Gilbert Public Schools Meeting 10/26/2021

001in the building this is tuesday october 26 and we are going to engage in a regularly scheduled board meeting however we are convening at five o'clock because there is a need for an executive session which is item one on your agenda item one point zero one pursuant with ars thirty eight four thirty one point zero three a three and a four discussion or consultation for legal advice with the governing board's attorney or attorneys and to consider the governing board's position and instruct its attorney or attorneys regarding accepting among bids procedures by procured by the district for enhancement to the backstop and protective netting at a baseball field at desert ridge high school and entering into an agreement with blanford homes for blanford homes to share the expenses with the district to pay one-half of the

002amount of the bid if the bid is accepted by the board for enhancements to the backstop and protective netting at the baseball field at desert bridge high school a mouthful is there a motion for executive session high motion for executive session thank you mr parker is there a second i second thank you miss humphries it's been moved and seconded that we convene an executive session recess prior to our meeting any discussion seeing that there is none we will vote all those in favor of moving to executive session please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries we will recess to executive session in the otm conference room upstairs on the second floor and we will reconvene at 6. good evening members of the board members of the public staff and those of

003you who are watching live stream this evening we just concluded our executive session at approximately 5 30 and we are ready to convene our regularly scheduled board meeting for october the 26th we're calling this meeting to order we will start with item 2.02 which is a moment of silence led and then followed by the pledge of allegiance led by mrs humphries so would you please join me in a moment of silence if you'll 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 thank you thank you mrs humphries item 2.04 will be our roll call mrs wilson would you please assist dr charles santa cruz here miss laurie wood

004here ms sheila eugetti is not present miss jill humphries here mr bill parker here mr pres president you have a quorum thank you mrs wilson for item 2.05 is a call for the first public hearing pursuant to hb 2862. uh dr mccord do you have anything by way of introduction yes dr santa cruz as we move into the 3.01 this is a required public hearing for the instructional time model about a month and a half two months ago we you approved our instructional time model and i think at that time we said there's always the possibility to make some adjustments to that and this is our first adjustment so i'll turn it over when we get to 3.01 for that thank you dr mccord item three is the public hearing so let's entertain a motion

005under item 2.05 is there a motion i move that we have a public hearing for gps instructional time model special education preschool thank you miss humphries is there a second second thank you mr parker is any discussion no discussion we will vote on item 2.05 which takes us to 3.01 on instructional time model those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries 4-0 item 3 is the public hearing 3.01 gps instructional time model special education preschool dr mccord thank you again dr santa cruz has stated earlier this is a revision to our already approved instructional time model i'll turn it over to our assistant superintendent of teaching and learning dr newman good evening dr newman good evening president santa cruz governing board members and dr mccord at the purpose

006of tonight's public hearing meeting is to revise the gilbert public schools alternative time instructional model and plan and with that tonight we'll be specifically looking at our special education preschool remotely which is the addition that we'll be adding to the plan right now as you can see we have various instructional models and delivery models on each of our campuses or online and so we'll be talking specifically again about that special education option special education at preschool as you can imagine if we're looking at it from a remote perspective might look very different than others and so i just wanted to kind of give you a picture of what that could be our students would be are instructed through the webex and we do have a certified teacher and a paraprofessional that are present during all

007of those sessions the sessions are a combination of whole class individual small group and really varies depending on the student's iep students can receive their related services through their related service personnel in various ways often it is independently and that is also done via webex with the small group instruction or the intervention the students will be receiving targeted support and specific to that iep goal and the growth that's there and that's something that's really important that would be whether they're in the classroom or not so the t the students may at times be with all of the students in their classroom and at other times they will be on the webex just individually with a paraprofessional a teacher or as i mentioned a related service personnel and the curriculum is the same as what is

008utilized in our brick and mortar the only difference as you can only imagine those preschoolers need those hands-on and so they do have those hands-on materials at home so they're able to interact with them during the session and then also with their parents or our home providers or whoever they're living with at the time or is taking care of them throughout the rest of the day they can follow up as well now for the business side of the house a little bit enrollment students are enrolled at a brick and mortar campus in this case our students in our program is at settlers point and they're reported to the ade as part of the elementary school the teacher takes attendance through infinite campus just as a brick and mortar teacher would take attendance through our as

009i mentioned infinite campus and based on whether or not students are actively engaged in the in the setting there at the preschool we know that an online preschool remote perhaps sounds a little strange at times and we know that this is not for all students but we also know that there are some students that have been able to flourish in this setting so it's important for us to provide that for them it is always important for us to identify if we can provide a free appropriate public education vape is what we call that and that decision really is the decision of an iep team so what they look at is what is what is a student who would flourish in this setting need to be able to do and that is the student would need

010to be able to demonstrate progress towards his or her iep goals to engage in that virtual instruction and that executive functioning skill that they would need to have because as we know at times whether you're in person or not sometimes there are hiccups that occur and just to be able to deal with that hiccup and move on and be able to progress with the learning is really important and of course especially with our preschoolers the most important part is we know that our preschoolers cannot do that without the presence of a facilitator to assist and support that student at home or wherever that student is engaged in the lesson and so that's another key piece that we know is very important and with the students that are enrolled right now they are engaged with that

011individual what we've heard also is that families are with the students right during the classroom remotely and then they're able to engage in some of that learning later in the day because they've actually sat with them during preschool and they know what they're talking about and and know what they're learning and so they're able to progress and so that's been a really a positive part of this for sure so we do have some next steps we do need to have two public hearings so this counts as our first we'll have the next public hearing on november 9th and then we would be placing an agenda item an action item for you to possibly approve the revision of our instructional time model to include this remote preschool setting as part of that and that concludes my

012very short presentation do you have any questions board members before we open it up for any public comment do any board members have a question or comment i just have a question about how many students are enrolled in the program right now right now there are nine students enrolled there's an option for some of our tuition base students to enroll um two so it's still a very small classroom we do we don't anticipate that we were going to be opening up multiple classrooms as i mentioned it's a very small population of students that we know can be successful in this setting okay all right thank you anything else board numbers miss wood thanks i remind me if you will how what's the time frame that we have according to the law according to hb 2862

013to continue to add to this instructional um you know the the different frameworks that we might propose and is it all this year or we have been told that we we will be able to do that as the revisions occur we would just we would have our public hearings first and then provided information and then ask for it to be approved we're going to ask for this to be retroactively approved as we move forward is it something that is approved on a yearly basis as well do you know i don't know all right i'm not sure i'm not sure what's your favorite color i know that answer i know that answer um we don't know i mean this is new for everybody this is new for the state as well as they're monitoring the program

014and and those things too so we really are um regularly receiving continual updates and we revise and and work accordingly i think then let me kind of restate i think it is something that i read that is a yearly basis or revision to what your current plan is if need be so okay and i think that answered my question because i thought i heard you say that as we add students to the structure or the format delivery model that we would hold public hearings again is that not what i if we interpret if we were to revise um the the model to have other opportunities for us to enroll students in brick and mortar and do in an alternative way that instructional time model that's when we would revise okay otherwise it's an annual approval

015right okay board members anything else and we moved to item 3.02 is request to speak any member of the public regarding this topic in this issue i don't have any requests at this point so if there are none we will then move to item 3.03 which is adjourning this public hearing and we will call for adjournment of the hearing item four reconvene the regularly board regularly scheduled board meeting and is there a motion for item four point zero one summit thank you miss humphries is there a second second thank you mr parker it's been moved and seconded that we've reconvened the board meeting uh all any discussion seeing none then we will vote all those in favor of item 4.01 please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries 4-0 item five

016is approval of this evening's agenda 5.01 is there a motion please submit it's been moved is there a second second thank you mr parker thank you mrs humphries removed and seconded that we approve this evening's agenda is there any discussion seeing no discussion we will vote on approval for this evening's agenda 5.01 all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries 4-0 item 6 is a superintendent's recognition award item 6.01 dr mccord thank you dr santa cruz governing board members if you join me in front of the diocese we will honor some folks this evening [Music] good evening everyone how are you good good thank you for being here tonight this is always the favorite part of our evening being able to recognize some of our students and

