001tuesday april 13th we are in a work study session and a brief board business meeting immediately following the work study however board members welcome tonight and welcome to those of you on live stream we have a need for an executive session uh so item 0 1.01 call for executive session pursuant ars 384 31.03 a and 1 to discuss potential appointment of rod houston as principal of mesquite high school is there motion moved thank you it's is there a second second thank you mrs humphries mr teddy it's been moved in second dead is there any discussion if there is none we will vote and then if passed we'll recess to executive session all those in favor of moving to executive session please signify by saying aye aye those pose the same motion carries five zero we
002will recess to executive session well good evening once again we will reconvene our work study session and then we will move into the brief board meeting we are into the work study session of tonight's meeting we're at item two and item 2.01 is calling this meeting to order and i have just done that we have a presentation this evening uh presentation of the fy 20 2022 budget and uh dr mccord i'm going to defer to you by way of introduction could you take some time and just overview or explain how it is that we have gotten to a two point or two percent and all the dynamics related the two and the three you know what dr santa cruz if you don't mind i'd like to address that at the um at number 7.3 7.03
003if you don't mind and then we can go into more detail but what you're about to see um is the preliminary budget for 2022 uh presented by our assistant superintendent uh bonnie betts and in that uh will be explanations of where our current money is where we'll be going in the future and how some of those monies uh that we those one-time monies uh that we have received this year are going to be spent or have been spent so miss bets uh good evening dr mccord president dr santa cruz governing board members this this is a near final preliminary budget and and we in finance do expect this to be very nearly what we will propose to you in the first meeting in june so just to give you an idea to begin we're going
004to talk about the adopted budget timeline as you know the legislature has not yet finished so there is there's there are still moving parts regarding the fiscal year 2022 budget wanted to make sure that we discussed student counts which is average daily membership adm as well as enrollment and then finally uh the balancing of the fiscal year 22 budget so looking at the year-over-year budget capacity change the expected budgetary increase is expected budgetary savings and then final budget balance strategies so this is the budget development timeline and i really wanted to bring your attention to april may so as i indicated we do not expect the legislative session to end until the end of april if not after the first week of may the governor's budget of course has been presented and that many of
005the assumptions in the preliminary budget for next year are based upon governor ducey's fiscal year 2022 recommended budget to the legislature miss butts and you're you feel comfortable using those numbers from the governor's budget just because in years past that's been comparable to what we've seen or it has been and the only the only difference from the governor he did make a recommendation of a 1.22 inflationary increase all the information that we're receiving across the state is that it will probably be 1.23 so the 1.23 inflationary increase has been included in these projections okay so the fiscal year 2020 to fiscal year 2022 student counts so as you know it's the average daily membership that determines our funding and so you can see from fiscal year 2020 the final we had the total average daily
006membership of just over 33 150 students in the 21 adopted we anticipated a 400 student loss which accounts for the 32 753 students but note fiscal year 2021 revised number three where that has dropped down to 30 822 directly related to the the pandemic that has been uh plaguing the nation for the last year now and then finally based upon cohort movement so in other words sixth graders going into seventh grade eighth graders going into ninth grade and twelfth graders leaving and comparing those to eleventh grade going into twelfth grade it is estimated that we will lose 200 students at the k-8 level and an additional 200 at the 912 level and so that's the basis for that projection of 30 422 students in fiscal year 2022. so in the current year from last year
007the loss is 2331 about average daily membership so student counts and then with the additional 400 we are expecting a student count or average daily membership loss of 2730. so again to bring that back to the realization about enrollment so average daily membership is different than enrollment enrollment is a body count where average daily membership is based upon your fte full-time equivalent as a student so if i'm in high school i could be part-time and that would decrease my average daily membership or a kindergartner is funded at 0.5 not 1.0 and so in addition this average daily membership does consider our students in our online organization so and the way that that adm is calculated or average daily membership is calculated and online is very different than our bricks and mortar so uh the enrollment
008loss since 2020 is just over 1700 1700 i mean i'm sorry the enrollment loss in the current year since 2021 is 1 344 about then we're projecting another 400 loss so a total loss in enrollment number of bodies we're expecting is 1 hundred and forty four just wanted to make that clear so student counts are is the basis for funding the enrollment is the basis for our staffing mrs betts just just from a historical point of view i believe it was 2010 when prior to that the legislature paid for all of i mean he gave us a 1.0 for kindergarten students and then when the when the economy fell apart in 2008 910 that's when they went back to the 0.5 but gilbert has always continued to fund all-day kindergarten that's correct during that time
009so that is a hit to our budget no matter what but it's been a hit over time but i think people have to understand that we continue to offer full-day kindergarten um but only get paid for half that's correct that's correct okay so to move forward wait miss pets yes i'm sorry to ask this is this earlier to you um the total enrollment loss i thought was 1744. not how the 1344 is the i'm sorry the the 1344 is the loss from 2020 from 2020 to 2021 so the current year that's what we've realized in the current year so the um initial presentation that was posted actually duplicated the 400 so this has been corrected in this presentation that's what i think the copy that we have is the old so it's double counting right
010so it's double 400. so the total loss the total two-year loss is expected to be 1744. 1344 realized loss between 20 and 21 and then 400 more projected okay and so that's 1744 total is um then when you look at the average daily membership that's where you get to the you still have the when you add in the weights and different things that's how you have the total loss 2730 79 cents 2020. that's correct okay that's correct so basically the difference between enrollment versus the adm is an additional thousand correct that's correct and this is this is from the beginning of the school year when you're saying starting with august right so um so fiscal 2020 ended in july of 2020 and that's where our final average daily membership was calculated and if you recall
011we did gain 600 students from projection back in which was a true increase of about 200 students over the prior year that was the first year in i don't know six seven years i've been on the board in nine years the only year we've increased that we saw an increase right that's correct so sorry it was increasing before i got on the board and then um it started decreasing a little bit at a time yeah okay so so now to move forward we know that i'm sorry that's okay let me look one more time so if you look at help me help me understand this so if you look at this number fy21 adopted the top number 32 567.97 that's average daily membership that's average daily membership okay so that's where i'm that's where i'm
012still off okay thank you that helps me and then you can see the the impact of the arizona online due to revise number three there was an enormous movement from uh bricks and mortar to online right which is contributing to the loss of the average daily membership okay thank you and that number's weighted based on how many hours they attend that that's correct it's not really weighted but yes it's based upon the number of hours that they're actually in the system working that's correct so it's a totally different calculation it may represent more or less students that's correct whether they're taking more than a full load or less than a full load and logging in and logging their hours that's correct which which is why we talk about the enrollment number separate from the adm
013number that's correct and does this um arizona online full-time does that take into account the that it's five percent less so uh so the the student counts are reflected as true student counts so that it's truly the calculation of average daily membership in the online environment i guess i would say so the the reduction of the 95 percent for full-time or the 85 percent for part-time happens in the budget capacity calculation all right thank you okay okay thank you so the mno budget capacity calculation so again this is about average daily membership and and moving all the all that that data forward into the calculation so the governor's budget the base level amount increased by inflation that's the difference of the 1.22 which the governor had versus 1.23 which we are reflecting here plus 32.82
014cents from the classroom site fund csf is classroom site fund sales tax if you recall last year the governor indicated that i'm definitely supporting the 20 pay increase by 2020 but i am recommending the use of sales tax revenues to close the gap at that point in time we were instructed make sure that you increase the classroom site fund contribution so that we are achieving the 20 by 2020 but it still was in classroom site fund because classroom site fund is no longer under the prop 301 it is now under legislative control because prop 301 expired in 2020 the governor determined that 32.82 cents or the value of 32.82 cents would now be moved into the general fund to fund ongoing charter school and district pay increases so that's why the 32 dollars and 82
