Gilbert Public Schools District Board Meeting 09/22/2020

001good evening and welcome to the meeting of the gilbert public schools governing board today is tuesday september the 22nd i would like to call this meeting to order welcome to those of you who are joining us on live stream those of you who are here and in the audience and members of the board this evening miss wood is joining us telephonically so she will be here at roll call we will first have a moment of silence item 1.02 and then we'll move to the pledge of allegiance led by miss eugetti would you please join me in a moment of silence i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you mr judy

002ms wilson please do the roll call item 1.04 miss humphreys here miss sheila eugetti here miss laurie wood here mr reed carr here dr charles santa cruz here mr president all board members are present you have a quorum thank you miss wilson we'll move to item two approval of this evening's agenda item 2.01 is there a motion i move that we approve the agenda as presented thank you mr jetty is there a second all second thank you mr carr any discussion seeing none hearing none we will vote on approving tonight's agenda all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries five zero move to item 3 the superintendent's report and we move to item 3.01 and dr mccord thank you dr santa cruz while i switch to the

003y-die here give me one moment okay thank you dr santa cruz governing board members members of the public tonight our superintendent's report is going to hover around three things one i'm going to talk a little bit about how we are how the decision was made based on a july 28th governing board meeting to start in person full and personal on the 21st and then i'll talk about the current metrics as well as go into uh gilbert public schools coveted 19 dashboard that will hopefully be up and running by tomorrow at some point in time and board members at any point in time feel free to please kick in with any information you'd like to share related to this on july 28th governing board agenda items 7.03 there was a motion that says it is recommended

004gilbert public schools begin in-person classes upon meeting the arizona department of health services guidelines at such time the board will provide teachers administrators and parents a one-week notice to plan and implement their reopening strategy beginning august 5th and until the guidelines are met courses will be held online the board will reevaluate september 22nd if the criteria has not been previously met and based on that and based on when the current guidelines are out originally maricopa county or the arizona department of health services came out with their dashboard and it was related to you could click on whatever county you lived in and those were the numbers that we were looking at and then subsequently maricopa county came out with one that is specific to school districts and we discussed that in board meeting i think

005thereafter but originally that's where we were looking at and so as we came to the meetings from then on out we kept looking at both sets of data just understanding that um using both of those to guide us in our decision making and with that um we didn't specify whether it had to be all green or you know how many yellows there had to be we just felt that it when it was we felt it was safe enough to continue based on those guidelines and based on the metrics that were set forth that was the decision made governing board members of my understanding that or would anybody want to kick in with that i believe you're correct there dr mccord i'll defer to mr carr comment yeah dr mccord i think you're exactly right and

006i would point out first of all this motion was passed before we knew the metrics or the format of the matrix second part of the confusion of the metrics if we call them is that there are actually two and there really are three elements of the metrics but as far as the green and red we were looking at the metrics of did we meet specific benchmarks and that's that's a hundred out of a hundred thousand a hundred and a hundred thousand people that's seven percent and that's five percent depending on which of the metrics it was so we either met that or we didn't and we have referred to those as green or red at the same time the metrics released included a component of risk level for spread and that was either red yellow

007or green and so the fact that we're using red and green for a specific metric and we're using red and green red yellow and green red and green for a risk level i think is part of what's causing the confusion we authorize you to go forward with the plan i don't i honestly don't feel like it's an issue of whether we're meeting the metrics and again i'm referring to the specific numbers not the range but perhaps we didn't communicate it post fact how we were following those what's red green or what's red yellow green and so we i appreciate that you're going through this in an effort to communicate to the public but i do concur or concur with your statement of we moved forward because we believe we're meeting the metrics and the move

