Gilbert Public Schools District Board Meeting 08/24/2021

001good evening call this board meeting to order today is tuesday august the 24th this is a regularly scheduled board meeting we have a need for an executive session and actually we have two listed and what i would like to request is that as i call for a motion that your motion include item 1.01 and 1.02 since they are so closely attached and then we will reconvene after our executive session welcome to those of you here in the building and welcome to those of you who are watching on live stream board members good evening is there a motion i move for executive session pursuant to ars 38-431.03 a8 and executive session pursuant to ars 38-431.03 a3 um concurrently thank you mrs humphries is there a second thank you mr parker it's been moved and seconded is

002there any discussion seeing none we will call for a vote all those in favor of moving to executive session including item 1.01 and 1.02 please signify by saying i i those oppose the same motion carries we will move to executive session and reconvene after welcome to join a conference now please enter a meeting number followed by pound if you are the meeting host please enter your pin otherwise the pin you entered is invalid please re-enter your pin how's test test me well good evening we will call our meeting back to order we thank you for your indulgence those of you in the room and those of you who are watching on live stream just concluded an executive session which started at five o'clock we are now ready for this evening's business meeting miss wilson we're

003at item 2 2.01 we just called me to order we will do a moment of silence then we'll do the pledge of allegiance led by mr parker and then we'll do our roll call would you please join me in a moment of silence enjoyment of pledge please pledge of the allegiance states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god and indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you we moved to item 2.04 miss wilson would you please call roll dr charles santa cruz here miss laurie wood here miss sheila eugetti here miss jill humphries here mr bill parker mr president all board members are present you have a quorum thank you mrs wilson red item three it is approval of this evening's agenda 3.01 is there a motion

004i move that we approve the agenda tonight thank you miss wood is there a second second thank you mrs humphries is there any discussion seeing none we will vote all those in favor of approving this evening's agenda item 3.01 please signify by saying aye those oppose the same i'm going to say the motion carries five zero monsieur jetty is on telephonically and it's intermittent there so i'm hoping that she can hear us item four request to speak to the governing board will we please play the recorded message 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 the open call to the public individual board members

005may 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-e-k-e-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 public schools website thank you we have nine requests to speak this evening

006we will take them in this order and please beg your pardon if i massacre your name i don't intend to do that and just as a matter of information we received about correspondence pieces from our interactive internet source we have read emails by the dozens and we have this opportunity this evening so in this order talia lawless hillary bank and christiane tijum tanjan time okay hi my name is stella wallace and i go to greenfield elementary i am nine years old and i don't feel safe here's the reason why nobody is wearing masks and i have already been sick twice this year just remember there are a lot of people suffering of coven 19 right now so please make a chain change so people like me can feel safer thank you tilly hi it's hilary

007rank not hillary bank i'm sorry i look like a bee hello i understand that masks are under discussion tonight and not up for vote and i hope it stays that way i'm here because i care about my children their health their freedom and their future i'm here to ask the school board to uphold the governor's mandate against forcing children to wear masks in school i could sit here and read the scientific research from the cdc pubmed and peer-reviewed sources showing that children have a survival rate from code that is 99.997 percent and that adults ages 20 to 49 years have a 99.98 chance of survival or even that the cdc a cdc study determined that children are not shown to be drivers of the pandemic or a study that that the cdc conducted along with

008numerous other studies that showed that cloth masks are not effective in preventing transmission of the virus or even that studies have shown that mass are detrimental to children for a variety of reasons or i could ask why the government cdc mainstream media and even some school board members aren't talking about the survival rate of covid instead they talk about the mortality rate or why aren't we talking about preventative measures adults and children can take to strengthen their natural immunity however i won't because i know facts in science don't matter to those people who are still pushing mass in schools no i want to talk about our rights my constitutional rights as a free person in america and my rights as a parent this isn't about about a matter of the greater good this is a

009matter of our god-given rights and freedoms if you offered me a car seat but the car seat couldn't keep my child safe i'd decline the car seat not because i'm against your right to choose to use that car seat i just find something that's a better fit for keeping my child safe since i'm not really interested in things that don't work the way they're supposed to or do it safely i'm not really interested in a false sense of security what is so terrifying to me about what is going on in our world right now is that instead of the democracy we're all raised in that provides us the privileges that we have and our children have people are so willing to give up and throw away their right to make medical choices for themselves and

010their children my body and my children's body do not belong to the government school or even other parents i think it's safe to say for the other parents who are here up speaking about mass we don't want to deny any other parent or person the right to make the decision to wear a mask for themselves and their children that is your choice and right and as american citizen but your fear is not my fear your fear is not my children's fear your fear does not have the right to interfere with my children's education and health or my children's future as a free american citizen what we tolerate today is what our children will embrace tomorrow thank you [Applause] hello my name is christianne time and this is nerve wracking and i applaud you for getting

011up here and being brave enough to do this i'm here for my children i'm going to read you a letter that i wrote to our school principal for which i have not received a response but i want to share it with you as i watch the coven numbers rise and listen to the recommendations from the cdc i'm increasingly troubled by some things at my school and i'm hoping you may be able to help me understand or even better change it firstly why are the kids desks arranged in clusters and facing each other my friend's public school in tempe has the same configuration but has plexiglas in between that makes sense but doing the same with no plexiglas and the kids not wearing masks is crazy or at the very least hubris also why is there

012no attempt at distancing them from each other at lunch if i'm being honest it really appears from the outside like no one there cares about trying to keep our kids from contracting kovid and what about masks ducey's executive order ties the hands of public schools in terms of mandates although that hasn't stopped several other schools from doing what they know to be right anyway and also reaches my workplace the ua college of medicine however our course director greeted our incoming class now the vast majority of the 120 new first year med students were unmasked at the time by saying i can't make you wear a mask but i can ask you and i am asking all 120 have worn a mask to class from that moment on because she is in a position of authority

013and commands respect she is also a doctor and knows the difference that face coverings make not only do i wish that you personally would mask up because your staff and your students look to you to lead by example but because even those who are vaccinated can still spread it please consider also the difference between putting signs up at school and on district websites that say masks are optional and those that say masks are encouraged neither defies any executive orders but the two messages convey very different attitudes if elementary age kids had the option of being vaccinated i would be more understanding of the lack of precautions but they don't have that option yet they're sitting ducks they all wore masks last year why to protect the teachers and now that the teachers can be vaccinated

014what we don't care anymore again that's how it appears and just in case you think that covid doesn't affect kids as badly as adults let me tell you about my step-brother who had to watch his nine-year-old otherwise perfectly healthy and active daughter lose her ability to stand up let alone walk suffer through spinal taps and three hour long mris and then tolerate weeks of physical therapy all thanks to the effects of covid the fact is while initial symptoms may be mild we do not know what the long-term effects of this are and it is our responsibility as adults to do what we can to protect our children i realize some of you may suggest global academy we did that all last year and my daughter in particularly is truly suffering at the thought of going

015back to online school next kelsey wharton amber mcafee and jocelyn kosher hi i'm kelsey wharton i'm a little nervous to do this um so i'm a mom of three i have a third grader a first grader and a one-year-old my boys go to our neighborhood school carol ray ranch um i do just want to take up some of my time i do want to thank the board and i want to thank everyone here we are all weary and sick of talking about covid and it is not any of your jobs to be public health officials and epidemiologists and i just want to say that i appreciate the difficult position that you're in the fact of the matter is that our kids are getting sick this year alone our school already has had nearly as many

