon in the future so this just started um but we've got a couple things going and forward slash level up is where you can find information if you're watching tonight and are interested so i i have a question because you have thrive on is a button on the website the level up also be a button on the website so you can just go there and click it and get to this information for that's okay interested yeah we could definitely do that and we can look and thrive a couple times i
042think it's really really good just make it easy yes i agree there's lots of valuable real estate up there so we really look at the time of year sometimes and other things depending on what we want to do with the initiatives but definitely that's something to look into so this idea of sixth graders going to the junior high is not new i mean it's something we've done in the past in gilbert public schools kind of went by the wayside and we we thought that it's time to bring it back just because we need to continue we're in competition with a lot of schools school districts and we want to make sure our kids have the best experience and are pumped up and ready to go to the junior high so they're already having those conversations
043talking about it this is where i want to be this is where i'm going to end up and then of course like you said the pipeline where's my next high school and we want it to be in gilbert public schools so absolutely and this will be sustainable this is being designed to be sustainable so each of the junior highs will receive like banners with level up with public schools that they can use every year they'll be outdoor uh banners for you know we some of our junior highs are in phenomenal curb areas so greenfield junior being an example so having something like this a banner on their fence serves the purpose of getting the sixth graders excited but also is great advertising and people are curious what's level up with gilbert public schools um also
044the i'll be going out and meeting with all the junior high principals over the next couple of weeks like what letting them know this is what we're doing so what are you what are you going to be doing to make that experience um special for the kids when they come on campus and i know they're already coming up with great ideas which is really exciting well i have to say i'm compliments i think that this is a real transition that parents are thinking about when we're moving from elementary to junior high because you know that is usually your pathway to high school um so i think really thinking about this and being intentional i really appreciate that absolutely and i should have mentioned that the level updates that marcie taylor's been organizing are in january
045so i from a from a kind of time scale marketing perspective it's perfect because like you say they're starting to have those conversations in january and then they have the family preview night and you know it's we just lose not that we lose a lot of students but we're always trying to look for ways to retain and also support the students and the families so part of what we're considering doing with the website page is actually adding resources that are going to support the students with that transition kind of like thrive like a miniature version of that there's a lot of potential to support that okay oh so yeah basically what we just said so special selection of events and resources design support sixth graders and their families and learning more about the junior high
046experience um this is the last example that we have for you tonight programs is obviously a really big one programs are really great for marketing opportunities because they can support enrollment in that program itself which in turn supports the school with their enrollment and retention we have a wide range of programs that you're aware of across the district um and we put up here kind of our five step process when we're working what we've found has worked well through through a bit of trial and error to be honest sometimes there's so many programs that it becomes hard to actually explain what our skills do and it can become overwhelming and there's a lack of clarity and parents and students become confused and that's what we want to avoid so at the beginning of any process
047we're going to use the international baccalaureate program at gilbert high as an example and we're going to work collaboratively with the program leaders we need to fully understand okay what is the program what kind of students are you trying to attract who do you think would benefit from this program and you know what are the key areas that we should focus on because we want to deliver clarity we want to take that information and then distill it in such a way that we can then share it with our family so they're really clear on what's being offered and what options are available for their student and and then we're going to consider how are we going to promote this is it going to be face-to-face events is it going to be social media video etc
048and then we review the campaigns and number five which is really important is looping back around and celebrating the students and the program success and sharing those stories because that's actually the best marketing so with the international baccalaureate i'll show you in a moment we worked with our team and focused on a number of areas that we all thought would support driving enrollment for that program and one of the key parts was to help students understand that if they were interested in a program like that that could be a program for them that it's not just for the highest achievers the highest and the students with the highest academic success so that all of the all of the students felt that they could attend the information night and find out more information we also talked