017some of our staff for some of the great things that they've done and and how well they represent gilbert public schools tonight i'd like to recognize a few of our national merit semi-finalists for the 2022 year each year we have semifinals for the national merit scholarship they're around 16 000 semi-finalists nationwide uh this is the 67th year of this annual program and of those sixteen thousand seventy five hundred scholarships worth around thirty million dollars are awarded to students uh which it's a great honor now they're semi-finalists so they still have some work to do and if if memory serves and some of the discussions i've had with some of the principals our students have a very good shot at making it to the finals mode about 95 percent of the semi finalists become finalists and

018then out of that they determine who the winners are for those scholarships from gilbert high let's see do we have shea stainer get rid of me [Applause] come on up [Applause] shape tell me um well let me use this sorry we're going to go freelance a little bit so you're a senior and what do you plan on doing next year um i plan to go to byu and study genetics study genetics wow she's a semi-finalist please give her a hand do you want to shake the board shea stay up here too because we're gonna take a picture come right here in the middle well mom you got a picture right you're good okay next from gilbert high jack miller is jack here come on up jack congratulations so what are you going to be doing

019next year any idea yet uh going on a mission all right then when you get back what do you want to do hopefully go to mit wow wow good for you go ahead and shake hands with the board congratulations jack next from highland high school do we have kaden arnold cayden come on up [Applause] to you what's what are your future plans uh hopefully the air force academy so when will you know that next spring hopefully next spring wow good for you congratulations [Applause] over here one for the christmas card congratulations next do we have anna tuba did i say it right yes congratulations anna honestly i should put my disclaimer up i mess them all up usually so what are you going to do next year a u of a to study physics nice

020congratulations oh sorry [Applause] so [Music] next from gilbert classical academy we have cushy park is that person dan no wow i even called you to figure out how to pronounce their name the right way let them know did i hit it on the head almost well is miss young here come on up [Applause] say your first name for mr hood he didn't know how to pronounce it when i called him ayla oh see i told you it was ayla mr hood ayla where do you plan on going next year um i want to go to union univer union university and run cross country i came to practice so sorry for my informal attire and a major in biology with a pre-med track wow wow this listen to this right congratulations kayla he's a little slow

021congratulations other winners from highland high was amy dubin and we have from campo verde brendan calalan and so we have a total of eight semi-finalists for gilbert public schools so please give them another hand oh [Applause] nice speaking of excellence and students achieving great honors we also have a high school that we'd like to honor this evening could i please have principal brian winter from gilbert high come up and his team if you would like shalee webb and stacia cantrell also could i have tony badone the director of the mountain region for cognia and dr christa anderson client services director for cognate if you could please come up i'm going to turn it over to tony and she's going to explain why we're here this evening are so excited to be here i'm actually the

022arizona director for cognia um for both arizona and utah who said they were going to byu who is that but i'm retiring and this is dr christa anderson who is the new only arizona we have a different person in utah took two people to get that done right so i'm kidding she's going to be fabulous and dr anderson will be and is taking over arizona now so if you have accreditation questions please call us but we're here for a really special special celebration tonight it is rare but we're starting to have schools who have been accredited for a hundred continuous years and gilbert high school hit that wonderful benchmark this spring of 21 and so we're here to kind of celebrate and i have to tell you we just came from the arizona school administrators

023conference where we celebrated you all and showed a picture of the original gilbert high school to all of these superintendents and folks that were up there so tonight we want to celebrate you in in a number of ways number one we want to explain that accreditation is a sign of excellence our our belief in cognia formerly advanced ed you should probably know it as the north central association for um commission on accreditation and school improvement ncaa cassie is what most people think and so that is an arm of kanye but our vision and mission for students all around the world were in 34 000 schools around the world our mission and vision is excellence and equity and gilbert high school has that in their motto uh the motto and i had to i took my

024little notes and put them on my phone tonight continuing a tradition of excellence one student at a time how fabulous is that so we're here to congratulate superintendent mccord a very special board member who gets credit for about a quarter of that century right dr charles santa cruz yes i think he deserves some applause absolutely and all of the fine board members teachers students some of them are here tonight that are in this this cohort of the finalists or semi-finalists gilbert high school opened in 2017. you all knew that right if i gave a test you already knew that answer opened in 2017 the first graduating class in 2018 i'm sorry oh you're so right [Music] yes uh 1917. i actually was a superintendent in the district that uh opened in 1909 and i kept

025saying the same thing 2009 and open to 2009. anyway 1917 graduating class of 1918 had four students a hundred years after it opened 2017 gilbert high school became an a plus school of excellence so congratulations on that award as well i think that deserves a round of applause so i i need the um the team from gilbert high school to help me with this part so we have a banner for their school and we have a plaque krista has the plaque and we're just so excited to congratulate all of you and everyone involved with gilbert public schools because it takes the first high school to have everything else happen right so thank you and i want to also special thank you to gabby who made arrangements and kept in touch i always appreciate those people

026right she's like the queen right she's running the show i i i knew that gabby i as a former superintendent i know who's in charge so thank you so much to dr mccord and everyone else do you want to say if you i just i think you know she had mentioned about this being presented at an asa conference in sedona and we weren't there we thought it was very important to celebrate gilbert high school in gilbert public schools with all of you with all of our board members so i'm very thankful that they have the time to come gilbert high school is the flagship of all of our high schools in in gilbert public schools and it has served so many families in this community and it'll continue to do that as we continue to

027move through the education process in gilbert but we're very proud of everything that they do what they stand for and the people that work extremely hard every day and that's our support staff that's our teachers that's our administrators they show up every day for kids and that's what's extremely important so congratulations to gilbert high in a well-deserved honor congratulations again [Applause] graduate of gilbert high school once you leave you never really leave together right thank you so much [Applause] nope he's good thank you dr santa cruz that concludes our recognitions for this evening you get 25 percent of that congratulations to all of our semi-finalists from our variety of schools and congratulations to the faculty staff and administration at gilbert high school for their cogno recognition well deserved behind that is always the hard work

028of faculty members parents included and students working towards excellence so well deserved we will now move to item eight as a request to speak to the governing board we have four requests this evening also would like to comment that we have received online commentary from members of the community as always those are red and we acknowledge that they are there and it is yet another opportunity for members of the community to address the governing board we will move to the recorded message and then i will read the order of our speakers the board may make an open call to the public during a public meeting subject to reasonable time place and manner restrictions to allow individuals to address the public body on an issue within the jurisdiction of the public body at the conclusion of

029the open call to the public individual board members may respond to criticism made by those who have addressed the board may ask the staff to review a matter or may ask a matter be to be put on a future agenda however members of the board shall not discuss or take legal action on matters raised during the open call to the public unless the matters are properly noticed for discussion and legal action during the open call the board requests that speakers refrain from voicing complaints against school personnel or any person connected with the district as it may impact due process rights policy k ke b and k e d are provided by the board for disposition of legitimate complaints including those involving individuals forms required for use of these policies can be obtained from the gilbert

030public schools website those who have requested to speak will speak in the following order cheryl massey flint crump steve walker and paula duvas hello my name is cheryl massey and this is not the first time i've got to come up here and talk about the same subjects i wanted to just to encourage you again that a couple months ago i dropped off a constitutional live package which is the complete thing all you have to do is look at it and use it and what it's going to do for you is that as we see different things going on in the world that maybe we disagree with or don't like and since two months have gone by it's a lot worse now than than it was the constitution can be used to make changes to where

031if you know how to change something and where the power is supposed to be you can sense what you can do to better have the schools run right the families happy the government running right to where we have everything that we need rather than trying to figure out who's going to get this what are we going to do about that so i just wanted to encourage you that you have a copy and it's the whole thing i wanted to also applaud you for the desire to provide something for a handicap preschool i have a young lady that i know who's in her 20s now that went and graduated from gilbert high school and she was in the brick and mortar version of a special education class because of the way she was born she was

032in a wheelchair had to have someone with her at all times which at some times with me and she now being in her 20s is working on her own and supporting herself so that that was awesome going to make me cry just remembering that and then i also am thankful that we still have choices when it comes to school choice what what you're planning for online really is good for some students but maybe not for all of them well so you have a combination that's really going to help the student again there's where some of my experience with just even my own children come in some more book people others needed my hands on my hands-on student graduated at 17 from gilbert high school he is now 43. so i i really enjoyed having this

033having this here when i came and it's kind of off the subject but i'm thankful are you going to tell me thank you mr massey mr crump good evening my name is flint crump i am here to talk about a subject that is not very pleasant as a father of a daughter virginia judge finds transgender teen guilty of sexual assault in loudoun county high school girls bathroom case a virginia juvenile court judge ruled monday this is yesterday a transgender gene was guilt teen was guilty of sexually assaulting a female classmate at loudoun county high school last may the national review reports judge pamela brooks of the juvenile domestic relations district court found that there was sufficient evidence to determine the teenager guilty of sexual assault in the case that has received national attention this is