015cents is added and then of course the inflation of 1.23 percent and so then you see that the base level amount went from 43 59 55 up to 4 445.99 that's the the recommended amount and that's what's in the budget calculation so in addition the governor indicated that he will honor the district additional assistance being fully funded and those are the dollar amounts at k8 and 912. there is a separate calculation for textbook textbooks at 9 12 but those two amounts per student are added together for purposes of this um slide any questions on that daddy i i have a question and it might be for you dr mccord um when the when prop 301 expired and he and the governor had this 32.82 cents that would go to um to our our budget did
016we have to change anything in you know remember years ago when we first did 301 we had a plan do we have to change a plan at all sorry we haven't changed anything related to that yet they're they're starting to loosen up some of the qualifications related to that for next year but um we haven't fully gotten all the information so so just that you just have to pull the and 82 cents per student out of that correct right so um so they've done that at the governor's level and at the jlbc the joint legislative budget committee so we don't have to worry about that it's done for you for us yes it's done for us yep so they're just basically the state is just taking this that amount of sales tax revenue and moving
017it to the to the general fund okay so here are the maintenance operations budget capacity assumptions so again fiscal year 2022 student accounts we always start with the student counts 200 k8 are expected to be decreased going into 2022 from 2021 200 high school students are expected to drop as well the aoi arizona online full-time and part-time are set equal to fiscal year 2021 again it's so difficult to estimate whether any of those students will come back to bricks and mortar or not and there was no basis for what the estimate would be and so therefore it was set equal to what's happening right now in fiscal year 2021. so then the total add-on weighted counts so these are what we know today regarding our special education our english language learners how many k3 students
018we have all of those counts are based upon the revised number three which is what we are working right now to present to you the first meeting in may that's our final revision for the current year base level amount increased from 43 59 55 to 44 45 99 or 446 dollars the teacher experience index did decrease from just over 1.02 down to 1.0196 to clarify based upon a question i had from mr carr the the data that determined our teacher experience index was pulled in october of 2020 so it's always the year prior that determines the teacher experience index and then the transportation revenue control limit that's the trcl is set equal to fiscal year 2021. so based upon all that information here is our comparison of the mno budget capacity so again always bringing
019us back to adopted you can see that we adopted 250 almost well 258 and a half million dollars revised number three pending is just over 260 million dollars so an increase of about 1.8 million and then our projected for fiscal year 2022 we're projecting just over 252 million resulting in a budget decrease of about 8.2 million again these are all based upon calculations that were incorporated into all of this um into the the budget uh format that we are provided by the state of arizona i would like to point out a couple of details here so um how am i going to find that here it is i don't know if you can see it so i wanted to point out the budget balance carry forward so if you look at 21 adopted the budget
020balance carry forward was 11 million and then for the revised number three pending you can see that it's over 31 million we'll go into some of those details but that's largely due to the enrollment stabilization grant as well as the efforts that we made last spring to move expenses into other funds to increase the budget balance carry forward and then note two that going into the fiscal year 2022 projected we're still projecting 17 million dollars of budget balance carry forward which is largely due to the advent of esser one the elementary and secondary school emergency relief funds and that has allowed us to move expense into those funds which again results in our being able to bring what was normally about six to 11 million dollars up to 17 million dollars going into 2022. and
021just a clarification yes the enrollment stabilization grant and yes are one-time monies they are they are yep can you tell me how much sorry can you tell me how much we received from prop one two three oh man um it's just over two million dollars i don't have the exact amount however prop 123 is part of this other budget items but some of it is negated due to the fact that we move some capacity into the energy savings fund so that's why it's not the full over 2 million the other thing i wanted to point out was the 15 override note that the 15 override has stayed the same for fiscal year 2021 but note the decrease in the fiscal year projected the reason is because the override is calculated based upon prior year count
022so for fiscal year 2022 the prior year is fiscal year 2021 so we are using the current count to calculate the m override value i wanted to make sure that that detail was clear as well and you can see that just due to the override and the drop of counts we've lost a little bit less than two million dollars in override monies any questions on this this is a very complicated slide so but you can see where on the top the unweighted adm or average daily membership is 30 000. the total weighted count is 42.6 so you can see that the weights have decreased from adopted by three million dollars over three million dollars as well the number of weighted students if you have less students in high school or elementary then of course you've
023got less weighted count on that multiplier for the weights any questions before i move on okay great so budgetary increases we know generally that we will always receive an arizona state retirement increase we've already spoken about the medical insurance premium increase at one percent minimum wage increase we are anticipating that in january of 2022. special education increases we did receive our preliminary allocation of idea and last time we presented to you that amount was a one million dollar increase but the allocation shows that we will have an additional 1.3 million dollar decrease in idea which puts more pressure on the maintenance operations fund so we have increased that to a 2.3 million dollar potential increase during fiscal year 2022 and then finally the recommended pa pay increase consideration at two percent so a total increase
024need projected of 7.65 million dollars so these just to be clear these include all employee positions that we would consider regular employee positions you can see the the exceptions there and then it does include all of the payroll benefits uh the cost is calculated based upon inclusion of all the payroll benefits to reflect arizona state retirement medicare social security etc okay so budgetary savings we talked about this a couple of meetings ago as well the premium holiday credit back to mno decrease in district office personnel and decrease of personnel due to less students total budgetary savings we anticipate about six and a half million so then the fiscal year 2022 complete budget deficit a budget decrease of 8.24 district cost increases of 7.65 and then district budgetary savings of 6.5 leaves us with a final
025projected budget deficit of nine point just under 9.4 million so the next step is okay well how do we balance that that budget moving forward so strategies opportunities to balance the budget fortunately we have received our classroom site fund allocation to go back to mrs eugetti your question that you asked about the 32.82 cents so because of that movement out of the sales tax revenue for purposes of classroom site fund we were concerned at the last meeting that our classroom site fund dollar amount per student would actually decline however the jlbc has sent us information and it has increased from 425 up to 793 dollars per student a substantial increase we have been cautioned however indicating that over 50 percent of that amount of that amount of the increases they're considering one time in nature
026and the rest is ongoing so again providing school districts additional information don't count on that extra one-time money to be ongoing in the future and then act accordingly that will go directly to the teachers correct it will go yes it has to it has to go to the teachers but that does provide another piece of information so with the statutory change regarding classroom site fund it is now eligible for support personnel those that support the learning of students psychologists social workers speech pathologists etc so those are are now eligible to be paid under classroom site fund as well so based upon all of that first of all sr3 again we don't know the exact amount i will share in the next slide what we anticipate we will receive there but the reduction of one elementary
027campus that was approved at the last board meeting that will have ongoing savings of a million dollars use of one-time monies there are it could be extra budget balance carry forward it could be additional ester monies it could be numerous one-time monies uh potentially that that would be available to the school district i did want to make it clear that we are not recommending that we move unrestricted capital from unrestricted capital into emino at this time and we don't intend to propose that it's still an option for us though and so um if it's needed we will bring that back to you for the first revision but right now we are not planning on proposing that you can see the teacher salaries to career and technical education fund and then finally the increase in classroom