049to them about student ambassadors so from their point of view they're selecting the student ambassadors they're involving them in the information night that's happening right now at gilbert high to share the story of how the ib program has impacted them and then from our point of view we created video content that they're going to use at the information which hopefully they're using right now um so i wanted to share some video content with you because it's just such a powerful tool probably hear this all the time and you probably see this all the time video is actually one of the mediums that is most impactful short video it makes a difference on social media it makes a difference and in newsletters often you send a newsletter the only thing that people do is watch the
050videos so um to finish our presentation before questions um i'm going to get some help from the back to show these two videos [Music] so throughout like all of my schooling junior high and my first two years of high school i haven't really had to study i kind of just improvised like i was always kind of in the back of the class and i was able to do that because there were so many so i didn't necessarily form relationships or sturdy ones colleges they know that we are in the ib program and that's very unique so that helps us i'm really drawn to helping people i'm focusing more on psychology right now like a psychiatrist and that's going to be a lot of work i'm kind of just beginning to learn how to study and
051everything like that now that i'm practicing studying i have insight on myself more and what helps me and my memory has actually improved a lot more i'm able to manage my time for working out nhs community service all of those things i feel like i have way more time even though i'm doing way more and then with the teachers i'm closer to teachers than i have ever been they help with motivation time management focusing all the resources you need the coursework isn't that bad because of all the support you get i'm a lot more social than i used to be being able to put myself in other shoes even better closer to my parents my siblings now i have so many friendships and close connections with people it has helped so much in maintaining motivation
052and being focused and i don't regret choosing to take it at all ib helps in well it's helped me anyways in like every aspect of life [Music] i'm an ib student i'm an ib student i'm an ib student i am an ib student i am an ib student i'm an iv student i'm an ib student i am an ib student i'm an ib student i'm an ib student i am an ib student i'm an ib student [Music] so that concludes our presentation i just wanted to double back a little bit that young man said he wanted to be a psychiatrist or psychologist that also reminds me that it's national school psychology week how do you like me working those things in throughout the presentation thank you to all of our school psychs for everything that
053you do and hopefully the one day this young man will be part of the gps team don and terry just a comment i'm reminded because this is just a phenomenal experience for me to watch what it is that has evolved over my time on the board when i first ran one of the things that was asked of me is how are you going to help make gilbert public schools locked into an individual psyche and i said i don't know there's a pr campaign that needs to happen and i really didn't know what i was talking about in large measure and you have both of you and your team have just solidified that one of the comments i remember making was somehow some way we have to find a method to keep gilbert public schools in
054the forefront of the minds of every person in this community so that they have no choice but to choose us and you are on the road to getting us there even further than i imagined so from a personal point of view i appreciate that from a professional point of view i applaud you and all that you have done thank you so much thank you all right go ahead i concur uh absolutely um a couple comments and some questions uh so thank you for everything both of you are doing that's phenomenal uh in my opinion sometimes the depressed uh is very quick to uh focus on some negative activities that that may occur with students or uh faculty but uh sometimes uh the positive stuff doesn't come out and so what you're doing is uh will
055help i think i i would love to see uh stuff coming out about our students our schools every day i mean our competition is doing a pretty good job with that and honestly i think you guys are in in a uh a sales position uh for for many years public schools could sit back and you know put a put a web page up and you can read about us if you want we've got to be aggressive now and that's what you're up to i think and and sell a product in our products education and it's darn good it's a darn good product uh but people don't always understand that so what you're doing is great uh let me look here uh tours i saw on there who are what are some of the groups that
056that were giving tours to you know um so mostly it's parents and families who are interested in coming to absolutely mostly it's parents and families with their students interested in joining our schools and we have like a whole system where people can complete a form or they can call and then they get that booked in within 24 hours take them around to school and then our enrollments online so they then support them to um enroll it now if they don't they can go in and check so if they don't enroll we then ask them to call them um a few days later just to check in if they have any follow-up questions or we can help them with that process any outreach to for example realtors so we do we do work with um builders
057predominantly um so eastmark's a good example where we're um working with the many builders who work there so that we're front of mind for them and that they have materials to share with people coming somebody's gonna buy a house here that normally have children that might be exactly positive chamber of commerce maybe some and and what you're doing is great um can you think of any groups that we maybe have a challenge reaching in in the community and i think our biggest challenge is competition and and we're i think you're really hit the nail on the head when you're talking about being a bit more aggressive so for example we do i didn't mention but we do do and we have like a flyer that goes out to all of like district wide to every