016positive cases of kovid as we did all of last year my family is just finishing a quarantine after my third grader was exposed to a classmate who tested positive we have been in school 13 days at that point barely getting into our routine and i am really worried about what the rest of the school year looks like both in terms of my children getting sick and also just the disruption to learning the inconvenience the parents who are needing to do work i think we can all agree that last year was inconvenient to say the least if not very scary i know that the districts have to follow state mandate but i want to use my voice tonight to urge you to do everything that you can within your power please encourage masks your policy is

017to encourage but not require masks and you could do more to convey that message you could ask your principals to convey that message i wish that principals were reporting numbers weekly to parents so that parents could see absences and could see the numbers of children being affected in the schools please ensure that our schools have the the best ventilation systems possible i know there is federal funding for upgrading ventilation systems if that hasn't been done i would really hope that that could be looked into i know all of us are here tonight because we care so deeply about our children and care deeply about the children in our community and i just feel we must do all that we can to protect them thank you [Applause] i wanted to welcome mr parker i'm glad our

018board is full again i was here last month and i listed a whole bunch of stats and numbers of what i believe to be true this month i'm not going to bore you with that what i do want to say is once again please keep masks optional and the reality is kids don't need these interventions just by the nature of being a kid we don't really know the long-term effects of covid like someone said and we also don't know the long-term effects of masking but we have seen short-term effects which i talked about last time which was suicide depression all sorts of mental health issues are just booming in children so i realize your job is hard to decide which one do you choose but i think you need to air on one listening to

019the public you had a public comment forum there were 680 i believe you said and i would wager after reading them that 630 were pro no mass or pro parental choice let the parents choose the people of gilbert have spoken and i would also encourage each of you if you have not drive by a school elementary junior high high school check out what lunch looks like walk the halls no one's wearing masks the people have spoken we did masks and where are we we're in the same place masks aren't the mitigation measure we were told they were especially on children what's the outcome no one knows how long are these kids going to be in masks forever is that what you want for your children and grandchildren what kind of life is that and you

020can say oh better than a dead kid these kids are not dying from coven we take risks every day if we're going to say that kids need to be in masks it's too dangerous then i sure as heck every hope that every person that is asking for kids in masks is going to fill in their pool because way more kids have died of drowning than from covid i hope that they're never going to drive again because the numbers for kids who die in car accidents are far greater than covet so once again i'm asking you as a mom please look at sweden sweden has showed us we do not need to put our kids in masts look at florida florida has showed us that the schools and the districts that mandated masks and the ones

021who didn't there's almost no difference between them masks are not the mitigation measure that are going to stop covet children don't drive covid everyone who's had a chance to be vaccinated has had that chance it's becoming endemic that's the flu that's the cold we live with it and each family should have the choice how to protect their children i have to sign a form if you are going to give my child tylenol or aspirin or anything else at school you give me that choice to allow you to do it or not i'm asking you please give me and all the other parents the choice to choose to mask up our kids or not i really appreciate it thank you [Applause] hi my name is justilyn kauser and i'm just going to take a brief minute

022to thank you for allowing our children to come to school without masks we as parents are so grateful that they can feel somewhat normal that they can see their teachers smile hear their teachers talk see the expressions on their friends faces it has made all the difference this year and i know that this is a hot topic i know people feel strongly and i want you to know that as parents we're not against masks we are against mandates if someone fills the need to wear a mask or to mask their child or they feel uncomfortable being around groups without a mask on or fear of any type then by all means they should wear a mask but for those of us that don't feel those things that are more worried about other effects then we

023should have that choice too to send our children without masks i'm grateful that you guys have listened to us as a board your job is to represent the voice of the community like amber said come to our schools walk around see how many students feel comfortable being at school without a mask it is the vast majority see how many teachers are comfortable there without masks again at least in my children's school it is the vast majority and i am grateful for all that you have done and i hope that we can maintain a normal year and keep masks off those that don't want them thanks [Applause] our final three speakers i believe it's todd searle josh barton and christopher wilson it's actually todd there's an eye in there instead hello um seriously people stop buying

024masks they are not effective in preventing general public from catching chronovirus this was from the surgeon general jerome adams the typical masculine in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus which is small enough to pass through the material dr anthony fauci said that they said this because it's always been well known among scientists and researchers that masks did not reduce viral transmission of 14 randomized control trials that have tested the effectiveness of masks and preventing the transmission of respiratory viruses 11 suggests masks are either useless or counterproductive the remaining three suggest mass may be useful but not necessarily to a statistically significant degree a french study from 2010 which randomly placed sick patients and their household contacts into a mass group or a non-mass group within one week 15.8 percent of

025household contacts and the no mass control group and 16.2 percent and the mass group developed an influenza-like illness the 0.4 percent difference between the groups was statistically insignificant the cdc's own data also show 70.6 percent of covid 19 patients reported always wearing a cloth mask or face covering and the 14 days preceding their illness 14.4 percent reported having worn a mask often so a total of 18 85 percent of people who came down with coven 19 had often or always worn a mask when we look at the arizona specific data concerning risk amongst children under the age of 21 because that's the lowest that they had it being hospitalized with covid they make up just 3.6 percent of all hospitalizations similar to the seasonal flu children under 21 in arizona make up just 0.19 percent

026of the deaths that's 35 total deaths since we've been tracking covid a 2009 study funded by the cdc added hand washing to the mix to see if masked grain would work better in combination with hand hygiene one group was instructed on the use of hand hygiene only a second group used both hand washing and face masks and a third group did nothing while the mask plus hand washing group fared statistically better than the control group in one measure the hand washing only group beat the control group to a statistically significant degree in two measures this suggests hand washing alone was actually the most effective measure according to the authors no additional benefit was observed when face mask use was added to hand hygiene by comparison with hand hygiene alone mask wearing does not protect children

027it protects school boards but math squaring also as we saw last year reduces enrollment at gps schools this year we are facing a teacher shortage of here so severe that you're having to hire agency teachers and no one else wants them have you considered the risk to our district if you mandate mass again and enrollment and subsequent funding drops significantly putting our district even further behind this my third board meeting i'd much rather be at home um last year when you decided to continue the them [Applause] thank you ladies and gentlemen of the board i'm sure you've heard enough about masking to bleed out of your ears but i have a few more things to say and i hope the board has some time to listen my goal in in standing before you is twofold

028first it is to thank you for your courage i know that it takes a great deal of courage to stand and to protect the desires and the rights of your constituents when there is a lot of public and private pressure to do otherwise and i am grateful that this board has thus far stood up and has decided to defend what its constituents want and has also decided to follow arizona law because i think it is an important thing that we provide to our students and our children the example of actually following and obeying that law particularly when it has been enacted by the legislature and signed by the governor through the process that we're teaching our kids about and i'm a lawyer so and a father of a child that is in gilbert schools and

029so that that knowledge and that respect for the law is vitally important to me in my career and i want to encourage the board to continue to follow that law and and continue to let the legislature be the guiding light on this because they have chosen to do so and they have the right to do so under our constitution if the board is considering playing some kind of gamesmanship with the law which i know is not technically effective until a few weeks from now i would encourage the board to look at the statistics recently in may there was a the cdc quietly released a study that was the largest study of masking and other interventions in the united states ever done regret relating to coping 19 it covered 90 000 students in 169 schools in