008forward just to add to that commentary was the authorization that the superintendent based on his communication with board members either during or in previous times past had the authority on our vote to make that decision and dr santa cruz i would like to just say that at the then i remember the evening that we talked there was a discussion about something that was on the town of gilbert website that had to do with the metrics for the town of gilbert but that did not encompass our entire district because a third of our district is in mesa and at that point in time we did not have specific gilbert public schools information i have i think i've made clear that you know throughout this whole thing this makes me nervous all the way around however you

009know we don't live in a bubble we are in maricopa county we have teachers who live outside of our district we have parents who work outside of our district and so i think that we have done the best that we can based on the information that we've been given from the county i think my biggest frustration is that dr mccord has this information that he has here in front of us but then we get conflicting data from the county or the state and and i think that's some one of the reasons we have parents that send us a chart that says one thing but yet we're going by this and i think that's the biggest frustration for me is that there's conflicting data all the way around and so you know trying to do the

010very best that we can under circumstances that we don't always have complete information or i don't want to say accurate information because i'm not sure that that's the case but then then we're dealing with the media who gives us certain things so i feel that dr mccord and our cabinet has done the very best that they can am i comfortable with this totally no i've said that from the very beginning but i think that we have to go with what the emotion said which was that we would do the very best that we could according to the information that we were given and this is what we were given and i think dr mccord's actions as you've stated were consistent with the motion as we understand it ms humphreys i did want to add in

011because i think what is really important is that as we continue forward we all work on those things that we need to do to make it safe for our kids to be in school and that means wearing a mask in school and after they leave school until they get home not taking it off to visit with friends it means staying home when sick student or teacher or staff member if you don't feel well please stay home it means cleaning and washing hands and taking care of those protocols we've put a lot of new protocols into place cafeterias hallways turned off the drinking fountains please send a water bottle in for your child those are all things that we can do individually and as a community so that we can continue the great downward trend that

012we've had over the last seven weeks we've gone from 110.7 cases per 100 000 residents to i think it was just over 33.79 if i'm remembering correctly this last week so we've been able to do a lot but it depends on our community and it depends on us working together to make things better so i would just encourage all of our gilbert public schools community whatever part you have make sure you're doing your part and make sure that we can continue because we want we want kids to be in school kids want to be there we want them to be there but we want people to feel safe so if your child doesn't feel well please keep them home and do those other things as well please continue dr mccord thank you dr santa cruz

013this is just a four-week listing of where the what the data looked like for maricopa county as reported by the arizona department of health services and again this is stuff as i've reported out on again we'll post this uh tomorrow just so everybody can see it but that's just a listing of the data and you know in certain areas trending down other areas an uptick here trending back down and then this is for gilbert public schools boundaries and again certain areas going down but others going up and then back down as you notice from uh reported on the 11th which is for the week of august 23rd the 29th and the percent positivity we were at 6.07 and then last week it was reported back down to 3.33 percent and steadily uh holding steady or

014going down from the beginning is the covet-like illnesses and again the number per hundred thousand cases is steadily declining and dr mccord on the first one and on this one you're matching the colors as published by the sources so the first one was all green because that's how maricopa county is publishing it this one you've got some yellow in it because or sorry how the state is publishing it for maricopa county on this one you're publishing it because the county is publishing it as yellow correct correct that i'm i'm yes i'm just in down what i see and and the difference in the criteria of whether it's green or yellow is the state doing it for the county level is doing it based on whether you met the specific metric of 100 for per 100

015000 or 7 positivity or 10 percent covered likeness when you go to the gps boundaries and switch data sources to the county they're coding it to the risk level not to the specific metric and so again that gets to my earlier comment it confuses and we recognize that confusion in the public and it's frankly has been confusing to us until we figured out that difference and so we understand that there is confusion there but highlight that one is based off of the risk level of spread one is the specific metric specific metric excellent um and just to to cap this piece off you know me dr santa cruz i know the board members as well as cabinet members have all been out to campuses since hybrid and since yesterday just seeing how things are going