034a current national issue i don't know if anyone has seen news reports of this but it's in the press now um the victim a 15 year old girl testified in court that she engaged in consensual sex civil activity with a defendant two other times in the girls bathroom at stonebridge high school but on the occasion in question she had been violently intimidated to perform sexual acts the outlet reported according to the commonwealth's attorney a teenager accused is accused of two separate incidences that happened months apart at different loudoun county high schools according to fox 5 the teen was wearing an ankle monitor for the prior assault at stone bridge when he forcibly when he allegedly forced a girl into an empty classroom and did other things at a new school so shifted from one school

035to another without any uh without enough precautions in my opinion i am against and i oppose transgenders the policy of transgenders using female bathrooms and i would like to request that the board take all resources available of legal counsel to file with whichever jurisdiction is necessary to change that policy to same gender only bathrooms or the bathroom of sexual birth that's my request we don't want this to happen in gilbert public schools and currently i called my high school today the kids high school and that's the policy that transgenders can use whatever bathroom they want i do not agree this should be an immediate priority an immediate priority please thank you thank you mr walker good evening my name is steve walker i'm a community member and member of gps education advocates which is a

036like-minded group of about 1 600 gps parents due to the district's close association with the nsba you might know me as steve the domestic terrorist i am here to speak out against your proposed policy change in agenda item 1007 relative to policy section bedd proposed change states the governing board president may recess the meeting without a vote of the governing board in order to maintain decorum and governing board meeting rules of order the purpose of a five-member board is to disallow autocratic power this policy would give the president of the board sole power to recess a public board meeting at his or her discretion this is an abuse of power we have seen this abuse of power in surrounding school districts used to muzzle and censor the frustrated citizens of the district speaking out against

037bad district policies this is not just about dr santa cruz this is about all future board presidents who may abuse this power in gps board policy section bca titled board member ethics it states quote board members will recognize that decisions should be made only after discussion at publicly held board meetings the decision to recess a meeting should be made only after discussion about among board members and never to avoid hearing from frustrated citizens of the district in section c i quote board members will render all decisions based on the available facts and independent judgment and refuse to surrender that judgment to individuals or special interest groups board members should not be surrendering their duty as a decision-making board member to another individual including other board members the board president or the asba which is who

038is behind this proposed policy change section bedd rules of order the board prescribes rules for its meetings as follows section d a motion to adjourn is an order at any time such a motion shall require a second and a majority vote section f quote rules of order may be subject to suspension only upon a majority vote of the members of the board present at a meeting the question i have is who who is it among you that is seeking autocratic power to decide when to recess a meeting in order to effectively muzzle and silence the citizens when they gather to express their discontent with you the suggested change by the asba is against the very purpose of a governing board for those that don't know the asba is the local state association of the nsba

039who has been made popular in the news the past couple weeks by calling parents domestic terrorists i suggest that you discard even the thought of relinquishing your individual responsibility i think i'm the shortest one good evening thank you governing board superintendent cabinet for the opportunity to speak with you tonight on the record as a resident and taxpayer in the town of gilbert i am here to request that you acknowledge investigate and act on a matter i believe is important to gps student academic experience and the well-being of the community at large i ask you to acknowledge that the current gps workplace conditions are taking an unreasonable physiological and psychological toll on educators of all levels of experience i ask you not to take my word for it but to investigate the advancing mental health issues

040within gps by speaking with the superintendent and the cabinet on this matter as well as working with gps leadership to initiate discussions with educators and their representatives and witness direct testimony on this issue lastly i ask you to act thoughtfully to improve workplace conditions and student academic experience before something tragic happens due to distraction anxiety or depression stress and feeling overwhelmed can be factors with consequences thank you for considering my request in the caring spirit in which it is shared with you i believe some of you may already have heard the emerging call to action on this situation my purpose in speaking with you and asking you for help is to confirm without a doubt that this is a community concern with respect your help is very appreciated i thank you for your time and

041your consideration and if there's any way you feel that we as a community can help you address these concerns i ask you to ask the community for that support thank you we have one final speaker i believe it's howard kimsoff don't know if i pronounced your last name correctly sir okay g-i-e-m-s-o-e i'd like to speak about face masks what good is a face mask we are told by the mainstream media and some of our leaders that masks are a worthwhile way to stop the spread they will say experts know experts agree i ask these experts to step forward and show us the tests or experiments that they base their advice on please do not present an anecdotal account of casual observations i asked for scientific experiments on people one group masked one group unmasked these

042tests have been done and they the results are online at the cdc and the nih and others this is what i found from volume 26 number 25 may it 20 non-pharmaceutical measures for pandemic influenza non-healthcare settings a lot of verbiage bottom line evidence from rcts of face mass did not support a substantial effect on transmission that's from the cdc and the nih you can find it on your computer too there's a commentary from uh dr browsnew masked for all for comet 19 not based on sound data her by her bottom line is data lacking to recommend broad mass use we do not recommend requiring the general public who do not have symptoms of covid 19 like illnesses to wear cloth or surgical masks there is no scientific evidence that they are effective in reducing the

043risk of sarcoid 19 transmission and another one public health from the indian public health service face masks for prevention of viral respiratory infections in community settings a systematic review their bottom line existing data pool from random controlled trials do not reveal a reduction in the currents of influenza light illnesses with the use of face mechs alone in community settings for yourself you may have your personal reasons for you to wear a mask you might feel safe you might feel virtuous but if you or anybody else can make rules that other people have to live by that others must follow then you must have real evidence to refer to and thank you for letting me talk thank you that concludes our open call to the public those wishing to speak like to thank those of you

044who addressed the board we appreciate hearing your commentary we moved to item nine which is reports item 9.01 fy 2022 monthly financial report year-to-date september 30th 2021. dr mccord anything by way of introduction thank you dr santa cruz governing board members we have for you tonight mrs betts superintendent assistant soup of business services she's going to present you the monthly financial report good evening governing board members dr santa cruz dr mccord this is a short presentation tonight um we're really going to focus on maintenance and operations on understated capital and of course the federal funds i wanted to let you know that this is the last time that we'll be presenting the budget reflective of the budget revision number one we have received information indicating that due to our student accounts our budget capacity is

045expected to increase um up to 5.1 million dollars which is really good news so our student council reflecting a very positive result in addition when we present the october 31st report it will also include the results of the afr which you the annual financial report the fr which you approved at the last board meeting okay so again the budget revision reflects budget number one and then the cash funds also have not been updated to reflect the afr so focusing on both maintenance and operations and restricted capital the available balance has declined which you would expect we're well into the school year now and our schools and departments are continuing to spend and we are continually uh allocating out more and more unrestricted capital as each day goes by um to our schools this is just

046the detail written that i just shared with you and then the federal grants it's important that we share the sr3 which is the one remaining federal fund that we have for use by gilbert public schools for the fiscal year 2022 we have not yet received formal approval for sr3 but we have we have resubmitted again and prior to that we did engage with our with angela marler connor in title 1 as well as our representative at the department of ed to give us some feedback and some specific suggestions regarding what else we needed to get our sr3 grant application approved so again just to be clear that the substance or content of what we have presented to you that we plan to use the money for are not at question it's just the information that

047backs up those budgetary requests and then just this is just a update on all of the federal funds and to note again that the education plus up is also an application that we are working on it is still pending we have provided the additional information they requested via email and we are hopeful to receive a response back soon that that will be allocated out to us shortly and that's all i have today for that board members any additional questions nope thank you miss bets appreciate your thorough and brief report 9.02 is fy 2021 bond and override report dr mccord thank you dr santa cruz gardening board members miss betts is going to be back on the microphone with our bond and override report again this is our annual report required by statute so this the

048arizona state revised statute references there for you requiring that any organization that has an override or bond proceeds to spend must present annually a report on how the proceeds were spent in the prior year so that's why we are here today so today's report i really wanted to talk overall about the commitments that we made both in the 2015 bond authorization as well as the 2019 bond authorization in addition wanted to talk about the commitments we made regarding the m o override both in 2015 as well as in 2019 and how those two commitments do come together and then share with you some of the history and how the monies were spent and then also to share with you the financial summaries regarding the specific bond spend in may we did present to you a