030the state of georgia it covered several months of time and that study asked whether or not many of the interventions we have looked at over the last year and utilized over the last year were effective of note and and interestingly had um quietly kept below the headline was the fact that this study found that neither masking plastic barriers nor social distancing were effective at eliminating or reducing or even changing the number of covalent infections in these georgia schools that study was published on may 21st 2021 just a few uh just a month ago i would encourage the board to take a look at that and to really spend some time studying if they're considering changing their position here because i think it is by and far one of the most effective studies we have and

031it's not the only one there have been studies in korea vietnam and the united kingdom well before covid discussing the effects the efficacy of cloth face masks and they have all found that there is a minimal or no change in the use of those masks ladies and gentlemen of the board i'm grateful for your courage thus far in my life in my job i'm frequently asked to weigh the evidence and i would encourage you as members of the board to weigh the evidence here there's a positive evidence and support of forcing our children to wear masks and given that paucity of evidence i would ask you to leave that choice to the children let those who are comfortable wear masks and let those who are not [Applause] how are you my name is chris wilson

032um i'm a father of four beautiful children and i'd like to thank you for your service obviously you guys spend a lot of time uh in your role and we get to go home and do other things so i really appreciate that i'd also like to applaud the young lady here for stepping up and saying what she has to say because that's why we are here exactly aside from all statistics and things the reason why i'm here is because personal choice is really important to me and i didn't discover that until december of last year i went and had 16 vials of blood drawn in that period i also spent about 40 minutes in that clinical setting at sonora quest laboratories during that period i had a mask on and i'm not one who normally

033wears masks and i couldn't quite understand why i felt a certain way after wearing my mask it wasn't until i met with my doctor afterward and throughout all the results they said i was healthy as a horse except for the fact that i had extremely high levels of co2 in my blood and the doctor asked me were you hyperventilating was there something wrong with you at the time were you nervous or scared and i said no it doesn't bother me at all and then the doctor caught herself and said were you wearing a mask and i said yes actually i was mine were far above acceptable levels and this is where it concerns me for my children because my children sharing half of my dna right as they progress during school and if they were

034required to wear a mask the same way it affects me i get groggy i get uncomfortable it's hard for me to focus it's hard for me to do my best work which is part of the reason why we're not going back into the office right now because they are not sure on the mass portion of this and so i i'd like for you guys to err on the side of freedom i come from a small town and the mayor there last year during 4th of july said if you'd like to come participate in 4th of july come if not don't come if you'd like to wear a mask wear a mask if you don't want to you don't have to but i'd like you to err on the side of freedom so i appreciate so

035far this this school year that my kids can go back to school but i also think that we should consider that parents know their children they know how their children act they know their health history they know everything about them because ideally they've been with them for a very long time and i think for them it's important meaning our our parents those that are here to make the choice for their own children because if they're anything like me a mask actually affects me quite a lot and i actually have the evidence now to show myself why right and i don't think that we should mandate anything unless you're a parent to your own child and in that case you are the judge and you are their best advocate and i thank you very much for

036your time that was our last speaker we thank those of you who came forward we'll now move to item 5 reports item 5.01 is our monthly budget reports we'll have item 5.01 and 5.02 dr mccord do you want to turn it over to miss pets yes here we are again for our monthly budget reports ms betts and her crew do a phenomenal job reporting back to the board about all of the financials for our district good evening dr santa cruz governing board members dr mccord we are going to combine the monthly financial report with the budget revision the budget revision number one report so i'll stop between the two of them of course to ask any questions but then we'll move right into the next presentation okay very good thank you um and i've decided

037to do this on my computer so that i don't have to point at chon anymore and hope that the powerpoint will advance so just wanted to point out that on this financial report the budgeted funds the budgeted column indicates the 2022 adopted budget which was approved june 29th and then the cash funds of course are also reflective of the adopted budget know that when we go into budget revision number two which we expect to be in the january time frame all those numbers will be updated based upon the final encumbrance period transactional processes okay so i just wanted to point out the two main funds here in our district operating fund grid so maintenance operations and classroom site fund both of those you can see the available balance right now is quite high but please

038understand that this is reflective of one month of activity and our teachers have not yet come back so you will see the encumbrance significantly increase as we proceed through the school year also classroom site fund remember that classroom site fund changed significantly and the requirement to have three separate funds has been eliminated so the adopted budget reflects the three combined funds that were formerly 11 12 and 13 now are all in fund 10. and then finally the unrestricted capital outlay you can see that we still have an available balance of 17 million dollars we're working really hard right now at getting all that money allocated out to our schools to make sure that we're using that unrestricted capital appropriately so next our federal grants just wanted to point out the esg the enrollment stabilization grant

039sr1 and sr2 that all those monies have been fully spent effective june 30 of 2021 and you can see the sr3 the 22 million dollars we have received a significant amount of stakeholder input on the sr-3 and we hope to get the application in probably next week based upon that input we are in the process of collating that and the your leadership team will be making recommendations starting on monday okay classroom site fund performance pay we had kept this out as a special fund in the state fund grid before but note that it's zero because all that information is now in the district operating funds and though statute requires that we still have a pay for performance component in classroom site fund it's not required to transact better report that in its own separate fund

040so federal and state grants this is just a summary that i've just shared with you all and then finally the bond funds and the debt service fund so i wanted to point out that you can see the technology security line where there's 6.6 million dollars in there from the 2015 authority remember that that was primarily designated for the technology refresh and so we were going through that for the next two years through 2022 and 2023 that should be fully spent and then this is the 2019 authority wanted to bring your attention to the security line where there's 7.1 million dollars left unspent please know that we you approved the security camera project in june and we are well on our way to determining the cameras and the locations for each of our schools to get

041them deployed over the next year and a half to two years and then finally this is just a summary of both bond fund authorities both the 2015 authority and the 2019 authority as well as the principal and interest in the debt service fund we are moving towards an adopted budget presentation on the debt service fund as we levy the amount of debt service each august and so therefore it is more of a budgeted versus actual cash fund so we're going to start presenting it in this way moving forward and that's all i have on the monthly budget report this month miss humphreys yes i i just had a question about the esser three funds i know that that final decision is up to the administration that the board had to say but when will you

042present to us what your final recommendations are we'll be presenting those to you at our next uh work study okay thank you board members miss butts can you explain again that last slide just that and why you're now presenting it this way just say it again what you just said you bet so the the cash for the debt service is comes in periodically throughout the school year and in addition we have a lot of cash sitting around june 30 which represents the end of the school year but we have to make a payment immediately on july 1st so it doesn't quite represent appropriately the activity or the expectation in this fund and so when you look at the adopted budget we actually are looking at available cash as well as the amount levied or the

043amount it's actually it's actually it's actually specifically the amount that we need to pay during fiscal year 2022 regardless of the cash that's available at any point in time so and the levy when we set the levy the county always considers the cash balance in the fund so that we levy only the net of what we need so in this particular case we will need just under 26 million dollars we had about 1.3 million dollars in cash so we only levied the difference on the taxpayer okay thank you okay great thanks any additional questions no additional questions please continue okay great i'll move right into revised number one the fiscal year 2022 revised number one budget a couple of things please know that we felt it important to revise this budget sooner as opposed to

044later because we adopted a budget on draft forms they were not approved by the auditor general or the department of ed so we wanted to update the budget immediately to put it into the proper format with all the the proper the proper worksheets to include the classroom site fund change so all those things are now within the the budget sheets that you have attached to this agenda item mrs betts we we did that because we didn't have the legislative session finished for our budget is that correct that's correct we adopted the budget in late june and the legislative session did not end until june 30. yes so we we had to adopt the budget by statute but the legislature had not quite quite completed their work so of course we had to do a draft