028site fund contribution of four and a half million dollars and then one time of 1.5 million and then you can see the totals so the budget is arguably balanced we're about thirty thousand dollars short which we should be easily able to to move expense into other funds to be able to achieve a fully balanced budget so this represents our recommendation at this time so specifically the one-time federal funds seems important as we are using one-time monies for various things in the board meeting today so i wanted to remind you about the enrollment stabilization grant so different than the sr monies the enrollment enrollment stabilization grant came through the governor's office and had to be totally spent by december of 2020 so at that point in time due to that we opted to use that money
029for the offset of expenses in 2020 to increase budget balance carry forward which i showed you earlier remember that the enrollment stabilization grant we expected 30 million and received less than half so that's an important point given that there are expectations about receiving certain dollar amounts that you can't you can't count on until you actually receive it uh note that 12 million dollars was spent in 2020 the remaining to be spent in the current year all of these to offset um increases in teaching staff additional staff custodials additional custodial staff substitutes etc esser one which was the first round of relief funds received was 2.3 million dollars we determined that we would spend all of that in the current fiscal year fiscal year 2021 to offset those direct expenses due to the pandemic so expansion
030of the florida virtual to elementary we talked about the hand sprayers to facilitate the desanitation the the sanitization of classrooms and actually our buses we've added additional cleaning equipment for each of our schools as well as hand sanitizer equipment and stands etc all of those things will be funded through sr1 and then sr2 these are these uh we again plan to use and have already accounted for that in our monthly budget reports as being spent fully by june 30 and those monies are being used to offset the expense of of personnel throughout the school district where we had that loss of budget capacity if you remember in december our budget capacity went from 258 million down to 232 million which is why we requested the 30 million of enrollment stabilization grant so fortunately esser 2
031came into play at the end of december giving us an opportunity to avoid having to do furlough days or decrease staff salaries throughout the school district so we have believe we've judiciously used those monies as intended sr3 we are projecting up to 20 million again there's some reluctance to share a dollar amount we feel very confident however that it will at least be the same amount as s or 2 so at least 9.7 million and then and then we again will bring back when we receive the final amount we'll bring that back to you with our recommendations on how that will be spent that money is available to us through the end of 2024 giving us some flexibility for the next three years um i have a question is there any thought about why we
032received less for the enrollment stabilization grant than we anticipated i mean at first there was a promise that there would be that much but um what is the thought that that we didn't receive as much as we had hoped um i i think that it may have had something to do with not expecting the enrollment loss statewide to be as significant as it was okay so although i do understand that the state has quite a bit of funds at their disposal at the current time it just depends on how they choose to use it so all right thank you could you talk a little more about the answer to uh in terms of what what could have happened if we had not had that 9.7 million dollars in terms of what could have happened this
033year because i i know you've got it here but maybe explaining it a little bit more that we could have had to reduce some salaries or had furlough days could you just talk a little more so that the community understands um what we use that money for because i've had a lot of questions about that sure so i think by the time we were revising our budget in december it was a precipitous decrease in students enrollment and funding at that point in time and again we were anticipating that we were going to receive the full 30 million dollars but did not so at that point in time the plan in the finance office was to present to the leadership team what are our options on balancing the budget for the rest of fiscal year 2021
034fortunately before the end of the christmas holiday the second esser relief package was a pr excuse me was approved by the federal legislature and we knew pretty quickly what our dollar amount would be so that 9.7 million dollars we designated totally to offset the um the salaries that that we would otherwise have had to reduce to get us through and make all of our employees whole through the remainder of fiscal year 2021. if if if we had not received that money there's a chance that we could have had a reduction in salaries to all of our staff or um the furlough days or whatever it would have been an option that we in finance would have had to present to the um to the uh leadership team yes missy jetty that that would have been
035some of the options we would have had to explore just because um we wouldn't be able to make our bills i guess is the best way to put it and i think having conversations in late spring early summer maybe even early fall we talked about that possibility of happening due to loss of enrollment and um we made the conscious choice and and luckily uh esther two came through to be able to uh continue to support the employees in that fashion so that was for this school year correct to get us through june 30 of 2021 if if some of this money didn't come through and there wasn't any idea of this money coming through throughout the the school year we would have had to make some very difficult decisions on on on on employees and
036and thankfully we didn't have to do that uh right smack dab in the middle of the pandemic if if i may what i'm taking away for this conversation and i think it goes to some of the questions that we've received from teachers and the public as well without this s or money and the use of it to to maintain teachers we would have faced a crisis mid-year because of the decreased enrollment and remember the adm increased in adm to use the correct term the adm drives our funding with that decreased adm we would have faced an issue of how to reduce our budget and knowing that that the ratio of teachers to to students is the main driver of our expenses we would have faced that this year we used the esser money to delay
037that now i know there's some in the public saying why aren't you waiting for sr3 and delaying it again but that's simply pushing it's pushing the problem down the road and it and it's it's a hard decision because we know that we're affecting people's lives and we you know nobody wants to be the person who's only looking at the numbers but that is our responsibility one of our main responsibilities is to to maintain a workable budget um and so yeah i guess we could but the problem if we do that and push it down the road further is it simply exacerbates the problem and makes a larger problem in the future so it impacts more people in the future and if it hits us mid-year next year then we're talking about furloughs or rifts mid-year
038and not providing people an opportunity to go find employment elsewhere so it it impacts their lives to even greater deal and it's i i know the many the decisions that we made a couple of weeks ago seems heartless in reality it it is intended to be made at this timing in order to optimize the opportunities for those affected and i recognize that they're not receiving it that way but that that is at least how i feel and i believe that's how the rest of the board feels and and it's not a decision that's made easily but we are using the esr funds to try to to minimize the impact to our community and particularly our teachers well i think for me back in november we in finance received an over-expenditure report from the department of
039education at that point in times telling us that you shall revise your budget down by 25 million dollars that's a frightening amount of money knowing that we only received just under 15 million from the esg grant so fortunately if you remember we revised the budget you approved that i can't remember the date in december and then the sr2 was then released i think prior to coming back from christmas break which closed that gap of the just under 15 million dollars to the 26 million dollars that we desperately needed to close the gap of our budget so anyway so um based upon all of that now sr3 projected up to 20 million um conservative estimate uh we've been told over and over again be careful what you commit to in terms of what you think it's
040going to be it's always a little bit difficult to estimate a dollar amount until you actually have the application we have not heard what our allocation is and we have not seen the application at this point in time we do feel confident though that it will be at least the value of esther 2 which is at least 9.7 million dollars and we do believe that it will be up to 20 million dollars but we are expected to have the final number by the end of this month and we will know then what our allocation will be the other point i'd like to make about that too is i wanted to compare us a little bit to mesa public schools so their um esther allocation was significantly higher so as an example the number so to
041our 20 30 33 million dollars so of esther funds mesa public schools is expected my understanding is expected to get maybe 250 million so something like eight times the dollar amount that gilbert public schools is expected to get for all three esser funds and again that's no no fault of of mesas it's based upon the title one allocation and mesa's tile one calculation or allocations largely much greater than ours but it is really hard to fully understand that a school district that has maybe 50 percent more students than gilbert would receive up to eight times more of the esther funding than gilbert would be so trying to put it in context to the fact that gilbert is individual in the state of arizona and everyone's situation budgetarily is very different so to move forward then