049summer project summary that that shared with you our plans for operations summer projects this report today is comprehensive it will be presented by both myself and albert dutch over as well as mr john castellano regarding technology spend and then i will share the specific transportation spend as well and then finally just to end just again another summary slide of the gps tax history that's directly related to our override as well as our bond authority so the maintenance operations override so if you recall the override was approved in november of 2019 right before the pandemic hit so under those because it was approved we were able to budget for those over for that additional five percent of our revenue control limit in the 2021 school year so again the uh the authority is good for a

050total of seven years but in the sixth and seventh year the revenues must decline by a one-third each year unless approved again by the electorate of the school district so in 2021 the m override generated a total 32.3 million dollars in budget capacity that's up 11.6 million about from 2020 and then keep in mind that the mno overrides calculated based upon the prior year's average daily membership so the loss of the student count that we realized in 2021 was actually reflected in the mno over override amount in the current year fiscal year 2022 okay any questions on any of that okay so if you recall for the 15 override there were three main priorities that were presented to the public into schools so a class size reduction allocation of two million dollars identifying the most

051urgent opportunities for reducing class sizes throughout gilbert public schools in addition the adding social emotional support so this included the addition of social workers at the elementary and the addition of mental health counselors at our secondary schools and then the other main main commitment was to retain and attract high quality personnel throughout all aspects of the throughout all functions of gilbert public schools if you recall it was during 2019-20 that otm engaged in the compensation study and that that information informed many of the pay increases along with the overall five percent pay increase that was approved by you in the spring of 2020. so the override commitments again just summarizing the difference between 2020 and 2021 where 2020 included the commitments that were made in the 2015 override and then comparing that to the commitments

052made and continued in the 2020 and the 2020 on 2019 election approval so note that offering competitive wages it was always part of the 2015 override note that the increase is substantial at about 7.8 million dollars to uh to increase wages going into fiscal 2021. uh maintain a reduced class size there's the reflection of the two million dollars more some from 4.3 million dollars to 6.3 million dollars increased social emotional supports that was not part of the 2015 authority so added 1.8 million dollars for those and then as part of the 2015 authority there was a commitment made for academic programming affordable student access to to extracurricular programming and then post-secondary advisor career explorer and early college credit those all have been maintained at those dollar amounts each of those programs of course have seen

053increases associated with staff increases etc for purposes of this illustration we we just wanted to make sure we were reflecting the fact that these commitments are ongoing when it comes to overrides these these are repeating every single year okay so you can see the 20.7 million was the 2020 actual budget capacity increase and 32.3 million was the actual budget capacity increase in 2021 due to the override so this is our gps override levy history um and then that's misstated it's not in this it's not just the override levees this includes all the levees so from 2010 to 2021 and then uh the final thing i wanted to share with you um is that the eminence should capital expense comparison so i'm going to focus on the benefits and salaries in 2021 in comparison to the

054benefits and salaries in 2020 so recall that the total increase in override was 11.6 million and and all of that was reflective of staff so over 15 million dollars in salary and benefit increases were realized year over year from 20 to 21. so class size reduction as you remember we were not anticipating the loss of students going into the 21 school year and all there were contracts that were already approved reflective of the entire year plus one of the requirements of the esser funds was that we maintain staff and make sure that we're an ongoing concern during and after the pandemic so you can see that from 2021 to 2020 our class sizes were quite significantly less in 2021 in comparison to fiscal 2020. these are averages but it results of a significant lowering of

055class size or more staff per student throughout all of fiscal year 2021. the other thing i wanted to point out is when we do these these comparisons we are always looking at the same time during each year because every single day this changes as we hire or individuals leave the organization so we are being consistent with always pulling this data sometime between october 1st and october 15th so that the data reflected is consistent with the sder reporting as well as our average teacher salary report that we include on the budget documents and then this reporting as well i wanted to share too that in the future we plan to be very intentional about where those additional ftes are going to go to and which class sizes or classes that we are targeting to spend those

056extra 13 to 15 fte depending upon the salary of the teacher that we are hiring any questions on that okay great adding social emotional supports you can see that the social workers in 2021 there were 34 in 2020 there were 26. so we did add eight social workers we also added six mental health counselors we did realize um an an inability to hire all of our positions that were available for these um the social emotional supports during 2021 but we are nearly fully staffed in the current year fiscal year 2022 and that's all i have on the mno override any questions on any of that i just wanted to express a thanks for sharing that with us and i really think it was um quite remarkable that our superintendent and staff suggested that we add

057those social emotional counselors and social workers i if we just give a little history it came some students from gilbert high school came into our board meeting with a resolution requesting that help saying that they felt very overwhelmed trying to deal with their peers and feeling that it was more responsibility than they could take so our board president took that resolution and we we passed it and then when the override came up it was one of those things that we worked on and so i just really feel like it was um i'm very thankful that those students came in and that then our superintendent and cabinet supported that and the board supported that because it's been a very great help during the very difficult time for our students so thank you okay anyone else great

058continuous bet okay going into the bond the details of the bond spend so this is the bond spend estimates from the 2015 authority i am not going to go into detail on this particular grid but we have been pretty disciplined following this except that we've been spending the dollars more quickly so we've identified that our needs are more urgent and we've determined that it would be best especially giving the very low interest rates to go ahead and sell bonds earlier and spend them earlier seeing that an all-in interest cost is something in the neighborhood of 1.5 to 2 which is historically extremely low so in addition this was the preliminary bond projected spend estimates for the authority and you can see where the largest spend is in the facility reinvestment also i'd like to point

059out the security camera implementation that you approved last spring we are well into that at this point in time and then um also note the technology infrastructure and equipment line i wanted to point out too that you can see that if you look at the technology infrastructure and equipment note that it does go through 2024 that was by design remember that the 2015 authority requested that we go to a secondary one-to-one initiative so seventh grade through twelfth grade um that does require that we be judicious about replacing our computers annually and so we have considered that schedule as we have done our bond sales and our making sure that we spend those monies within the three year period required so again all of the bond proceeds have been realized for the 2015 authority and to

060date we have sold about 32 million of the 100 million dollars 2019 authority so district-wide spend a summary i'd like to take a few minutes just to speak about the fact that some of the numbers that we are going to share with you we've reconciled them but they're not going to be exact so keep in mind that much of the projects that we do during the summer cross over fiscal years so at one point in time i'll make sure that i let you know that the annual financial report indicates this dollar amount total total but operations and technology services had projects that they anticipated to spend money on that crossed the june 30 fiscal year so there will be a slight discrepancy i mean not a lot like maybe a hundred thousand dollars at the

061most so just so you're prepared for that so bond fund the 2015 authority this just shows you the detail by year of spend i'm not going to go into the detail here i just wanted to make sure that you had that for your own information and this is consistent with what we present to you monthly in the monthly financial report and then really this is the area that i just shared with you so look at the 2021 actual versus the encumbrance release so that basically says that we actually spent 17 million but we were planning on spending 18 almost 18 and a half million so that is what i'm talking about regarding the discrepancy between what's going to be presented in the details in comparison to what the annual financial report is sharing okay again

062same situation with bond fund 630. we keep bond fund 631 and bond fund 630 separate so that we are we know which authority we're working from in each of those so as an example the technology spend we we haven't spent all of the 631 which is the 2015 authority because of what i shared regarding the technology one-to-one initiative but the 2019 authority called for the security camera implementation which would which would mean we would need to spend those bond funds for the security camera since that that's what the voter voted on with those with that authority okay again same idea with the 21 actual versus the encumbrance and note that the annual financial report does not consider both the authorities they just group all the bond spend together as one bond fund and this is

063the bond fund summary year to date again this is consistent with what you've seen in your monthly financial reports this is the bond spend total and this is from the annual financial report indicating how the total amount was spent and realized again as of june 30 excluding the fact that many of the projects were continuing in july and august this past summer so a total of 25.3 million dollars was spent in out of both bond funds during fiscal year 2021. and this is just a graphical representation of that you can see the majority is in the facilities renewal there's a small amount in the cost of issuance and the rest you can see with technology and transportation so technology spend details at this point in time i'd like to hand this over to mr john