045because they hadn't finalized the budget that's correct okay thank you you bet so today's report we're just going to focus on the revised mno budget and the revised unrestricted capital budget as well as the final tax rates so a couple of things happen at the end of the fiscal year we do a statewide recalculation which occurs in mid july because of that statewide recalculation we wanted to consider those new student counts or average daily membership reflective of the prior year remember that when we adopted the budget we made the assumption that we were going to take the current year's student count at elementary and at secondary and reduce both of them by 200 students to adopt the budget so because of the statewide recalculation [Music] those 20 21 student counts went up so you subtract

046200 from a higher student count and you will realize greater budget capacity so we wanted to make sure that that was clear to all of you so as an example this is the grid that shows you the change so you can see that in the 21 adopted that was reflective of the end of 20 and assumptions made at the end of fiscal 20 but then we saw a significant decline in student counts so you can see our revised number three is just under 29 000 students but you note from the fiscal year 2021 final recalc that it's just over 29 29 000 students gaining about a hundred student counts and then the adopted was reflective of revised number three not reflective of the final recalc so the fiscal year 2022 revised number one takes the

047the 21 recalc and subtracts the 400 students slight variations there um no that that works that the math works the math works i get confused sometimes with weighted student account versus the actual student account so we're good there a note also the arizona online full-time note that the 21 recalc was actually significantly less than what was adopted and so the revised number one went down which actually helps us because we're funded at 95 percent on the aoi so the students that we didn't have in aoi moved to the bricks and mortar to give us the additional budget capacity and the same thing occurred not as drastic on the arizona online part-time so you can see our total going from 30 just under um we adopted 30 and so overall our revised number one shows a

048slight decline but remember this is student count not weighted student count and the difference between the arizona online versus the student counts reflected of our bricks and mortar students so there are significant some significant changes that have occurred there any questions on that okay great so revised mno budget capacity again now we're going to the weighted student count you can see that the 22 adopted was about 120 students less than what the revised number one shows reflective again of that aoi movement to bricks and mortar and the decline in the aoi overall so the revenue control limit went up by about 600 thousand dollars directly due to the fact that we took a higher number from the recalculation and subtracted the 400 students so we received more budget capacity based upon that assumption and then

049note 2 the 15 override has actually increased by a little over a hundred and thirty five thousand dollars so we are we are putting in the thirty one thousand uh thirty one million a hundred forty thousand dollars into the budget um please know though that we levied the million 3 000 so we expect that we will have to revise that down the budget balance carry forward increased again because of the recalc we received the cash so because of that we went ahead and increased the budget balance carry forward to reflect that change occurring again due to the july recalc of the prior year student count then everything else stayed the same but you can see that the budget decrease from fiscal 2021 was originally a 2.8 million dollar decrease and is now a 1.1 million

050dollar decrease from prior year to current year with revised number one the other thing i think that's important to share with you is we know that we are up in enrollments but we do not have a calculation for average daily membership or student count at this time so we we opted to not try to estimate what our new average daily membership would be but you will see that when we bring the december or january revision to you so before i go any further are there any other questions so again just a couple of notes remember that the override is based upon prior year student counts which accounts for that increase okay so now going to revised unrestricted capital so keep in mind that the unrestricted capital is based on a pure student count and a

051certain dollar amount per student count so you can see that and also the understanding capital is based upon prior year student count which you can see by the formula we went from three fourteen million three hundred thirty five thousand up to fourteen million three hundred thirty eight thousand so only gained three thousand students we um the total impact of the recalculation was only just a few average daily memberships or student counts the biggest impact was the movement of the aoi students back into bricks and mortar so for purposes of the district additional assistance or unrestricted capital the student counts for the aoi as well as the student accounts for bricks and mortar are the same so the aoi is not reduced by that five percent which is true in the m o um over uh

052m mno budget capacity calculation and then you can see that the budget balance carry forward has remained the same and um so because it's only three thousand dollars it still showed an increase of just 3.6 million dollars so a very limited change okay and then finally the 2022 tax rates these are now set the maricopa county comes to us in early july and asks us to review their calculation that point in time we engage in a conversation and and at that point in time they had information regarding what our cash balance was at june 30. because of that greater than anticipated cash balance in our debt service fund we were able to fairly significantly decrease the secondary tax rate on the bonds you can see that the 2022 estimated tax rate for the class b

053bonds was a dollar and 12 cents roughly and it went down to a dollar six cents so overall because of all the changes we saw a total decrease from the estimated of four cents and from you can see from the change over prior year as well as the change from the election estimate we are almost 23 cents less than than the prior year on our total combined tax rate and 43 cents less than what we projected in the 2019 november ballot question so are there any questions on any of that okay miss woods thanks so much bets so that's a good thing for our taxpayer yes and how can we continue to keep that kind of positive impact on our taxpayers so a couple of things when we requested the additional authority for our bonds

054we amortized the debt over a very short time frame so as we go through the next five to ten years each year our debt service requirement will go down because we are paying back the bonds on a very fast schedule so those are some of the things that were actually included in our planning back in november of 2019 and then what about the cash do we want to keep cash and will we typically have extra cash on june 30 or how so in the in the debt service fund we do use the available cash to reduce the tax rate there is not a formal way in which we do that on the primary tax side however keep in mind excuse me however keep in mind that keeping a cash balance overall is advantageous for our

055credit rating as well as making sure that we don't have to incur debt service requirements on our m o side because the county does charge interest that we have to pay back when we borrow money on the maintenance and operations side so keeping cash available to a certain level actually helps us and does help the taxpayer as well thanks and we don't have adjacent ways and we do not have adjacent the only taxing authority the governing board has correct that's correct other questions miss betts just uh i just want to go ahead and miss you jenny uh mrs wood um having been a superintendent it's really important to have cash because if you don't you can get yourself in a lot of trouble so it's really a good thing to have a cash balance when

056it's done right and i have every confidence that dr mccord and miss bench do the very best they can thank you mr eugenie my comment really relates to our modest approach to modest and conservative approach to building a budget and the 400 student loss estimate continues to be to our benefit uh am i correct there well except for last year which was the combination the last three years prior to last year it has been to our benefit to be a conservative estimator on our student accounts the real the real crux is the conservative approach to building the entire budget and uh that's been a benefit to the district other questions i just had one question uh when is a time frame that we would be able to get the adm numbers roughly so the um

057the 40th day is um uh like around the 20th of september so at 28th or somewhere right around somewhere somewhere in that neighborhood and so we we believe that the submittal in september will be um will result in us receiving uh student counts uh in october right so we'll see it in our payments then as well thank you other questions board members seeing that there are none miss bets again my compliments to you and to your team i know they are here with you this evening and we appreciate their diligence in getting reports ready for us and dr mccord i have released the the presentation to you all right we will move to item six is the consent agenda and item 6.01 is approval of consent agenda items is there a motion i'll make a

058motion uh to approve the bennett's regular oh i'm sorry the consent uh approval of consent agenda items thank you mr parker is there a second second thank you mrs humphries any discussion seeing no discussion we will vote on approval of the consent agenda items all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye all those opposed the same motion carries five zero we're at item seven action items items for consideration discussion direction and possible approval item 7.01 is for discussion only face coverings coveted 19 mitigation strategies and i know dr mccord you have some information for us and rationale please thank you dr santa cruz let me connect real quick okay thank you um tonight we'll be discussing and again like you had reiterated and it's been reiterated earlier it's for discussion only but we'll