016visiting classrooms having conversations with administrators teachers and very positive feedback but more than anything i'm looking for what do i see i see staff wearing their masks i see students wearing their masks but i think it's also important to point out and i think miss humphries talked to a little bit this is a this is definitely a community effort we have to be vigilant about adhering to some of those guidelines and mitigation strategies that we have in place in order to be able to stay in school because if the numbers go south then we have to look back again and make other decisions and so i think it's important to make sure everybody understands that and i i don't think that people don't understand it but we just have to adhere to it and continue

017to do this because i see a lot of happy students and staff and i said this from the beginning in-person instruction is in my opinion the very best and uh for students and so but we also know that there's there's uh other thoughts and feelings and and and you know we we have to provide online education which is something that you know isn't ideal but we definitely are trying to do the very best we can and we try to tweak as much of it as we're moving through this and so we don't want to with any of these decisions we don't want to create mistrust that's definitely not the intention we're learning as we go along too with certain things and how we need to communicate and if we could wind the clock back a

018little bit and look at things differently we probably would and and and make some different discussions about how we communicate certain things out more clearly just so people have a clear understanding not everybody will agree or understand we understand that we can appreciate that but as things continue to change as we move through this process whether it's from a state level at district level we have to do the very best job we can with communicating out where we're going and what we're doing so i'll move on to um the yep before you move on and and i don't know if this is even a possibility dr mccord but could maybe um miss frost or somebody um at the district level you take some of the other information that we're getting and try to find out

019you know the discrepancies between it and i'm i'm talking about the the one um chart that i said that we got today where it showed the county being different than what we got right what we were given here and maybe finding out calling i don't know if you can call any i don't even know if it's possible but i'll ask her because i think it was added to their website but i don't know when it was added on thursday okay but i think if if we could if we could have an answer to that if it's even possible right um because i think that's our our biggest frustration is that at you know at that level we're giving we're being given different pieces of information on what that should look like thank you i will

020definitely uh have a conversation with her um moving into the benchmarks i've gone through these slides before just the criteria based on each area and then of course where it goes minimal moderates substantial and then looking at um where each level is hybrid traditional and the mitigation strategies that uh are asked in each area and so um i i and to talk this little bit you know um questions are we green or are we yellow well you know in the definition of hybrid i think is having students in person and having students online and we do have both of those but regardless i think if we were even in the green we would probably if you'll notice all these boxes aren't checked and when i say in the green for both gps as well as

021maricopa county i wouldn't i wouldn't necessarily condone not having masks not doing symptom screenings not you know any of those things so as we approach some of those areas and in my opinion when it says traditional it seems like everything is going to be in the clear and they see it being in the clear for a long time but i just don't think that's going to be the case so we will continue with our mitigation strategies as we move forward and dr mccord getting back to the the masks and the face coverings i know that there was and i don't know what happened with the board of supervisors today i don't know if they made a decision or not i know they were having a meeting and i'm i was going to report this and

022when i do my insurance trust report but um if we have to have a motion to continue with the masks i would ask that we do that because from everything that i've been hearing that is singly one of the most important things so and i think there's some confusion there with from some of the emails that we've gotten because it doesn't say that you have to continue to wear masks when you're in the green right so i think that we as a board have got to to make a decision one way or the other on that and i i support that we continue to to enforce that thank you thank you the simple reality of if we follow this which our motion does and dr mccord acknowledged what's hybrid what's traditional i believe the actual

023printed definition some students on online and some students but if we follow this with the risk assessment uh we're we're still a long ways away from the mask recommendation be going away yes we're green in two of the categories but if we look at other states and what's happened with their uh cases per hundred thousand and we look at where we are we have as ms humphreys pointed out declined but the the continuing decline of that bell-shaped curve will be very very gradual so i just candidly i don't see this going away for quite some time based on these recommendations i i do have one question on the cohorting i know you know at elementary we can do that at the secondary levels have we been able to cohort much or basically everybody has their