058household in our boundaries and this year we're going to do two so we'll do one in november um november 20th and then um in january which is more traditionally when people are thinking about registering but we are always conscious of the fact competition is 100 our biggest challenge you know sometimes we have stakeholders out there that that we depend on they may not have children but they vote and so i think it's important that that we make the that part of the community aware of all the great things we do too and and the great uh students that we have absolutely that's basically it for me thank you thank you i appreciate you for everything both of you thank you board members miss eugenie i just want to say thank you and i wish you'd
059been around when i was a principal thank you yes thank you i was just thinking in the information age it's important that we have correct information and content available to people and in this competitive nature of education we have to be the best choice but not only that we have to then let our let people know why we're the best choice and so it's really critical to our schools that you guys are giving that information and i really love that it's you're authentically sharing um what's really going on at our schools and making sure that communication is clear and that people can access that information and the correct information on the website and that's a really important part of families and how families operate right now and parents and students is to be connected through
060that so i think that's been really important and i'm i'm glad that we're celebrating accomplishments and achievements i i loved that gilbert gold i sat in the newsletter and just it was it's a lift it's great and there's lots of great things that are happening we're not perfect but there's many many good people and good things that are happening at our schools and finally i just i appreciate that you are efficient and deliberate in using resources and that you're data driven and that you come back and measure to see and make sure that you're efficiently using the resources that you have to to make sure that they're meeting the goals um so appreciate it thanks thank you thank you ms humphries um yes i i i wanted to make a comment and i have a
061couple questions i really really appreciate the work that you put in and i i just want to emphasize to the community that communication is key we parents can't make good choices if they don't know what's available to their students and so it's we care about enrollment because we want you go to the best district in the state um and get the best education and you know i'm a little biased there but i do think we we do a wonderful job for all of our students um so one question i have is we talked about the transition from junior high to high school some of the things we're doing there what about the transition from sorry from elementary to junior high what about the transition from junior high to high school what are we doing i
062know we have nights preview nights for freshmen what other things are we doing to help students understand what's available at our high schools we would like to do something more formal like level up for that transition as well um anecdotally though a lot of stuff does happen and when i'm talking with the principals at the high schools we're often talking about the pipeline so we're talking about okay get a t-shirt in a kindergarten's hand that says future tiger um and you're halfway there um so and i know there's a lot of other initiatives that go across the district that other teams are working on where we're considering that pipeline and how when someone when a family picks their elementary school they're already considered where they're going to junior high in high school that's the ideal
063and i think it would be great to look at how level up works for this transition and what impact that has and then create something similar uh for the junior high to to high school absolutely the high schools do with their open houses etc they and they have a lot of programs to share and that there's a tradition of that and we would love to support that that's good because i i know there's it's it's a lot to consider when parents are looking at the different choices that they have i mean it's it's when i did college tours a few years ago i was like okay this is this is kind of where we're going with our public schools um you know and even if you stay in the boundary that you are going to
064the school where your boundary that's a choice to go to your local neighborhood school and i i have to say i i prefer that i've done open enrollment a couple times but um you know that it what works best for your child and not every child is the same so the other question i had was sometimes because we're gilbert public schools people don't realize that one-third of our district is in mesa so what are we doing to communicate and help people to understand that even though they're in mesa they're still a part of gilbert public schools yeah so a big part of what we do is we make sure that we're being equitable with the content that we're sharing about schools so we're every gold story every social media post is all on spreadsheets and
065we're making sure that we're covering all of our schools equally and including them so that is that's really important to us and it's important to the schools obviously um so we make sure and we do do a lot we actually do a lot of targeted campaigns in mesa because that's where a lot of the growth is yes so yeah we work a lot there too well i appreciate that because i have had people say to me well what on earth is gilbert public schools doing in mason i'm like well there's one third of our district before there was even a town there we were gilbert public schools so you know those boundaries were set years and years ago so i do appreciate the hard work i feel like we've come a long way in the