059talk a little bit about face coverings as well as our mitigation strategies um knowing that we're going to continue with making mass optional as we move through the school year it's important we take a step back and look at our mitigation strategies and i've heard from a lot of different people that our mitigation strategies are poor i've heard that they're great i've heard everything in between and i think it's important that i go through what is currently practiced and what will be practiced moving forward as we continue on with this pandemic along with that i've had the opportunity to be at almost every school so far this school year and i've seen some phenomenal some phenomenal things going on that are totally unrelated to cove but it's all about education that's really really nice to

060see but i also see the things that our schools continue to do to try to make a school day as normal as possible but keeping in mind what we're dealing with as a school district as a community as a state and a country and so it's important to me to get feedback from staff as well as as administrators principals in particular about what's going on out there what do you see what can we do and i've asked them specifically uh what can i do differently um you know without mandating a mask but at the same time what can we do on our campuses and they came back with some of the things that we did last year but they also reiterated some of the facts that some of the things we did were were actually

061not needed because they it just was difficult to enforce and when i say enforce uh just logistically very difficult to to make happen on campuses and so i understand that as well and so what i'll go through um a little bit here is what we're currently doing i'll have our director of health services jen frost talk a little bit about quarantine when i get to that point and and what what our practice is and um we'll go from there and then you guys can have a discussion about anything else related to this topic if i can go okay face coverings as i just reiterated uh face coverage will remain optional but they are strongly encouraged for all of our students and staff as as a lot of folks came up and talked this evening and

062what we've heard from a lot of different people is that you know they want them to remain optional but again there are a lot of people out there that definitely want to wear a face covering and we encourage that we don't want to discourage anybody from from having that opportunity and if you look at the third bullet we have had this conversation with our site administrators before the school year started and continue and that is that if people's behavior related to wearing a face covering impedes on a student's education we are going to address it there's no question about it if somebody's going to get bullied because they're wearing a mask or because they're not wearing a mask we're going to address it has it happened out there i haven't heard of it very often

063but yes i'm not naive either i know these things happen especially when an adult's you know back is turned to somebody so we are going to definitely address those things the cdc and the adhs strongly recommend the use of masks indoors for those who are vaccinated in unvaccinated areas of higher substantial transmittal rates we also know that we have a lot of folks that are vaccinated out there and their opportunities if people want to be vaccinated almost on every corner within gilbert and east mesa people can go and get that again those are encouraged as well but again it's your choice we want to make sure that the information that you need to be able to acquire what you need is available on our websites and i believe that is available in our our sections

064under our websites as well so again moving forward they're strongly encouraged i think people wondering why isn't the district pushing this or why are you coming out real strong about this it is a choice but i strongly encourage it for anybody that wants to wear it and wants to make sure that that's how they are going to protect themselves there's no question about it but again i don't want any kind of negativity coming to those individuals as well because that's important to me they're entitled to the right of education just like anybody else's so there's my two cents on face coverings as a as we move through the evening on this um some of the things that we'll continue to do we'll observe the three feet social distancing when possible we'll continue to have normal

065traffic flows and capacities in all areas but what you'll also see on campuses is that because of the design of the campus some of these traffic flows happen naturally in how kids move in to and from their classrooms and so we've encouraged our administrators to do whatever that they can because every campus is a little bit different to mitigate the spread of cove at 19. we've also encouraged any large group gatherings that if they can be scheduled outdoors do that when possible it's really difficult right now because it's it's pretty warm out there and hopefully it'll be cooling down soon and we can be able to do those things i know that some schools have went to having some virtual assemblies just because of the size of their cafe gematoriums at the elementary i've seen

066some of them at the high schools break them up by grade levels because having 3 000 students in in a gym is really really difficult to do logistically in any kind of year and so they've decided to break those up and have different types of conversations and events for those kids this is something that has been requested we've updated our dashboard we came out a week ago saying it'll be every tuesday and friday we have no problem and i consulted with our director of health services who um you know make sure that all the numbers are correct those are going to be updated on a daily basis monday through friday it'll start on thursday we won't start that tomorrow morning just because i didn't want to surprise her too much as we move through this

067but we'll start doing that on a daily basis student health screenings if your child has any of these symptoms keep them home from school and notify your campus of their absence and symptoms and i'll get to the questions here in a minute if the answer to all of these questions is no then we feel confident that your child be more likely to have a successful day at school and here are those health daily health assessments does your child currently have a fever temperature of 100.4 or higher or has had a fever within the last 24 hours does your child have a new cough or shortness of breath headaches body aches loss of sense or taste or smell chills sore throat diarrhea vomiting congestion or runny nose is anyone in your home currently isolated for coven

06819 due to the positive due to a positive test or covenanting symptoms and last have you been in close contact clothing six feet for more than 10 minutes with someone who has been diagnosed with coping 19 or has symptoms compatible with coven 19 in the last couple days and is your student or even adult awaiting results of a cova test this is highlighted and bolded for a big reason we have a lot of folks that will get their kid covet tested and send them to school please don't do that if they're gonna be if if you have the idea that they may and they have symptoms and you get them cover test wait till that result comes back before sending kids to school and i i understand the difficulties of child care understand the difficulties

069of what that does to your household but also we don't want to send kids to school that possibly have coveted to spread it around so we ask that you adhere to that the management of ill students within the school health office our district continues to work closely with state and county agencies for additional resources for parents and staff health offices will isolate ill students from well students and staff and protocols and procedures will be in place to reduce frequency of non-health related visits to the health office and then management of students returning to school students are expected to follow the exclusion and return to school guidelines set forth by the state and county health departments parents will receive information from their school's health personnel regarding when their child can return to school and when they

070can go home with their particular symptoms they can always call while their child is home if they have additional questions or new symptoms arise staff health greeting staff will be required to screen themselves for symptoms and and contacts on a daily basis in terms of who they've been in contact with if they have been in contact with people that have symptoms or actually have coven 19. the management of staff returning to work after illness employees are expected to follow the exclusion and return to school guidelines set forth by the state and county health department and i'm sorry if i'm reading to you but i think this is probably the best and easiest way to to work through this information protocols for positive cases or exposure scenarios will notify parents of any exposure their child has

071from a positive staff member or classmate at the time of the notification they'll be directives depending on the type of exposure currently the director from the maricopa county department of health is not to send home an entire class due to one positive student or teacher as this is now a community-wide illness we will continue to work closely with the department of health regarding these guidelines as well as reporting it and positive cases at each campus and then positive covenant 19 notifications classroom letter to staff and class and any student who may have had a general exposure to coven 19 plus student or staff now i'm going to bring jen frost our director of health services to talk about quarantining because i know there's been a lot of questions uh related to that maybe not just

072from people in the room but people online and and within our community and i before she starts this is there is no perfect way to quarantine and i and i hope people understand that it is about uh being able to trace what we can when we can and so we rely on a lot of different things in order to get this as as right as possible so i'll stop yapping and let jen go well excuse me i'm gonna read too unfortunately mandated by a lot of quarantine students have been verified as being in close contact with a coveted positive student or staff member we are asking teachers to verify this contact within the classroom to the best of their ability information about any contacts off school grounds is outside of our ability to track and