024schedule and they go where they need to mostly that last aspect of what you said we we did not cohort it necessarily kids have the option of taking some classes online as well as in person so they can break up their day differently if need be okay that's that's you can't do that at the elementary level yes and i i know um doing secondary schedules it would be a tremendous challenge to cohort students because it's hard enough to make a schedule when you're trying to give every student what they want but to try and give every student what they want and cohort them at the same time i think what this has done more than anything has helped every district take a step back and and not thinking just about today but looking at tomorrow

025and and a long time from tomorrow and that is what can we do differently in a lot of different situations to help accommodate students regardless of a pandemic so we definitely have some thoughts and ideas moving forward let me finish up with this this is the current data that was reported last thursday again it goes back to the slide the last box in the maricopa county data 43 out of is green it's considered a moderate risk because it's trending down and then criteria two percent positivity is 4.0 and um which is green and then criteria three hospital visits uh 2.0 percent and then looking at gilbert public schools boundary data 33.79 which is yellow at moderate risk and criteria two percent positivity is 33.33 percent uh again minimal risk trending down and criteria three hospital

026visits 2.0 percent uh trending down uh i believe it'll probably flatten off though at that point but i i could be wrong i i definitely can't make a living out of guessing what the data is going to show each week so we'll just keep our fingers crossed and try to do our best again side by side looking at maricopa county arizona department of health services information in maricopa county related to gps and again those are the same numbers just side by side and then what i want to talk to you about is moving forward i know we've had questions in the past and and we want to be definitely as transparent as possible when it comes to covet cases within our district and don antecenas and her team as well as jen frost have have

027come together and put together a dashboard that again we will hope will go live tomorrow and i'll kind of walk you through that real quick and i'll read this to you so the purpose of the data included in this dashboard is to provide a transparent summary of reported active positive cobit 19 cases by school an active case can be a student or staff member that has been participating in on-campus activities and attested positive for covid19 upon notification of a positive case extensive procedures and protocols are immediately actioned by our district and campuses including exclusion for participation in any in-person on-campus activity until the registered nurse verifies that the individual meets the return criteria set by state and local health authorities once an individual is cleared to return to campus they are no longer considered an

028active case and their case is removed from the dashboard count please note parents will be notified if their student has been exposed to a positive case exposure is defined as within six feet or less of someone with a positive diagnosis of copin 19 for 10 minutes or more as according to maricopa county health department full details for this can be looked at under our health services department on our website all cobin 19 data shared by gilbert public schools is for informational purposes only this information is based on reports to the district from other sources which have not been independently verified gps confers the maricopa county health department to track cover 19 cases and the trace uh close contacts dr mccord yes i ask when you say six feet or less does that include like if

029a student in one class i mean you can't decide if they've been six feet what happens is we give the information to the county um we will they will ask certain questions we will give them as much information as we possibly know from the information we've received from the student and if there are a number of students that need to be contacted that's when the county we turn it over to them to be able to do the investigation because we what we don't want is us making a decision that should be done by a health department for the mere fact that we don't want to air negatively so if the maricopa county comes back and says you need to contact these families and quarantine them for x amount of days then that's what we do

030and we contact those families and you may not have the answer to this question and not but has maricopa county increased the number of people to help with this i don't know the answer to that but it's a team of people that jennifer works with so it's been consistent in that aspect of it so they're familiar with each other but i don't know if they've increased the number or not i can ask jennifer again the dashboard will be updated weekly and this is what you'll see you'll see those that information i just read to all of you and then you'll also see the school the zip code and we will also put in the number of students and staff on campus and then the number of current active confirmed coveted cases and so you know

031a school district with 33 000 students 4300 employees you know will will indicate that on where all those folks are distributed there and then again just to reconfirm they'll be active cases and once they're no longer active and returned back to work or school that number will drop off of there just so people have an understanding of what that is and that is my board report for the evening i had one question um not it seems like not everyone who has coveted tests positive sometimes there are cases where people are sick but they do not test positive so they have the symptoms would we count that then as a positive case well these are current active confirmed covet cases okay yep and and dr mccord just to clarify we're putting the zip for reference the