064castellano and thank you mr castellano and you could just tell me when to move thank you mrs bens appreciate it dr santa cruz members of the board dr mccord thank you for having me uh here tonight i don't have any robotics tonight i apologize so try to keep you engaged as much but um most of the things you're seeing here again we bring back every year so you're gonna recognize these same light items sparkle obviously these are new for you but like miss betts said we've been following a very regimented schedule with our budget and it is working out exactly how the taxpayers had voted for in that 2015 bond the stuff we i wish we could talk to you about tonight but again supply chain has slowed some of our projects down so our

065data co-location we're just we're now getting started on that unfortunately but hardware is starting to arrive so next time i'll be able to share more of that with you and the security camera project as mrs betts said is now rolling along and we have multiple schools cabled and we'll keep doing that as well waiting for hardware to catch up so again supply chain has just really hurt us but things are starting to move a little bit now so that's that's positive um so we're going to jump i'll jump right into the next slide mrs bets please um so cabling so these are the schools that we cabled in last fiscal year we will currently be cabling the remainder of our schools this fiscal year which we'll report next time i see you with the bond

066report um but we will be 100 percent complete then with re-cabling our schools so that'll set us for for quite a few years to come with cabling but again we keep a regimented schedule and do as many schools as we possibly can during those summertime months to avoid as much disruption as we can next slide um so we uh have replaced a few of our servers at our secondary locations this obviously falls under infrastructure we only have one server at each of our secondary sites because we have the data center but we still need to have one server at those sites for certain things that we do on that campus that we just need that data there for a quicker customer service so when we re-image computers or do certain things on the campus that's

067why we have uh one server at the secondary location site so that's what that picture is there the new ones on the bottom and the gray one is old which they're being removed right now that's just a power supply backup on the right hand side there okay obviously mrs betts talked to our one to one initiative so that continues during this bond spend obviously every year we refresh the ninth graders as they come into high school they get the new device and they keep that for the following four years throughout their high school career we did replace our seventh grade and 10th grade devices at gca on the last spend and then our elementary refresh we were able to refresh 9000 devices last that last fiscal year so that was great we still have thousands

068and thousands more to go but obviously we're looking to address that between semester funds and and some of the other budget if there's left in the 2015 bond span so still rolling along there and nothing really new to report report there with that i believe that's the last slide if you have any questions i'd be happy to answer them other than that thank you for having me um to continue the 2021 transportation spend details i'd like to acknowledge that mr toby would definitely be here to present if i had given him more notice and reminded him that he needed to present so i offered to do the presentation for him so i just wanted to own that so transportation vehicles we did purchase transportation vehicles 54 passenger buses seven of those 72 passenger buses six

069of those and then 10 passenger vans the 54 passenger buses are primarily special needs buses i think that mr tolby's whole hope is to right size the fleet for the specific needs of each individual route throughout gilbert public schools so um and then this is a picture of the front of one of our new special needs buses so this we are working to standardize our fleet to thomas buses you can imagine the advantages of having the same brand of bus as it relates to our mechanics and even our drivers understanding how what the idiosyncrasy idiosyncrasies are of a thomas bus and it's very comparable whether they're in a 54 passenger or a 72 passenger or an 84 passenger purchasing various sizes again to meet the very needs of distance and student ridership that explains the

070reason for the vans we do have a lot of mckinney-vento students which are we are obligated to transport students sometimes as far away as dysart or goodyear because of their homeless status at a point in time in their school career this allows us to have a smaller vehicle to go across town to meet the those needs also we're ensuring that all buses include an integrated seat you can see the picture of the student there that has the harness actually a part of the seat this eliminates the the struggle of having to add the harnesses to existing seats prior to the bus run every day and then having to remove them for middle for junior high or high school students so this streamlines much of our operations cost and our our driver costs associated with prepping

071prepping their buses and then finally um the last focal point for for mr toby has been to ensuring that there is undercarriage for our large buses to make sure that we can expand the use of these buses to longer athletic trips so that there's enough room for football equipment and band equipment etc so he's thinking ahead on what the fleet should look like this is just a regular education 72 passenger bus and then finally these are the 10 passenger vans right right now we haven't really established a van standard as to brand but the last three years we've been buying these ford vans these four 10 passenger vans so are there any any questions on that i i do want to express appreciation for that because i think um if we have one type of

072one brand of school bus that makes getting parts a lot easier that's the other thing um so hopefully we'll settle on the van that we like and then just go with that one as well so and i would say i remember half having to okay the purchase of car seats so now we don't have to the additional cost of car seats are moving them in and out we'll still need them for a while okay the car seats all right so uh this portion of the presentation i will be sharing with albert and i i'm gonna give all the gory boring details and mr dutch over gets to share all the photos of all the great work that he and his teams have done so this is just the total project summary a total of 16.4

073million dollars has been planned for the summer work primarily so mechanical you can see that we spent time and effort at harris islands meridian patterson and then mesquite high school on these mechanical projects to remind you of mechanical that's our hvac lighting and electrical and i'm going to send this over then it's all yours mr dutch over thank you thank you dr mccord dr santa cruz members of the board um so as bonnie stated we'll go through these and groupings um as they are particular to each department or area first we did a grouping of mechanical projects which included hvac which which was the larger of this area this is a before at meridian elementary a package unit to the left and the split system to the right and just a picture of the new

074hvac system i will note that we do when we do implement or replace we utilize uh this opportunity to implement high efficiency units not only does this add reliability to the facility but it gives us a return in saved energy and maintenance costs secured entryway gilbert high this was this was a unique situation so this was the last of our comprehensive high schools to do a secured entry lobby area so as you can see here the prior area was open open hallway office was to the right not very as far as security goes not not not very secure or not very doesn't present um presents a little bit of a challenge there as far as security goes as you can see now we have more of a true entry entryway a true lobby um that

075allows the attendance and um reception area to onboard our yeah attendance and reception area to onboard students as they come in structural this is where the biggest portion of our dollars were spent or our projects were which include classroom flooring painting restrooms portable renovations and things of that such so just a brief overview of of all the spans in this area uh this touches on the move or the relocation of houston elementary arms neely to the houston campus there was a need for a drive so this is a preliminary drawing of what the drive potential was or what the drive idea was as far as implementing that there on the new campus this also shows a expansion of the north east northwest staff lot so keep in mind that the expansion of parking was required

076due to the fact that the there were some somewhere between 750 and 800 students at neely that were now going to have to be at houston whereas there were just under 300 students at houston so it was important that there be not only greater opportunities for parent drop off and pick up but also for additional staff at the new at the new neely facility again this is neely traditional so you get this kind of gives you a quick view of the some of the items that we did touch at this at this site that's repainted there too is that right albert that's repaint yes and this gives you the finished product for the front drive and the new lot are the front the front drive and the parent pickup and drop off lanes this highlights

077the interior paint that was completed at the site as well as carpeting this is just obviously more just a little outline of where the existing this is the current state and just outlining the existing expansion area for the staff parking portable renovations again this is something we try to work on just due to the state of the building and the age of most of our portables they i know they're temporary site uh temporary structures but uh have tended to be a fixture on on most of our campuses and this is at canyon valley oh wow and along with the modernization we try to incorporate the the portable and make it more of uh tie it into the facility so it's more as one building or multi everything ties together as one facility i'm sorry is

078that a refurbishment or a replacement it's a refurbishment you did a wonderful job it looks really good restaurant renovations this is a this is usually pretty big these are most of our restrooms are pretty dated this is mesquite elementary here this is obviously our before picture and here's the after again we'll show one of our other older facilities this is islands elementary before picture and now the after exterior paint again with the facelift and additional renovations we're doing to try to modernize the facilities we're focusing on exterior exterior aesthetics aesthetics as well this is desert ridge high school this is currently with the new paint job i just thought it was a nice piece to start with for desert ridge this is the before outside of their auditorium now this is the after incorporate the

079school colors have you heard anything about this one laura you're are they happy with the colors okay that's good you and i have had conversations about that and then we have greenfield junior high again incorporating updated modern colors as well as school colors into the building harris elementary you can see they had a green before this isn't the new color this is the old color and now this is a new more modern color scheme flooring flooring renovations this is the flooring at desert ridge high school to the left we have the library to the right we have one of the hallways again trying to incorporate new technologies things that are going to save maintenance costs as well as just regular day-to-day operations costs we're moving to the lvt hard flooring which gives it aesthetically a