073what that means is is that if you can picture any kind of student on any kind of campus they're everywhere even inside classrooms they don't sit in their desk all day they have reading groups they have times when they work on posters together there are hopefully not sitting in one spot all day in a classroom which i know our educators have worked really hard to make the classrooms appropriate for for their learning conducive to their learning different styles we have some classrooms with couches some classrooms with different tabletops so it is really difficult to say that this one student was in in fact in contact with every single person or not so we are doing our very best to make sure that we are quarantining the students that we're really in contact with that positive

074to the best of our ability secondary is a little bit harder sometimes because again the sizes of the classrooms and the movement of the students so again it's not a perfect science um none of those kids are in a bubble and then we also cannot track you know who they were on the race on recess with um on the playground or who that they were in sports with if it's not a school sport so again we are trying to keep everybody safe to the best of our ability but we ask the teachers to help us be the eyes in the classroom cdc and county students or staff have been vaccinated do not need a quarantine that's a cdc and a county guideline also if they've had covet in the past three months and we have

075verification of a positive test then they do not need to quarantine either any questions for jen before she sits down related to quarantine i guess if i can go ahead just so we're working through the school nurses again to do this and you're also involved in looking at all of the cases as well or how so the school nurses and the teachers on campus for that pa that part um what i do is i look over every case that's submitted to me so a parent calls in a positive child the nurse submits that to me and i look through that data when we see a classroom that has more than one student positive there's recommendations made to that classroom specifically we recommend that the students be separated if they're if their desks are in groups

076we ask that they be put in you know in lines the requirement is is no group work for the next 10 days or a limit of group work for the next 10 days and a limit of any kind of group projects for the next 10 days if they can get through that 10 days without any further cases then we can go back to normal so it's another step in some ways i know people think it's very simple six feet 15 minutes but it's not when we look at then the movement inside of classroom and we really you know at the heart of this this is school this isn't a hospital or a clinic this is school so we want them to be able to educate our children um so i'm looking at it from another

077view so that we can hopefully mitigate on that side so if we're seeing areas where we see more than one case again there's recommendations made to that specific classroom so that it's hopefully helpful in that specific case and then it's not something that we're doing it's just kind of a vague overall to everybody thank you mrs frost with the new delta variant being more contagious will we be able to track i mean and no we'll just know that if there's two cases that aren't related because i mean it's going to be more infectious it's going to be harder to i think to pin down where that infection came from it can i know last year we had a particular instance where i did ask department of health if they could check for which variant it

078was and they stated no that that was not how it worked regardless of what we were seeing however i know that in arizona we are seeing the majority of the variant is the delta variant we are you know unfortunately when county contacts the uh traces of contact they're relying on the family to tell them whether or not they were in contact with a certain person yet they can't um they cannot um give that person's name so when we have two kids in a classroom they may have never been together they may sit on opposite sides of the classroom but that still may be considered an outbreak because they're in the same classroom although we don't know we there's no way for us to verify whether or not those students were ever even in contact okay

079thank you other questions thank you jen okay i'll continue on um in terms of notifications we continue to find ways to ensure we can communicate with our parents in a timely and effective manner in an effort to keep our parents as informed as possible please note this school year student close contact notification will continue to be sent out via email and we will be adding text messages uh to alert you to the fact that you have received an email you will notify you will only receive a text with regard to a student closed contact notification that specifically involves your student should you wish to keep your student home and or have them tested we will support your student any way we can monitoring campus i think uh jen just talked about that in terms of

080if there are areas in a classroom or i mean on a campus she will separate those she will give direction to make sure that they're spaced out as possible in that classroom and again monitor for the next 10 days to see uh how that has progressed again hand washing i mean it's going back to some of these basic things but we need to remind ourselves upon arrival at school use sanitizer if there's no sink available wash your hands after any physical activity or before and after meals after sneezing coughing and blowing noses because we know that happens quite a bit on campuses and so we also have to look at what do we have going on on our campuses and some of these will be a repeat as i go through a couple of these

081slides but physical distance where possible i know that was a big concern last year it is hard to physically distance in a classroom it's it's hard to physically distance on a campus in general classroom and lunchroom seating will be socially distanced as much as possible signage will be displayed on campuses wide promoting best practice behaviors signage reminding students and employees to complete daily health assessments at a department if a visitor does not have an appointment the department will be contacted determine whether someone is available to assist the visitor if that specific staff member is not available the person will be asked to reschedule and come back another time or have a different type of conversation in a different mode of communication hand soap will be available in all restrooms posters on how to wash hands

082properly be posted in all restrooms and at all classroom sinks hand sanitizer bottle or dispenser will be in every classroom and placed at the entrance to buildings a bottle of cleaning supplies with the cloth and instructions will be provided in every classroom cloths are changed out daily by custodial staff again this is practice that was continued on from last year desk and any touchable service services should be wiped down daily at the end of use capacity athletic events will be determined by the arizona interscholastic association that's aia and they also have some protocols in terms of if there's positive students within any of the the teams and so we follow those protocols extremely well tables and services will be wiped down with sanitizing products the start and end of each meeting and day sharing supplies

083such as pens pencils notepads etc and congregating in work and supply areas is strongly discouraged while shared equipment will be treated nightly individuals are responsible for sanitizing shared equipment such as copy machines before and after use wipes and cleansers will be provided looking at the breakfast and lunch modifications again use of hand sanitizers and ongoing cleaning of tables and chairs will occur throughout the lunch periods three to four students per table facing in the same direction when possible at the elementary the secondary levels they'll be provided space outside in libraries and other areas throughout the building to eat their lunch spreading out students hand sanitizers is an ongoing cleaning of tables again will occur during the lunch periods and additional garbage cans will be provided for disposal of completed meal packaging and leftovers after each

084lunch periods everything will be wiped down again for the students for the next day and then again cleaning and disinfecting enhancing training for all custodians and non-custodial staff on the use of disinfectant application every year we seem to get a different crop of custodial staff people come and go and so we continually train them on what the expectations are related to this disinfecting and high traffic areas doors countersinks other horizontal services restroom and health office touch point areas will be disaffected twice daily guidelines and supplies for cleaning desks and table provided to each classroom teacher again signage for hygiene the use of laundred and sanitized color-coded microfiber cloths for specific surface areas to avoid cross-contamination utilization of electrostatic sprayers for wide area disinfecting and i believe we touched on that several months ago and those

085seem to be pretty effective and i think the schools like those a lot to help sanitize a minimum of a twenty to thirty percent outside air damper control will be maintained operation of outside air units or oau's an hvac unit fans will be maintained to ensure constant air changes and merv 8 pleated filters will be used in both the hvac units and the oau bunny what's a merv 8 i know it's it's an odd term it's just the um level of um of ability for the filter to take out the size of a specific particle i don't know what merv stands for i can't help you there i'm sorry but it's it's a higher quality to help it's one that's recognized like jen may know something there oh jen oh there she comes thank you

086jen those are used in hospitals good thank you school closures school closures be determined by maricopa county department of health field trips day trips will proceed overnight field trips will be reviewed by administrative services food services the federal government has extended free meals for school-aged children for this school year and at recess there's no restrictions at this point in time transportation observe the three feet social distancing when possible buses will be sanitized after each route and windows and vents will be partially open to circulate fresh air water fountains will be open inside and outside and and this is something we close down at one point in time but we also got a lot of complaints that kids were getting a little bit dehydrated and again this time of year but we also several of our