032numbers have nothing to do with the zip code correct thank you dr santa cruz thank you dr mccord and if i could i would like to exercise a point of personal privilege this evening as a statement as i read the statement i will not presume to speak on behalf of all board members however if they concur with the spirit and the letter of what i am about to read i would certainly welcome their support it is not offered as rationale or as justification it is simply offered as information as we look at perhaps the last five or six months of our involvement with this covet issue it also as i enumerate various points they're not necessarily in rank order or in the order in which they came they were just pieces of information that struck

033me as i was composing this so if you will i said convo covet 19 is not of our making but we have attempted to address the collateral damage created by this virus decisions regarding how districts should proceed have largely been left to the lo to local boards and municipalities with relatively little guidance from the national and state government over the past five to six months the superintendent staff and governing board have worked to continue to deliver some educational service to our students and families admittedly the virtual format has proven to be a significant challenge for many of our students particularly but not exclusively at the elementary levels the virtual format has also been a source of frustration for many of our educators as well this is not anyone's preferred method of providing opportunity in teaching

034and learning for our students but we felt that it was necessary to engage our students in learning in the learning process in the safest manner possible and that is as we initially began the process the implementation of the virtual format will continue to be a mode that we will be utilizing within the district but it will be necessary for us to make significant adjustments in order for students and teachers to derive optimal benefit from its use we will do all that we can to tailor the use of this virtual tool to meet the needs of our students and teachers in a manner that is consistent with our district's curriculum goals and standards there are still many obstacles through which the administration the staff and the governing board board must navigate before we can say that

035we are satisfied with the actions we have placed in motion to address the teaching and learning process for our students and our teachers we will endeavor to do all that we can to address the challenges that continue to arise regarding covet 19. in order to provide perspective allow me to identify some of the actions and is not an exhaustive list that have taken that have been taken by the administration and the governing board during this critical time obviously we initially accepted the notion that covet 19 was and continues to be a real threat to our ability to provide educational de uh educational service in our usual manner we resolved to communicate with families and staff consistently and often we organized and convened a 135-member task force to develop plans and procedures to address approximately one

036dozen critical areas affected by covet 19. we presented reviewed and implemented the plans that we established by each of the that were established by each of the subcommittees of the task force we organized and designed instructional delivery models in an attempt to continue learning opportunities for our students and families we surveyed families and educators regarding the model options and we organized an individual preference we organized and requested individual preferences with each of the model options we assessed and reviewed the health and transmission standards and the arizona department of health cdc information and the metrics that have been established and articulated we established plans for the reopening of schools with the hybrid model as a bridge we established mitigation and sanity sanitization protocols for behaviors and expectations in our schools during the pandemic we reviewed and

037interpreted county and local metrics and proceeded accordingly we deployed human resources to needed critical areas made necessary adjustments as appropriate and determined a course of action this is not an exhaustive or comprehensive list of all of the actions that have taken that have been taken by the district and the campus personnel to address the need to deliver instruction to students and to maintain some level of educational service to our students we will continue to evaluate our progress and augment our procedures and strategies as necessary our teachers are the front line professionals in this endeavor and we acknowledge the extra time energy and resources they have expended in an effort to implement a workable plan we also acknowledge that the situation in which we find ourselves is dynamic and ever-changing but we are not deterred we

038have read the emails that have been sent to us and we have factored many of the recommendations into our decisions and discussions that is my general sense of what we have done and where we have been and i wanted to share that with you as a matter of establishing at least a foundational understanding of where this board has attempted to be during this pandemic and through its conclusion with that i will conclude my remarks if there is a board member who wishes to say something please talk ms eugetti i would like to to thank you for your leadership dr santa cruz and thank dr mccord for his leadership there have been times over the last few months that we have not agreed on things i think that's been very evident but we've been respectful of