042i wanted to share the budget limit comparison and you can see where revised number one we are just over 250 million dollars that is after having accounted for the enrollment stabilization grant if we had not had that 12 million dollars that's where we would be down to 230. so we ended up at 252 million because we were able to increase our budget balance carry forward to bring us back up to 252 million then you can see that due to accounting for the sr2 in revised number two the budget capacity went up to 260 million dollars that's in the current year and you can see it's a little bit more than that on revised number three pending but you can see the fiscal year 2022 projection which accounts for that 400 students adm loss and again
043to the right you can see the budget balance carry forward so this is shared to show what our our budget balance carry forward has been so prior to 2020 it was in the neighborhood of four to six million uh you can see that it was a little bit higher in 2021 initially but due again to the advent of the federal funds and the one-time monies you can see the budget balance carry forward rising to over 30 million and then you can see our projection for fiscal year 2022 going down to 17 million again it's that that situation associated with one-time money so year-over-year just due to the budget balance carry forward there was a loss from 30 million dollars to 17 million so there's a 13 million dollar loss right there as well any questions
044on that that's regarding the budget balance carry forward um i know when you came you made a very uh passionate plea to increase our budget very budget balance carry forward it was far too low in the past we have made efforts to slowly increase that uh let's throw out the the revisions because it's that one-time money but even without those two those three revisions i guess two bar graphs but three revisions we're seeing that upward trend what what's the target where where are we where are we right uh where do we get that number right that we should try and maintain it so and i i think um we still have a um a reserving policy for mno that that we need to address in in policy so it's it's that balance between meeting the
045needs of your students in the current year versus having some flexibility to have additional carryover in subsequent years which also includes balancing how much fund balance you have left which impacts your credit rating which impacts the cost to the taxpayer for gilbert public schools so generally speaking i would say targeting between four and six percent would be a reasonable budget balance carry forward it would also depend upon whether we adopt a policy allowing our schools to carry over their general fund discretionary budgets so all those things are still subject to conversation but i would say between four and six percent and i think you made a very valid point just reiterate you know it's a balance if we we don't want to take it all at once because that adversely affects the students this year
046um at the same time if we don't carry the right amount you mentioned that it affects our credit rating which affects our bonds and takes money away from students it also may require us to take more tax advance notice notes which costs us more interest annually which takes money away from students so getting that right over a time period and then maintaining it right is important in order to maximize dollars in the classroom and protect the taxpayer correct ms betts um just reiterating kind of what's been said i think it is it can be difficult if we look and see there's actually more money in fiscal year 2022 projection than there was in fiscal year 2020 revised and the amount of carryford we have it can make it difficult to see why have we made
047the decisions we made especially with the um teachers and different things can you address that again just one more time that it looks like there's plenty of cash so um so just a reminder of the budget increase from fiscal year 2020 to fiscal year 2021 that was directly due to the passage going from a 10 override to a 15 override which infused an additional 11 million dollars into gilbert public schools at the same time we made commitments to salary compensation the 20 by 20 that the governor proposed was also in play for 2021 the final year of that five percent increase in addition to the other commitments that the override made to add social emotional supports at all of our schools to allocate a certain dollar amount to reduce class sizes we were very successful
048at reducing class sizes in the current year due to the the movement of students and lots of students so just a reminder that there were a lot of commitments associated with that so and again it's it was an enrollment loss that led to the reduction in force than a lack of budget so it's a process by which we wanted to make sure that we were meeting the needs of this of students and so sort of i don't know like right sizing i guess the school district different than in 2010 where the reductions was due solely to a lack of resources the state was in a dire situation and our dot we had all the students but the dollar amount per student dropped precipitously so different situation um trying to navigate the needs of students so
049we're not changing class size allocations none of that it's just making a decision to have the right number of teachers for the students that we're expecting to be enrolled in 2022 thank you so the unrestricted capital budget i shared that the governor's budget did include fully funding the district additional assistance so the revised number three pending shows 16.7 million dollars if you remember there was an increase in funding in district additional assistance between 20 and 21 again a reminder that district additional assistance is based on prior year student counts so so where we were reduced by about 17 from formula in the current year and having a zero percent reduction for projected for 2022 it only resulted in a 380 000 increase again just due to the loss of students any questions on that can
050you speak to how how we spent that i know you do every month you tell us that so um in the current year uh we made sizable allocations to athletics to make sure that we're catching up with all of the athletic venues that are maintenance in nature such as the pole ball pits the long jump pits just even adding sand sometimes we made allocations to the weight rooms we completed that in 202 one making modifications to all of our high schools and then some modifications down to our junior highs we did make a sizable investment in cafeteria tables due to the need to add cafeteria tables for social distancing purposes um added allocations to performing arts associated with not having any allocation to performing arts for many many years in addition there was an allocation
051for uh additional textbook adoptions um those those sorts of things thank you um i have a question about that do you remember when i i'm trying to remember when the district additional assistance was cut because i think this is probably the first time it's been fully allocated in about at least nine years ten years or something yeah i don't know the exact time frame i thought it was 2012 or 13. then right around there 2012 i'm thinking they didn't cut it um right at the 2010 but they did cut it a couple of years later and they cut it in the middle of the year yes it was very frustrating okay so risks and opportunities as i mentioned earlier we're still not done normally by this point in time i'm talking to our student count
052analyst and she's saying bonnie we're pretty set our 100th adm is completed we are still fluctuating up and down primarily due just to the quantification of the number of students that are online whereas most of them were in bricks and mortar in the past so i just wanted to prepare you all that the budget capacity will continue moving in the current year the legislature is not completed there's still lots of outstanding bills that have not been decided upon and of course the major budget reconciliation bill has not even been heard yet so again there's lots of still lots of moving parts for fiscal 2022 so so we could have a greater loss of students in the current year than realized as an example we did lose 80 adm month over month we could see an
053average daily membership loss of more than 400 students from the current year at this point in time due to the pandemic all of our trend analyses are just not valid anymore it's really difficult to determine what's going to happen going into august of 2022 and then as i mentioned with the budget balance careful conversation and all of the esser funds and the enrollment stabilization grant funds we are we have and continue to use a lot of one-time monies that will decrease our future flexibility so the miss bets yes if i may interrupt sorry dr santa cruz actually dr mccord can i ask again we we've heard questions of you know to sit here and just say well our adm loss could be greater than 400 students and to say we're going to have a loss
054of students we're losing students are we just standing by and just you know just saying well that's all that we can do about it or what's our plan to and i know you've mentioned some advertising and some communication but to speak more clearly too are we following up on students who are in we have each campus when we came back full time picked the phone and called all those families that had left to let them know that we're back open full-time and they're more than welcome to come back and we received some students from that but what we've seen throughout and and i check you know enrollment on a daily basis and you see fluctuations of students uh of 20 to 25 students swing a day it goes up one day it goes back down
055you know it may go up 80 students you know one day and then it drops another 60. it depends on the status of students coming and going from global going back to bricks and mortar but we have seen that and back to the comment that you made just a few minutes ago it's really difficult to project what that's going to look like year over year and so um we have to be as fiscally responsible when it comes to our budget for next year because as we you know we saw this year we requested 30 million and only got half of that and so we can't put our district in a position to be able to not be able to make its bills i guess over time and so looking at next year do i think