087campuses have water bottle water bottle filling stations and we're looking at trying to make sure we have every one of our schools that have those available to our our students and classroom seating social distance if possible teacher will still determine the physical layout of their classroom but we are suggesting rows and if that's possible sometimes there are tables in classrooms in terms of desks regular individual desks but a lot of times there are tables and so our teachers have gotten very creative over time in terms of trying to help them social distance in those circumstances and that would be it for right now thank you dr mccord board members are opening up for any commentary you may have let me just start out by reinforcing one thanking you for reviewing those again and reinforcing some

088of the verbiage i heard this evening by one of our speakers and that is that masks be highly recommended or strongly recommended uh i don't see that that's a mandate i simply see that that is a courtesy reminder to anyone coming to our facilities so i would encourage us to explore that board members miss wood or anything i just wanted to actually start with asking miss bets do we have then the cleaning supplies the hand sanitizer and the wipes because we've heard some concern about that at each school and classroom at this point in time and do teachers know where they are and know similar to last year if if they don't know where they are i have not heard that but we maintained the census cloth contract with that provider to make sure that

089we are getting regular replenishment of laundered microfiber cloths and all of the schools still have the spray bottles in each classroom as well as those microfiber cloths and we have the this so if a teacher or staff member doesn't have that they need to let us they need to let me or albert know immediately and we'll make sure that we get that done okay and then as well as the hand sanitizer hand sanitizer isn't we've got plenty of stock on the hand sanitizer so again the schools would still need to order it um but but we definitely have it in stock okay that was just different than last year when we were waiting for it at this time we do have it now we do have it now other questions comments well i'll i'll keep

090going then okay i think that's really important oops mr jennigan okay i think it's really important that we continue to provide the data and the notifications that we have been in as as accurately and urgently as we can for our families that empowers them to make the best decisions for themselves this this has required a lot of difficult decisions for our families this past year and a half in many many ways and i appreciate that and respect that and our our staff as well and i i have to say that i don't we're not out of that yet you you know we still have to make those difficult decisions as things come up and i'm i'm respectful of that and i think the better data that we can give the more timely that helps families

091make the decisions that they need to and staff as well so i think that's really important thank you miss wood mr parker yes i'm really proud to be a member of this excuse me a member of this community uh tonight we had groups of people that had strongly strongly uh our strong opinions on both sides of the issue and we were able to discuss it and be respectful of each other and respect each other and i think that's a credit to the talent of gilbert and the school district uh as far as mitigation i think we're on the right path this is something i really believe that we need to have flexibility on we need to watch what the way things are going with the infection rates and that type of thing the last thing

092in the world that i want to see is us to have to go back to remote learning i've been on a screen with zoom i know uh how challenging that can be when the kids are sleeping sometimes we need kids in the classroom so i the only thing i would ask is that we be flexible and we watch where we're going and be willing to to look at other solutions if we have to and hopefully we won't thank you mr parker miss humphries do we want to let uh miss miss eugetti i thought she was starting to speak at one point so did you jetty were you needing no i wasn't first you said for miss humphries to go ahead okay all right i just wanted to make sure she got a turn um you

093know these these are really hard decisions and personally i feel like um when we're talking about masking that should be a state decision not a local school board decision and it should be based on county metrics and i think that would uh be much easier on all of us because um this has been hard it's i mean we just saw a little girl speak tonight that is struggling with her concerns and i think that we need to be careful to understand the challenges of those around us i did want to state there are quite a few organizations governmental organizations and private organizations that are they're um encouraging people to get vaccinated and to wear masks the center for disease control governor doug ducey is encouraging people to get vaccinated and wear masks dr cara crist

094the director of the arizona department of health services the maricopa county department of health services the american academy of pediatrics the arizona hospital and health care association and the arizona public health association all those have come out and specifically said that wearing masks will help us and the arizona hospital and health care association put out a statement that you know they are getting hospitals getting full phoenix children's hospital is getting full we need to be careful to slow down the spread to help our health care workers get through this and we can look forward hopefully to a vaccination for our children probably in december or january but we still have several months to get through especially for those elementary kids so um let's be aware um i when when we had the decision about whether

095to continue mass to the end of the school year or not i will say at first i was like okay i'm done let's just not mask and then i saw a post from a friend her her son was 10 years old and while he seemed to be a very healthy child he had been a preemie and he had some lung problems so having everyone take off their mask suddenly he was faced with the issues that if he got covered it might be worse for him and then another story of someone similar with a health condition we have children in our schools that are medically fragile who have special needs or who have health conditions that this is more of a concern for them and i hope that we would be as thoughtful and kind about

096helping them get through this as well as their own children and i just want to share two quotations one is from an article that was in the arizona republic on thursday august 19th by stan christensen and i just want to share a couple paragraphs of what he wrote he said when we value individual liberty above our moral obligations to one another especially the most vulnerable we weren't able to we aren't able to get the virus under control and push forward toward collective prosperity a healthy path forward is to balance rights and responsibilities and be willing to make the small sacrifices patriotic citizenship requires only when we use our freedom to make choices that strengthen our community will our physical mental and economic health be restored the other quotation i wanted to share is from mr

097rogers i don't think i have to introduce to mr rogers this but he always has wonderful things to say and this is the quotation that i'm going to read all we're ever asked to do in this life is to treat our neighbor especially our neighbor who is in need exactly as we would hope to be treated ourselves that's our ultimate responsibility so i would encourage our community to come together to support our kids and if your child could wear a mask and you could mask to help us get through this it would be so appreciated thank you mr jetty i would like to say thank you to mrs humphrey for letting me go after her because i would like to say that all of her words where everything that i want to say but i

098do have a question for dr mccord we have given everybody an option and been respectful about it can you and i talked to you about this earlier today and i i called you way before that you had a chance to figure it all out but what what are you seeing in terms of our teachers staff and kids wearing masks in our district so i don't i don't have a specific number um in terms of i only have it anecdotally i guess is the best way to put it and and being on campuses talking to the principals talking to the cabinet members we're seeing about probably 20 percent and i when i say that it's higher in some schools it's lower at some schools but i would say on average about 20 percent of the students

099and staff wearing masks and 80 percent not thank you i i knew that that was what you're going to tell me because i didn't give you the information in time and i'm going to reiterate rate but miss humphrey said please we're not mandating anything but we're asking you as a community to support and help our our children and help our community and let's come together please thank you mr jetty dr santa cruz just to add on could we just also as we're saying could we please abide by the mitigation strategies that we have in place yes master optional as we've and then we've had a plea to please use them but let's for sure absolutely if your children are sick keep them home if you know if there's other things that we have can we

100please make sure and come together as a community that way and make sure that we are supporting each other and all the different needs and concerns and circumstances that we find ourselves in in every way but you know just wanted to add that thank you thank you miss wood as i bring this topic to a close then just a reminder and that is that for the past two years the situation has been fluid and we continue to monitor and adjust as we would in a classroom if we were teaching so should things change drastically there may be a need for this board to revisit some things that might be contrary to what has been said or stated or intimated this evening i don't know that for sure but it certainly is a possibility given the

101fact that we have endured this thing for the better part of two years or more so the mitigation strategies and the review of that was for all of us concerned working together so that those who believe that we have ignored that and aren't doing what we said we were going to do that those in fact are items that are paramount and important for our day-to-day operation and those people who need to know or to have the ideas expressed by dr mccord reinforced they have now been reinforced and i'm sure that their supervisors will do the same again tomorrow and for the days to come so that being the case uh i will also reiterate that uh a consideration for signage that says masks strongly recommended or highly recommended as mentioned by one of the speakers