039each other and to me that's the most important thing that we can do is be respectful and i absolutely concur with what you said um i continue to be worried i will say that until this is gone but i support the efforts that are being made and i appreciate all that is being done and i hope that we as a community as a school district as administrators teachers parents and families can continue to support and do the right thing so that we can continue on the same course and and i thank you again for your leadership thank you mr eugenie and i also am as concerned as you are and yet we move on mr carr dr santa cruz i i thank you for that summary um and i thank you for acknowledging the work

040of many under the leadership of dr mccord and his staff and many members of our community you know miss eugenie and yourself and and previously miss humphries and miss wood have all acknowledged as do i we all want students in the classroom we know that that's the best learning environment we all want the safety of our teachers our staff and these children the reality of this situation is at times coveted puts those as diametrically opposed solutions we have had what i'll describe as warm and lively discussions uh amongst ourselves in how to to balance those needs we've found opportunity to compromise uh to try and find the best solution not relying on one individual but relying on the collective wisdom of not only this board but the recommendations of many as you so eloquently summarize

041so i thank you for summarizing that and i add my name to that uh in in thinking all involved and the efforts and we know that those efforts will change we will learn more information and we'll will change with the information as it becomes available thank you mr carr ms humphreys dr sanchez thank you i i do want to say that um i know that our superintendency in our cabinet and our staff members have worked phenomenally hard that they have done in a few weeks what usually they usually do in a year to plan for school and to plan for a change in school several times over and i i want everyone to know that we have the best intent we're not doing it perfectly i realize that but we have the best intent to

042do what we can to take care of every child and every family it does take time and it does take effort and we appreciate the patience but i really do want to commend them for all of their hard work and just encourage us as a community to work together this i would say this has been the most difficult decision in eight years on the board to thread between those who want to go back to school right away those who would rather wait those who are worried those who want to move forward and fulfill all the guidelines that the state has put in our for us to do and be cognizant of the different opinions so i just really think it's important that we come together as a community and really work towards solutions because we

043can spend a lot of time and energy and disagreeing but if we work on the solutions we put that time and energy to solutions i think things will get much better ms wood thank you dr santa cruz i just would like to concur with what you said and add my state as has been expressed also thank you appreciate you and thank you board members by no means do we wish to communicate that we believe we're out of the woods at this point it appears that kovid is in the driver's seat we're just simply trying to beat it at its game as much as we can so with that i will move to the request to speak to the governing board if we can play the recorded message and then i will list the four people

044who have requested to speak the board may make an open call to the public during a public meeting subject to reasonable time place and manner restrictions to allow individuals to address the public body on an issue within the jurisdiction of the public body at the conclusion of the open call to the public individual board members may respond to criticism made by those who have addressed the board may ask the staff to review a matter or may ask a matter be to be put on a future agenda however members of the board shall not discuss or take legal action on matters raised during the open call to the public unless the matters are properly noticed for discussion and legal action during the open call the board requests that speakers refrain from voicing complaints against school personnel

045or any person connected with the district as it may impact due process rights policy k e k e b and ked 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 will begin our open call with mr phil montalvo and then michael langford followed by amber franco and concluding with mr joe gusik mr montalvo hi thank you first of all i wanted to thank the board the teachers their families as well your families i know that there's a ton of time that you guys put in beyond what's here and you can't see me smiling but i'm smiling with you so a couple of things first i'd like to share an experience and

046then i'd like to provide some input in perspective so understanding this is a never before seen situation not going to get it perfect and there is no exact right answer my experience up until about two weeks ago was very very positive commendable uh with what i had seen the gilbert public school district doing when we have the option to allow our students to either attend online full-time attend school full-time or do what at that time was defined as a hybrid model where a student could attend part-time at school and part-time online which is a little different than the definition i just heard tonight and i'll get to that we made a selection for our daughter we talked to the counselor who sought us out we were explicit about the three classes to be done at