066last four years i can't believe it's only been four years but i know that you know the website is much more accessible user friendly all of the issues that we've dealt with and i really i really appreciate the hard work that you both put in because i think we're in a really good place now and i appreciate that so thank you thank you thank you thank you ms humphries and and to ms humphrey's point i'm looking at dr newman and mr martin and some of those transitions were initiated this summer with some of the bridging that occurred in the academic and recovery areas and so cap will capitalize on that and put out information again about that but there is a ton going on within our schools within our district and you are at the
067center of the storm and you are broadcasting that in a very unique and very efficient way and again appreciation and kudos and thank you dr mccord thank you nope thank you guys appreciate it thank you very nicely done board members we are at item four which is adjournment of this work study session that was an absolutely enlightening piece for us to end on for this work study if there are no other comments questions concerns i will adjourn this portion of the meeting so we are duly adjourned in work study we'll now move to item five to our brief board business meeting and i will ask mrs wilson to please call the roll dr charles santa cruz here miss laurie wood here michelle eugetti here mr bill parker here ms jill humphreys here mr president all
068board members are present you have a cora thank you mrs wilson we will go to item 5.03 which is approval of the agenda for this brief board business meeting is there a motion summit thank you miss humphries is there a second second thank you mr parker any discussion seeing that there's no discussion we will vote on approving this evening's agenda all those in favor please signify by saying aye those oppose the same motion carries five zero before we move to item 5.04 which is a call for the public meeting i would like to exercise a point of personal privilege with board members and since this is a day or two before veterans day i would like for us to take this opportunity to thank those who have served those who are serving in all branches
069of our military and those who have served in all conflicts in which this country has been involved and i would like to impose upon you for us to take a moment of silence in homage to those men and women in uniform in all branches of our military current and past could we take that moment of silence and then i would like to ask us to stand and offer the pledge of allegiance on their behalf so join me in a moment of silence please thank you please join me in the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all board members thank you i appreciate your indulgence i just felt that it was
070opportune even though we don't have a regularly scheduled formal board business meeting being so close to the 11th day of the 11th month and the 11th hour that we pay tribute to those brave souls so we move to item 5.04 which is a call for the second public hearing pursuant with hr special education preschool instructional model and we moved item six and we will entertain a motion to open a public hearing so moved thank you miss eugenie is there a second a second thank you mrs wood any discussion seeing no discussion then we will vote on opening a public hearing for item 6.01 gps instructional time model special education preschool all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries item 6.01 dr mccord i will defer to you
071thank you dr santa cruz governing board members uh this is the second public hearing uh dr newman at our last board meeting gave a presentation related to the reasons why uh there was a change the instructional time model once again i think i we had mentioned it when we originally approved this that this is a work in progress and there may be some changes moving forward and this will be one of them dr newman's here to talk more about it if need be thank you dr newman welcome thank you good evening dr santa cruz governing board members and dr mccord this is our second public hearing and really the purpose of tonight is just for us again to revise the gilbert public schools alternative instructional time model tonight as i mentioned last week or last
072board meeting tonight we really are going to talk specifically about our inclusion of the special education preschool at settlers point elementary when we talk about special education preschool remote learning i wanted to just clarify and give you again some of the key components and what that might look like for our young students our students are instructed through our webex there is a certified teacher and a paraprofessional that is present at all time during these sessions and those sessions include whole group small group as well as one-on-one instruction where teachers are also providing not only the learning support for students but also we have our special service providers that are providing some of those services and related services that our students might need and then lastly they're focusing on that targeted instruction for the students related
073services and utilizing the curriculum from an instructional side same curriculum that we'd be using in our brick and mortar preschools that's what they're using here in our special education preschool remote there is a business side to all of this our students will be enrolled and are enrolled at the elementary school in this case it is at settlers point elementary and the teacher takes attendance through that webex and that that attendance similar to what a teacher would do at a brick and mortar is reported to um the state in that way i mentioned last time about what does it look like to be the ideal student or a student who might benefit from a remote learning and from a preschool um setting and really that requires us to look at a student individually and see are