080better look as well as lowers the maintenance cost it reduces the stripping and waxing of the floor so it's a little bit easier on our our custodial staff and site staffs uh highland high kind of caught this one midway through this they had um ceramic tile obviously this is a demo phase the next picture shows a hallway prior to demo showing the the vct as it was now this is hot call with the lbt throughout as well as the hallway and along with the flooring projects we are incorporating the schools are choosing at this point elementaries mainly to incorporate their their logos or do a mar branding making sure their branding is the center court there in their multi-purpose rooms this is gilbert elementary i just thought it was a nice piece i wanted to

081add it in so these are pending projects projects that we're currently currently looking into projects are currently in progress right now we're we're looking for a kitchen an ap storage expansion at neely neely houston houston campus and then at all five of our comprehensive high schools we're looking into led sports lighting as well as automated irrigation again cost savings maintenance savings things that give back to the district sorry oh it's okay you're just playing with the button uh greenfield junior you saw that we had we did the exterior paint we're also doing exterior learning congregating areas in the north west side of off of the cafe as well as their center courtyard district-wide security cameras bonnie touched on that we're in the middle of that project as well rit is in the middle of that

082project um perimeter fencing again going back to the security pieces and trying to be as least intrusive as possible we're trying to incorporate perimeter fencing at our facilities encouraging the safety of the students as well as adding to the aesthetics of the site we're doing these right now at gilbert high school gilbert al superstition springs their exterior field as well as a mesquite l preschool containment and then transportation bonnie spoke to that as on on the current state of transportation and what they're looking to provide you'll be seeing uh some of these coming to you in the next at the next board meeting for approval to purchase the seven five seven uh eight additional buses um to hopefully be delivered by the summer um can you tell me how many passengers that activity van or

083the activity buses that we're going where we're going to have one at each high school is that my correct understanding that was that's the plan and do you know how many passengers oh my gosh is it 16 i think they're 16 passengers in the vans i believe so right yeah okay and they're they're they're more of a bust but because they're white they don't require the driver to have a cdl okay so and we'll i hope to be providing some training to yes we've already trained quite a few actually that are planning on driving that's great we just want everyone to be safe and i just wanted to share that all these projects these are going on right now these are projects that we are able to do without disrupting school and there's about a

084nine million dollar spend here just to touch on the neely expansion this is this is uh what the plan is to the left is the current layout or format um not to get too too far because it's kind of i don't know if everyone gained their bearings but to the upper to the top of the the the upper left schematic you have the current receiving area uh to the right of that is the current storage area a pe storage area what we're going to do is expand that storage area out into the current receiving area but also in the receiving area food services installing two new uh two well one new freezer and one new exterior refrigerator and then on the lower the lower end we're gonna expand the dry food storage to allow for

085the additional capacity and growth of the facility so the same thing is occurring in nutrition services where there the site was used to serving breakfast and lunch to between 200 and 300 students and now are ramping up to 750 to 800 students each day plus the fact that we're on universal free breakfast and lunch right now so that's making the participation rates um quite high so to move forward because of the the spend and the fact that we're still enjoying extremely low interest rates we are engaging with our financial advisor next week to talk about the next bond sale which hopefully we will close probably at the end of january early february so we're prepared for the next phase of our bond projects and then albert and i will be presenting to you the summer

086bond projects again in the april may time frame so that you have a preview of our plans for the summer final thing is just a quick tax rate summary you've seen this before again the rise in the total tax rate is totally due to the m o override going from 10 to 15 we actually saw a reduction in the secondary tax rate due to the bond because we've maintained or lowered the tax rate due to the very favorable conditions regarding interest rates as well as managing the time frame in which we are paying back all those bonds which is very rapid here in gilbert public schools and that's all we all have if there are any questions we're all available to answer them for you [Music] board members any questions is wood yes thank you

087thank you so much i appreciate everyone who presented tonight and i really appreciate our community for your support through override and bond funds and i think it's really important that we are accountable and show that we are spending how we said that we would bond funds you by law we have to spend them within a certain percentage very close to exactly how we said we would and then the override we have we're showing that we are keeping our commitments and we'll continue to do that so i think that's really important that we do that i just had one question when you we've talked about that we are taking advantage of the advantageous interest rates in the bond market so we are kind of increasing the speed with which our projects are those projects were already

088on our list when we went out for that original bond we're just kind of increasing possibly the speed of them do you anticipate that we would have bond needs sooner than we thought we would again or do you think this will carry us through to where we thought we would be as far as years between bonds um so a couple of things in in the conversations with the financial advisors we have been looking at a very long term schedule of of bonding and paying off debt so the focus has been on not ever increasing the bond levy in fact decreasing it annually but but we're going to be continuing to look at it albert and i are planning to actually look at what we need for this year and next for the summer and next

089to determine how much we should potentially sell in this next bond sale and then figure out how long that will last us and that what what projects will go un unmet with our present um i guess expedited completion of projects the other thing is i think that there was a an arbitrary and help me if i'm wrong albert i i do believe that there was a focus in the past of just only spending what five to five million dollars a year or something and constraining the spend to a level even though you're able to manage a higher level of spend yes we we spent roughly four to five million through the course of the summer which again assessing it with misbets and and trying to move forward and expedite some of these processes or even

090in curriculum changes we found a bigger need so we ended up moving things and continuing with that that spanned into the school year if i could add to that because i remember at a particular point way before this cabinet where we we didn't have any more bonds to sell and so we were phasing down our override and a capital override that we had and so we were constraining our spend because they're just we didn't know when we would have funds just when we would be able to go out and have up on sale so there was a year or two there where we really could not do all the things that were needed um and that was probably that summer where we only spent five million dollars because of the cuts to the district additional

091assistance the lack of bonds and the cuts to our maintenance and operations budget um it it we went down to state funding only for that one year and so once we were able to do the bond sale in 2015 that was a great help to both get the override passed and the bonds passed and i am very very grateful to our voters um i have the second one mrs wood said that they supported that and helped us have that money because there just isn't the there was not the funding at that time to support all of our needs so um i think it's you know i i don't know because i was pretty new on the board at that time what they had spent previously but we just hit a patch there where it was

092very very difficult and the cuts from the state on our district additional assistance didn't help but um we're doing much better now and i appreciate the voters for that because it could have been a different story and and yeah we we were at that point through those lean years we ended up getting into probably a deferred maintenance of over 100 plus million um and then when we did get into the 2015 bond that is we did approach it slowly um we got into the four to five million same standard as four to five million but as we continue to see again with the deferred maintenance and other items that we were unable to address at the time we looked into picking up the pace just just so that we could add that added value to

093our facilities so we didn't just get further in the hole which i feel like we've done a good job addressing and reassessing items as needed as well as not only from community board members students staff as we take these assessments in we continue to address that way we stay keep our facilities modernized as well as hopefully we don't we don't bury ourselves in another hole if we do have to go back into lean years so we try to think ahead of the game um rather just stay with it rather than just staying with the crowd yeah and i would say i mean one of the i think it's a point of pride that we've been able to keep our schools up it's a point of pride for our students to have a you know a

094nice school to attend and for our staff members to have a nice school to work in so i think it's you know i really appreciate the community support on that well and i think due to the fact that we were very low funded in the past it it seemed like there was a greater urgency to catch up if we had the available resources and the fact that the interest rates have been historically low giving us an opportunity that was unprecedented so we have been expediting it but it's a fair comment because we had the failure of the ashland ranch main um main switch yeah main switch care that was an emergency repair that was in excess of a hundred thousand dollars yeah we were over a hundred thousand dollars at that point well and when

095you were talking about transportation i do remember even though the bonds had passed the new buses were not here and the first day of school the first week of school when it was so hot it seemed like there was one report after another of buses breaking down so you know it has made a huge difference so i really appreciate that i appreciate the hard work and i appreciate the voters so thank you ms betts can you speak to the point and it is consistent with miss woods commentary uh the manner in which we're spending you indicated a quicker turnaround on our spend uh can you speak to the positives related to that and taking advantage of the current uh interest rates and how that is benefiting our taxpayer well and i think it's twofold i

096think that by expediting the projects we are benefiting more students every year and that we are even hearing from i mean even albert's son looked at greenfield junior after it was painted and made a comment oh my gosh this looks like this looks terrific so i think that there i mean at least when i since i've been here i felt a sense of urgency of trying to bring our school sites up to par across the school district so number one is to benefit our students and staff and then secondarily the the relationship between the low interest rate and the benefit to the taxpayer is that the levy is that much lower and their tax rate will go down over time and the ability we have to not have long-term debt in my history debt has