056students will come back yeah i do but am i willing to stake the the financial stability of our district on it no not right now i can't do that as was noted earlier we've increased uh one year probably over the last 10 in terms of enrollment and so the demographer has stated over time that our um our enrollment is you know projected to go down year over year and so i think when we increased enrollment a couple years ago we we really shot above and beyond that and and he even called and made a comment saying wow i didn't i didn't know you guys were going to be able to do that and then the pandemic hit and here we are today so let me let don talk a little bit about more about our
057marketing efforts moving forward sure yes so um a number of the initiatives and campaigns that we had in place the year that we saw the increase we've continued them last year and this year as a kind of solid foundation so that would include leaflet drops and within our binary areas facebook advertising social media advertising um in general also print materials kind of all the usual things you would leverage um every year to with the goal of driving enrollment up and also sustaining that enrollment and so all of those have continued for this year and the other thing that we're implementing for this year is a much more targeted approach so many of the factors that have influenced enrollment this year are new factors that didn't exist prior to the pandemic or weren't something that or
058weren't factors that were influencing our enrollment so we've really tried to target in on what those are and address them at school level the other thing that we've noticed is the enrollment factors have been really on a school basis rather than um you know we could do generic advertising that applies the whole district but what is and what has been more effective is really targeting in on the specific marketing needs of each school because the factors implement influencing enrollment have been different and so some of those things might be looking at um the withdrawal information of everyone who's withdrawn from sixth grade for example and then working with our junior highs to reach out to those families to you know say and it's really great customer service as much as anything else to say you
059know we um we know that you were formally prior to the pandemic a gps student and we see that you withdrew during sixth grade we'd like to work with you and answer any questions that you might have to support you in making your decision for junior high and to make you feel as welcome as possible so really targeting in on all of those students and families that have withdrawn and reaching out to them um and that's to get back the students that we have lost during the pandemic and of course constantly keeping an eye on not trying to lose sight on what was our original goal which is to continue to grow each year so then really we're doing school specific leaflet drops to zip codes and particularly targeting the west side of the district
060right now and where working i'm trying to think when she says leaflet drop please don't think that we got helicopters running around just going to ask that question so are we making our teachers go out and drop leaflets are we hiring a company how are we doing we work with uh so we work with community impact newspaper we also work with company companies and the most efficient way to target it by zip code and residential areas is actually to work with the post office they have an every door direct mail system and that allows us to create leaflets that are specific to the schools that are in that area we're also really focusing on um some of our key programs the traditional programs performing arts um as well as the quality of our neighborhood schools
061um the dual language and then we're drilling down into like where do you you know where are you seeing um where are you seeing these losses so obviously there was a kindergarten loss so we're working on creating content around why kindergarten is important to support families who are maybe considering should my child go into first grade or into kinder um and then some of the elementaries we've seen a loss we saw quite a lot of a loss at fourth grade now going to fifth so we're trying to address that by making increasing awareness of all of the valuable um academics and extracurriculars that are offered at that i can't remember what it's called but the fourth fifth sixth not the early childhood the other intermediate intermediate that's it yeah at that area and to really
062you know shine a light of course we live in a competitive arizona is a competitive landscape for education and i would say arguably this year has increased that competition tenfold and we have home school options that didn't exist prior so we're keeping an eye on all of that and really pulling out all the stocks and i can say that working directly with the principals they are phenomenal they work really hard on this and we're creating videos we're they're they're taking on a lot which might not feel comfortable and familiar but they're working really hard with our team to do everything we can and i probably forgot some stuff too that was great thank you i think i appreciate you being proactive and all the work that's gone into trying to do what we can to
063invite students back and let people know that they're we want them back in our schools and the reasons why we want to back in our schools oh yes absolutely the other thing i forgot to mention is we are anticipating when i liaise with my colleagues in other districts we're definitely seeing with regard to enrollment there's a bit of a lag and people are behind and planning for next year so we're doing everything we can over this summer to be as accessible as possible so um jason martin works on creating a summer registration committee group uh i think it's going to be at highland park and that'll be for four weeks and as part of that we're gonna um each school is gonna be create at the elementary and junior high level is gonna be creating
064kind of like a suite of information a letter from the principal so when people reach out over the summer and they're sent that information they're sent videos um all the schools have created virtual tours for people who don't feel comfortable we're really doing and there's always more and we will continue to do more but we're taking it really seriously i i have a question if if someone perhaps had a kindergarten student in this year yeah if someone had a kindergarten student this year and decided to just keep that student home what would be the process would we put them in first grade kindergarten or what would be the process of someone bringing a student back that maybe they just kept them home for this year it depends on what on what happened at home if
065a parent came in and requested they wanted their child in kindergarten to start there that'd be great if they requested first grade we'd probably go through some assessments just to see where they're at as well and and so we could help with that placement and recommendation to that parent okay thank you yeah in addition to that um mr ryan and mr costellano have put together a data user group and that data user group is it kind of encompasses a lot of different areas in education here and we're talking about test scores we're talking about ap classes we're talking about a number of clubs organizations those types of things but one of the aspects related to this group is to develop something related to enrollment and so it's going to be designed for schools to be
066able to set targets in a lot of different areas and as much marketing as as don can do we also know that the neighborhood school and the reputation of that school is what drives enrollment in those communities and so along with her assistance those schools will be targeting those as we move and they have been but we're making it more direct more succinct and putting actual numbers and targets in place for them to try to hit moving forward so once we get that completely developed we'll we'll bring that here and run through it with you but it'll it'll take a little while thank you so there are future budget opportunities as well it's it is possible the legislature will approve greater funding again we constantly are looking at our budget balance carry forward to see
067what opportunities there could be in increasing that the distance learning remember that the current year budget included a distance learning adjustment of over 6 million dollars we do expect that to be decreased and so that will increase budget balance carry forward as as a consequence also we haven't talked at all about potential of moving expenses into other funds and then finally esther three how much could it be two times s or two um so and then of course with sr3 we do know that once we know the allocation twenty percent of it has to be set aside to address learning loss so we are in the process of planning up to if it's 20 million up to four million dollars to address learning loss we're hoping that that would have a a positive impact on
068enrollment as well going into the 2022 school year so with that that's all i have on this budget report today thank you miss bets any other questions board members were we supposed to hold our questions to the end sorry okay thank you miss pets that was the only presentation for this evening we'll have some action items as we get to the brief board business meeting uh we'll move to item four which is adjournment of this work study session 4.01 is adjournment anything else before we call the adjournment no sir thank you dr mccord then we'll declare that this work study session is adjourned and we will move to the brief board business meeting item five and we'll call 5.01 call a meeting to order and mrs wilson would you please call the roll miss laurie
069miss larrywood here mr reed carr here miss sheila eugetti here miss jill humphreys here dr charles santa cruz here mr president all of our members are present you have a quorum thank you miss wilson we're at item 5.03 is approval of this evening's agenda is there a motion so moved thank you miss humphreys is there a second i'll second thank you mr carr any discussion if not we will move to vote on approving this evening's agenda all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries five zero we move to item six which is the consent agenda and we are open for a motion sentence i move to approve the consent agenda thank you mr carr thank you thank you for the second any discussion seeing none we will