074we able to provide both instruction and services to that student away that that student can receive a free appropriate public education to which we call fape and that is the result of an iep team which consists of the parents teachers administrator to determine if that really is the best placement for a student in addition to that we need to be sure that students are able to demonstrate progress towards our iep goals quarterly teachers report on what that progress is and it's important that students continue to move in that learning and also if our students are able to engage in virtual instruction right that might look different for a preschooler so with that we also know it's extremely important for our students to be able to regulate and have some regulation skills that if there is
075a hiccup along the way um along with that assigned adult who's sitting there with them at home or where they're receiving the instruction they're able to help them so that they can deal with the situation and then move slowly through that and then get right back to the learning so the presence of that facilitator is extremely important and that's why as i had mentioned before we're looking at a very small population of students but a population of students all the same that really can truly benefit from this model and then next steps tonight's agenda there is an action item to revise the instructional improvement i'm sorry special education remote preschool into that instructional time model and that was will be what we're asking for further on the agenda as an action item for you pending
076your approval then we will submit directly to the state department and we will let them know that we are revising the model in a way that we're including special education preschool and then that concludes my very short presentation thank you dr newman board members you have had a presentation prior to this and have had an opportunity to review the documentation via your board packet and then this presentation this evening are there any questions before we see if there is anyone from the public who wishes to speak i just want to say thank you for the hard work i mean this is unique we wouldn't have thought of doing preschool online maybe a few years ago during the pandemic we learned that it can be done and for some students they excel being online so i
077think it's an opportunity for those that that it will work for thank you ms humphries board members any other questions seeing none miss wilson i i see that there are no requests to speak item 6.02 that is correct there is no request for members of the public to speak dr mccord anything to add no sir if not we'll move to item 6.03 which is adjourning this second public hearing with no request to speak two presentations and two public hearings we will adjourn this portion of the public hearing we'll move to item seven reconvene this brief board business meeting 7.01 we will entertain a motion to reconvene so thank you mr parker is there a second second thank you miss humphries any discussion seeing that there is no discussion we will vote to reconvene all those
078in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries five zero with item eight which is consent agenda items item eight point zero one is approval of the consent agenda is there a motion so moved thank you miss humphries is there a second second thank you mr eugenie it's been moved and seconded is there any discussion seeing that there is no discussion you have had an opportunity again to review all of the items contained within the consent agenda through your board packet those in favor of approving the consent agenda as presented please signify by saying aye aye those oppose the same motion carries 5-0 consent agenda is approved item nine are action items nine point zero one uh dr mccourt any anything for nine point zero one by way of rationale
079no sir this is just the approval as mentioned by dr newman in her presentation thank you sir so we're at 9.01 is there a motion i move that we approve the instructional time model for special education preschool remote learning thank you humphreys second by mr parker is there any discussion if not we will vote then on item 9.01 instructional time model for special education preschool remote learning all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries five 5-0 item 9.02 is superintendent's evaluation instrument performance pay measures and weights and that would be the instrument uh is there a motion so moved thank you ms eugetti is there a second second thank you mr parker it's moved and seconded is there any discussion no discussion we will vote on item
0809.02 all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those pose the same motion carries five zero nine point zero three of instruction given an executive session to the governing board uh an executive session the governing board may vote to authorize its attorney to and its representative to act as instructed in the executive session convened pursuant to agenda item 1.02 and we are voting on approving that we have given our attorney direction am i correct that is correct thank you dr mccord is there a motion so moved thank you ms humphreys is there a second second okay thank you mr parker you've been moved and seconded that we approve item 9.03 all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries 5-0 where item 10 is adjourning this
081brief board business meeting out of 10.01 is there a motion to adjourn submit thank you miss humphries is there a second second thank you mr eugenie moved and seconded into discussion thank you for your attendance this evening those of you in the boardroom and those of you who watched on live stream all those in favor of adjournment please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries five zero we are adjourned