102this evening not a bad idea we'll move on to item 7.02 which is fy 2022 revised budget one dr mccord anything by way of introduction note miss betts presented the revised budget information in the report section we just asked for your approval board members you have had an opportunity to review that in your board packet you have viewed the presentation from this evening is there a motion i move that we revise the 2022 budget number one thank you miss humphries is there a second okay thank you mr eugetti there's a second for fy 2022 revised budget number one item 7.02 is there any discussion saying that there's no sorry i do i want to thank ms betts and her team and um i feel like um school finance is very complex and i feel like

103they really work to help us to understand what the budget is and where it's going and how we're using those funds to support our kids so thank you thank you ms humphries no other discussion we will vote all those in favor of 7.02 please signify by saying aye aye those oppose the same motion carries 5-0 7.03 is appointment of governing board member to audit committee dr mccord to defer to you for rationale thank you dr santa cruz governing board members the appointment of a board member is required as part of the audit committee membership the audit committee bylaws indicate that this committee shall consist of up to seven members appointed by the governing board the committee shall include the superintendent assistant superintendent of business services director of finance a governing board member and internal auditor

104along with two community members you approved the appointment of mr reed car at the last governing board meeting tonight you're being asked to nominate and approve a governing board member to sit on this board approved committee thank you dr mccord and uh with that rationale i'd like to move that we appoint mr bill parker to the audit committee is there a second i'll second that thank you miss humphries mr parker any objection to that we'll talk about it later okay remember i just read it i didn't i didn't nominate you i i do want to point out to our community in case they don't know that mr parker used to work at the auditor general's office so he has lots of knowledge to bring to that position so thank you all right any discussion seeing

105that there is no discussion we will vote on the motion and the second for item 7.03 appointment of governing board member mr bill parker to the audit committee all in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same mr jenny i think i heard an eye but wasn't quite sure you did okay thank you motion carries 5-0 item 7.04 fy 2022 transportation driving and monitoring retention incentives dr mccord any rationale thank you dr santa cruz i'll turn it over to ms betts the the point of this agenda item is again continuing to try to incentivize uh individuals uh to retain in our transportation department as well as possibly attract in the future um so as as you know or we've talked about that that as of friday we're down 43 bus drivers and

106in addition we do still see a fair amount of absenteeism so we were hoping that by offering additional money for driving that it would incentivize more of our drivers van drivers and bus monitors to schedule their appointments when they're not required to drive on behalf of our students so the intent is to do this for the year that we will reassess after the first semester to determine the effectiveness of of doing that but at two dollars additional per cdl bus driver it could be as much as two thousand dollars per employee if they are here every day that they're scheduled to drive and that of course translates to our students getting to school and back home on time and regularly without interruption and ms betts you had indicated that we have budget capacity should we

107move and pass on this item yes sir so we anticipate it will be under half a million dollars total to include payroll benefits and i just shared with you this evening that our recalculation of student accounts has resulted in a 950 000 increase to budget capacity so the budget balance carry forward will be enough if we do decide as well it would be eligible for the sr3 monies also so yes we can verify that we have the available budget capacity before we move into additional discussion is there a motion on item 7.04 i moved to approve the fy 2022 transportation driving and monitoring retention incentive thank you ms humphries is there a second second thank you mr parker discussion um i had a question so if it's two thousand dollars per employee would that be

108per semester or per the year that's for the entire year presumably yeah and that's the one for the cdl bus drivers the van drivers and the bus monitors where we're making a recommendation for it to be a dollar per hour incentive for all the days that they are with students supporting them okay thank you i appreciate that i would like to make a comment on that as well bus drivers are not they don't come on trees it's very difficult to to get qualified bus drivers they have to have a cdl they have to have an air brakes test they have to have a school bus test and when you lose one you have to go through that whole process again so these these are very valuable people your your kids might not remember who their

109teacher is but they sure know who the bus driver is so uh we we owe these people a lot and i would fully support this additional comments questions concern um i i just want to make a comment oh go ahead mr jetty now i just i just want to say that uh every morning when i listen to the montana news it's an it's it's a big huge issue here because everybody is um in small towns so it's not an issue just in gilbert so we have to do what we have to do to get kids to school thank you ms eugenie is humphries um i was going to say just that um you know i this has been i think one of the things i've had to revisit regularly as a board member this is

110my ninth year and we've probably revisited it at least four or five times in my time on the board because it does become an issue and it it has been an issue for a long time and i i hope this will help us to solve that problem and get good qualified people to to be willing to drive for us other commentary saying none then we will vote on item 7.04 all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye bye all those pose the same motion carries 5-0 item 7.05 policy development first read policy jhd exclusion and exemption from school attendance dr mccord any rationale thank you dr santa cruz governing board members before you we have for our first read which went through the policy committee a week ago we have some red lines

111there in terms of making sure that we have the proper language in our exclusions and exemptions from school attendance we added in who is currently treating the student for the chronic health condition that is that health professionals making sure that anybody who is recommending exclusion or exemptions from school it's that person's health professional and and just not somebody else and then the it also says this health provider must certify that this chronic health condition requires management on a long term basis and so again there were some red lines that made it a little gray this tightens it up thank you dr mccord we have a first read for policy jdh is there a motion ghd jhd sorry my dyslexia kicked in i moved that we approve policy jhd first read exclusion and exemptions from school

112attendance thank you ms humphries is there a second a second thank you mrs wood any discussion just again this will go back if if approved for the first real go back to the policy committee for another once over before the second read very good seeing that there is no additional discussion we will vote on item 7.05 all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye all those opposed the same motion carries five zero we're at item eight requests for future agenda items as in the past we would suggest that if you have items to be considered for a future agenda please make contact with mrs wilson and we will put that on the docket for consideration or item eight point where we're item nine board committee reports nine point zero one is gilbert ed

113foundation ms humphreys i have nothing to report tonight i know that's not my usual style but i have nothing to report tonight thank you thank you items 9.02 city of mesa liaison ms wood i had a discussion with council member thompson recently and we were discussing some ideas of possibly working with um the the businesses in mesa and gilbert to give feedback on and i know we've done this in the past but just another idea chambers of commerce and different things to give feedback on our high school courses and how we can prepare our high school students for work that's mesa's been looking at that a lot and they're having a conference about it so i thought that would be of interest to us so maybe i'll discuss with dr mccord a little bit more

114what we're looking at a good item for mr daley to be involved in as well oh yeah but i'm sure that dr mccord will pull in whoever he needs okay thank you 9.03 uh town of gilbert liaison is vacant at this point we'll move to 9.04 finance committee audit committee and mr parker just appreciation for accepting that role item 9.05 is trust representative miss eugetti we had our meeting last tuesday and we are in good health so i have nothing more to say thank you mr jetty item 9.06 is legislative representative and i have nothing to report that hasn't already hit the public media we move to item 10 meeting dates dr mccord thank you dr santa cruz governing board members our next meetings are as follows september 14th it will be a board work

115study and brief board business meeting september 21st is our board policy committee meeting and september 28th is our regular board business meeting thank you sir we have reached item 11 which is adjournment is there a motion summit thank you miss humphries is there a second second thank you mr parker discussion no discussion [Laughter] thank you miss eugenie [Laughter] i i'm trying to be i think there's the four seconds away so i'm trying to oh you're trying to anticipate you're trying to anticipate that okay so mrs eugene has already voted for adjournment that will go on record the rest of us will now vote all those in favor of a german police signify by saying aye aye motion carries 5-0 we are adjourned thank you very much for your attendance and thank you for those of

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