070take a vote before we do that i just want to notice mr houston that we will have an opportunity to congratulate and offer time for him to speak to us after the vote those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed same motion carries 5-0 dr mccord i'll turn it over to you thank you dr santa cruz governing board members tonight on the consent agenda for certified personnel you just approved rod houston as the new principal of mesquite high school mr houston has been an ad there for a year and then became the interim principal for this school year he's done an exceptional job in an especially difficult time and we just want to congratulate him and his family on this accomplishment mr houston if you'd like to say a couple words please
071feel free i'd just like to thank the the governing board induction court and the superintendency for their confidence in me when they came to me to ask me to be the interim principal um and i look forward to continuing on the path that mesquite is on and taking us to greater heights and keep rolling so thank you all for your confidence and support thank you mr houston congratulations we'll move to we'll move to item seven action item seven seven point zero one is buyback of accrued time for employees that were included in the student-centered reduction in force dr mccord anything by way of introduction yes dr santa cruz governing board members it was suggested at the last board meeting that we take a look at this and we're asking you to approve those that were
072part of the reduction in force that didn't qualify based on the 2020-2021 memorandum of understanding the qualifications to be eligible for medical leave buyback those qualifications where have five years consecutive service for the most recent date of hire in the district have accumulated at least 25 days of unused medical leave and complete the current contractual year in gps and then it talks about basically the number of days in the buyback related to that for this purpose if those that didn't have at least 25 days they would be paid at the amount of 26.50 per day for those that didn't meet those certain criteria and so again unusual circumstances call for some things to change a little bit for the benefit of the employee that were part of this and so we bring this to you
073to allow this to happen for those that are involved and mr mcintosh is here from otm uh to answer any questions related to that before we move to mr mcintosh we're at item 7.01 is there a motion i believe that we approve the buyback of accrued time for employees that were included in the student-centered reduction in force thank you mr eugetti is there a second all second thank you mr carr now we are open for discussion any questions for mr mcintosh what would be the process that these teachers go through to to begin this so good evening dr santa cruz and governing board and dr mccord the process would be the the names that were impacted by the reduction in force we would check each one of those and if they qualify at the end
074of their contract whatever remaining days we would buy do they have to submit anything to you no they do not we'll take care of it no tim i appreciate that any additional questions seeing none then we will vote on item 7.01 those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those pose the same motion carries five zero we're items seven point zero two suspension of performance evaluation for 2020 and 2021 dr mccord anything for introductory purposes yes dr santa cruz governing board member we're asking you to uh to suspend uh the performance evaluations for the 2021 school year most recently the governor has signed into law the ability to suspend this for this current school year again after your motion mr mcintosh is here to answer any questions thank you sir item 7.02 is on
075the table is there a motion so moved thank you mrs humphries is there a second second thank you mr eugetti discussion any questions for mr mcintosh i just have one and i think um i know the answer to this but just this this happened already last year correct so so it's two years in a row that this has been suspended at the formal evaluation at the end of last year it was due to an executive order right this year the governor signed it into law on march 18th so retroactively so there's no no formal evaluations for last school year and this school year correct there are formal evaluations last school year but in towards the end of the year they some of them were not we're not going away okay okay thank you additional questions
076ms wood thank you so i think i think as we've talked before about changes in the evaluations and partly that it's an opportunity to help teachers and schools learn and grow teachers and and principals i i i can understand why we're suspending it because it's been such an interesting year but i also see value in that feedback positive as well as constructive is there something that we can do to make sure that we're still having that happen on campuses i think that's important absolutely i think the principals still plan to meet with their employees towards the end of the year and get some coaching on what they've observed over the course of the year this year and to help them it just won't be a formal evaluation where it's science summitted i did have a
077question um is there any impact i mean so we didn't have some evaluations last year we're not going to have evaluations this year is there an impact in the future that maybe for someone who wants to be highly effective because they have not had these two prior evaluations how are we going to mitigate mitigate that impact or what are some of the potential outcomes i guess is what i'm asking i think that principals are still having those conversations with their employees each year like i answered with mrs woods the coaching opportunities i don't know what the impact will be it goes until december of next year it is not our plan to continue this into the next year we would like to see the evaluation process go through i think those conversations are really helpful
078to employees with their administrator on what the expectations are and some coaching opportunities of both strengths and weaknesses among our certified staff there okay thank you this is a an interesting turn because it was a discussion that we certainly incorporated in some of our meetings as we had the opportunity to have that conversation and probably in all fairness i think the gesture is should be appreciated not believing the fact that evaluations can and are helpful to the growth of any employee and we endorse that i believe as a board and as a school district but with the challenges that have faced all teachers and all administrators in the last year to two it just uh begs the question where were those evaluations of any value during this time for those employees to address the issue
079of growth and support and i would fall on the side of saying it would have been probably minimal at best but evaluations are still an important part of the profession my biggest concern about i i guess first the question you mentioned that the governor passed that there was a law passed this year is that saying we should not do evaluations or is it just giving us the option to not do evaluations it's given us the option governing board would have to approve that you know my my biggest concern about not doing the performance evaluation perhaps you can tell me the impact in a in a or at least a formal performance evaluation is we're getting feedback at least by some that they they were surprised at recent evaluations that were conducted and they were surprised
080at their outcome on their rubric um i guess my question be had we done formal evaluations a year ago had we done evaluations this year would they have had the feedback they needed to not be surprised i think i think that's a difficult question the answer to be real honestly remember remembering that evaluation is the observation is a moment in time so it's that one lesson now they go in and they do walk throughs and and they take other feedback but the evaluation process is an observation and then with the addition of the walk-through forms the observation forms a pre and a post reflection and then a summary form at the end of the year i do think it's hard to answer that because some would have been scored last year some would not have
081this year with with the pandemic we had different modalities some people moved to to global some people stayed or went back and forth so it was just a difficult year as a whole for our certified staff you know i i'll admit as an employee you know the evaluation time is always stressful because you're worried are they going to say something they're going to identify something that that i didn't do that i wasn't aware of that i didn't think of you know i mean even when you have confidence in your own work it's still a stressful time um i guess my question would be how many of the teachers would want an evaluation i haven't surveyed them so i can't answer how many want it i know by statute prior to this law we were required
082to do them i do think the majority of our certified teachers appreciate feedback in general and knowing what they need like i said like what they need to work better on and what they're good at and getting that feedback to take into the the following year i i i just worry two years in a row i mean i i think if i turned the tables and said to the teachers oh you don't have to evaluate your students for two years i think we kind of saw the second half of last year when we quit grading and said you can only increase your grade kind of what happened to education we learned from that and didn't repeat that mistake this time as we moved into this current school year i just worry evaluation is a useful