097been extended between 20 and 30 years and here in gilbert our average is 7 to 10 which is really remarkable that we're able to pay that down and off so quickly and still meet the needs of our schools and our students one thing bonnie i'll just add to that it helps us be reactive or not react i'm sorry uh proactive rather than being reactive um and then heightened sight being everything um allowing us to do so many projects and and a wide variety of projects we tend to have buying power as well and and being in the state we are now actually eliminated a lot of issues we may have ran into with again i mean we still jumped through a lot of hurdles this past summer with supply chains and work shortages and things

098like that but i felt we were still in a good position there were small inconveniences compared to where they could have been if we had waited or or drug our feet or only handled minimal um products or projects thank you for that mr dutch over mr parker i just wanted to say uh is it working okay uh i visited gca last week and the work you guys have done over there is pretty amazing when they switched to school over from a junior high the only comment i had from a couple of parents were concerned about the lighting on the athletic field and so other than that they were really happy so just one pass that on great thank you thank you mr parker and to your point on being proactive miss dutch over i appreciate

099that because we we saw the volume of scheduled projects that we were unable to get to prior to this and we've been able to at least be very judicious about our spend and how we're going to address those projects along with the fact that it's a it's a real overt and obvious way to illustrate that we are certainly taking care of this community's investment investment in all of these facilities some 41 plus of them and if i could just add i just really wanted to call out mr dutch over it's really a pleasure to work with a director of operations that has such a sense of urgency to the point where two days before school i caught him with a vacuum pack on his back vacuuming the floor at neely to make sure it was

100ready for students on the first day of school that doesn't happen very often that was a photo op i got a picture and i didn't get it in the presentation i should have sent it to his wife because i'm pretty sure that doesn't happen that's just one example so it's been a pleasure to get all this work done and it's largely due to mr dutch over so i just wanted you all to know that and the point is not understated the benefactors of all of this work are our students so good job mr dutch over and all of you who presented this evening thank you i just want to piggyback on that just to thank my crew as well because it's not me by myself so um i don't want them to beat me up

101tomorrow morning okay no they they take a lot of the grind off of my back too and they should take a lot of pride in the work they've done anything else board members thank you miss betts thank you mr dutch over mr castellanos appreciate that we will now move to item 10 which is consent agenda items for consideration discussion direction and possible approval we are ready to entertain a motion on the consent agenda i moved that we approved the consent agenda items removing item 10.07 and 10.08 for further discussion thank you ms humphries there's motion is there a second second thank you mr parker it's been moved and seconded that we approve the consent agenda item items as printed and presented excluding item 10.07 10.08 any discussion seeing no discussion we will vote on the

102consent agenda items as stated in the motion all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries 4-0 we move now to item 10.07 is there a motion uh i move that we approve the second read of policy bedd rules of order and also the second read of policy behd public participation at board meetings it's been moved and seconded unmoved that we entertained 10.07 10.08 any motion is there a second second it's been moved and seconded we will discuss each individually seven first and then eight but is there any discussion um if no one else has i would like to i wanted to just share some thoughts on this these two policies we've gone over them probably three or four times in policy meeting so i just wanted to

103share some thoughts before we finalized our vote on policy bedd the change is to sorry i need to get my papers the change is to the language um and it was mentioned tonight in public comment the governing board president may receive recess the meeting without a vote of the governing board in order to maintain decorum and governing board meeting rules of order and as people have mentioned they don't want a board president to abuse their position to end a meeting and not allow the input of constituents and i i concur that is a valid concern however i did some investigation and follow up and learned a little bit more about some situations in our state both in the vail district and the scottsdale district a lot of times when we when there have been contentious

104board meetings it's not necessarily the community coming in with that contention it's outside groups and in the situation in scottsdale and vail the board mating board meeting became so contentious that students who were there for recognition were beginning were becoming concerned so it's not just the safety of the governing board that we have to consider it's the safety of the students and families and staff who are attending those meetings so i understand that this is concerning that we don't want a board president to abuse their power i will address that in a few minutes because i think um i i just don't think a change of policy is going to constrain a board president who is spent on abusing their position and the reason i put both together is i wanted to make a few

105comments about policy bedh on this policy i wanted to comment the the reason it's on the agenda is for the presentations of unsolicited services will not be permitted but i wanted to go back and comment to something that was adopted earlier which is under the letter c where we gave some a better definition of what would happen if we had a number of speakers come to the meeting i personally there's there's several different ways we can deal with a influx of speakers we can limit the time for public comment we can limit the number of speakers or we can limit the time that each speaker has i personally want to allow each person to speak and in a particular board meeting earlier i believe we had about 70 people lined up to speak and 50

106of those got to speak and i put this forward to the rest of the board because i felt that you know as much as i want to allow everyone three minutes when you have 70 speakers that gets a little bit difficult for everyone because of the length of the meeting and we also have to remember the open meeting law we want to be transparent we don't want meetings that go late into the night because then people aren't able to be there or aren't they aren't able to watch so that's why i put that forward but when we're talking about someone who is abusing their authority that is a grave concern and i um recently had a conversation with a friend who was a board member in another district and is struggling with this very concern

107so i wanted to address that issue because when i came on the board i was part of a very dysfunctional board a very dysfunctional board and so i i want to put forward that by the time a board president would end a meeting early or constrained speakers the damage has already been done when you see those things happen behind the scenes things have happened to micromanage the district and the damage has been done so i want to put forward there's three things that i think help very greatly in keeping this from happening and one is the community none of us select whom we serve with up here it is totally the selection of the community and so when the community is voting i suggest that you really look at candidates and you pick candidates who

108have integrity dedication knowledge and empathy with no agenda that they are here for the good of the students and the staff in the public schools and i would say if things happen the community needs to hold board members accountable and that's why i do not want to limit public speaking because my experience was we had packed board meetings for two years and there was an attempt to limit public comment but those people were coming to the board and holding their accountable for some very very hard decisions we have to remember that we're serving as board members we're affecting the entire community the career choices of staff and the education of students so the second way i think it's really important to help people to understand what their role is i think it's really important for

109us as board members both individually and as a board to get professional development and i understand that not everybody agrees with everything that the arizona school board association says or does neither do i we are a member-driven organization we have many differences and we try to come together to bridge those differences and move forward for what is good for kids so i it's really important that people go get that professional development to learn what their role as a board member is to learn about open meeting law to learn about running a meeting and to talk and network with other board members so if they are dealing with a challenge then they have other people who have similar experiences to draw on um and the third third way is relationship building i think it's really important

110to build trust between the superintendent and the board and to build trust between the board members that's why it's important to have those retreats and to really work together and i feel like we we can tell the difference between a well-functioning board and a poorly functioning board and so i just wanted to address those concerns because i do think they are very valid but i don't think that this these changes in policy will affect um someone who wants to abuse that position i think there are other things that can be done and should be done that are much more impactful and with that i'll end my comments thank you miss humphries any additional commentary thanks ms wood thank you um just back to policy b-e-d-d rules of order i do believe that it's important and

111i've heard my fellow board members share similar sentiment that we have public comment and that we are received the public comment that that's important that's an important part of our board meeting i also believe it's important to have order and to have a well-functioning board meeting to to get the business done that we're here to do but i do have concern of giving a significant power to one board member the board president in this case not specifically personally dr santa cruz but just in in as a board president and i think there's already a mechanism in place in the policy to address these situations as a five member board that we could have a motion in and a second and then vote on it and i think that that would be sufficient to address any

112needs that come up and i i would prefer that we keep the policy as is you miss wood any additional comments i'm actually in favor of this i i think there are unique circumstances at times out of the ordinary and hopefully would never have to be used but in a situation like that uh i i uh i'm in favor of giving the board president that authority mr dr sanchez if i could just say one more thing um under the circumstances with vail and scottsdale i believe that the meetings were ended at the suggestion of the police officers who were there that was how um dire the circumstances where they felt it would be more safe for everyone if the meeting were ended so with that i have to support this policy i um mrs wood

113if is there a way that we could reword that that um you could have buy in on that particular change in the policy i mean i'd be willing to table it if you want to come back next month if you had some wording that you felt would um try and i because i don't have an idea of how to change that wording um i just under the circumstances that were in scottsdale and vail um it was at the recommendation of the police officers that the meeting ended and i think when you get to that point um and and we don't you know we have security here we don't usually have police we have had at some times because of the number of attendees or the the tension we've we've occasionally had police officers come so