083is a useful element to all of us the feedback we use we receive is used for improvement i i just am worried about suspending it for for an indefinite time period now two years that that puts just as it put our students at a disadvantage does it put our teachers at a disadvantage of some sort and i don't know the answer to that i'm generally asking i do think that you know to my point earlier it doesn't have to be this formal legal process which was suspended or signed into law i do i know that our principals will want to meet with teachers and give them feedback and coaching opportunities on what they've observed in the entirety of the year with a teacher's weaknesses and strengths so i'm hoping that as we go through the
084next month and a half that each principal takes that opportunity to meet with their teachers one-on-one and provide that feedback whether it's feedback off this observation and the walkthroughs or whether it's feedback based on the rubric i think even those that weren't impacted by the student center reduction in force want some of the feedback that their the site leadership has seen this year and observed in a very difficult time and just to be clear so that my comment is not misconstrued i am not anti-evaluation i'm simply saying that given the stress of the time and all of the pressure that our professionals have been under during this stressful time it just seemed like another element on the plate that would not have served them well in getting objective and necessary feedback by no way in
085no way am i suggesting that we abandoned the concept of evaluation uh in perpetuity just a matter of taking a look at our circumstances and adjusting according to those circumstances just as you use the example of students and and the grading to say that teachers didn't adjust the grading in whatever manner during this time for those students would be probably an error as well so there is there is no desire to abridge the idea of evaluations it's simply a statement of giving teachers a a respite in a time that is particularly challenging in my view any other discussion with that then we will vote on item 7.02 all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed same motion carries 5-0 we'll now move to item 7.03 and as we move to this
086i was a little premature but dr mccord if you would can you kind of re-iterate and update the board on the cost of this particular proposal as we work through it and it relates to a two percent ongoing compensation and a three percent stipend for members of our employee group all concerned and then i'll have some follow-up questions along with a motion you bet thank you dr santa cruz uh we are asking for a two percent ongoing compensation increase in a three percent stipend for the 22 school year in order to maintain the base salary competitiveness of the various district positions it's recommended to increase individual salaries for all positions by 2 percent except for minimum wage earners minimum wage earners shall receive an inflationary increase for their hourly wages uh they they received that
087in january of 20 or will receive that in january of 2022. in addition to the anticipated or three grant monies it is also recommended approving an additional three percent to all employees including minimum wage earners to be paid on the first pay date in december 2021 and the first pay date of june 2022 based on their continued employment the estimated cost uh for the ongoing the two percent is 4.4 million dollars and in our onboard docks it is misprinted the three percent is a 6.7 million uh dollar stipend for the sr-3 monies thank you dr mccord with that is the introduction to 7.03 is their emotion so i moved that we approved two percent ongoing compensation increase and three percent stipend for fiscal year 2022. okay is there a second second it's been moved and
088seconded is there any discussion i have a couple of questions for discussion purposes uh when we talk and i don't know if it's dr mccord or miss betts which positions are included in the two percent of the ongoing increase so for that it's all regular scheduled positions with the scheduled work week minimum wage employees temporary employees supplemental pay employees and any substitutes would not be included in the two percent uh pay increase okay my second question is remind us of the positions that are minimum wage positions so in in our grading system in terms of of how employees are graded for purposes within our system not a grade in terms of a b c or d but just what level they're at all positions that are at the 101 which include assistant activity leaders crossing
089guards instructional assistants science resource materials clerk spirit store clerk keep in mind that all of these positions will receive an inflationary crease in january of 2022 pursued to statute and my last question is how will hourly employee stipends be calculated if they are eligible how are they miss bet you want to hit that one um you bet sure uh so um the calculation would be based upon their annual scheduled hours so specifically if they are a seven hour a day employee multiplied by their number of days for the entire year then we would take their hourly rate of pay reflective of fiscal year 2022 multiply those two together and then multiply them by 1.5 for the december payment and another 1.5 for the um june payment so it will be based on scheduled hours not
090actual hours so overtime hours or those hours that are over their schedule would not be um included in the calculation of their stipend thank you mrs betts any other questions miss wood yes thank you so the three percent stipend we didn't see that in this budget at all in this budget presentation and i i believe though you just said that that will be coming from the sr3 that's correct which you anticipate between 10 to 20 million dollars that's correct and we're saying that this will be 6.7 million dollars um that includes all employees who have been here this year going forward to basically give them a retention stipend as much as we can too that would be approved for contracts for next school year okay okay okay that are that are approved for contracts next
091failure okay so if we have 6.7 million dollars um if it's only 10 million dollars and we have 20 percent that must go to um what can i think of the word right now um okay so that would be two million going toward learning loss so the basically the remaining would go toward this um stipend that's correct if it's a 10 million dollar amount we're hoping that that's the low end of what we're anticipating that's the low end of what sr3 will be based upon the quantification of what was passed by the federal government uh it's anticipated that it would be a little bit over two times uh two but again um being cautious and not knowing exactly um but um but that's what we were led to believe again we will know for sure
092by the end of this month okay i appreciate that and i with this been a difficult year and difficult decisions all the way around but i also know that we've made commitments um in our strategic operating plan in the past year of um in in our in our overrides in different things to provide competitive compensation and we've made strides toward that and i think this is important even though recognizing that this three percent stipend is a one-time use of money i think it's as as much as we can offer in the best way that we can at this point and hopefully we can find going forward let's keep looking forward to be competitive in our salaries it's important i think we've set that as a standard going forward and i think we need to keep
093going forward with that so i appreciate this thank you thank you miss wood any other questions comments concerns i i was just going to say um i really i think it's important to be competitive but i am concerned that we're using one-time money i mean my experience on the board is that every year we've had to cut the budget except after we've passed an override and bond election those are the only years i have not had to cut the budget in order to get a raise included and sometimes that raise has been much smaller than this so i just want people to be aware we're doing our best hopefully as we go forward in the future i i hope the legislature will be more generous than i anticipate that would be very helpful that you
094know we need funding i know people get frustrated that we talk about funding but we need funding in order to pay people to have education and that's you know this is it's nice that we can give the stipend but um it's going to be challenging to keep that three percent as we go forward then we're going to have to figure out how we do that mr carr if i may just to make a comment to clarify you know i think the question that i've received is why are you giving raises when you've just announced that you're reducing employment um and and i've talked with both mr mcintosh and miss betts about this and rather than ask it i'll answer you can correct me if i say this wrong the reduction in force was driven by
095student and count student enrollment adm it's it's it's part of a formula of student teacher ratio if you will and with the effects and affects our budget it affects our classroom planning it affects you know all elements the compensation for those employees that that remain and and we we recognize how it looks to to some but is part of an ongoing plan we've done a compensation studies we've done benchmarks we've had strategic plans and we've spent the last two or three years trying to align our compensation to that to make sure that we are competitive one of the feedbacks that we received from teachers four years ago some of you know six years ago when all of us have run and over the last several years is my salary is not the same as those
096in neighboring districts we've spent a great deal of time and effort over the last several years to try and align salaries across the board to those competitive benchmarks that we have with our neighboring districts if we backtrack now we fall behind again and that creates a two three or even four year fix that we're constantly behind not knowing to ms humphreys point if future budgets or future allocations will allow us to fix that problem so as much as they seem related to some that they're they're actually two different drivers that drive it and one is we we have to align our our teachings our staffing two student numbers the other is we have to remain competitive with neighboring districts to keep the employees and and treat them fairly so i just i just want to
097make that point and i i agree um ms humphries with you i i'm concerned about using one-time funding not because we don't have one-time funding available but because it creates an expectation we're using one-time funds to stay competitive at some point to stay true to that we've got to make that permanent and we don't we don't know so we're trying to bridge that gap um and it's an imperfect bridge but it's a bridge that i'm willing to take to to try and treat the those employees who are staying as fairly as possible so i again not a question but uh a restatement of a conversation that i've had both with mr mcintosh and miss betts uh outside of this meeting oh i have another comment now that have you listened to you mr carr um
098in 2009 i was a parent that came to that meeting the school board meeting where the school board voted to a reduction in force and that was where i got involved because i thought you know i got to understand what's going on that reduction um they didn't give a raise so they could keep more people and it took us seven years to actually bring people up to where they should have been because of that it took us until 2015 until we passed the override and then so they got that raised in 2016. um we did a one to seven percent raise to help those that had stayed in the district but had not received adequate compensation um so we had some leapfrogging going on um it's really important that we try every year to be
099um keep our programs the best we can but also keep our salaries as competitive as possible because once we once we slide back it's really hard to recover it's it's really hard and um that just shows because you know 2009 to 2015 that's a long time to wait for additional compensation and miss betsy i'd just like to go back just a little bit because you outlined two circumstances during the first rift period and the circumstances this period can you re-state the differences between those two i'm sure so back in 2009 and i was here in arizona in 2009 at the time it was a a huge decrease in the amount per student available for school districts and charter schools throughout the state of arizona so we were not provided the additional resources we needed to
100meet the needs of the students that we had in our schools and if i remember right in gilbert you all were still growing in 2010 we were right about plateaued out about plateauing at that point in time probably the peak and so at that point in time the reduction in force occurred and many school districts froze salaries without any increases and had to eliminate staff and so class sizes were increased resources were limited to our students so in this particular case the class sizes are remaining the same as they were in 2020 and the issue is that we lost the student so didn't have the same need for the number of staff to support the learning of those students and so but we we did receive an additional a dollar amount from the state regarding
101like the base level amount increased by inflation as an example so it was truly about the loss of students and making sure that we had the right number of staff to meet the needs of those students not due to a significant budgetary reduction i think that's an important factor is that we keep in front of us that the loss of students is what brings us to this point today if there is no other discussion and miss wood would accept and her second would accept i'd like to just restate the motion just to for clair clarification sake and it's moving to approve a two percent ongoing pay increase for all regularly scheduled employees excluding minimum wage supplemental pay temporary and substitute employees and approve a three percent stipend for all regularly scheduled employees to include minimum
102wage employees but excluding supplemental pay as a part of that calculation temporary employees and substitute employees where the stipend for the hourly employee is calculated based on an annual scheduled hours multiplied by the fiscal year 2022 hourly rate to be paid in two lump sums in december and june just so that that's read into the record and people understand who the groups are and that are included those that are not included and what the two percent represents and what the three percent represents uh do you accept that wording this would yes thank you and i i think you think you stated this dr santa cruz but just to be on just in case i didn't hear it the stipend is just for the three percent is just for the 2022 school year yes i'm fine
103okay so that was miss woods motion and the second she's accepted the verbiage and so with no additional comment or question we will vote on item 7.03 two percent ongoing compensation increase in the three point three percent stipend for fy 2022 those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries five zero item 7.04 starting wages and salaries increase by inflation exempt for minimum wage except for minimum wage and supplemental pay dr mccord anything by way of introduction yes dr santa cruz governing board members in order to minimize salary and wage compression associated with beginning hourly wages and salaries it's recommended that the governing board approve starting pay inflationary increases for all positions except for minimum wage positions minimum wage positions will receive an inflationary increase in january twenty twenty
104two the legislator is the legislature is expected to approve a one point two three percent inflationary amount thank you dr mccord item 7.04 is on the table is there a motion so moved thank you miss humphries is there a second oh second thank you mr carr discussion dr mccord yes thanks dr santa cruz dreamcoater miss betts so do you feel that this continues i i feel like this addresses the concerns of compression that we've been trying and working to address does this address competitiveness with for our starting salaries for with our neighboring districts do you feel i think based on our compensation study it helps address it it doesn't no it doesn't fully address it and when i say that um again talking about budgets and surrounding districts they're growing they have more they'll have
105more money probably to put towards this but this will help us continue to stay the course and not fall further behind i guess is the best way to put it okay so i know that's important too exactly thank you can you could we have uh hear from mr mcintosh a little bit about the compression issue that we had those seven years i mentioned that we were finally able to dress some in 2015 and and especially with the minimum wage that's been over the last three four years can you talk about compression and what we've done to address that and why this is important to to address it as we go forward absolutely absolutely um at the end of the conclusion of our salary study we looked at every job within the district and um then
106those who participated in the salary study and pushed people into new ranges and gave them last year and addressed all of the compression that we felt was necessary at that time to dr mccord's point it helped us become more competitive it has been suggested i think by the the consultant what is it you have to go at least half bonnie of whatever raise you give to the entire employee group you have to increase those base rates by a minimum of half in order to stay um not to have the compression occur again actually a maximum of a half right a maximum of a half and just in case somebody doesn't understand that compression means that someone who's supervising might make the same amount as someone that is under them because of either the minimum wage
107increase that we've had over the last few years or prior someone coming in new to the district and getting a little more money and then people in the district not getting that same amount of uh increase correct prior to to last year's salary study and the implementation of those results we had compressed a whole bunch of job grades because the increase was provided to minimum wage earners was larger than the increase given to the staff within some of those in other positions so it compressed a whole bunch of jobs into what became the minimum wage jobs and then we had to to implement these the salary study results in order to push some of those jobs with higher responsibility outside of the minimum wage and and we were able to address this because of our
108increase from a 10 override to a 15 percent override correct otherwise we would not have had those funds and that's why we had the compression to begin with because we just didn't have enough funds to address it but without those additional funds given us by the voters we were able to do a lot um so i'm going to work on enrollment i hope i can find some people who want to come to gilbert public schools and hope we can do better thank you and i think the salary study has helped us and keeps us in prioritizing uh the fact that we need to continue to stay competitive stay decompressed moving forward and so that depends on on budget but of course that would be a priority as we move if i could just make sure
109and clarify to dr santa cruz correct the fact that that we are just talking about the base rate schedule right now to increase the starting salaries i just wanted to make sure it's clear that everyone's not going to receive inflation plus the two percent so i just want to make sure that's entered on the record that this is for those that we would be hiring in the future that would that the starting salary of any position would be increased by inflation because anybody that is ongoing would receive a two percent pay increase instead of that one point two three percent so i just wanted to make sure that that's in the record and clear thank you ms betts any additional commentary question then 7.4 is ready for a vote all those in favor of 7.4
110please signify by saying aye aye all those opposed the same motion carries five zero we're at item eight which is adjournment of this brief board meeting is there a motion i'll move that we adjourn thank you mr carr that has been moved is there a second second thank you mr eugenie it's been moved and seconded all those in favor of adjournment please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries five zero we thank you for your attendance both live stream and here in person we'll say goodnight and the board meeting is adjourned not at a work study there is no open call to the