114it can't be at the recommendation of police because we don't always have police here so is there a is there would you like a month to think about that and take it back to policy off the top of my head i don't have any suggestions other than what's already in place i mean we've discussed it in policy yeah i don't know if there's i i don't know i again my concern is limiting it to a one two uh to the board president and i don't know that we're gonna come to uh well i appreciate that you're asking i just i was hoping that maybe yeah if you had some time to think we could come to some kind of a consensus on this any additional commentary okay done then we will vote on each item

115individually even though the motion encompassed both item 10.07 motion second read is to adopt b-e-d-d rules of order all those in favor of the policy proposal second read as presented please signify by saying aye aye all those opposed aye motion carries 3-1 item 10.08 policy development approval second read adoption of policy bedh public participation board meetings and we have discussed that all those in favor of the second read and adoption of policy please signify by saying aye aye aye all those opposed the same motion carries four zero item eleven action items for consideration discussion direction and possible approval item 11.01 dr mccord anything by way of rationale yes sir thank you dr santa cruz governing board members this item is related to the baseball field at desert ridge high school desert ridge has been in

116place for close to 20 years and over time land gets developed and homes are built and on the south side of the school adjacent to the baseball field is a development called mulberry which is was developed by blanford homes and at that time where the baseball field sits as well as where houses are in relation to the proximity to the baseball field foul balls have over time went into the housing development created some damage um and then there was some construction of a net that was put together by blanford homes and although that attempt was uh a good one it still does not stop the balls in this proposal is to construct a hundred foot structure to stop uh errant baseballs entering into that neighborhood again this is uh something that we've worked with blanford

117homes on over the last several months and tonight we bring a proposal to you thank you dr mccord so you have rationale for item 11.01 is there a motion i move that the board approve and authorize the superintendent to enter into the cost sharing agreement with blanford homes in form posted with agenda item 11.01 but with changes as follows strike the language mbi builders llc and desert vista 100 llc from the first paragraph in paragraph three the first sentence will read in exchange for blandford's participation in the cost sharing agreement the district releases and waives blanford mbi builders llc and desert vista 100 llc and their related companies affiliates members officers employees and agents the released parties from any and all liability arising from and the district without limitation agrees to defend a dem i'd

118indemnify and hold the release parties harmless from and then continue with the rest of the paragraph with the remainder paragraph three remaining the same as the form posted with agenda item 11.01 you miss humphries is there a second a second thank you mr parker that was a rather long motion i take it that you understand it and is there any discussion i just wanted to thank blandford homes i i think they're doing the right thing in helping us to solve this problem desert ridge has been there for many many more years in the neighborhood but you know considering we just have to move forward and we appreciate their helping us do that thank you ms humphries any additional commentary seeing none we will vote on item 11.01 you have heard the motion second you understand

119the nature of the motion all those in favor please signify by saying aye those opposed the same motion carries 4-0 item 11.02 discussion possible action related to approving save cooperation contract 17-03 awarded to sun valley builders dr mccord any rationale this just goes along with item 11.1 in terms of awarding the contract to sun valley builders to construct the polls and netting to protect the community as well as the rest of the individuals over there so this motion will help the project move forward is that correct that is correct item eleven point zero two is there a motion some moves thank you so much thank you mr parker then and thank you miss humphries for the second is any discussion dr santa cruz just that we went out for the pure procurement procurement as we

120always do and this this came back as the the best bid and the timeliness as well so just wanted to make that note thank you miss wood this was indeed a very favorable offer so any other discussion seeing none we will vote all those in favor of item 11.02 please subscribe by saying aye aye aye those opposed the same motion carries for zero item 11.03 discussion consideration give direction on voting on one bylaw change proposal for the arizona school boards association dr mccord any rationale i'll just read the uh rationale to everyone with unanimous approval of the asba hispanic native american indian caucus and asba board of directors this change is being sought by the hispanic native american indian caucus it would create a seat on the asba board of directors so the hispanic and

121native american interests can be represented simultaneously on the board currently there is one seat on the asba board of directors designated for the representative of the hnaic and it alternates every two years between hispanic representation native american representation creating gaps in representation by contrast the black alliance has a seat on the asba board of directors ensuring representation on the board at all times this proposed bylaw change also provides effect flexibility of the hnaic to split into two distinct groups if its members so choose and allows those groups to change their names and be recognized under the new names thank you dr mccord you heard the rationale a motion on 11.02 would in effect direct a voting member of this board to either affirm the bylaw change or reject the bylaw change is there a motion

122i move that um the gilbert public schools governing board vote yes on the byline change from the arizona school boards association is there a second a second thank you mr parker is there any discussion um i i want to give some input on this this is something i have served on the board of directors for five years and this is something we have been working on for five years for from the the entire time that i have served there um i will say that the board of directors is a you know we are very a wide very diverse group of people but we work together in a very good way and we can find a lot of consensus also each of us because we have hispanic students because we have native american students and because

123we have black students in our district we can each be a member of the the black alliance or the hispanic native american caucus or both i have been a member of the black alliance for i think probably seven or eight years and um i've learned a lot through that association and and have attended also some of the um hispanic and native american meetings so i think it it is one more seat on the board but i think it's a very positive move forward to give representation to um as many as we can and and we all can be members of those alliances and caucuses thank you ms i'm afraid there's any other commentary miss wood thank you dr santa cruz i think my concern is that in adding one more seat this would in effect

124dilute the vote that we have currently which is two maricopa county representatives and that would be that's my concern in in adding this other seat but it really doesn't because you can be involved in those organizations so you can actually be represented twice or three times on the board as a board member in maricopa county as a member of the black alliance and as a member of the native american hispanic caucus right which they're already represented right now well i mean you as a board member can be a member of that organization which then represents you again on the board if you so choose thank you miss wood thank you miss humphreys my comment would be uh that this creates representation for all membership groups involved in asba and so i would support the amendment

125request for change any additional comments i think that i feel that we we need to be representative of our population and that this is something that will help do that all right the additional commentary just to repeat then item 11.03 as an affirmative vote would then affirm this board's support for the amendment all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same aye motion carries three one we are at item 12 items for future agenda item 12.01 again just a reminder to board members if you have uh items that you wish to be placed on the agenda if they're not uppermost in your mind right now and wish to articulate that then please get a hold of miss wilson and we will have her take your request and discuss it for

126a future agenda item 13 13.01 our committee reports gilbert education foundation ms humphreys um i wanted to report that we had a very successful bowl-a-thon at the end of september and um raised a record amount and so we really appreciate all of our sponsors who purchased lanes and donated and it was a very fun evening also we have our innovation grants that can go to our staff members and teachers those are up on our website and people can go there to apply um and we will be having our scholarships for students and staff will be up on the website in november and so please look for those um it's you know it's a very busy time for gilbert education foundation i also wanted to just mention um at the arizona school board association maricopa county

127meeting we had some board members who received recognition ms laurie wood and miss sheila eugetti and miss gabby wilson all received awards at the county meeting so i wanted to report that congratulations thank you ms humphries item 13.02 city of mesa liaison ms wood yes i just wanted to share that desert ridge high school student council in partnership with the city of mesa police and other mesa government are having a community trunk or treat this saturday and that's a great event we're appreciative of the city of mesa and the students and staff at desert ridge high school for coming together for that and hope that they have a great a great night thank you miss wood item 13.03 the town of gilbert liaison and dr mccoy i'll defer to you anything that you would like

128to add there nothing in particular that their bond issue is up for election next tuesday thank you sir item 13.04 is finance and audit committee mr parker yes we had our uh the first meeting that i attended uh and that was more of an administrative uh meeting setting up some policies and and that type of thing i did find out that uh we should be very proud of our accounting people in the district have had a clean audit last year for first time in a while and really doing a great job thank you mr parker 13.05 insurance trust committee ms eugetti is not with us this evening we wish her a speedy recovery item 13.06 legislative information at this point and i have nothing additional to report so we move to item 14 which is

129meeting dates dr mccord thank you dr santa cruz governing board members november 9th we have a board work study and brief board business meeting november 16th is a policy meeting and november 30th is a regular board business meeting thank you sir we are at item 15 which is adjournment item 15.01 is there a motion a motion for adjournment thank you mr parker is there a second second thank you miss humphries is there a discussion seeing that there is no discussion we will vote on adjournment all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye those opposed the same thank you the motion carries 4-0 we are adjourned we appreciate the attendance of those of you on live stream and those of you who were here in the boardroom we wish you good night you