047school because there were no other options for her academic progress in those areas and which three were to be online as it turns out a month after school it started settled in attachment to teachers she had been placed entirely for at school so now even though we were given the option a second time to change our choices now we're dealing with a situation at home where it's been challenging for our daughter and now we're having to face do we assume additional risk that we're not comfortable with for her going back to school full time or do we further disrupt her by having her change schools formats etc there are kinks there are bugs now as we move forward it was my understanding from what i'd seen of the board meetings we were absolutely going by

048the district ones i know dr mccord had shown that several times uh and it was the subject of conversation the perception this evening that i have is that there is some rationalization i'm not talking about statements from dr santa cruz uh and so the communication has been very very good very impressive with the extent of communication the texting the emails however when we got to this period when we first turned yellow and based on that and i'm talking about the district one there was no communication for quite some time and if it was clear to the board and everybody that what we were measuring and we were still on track to go to come back then i would have expected to see something come out about that as a matter of fact i knew that

049because it comes out about 4 pm 2 pm whatever on thursdays i gave the benefit of the doubt and i waited yet a second week i followed up i called the superintendent's office to which i got no reply before the communication came out that said we're going back full force on the 21st so there is at a minimum i think some perceptions i think it's good that we're getting some clarifications here but i do think then that the vore does need to be explicit so for example i heard mr carr mention i guess we could say we're still in a hybrid model because even though we have students back at school full time we still have some that are online and by that very definition last year and for any years that we've been going

050where we've had the online academy we've been doing a hybrid so i do think if there are differing definitions about what hybrid means and especially when we're looking at the uh factors that we're going to do that the board should clarify that definition and uh it's it's it's just really really frustrating i've got to say i've lost um i've lost a lot of confidence and uh it appears to be some slipperiness now going on which really really surprises me to say that we want to shift the data we're looking at to meet what we want to do and that's that's the way it looks and that's the way it appears and it makes it very difficult having worked in data for many many years i can appreciate the nuances the differences not everything is comparable

051and if it was so clear then to everybody what it was we were talking about i would think we should be able to explicitly find those things in the minutes and i have not been able to i'll go back and look again but thank you for your time thank you mr motel mr langford yes thank you i'd like to um uh state that i completely agree with the i'm sorry i didn't catch your name but um phil with his statements and i had the same concerns about the appearance of the data uh which data is being relied upon shifting uh based on um what is going to justify a full return uh to in person on on our in-person instruction same thing with the definitions of what mode we're in it's still not clear to

052me what mode we're actually in are we in a traditional fully green uh return to schools or are we in a hybrid and by the definition of hybrid sure seems very close to what traditional should be not only that but if we're in this hybrid zone with the amount of students who are in school and my experiences with with the high school so i'm talking about the secondary level it the the measures that are required or at least recommended by the state that be maintained in a hybrid zone i mean it's impossible to meet those so particularly the physical distancing is is quite frankly impossible and my experience is that not all staff are wearing masks not all students are wearing masks i think the communication of those requirements has not been good enough enforcement

053not sure how much that's happening but certainly that that's sort of been my my experience with my son returning to school i wanted to highlight again we had the same issues as well as that phil had with his daughter in the online schooling in that it is and it's been mentioned several times here tonight that the board recognizes that there are certain limitations to the online school the main one that's affected me that i want to make sure the board is again aware of is that not all classes are offered through global academy so if there's a so students are not necessarily able to pursue their academic you know interests their academic plan and are have to choose between sticking with their academic plan or or returning to um or or being able to stay

054safe and do an online um you know an online instruction which which may completely derail their their um their tracked for graduation or or the type of degree they're looking at um i wanted to mention um as well that um again again with uh the definitions of whether we're in hybrid or traditional i think it's important and uh to more to more specifically to find what those are what those mean where we are and it seemed to me like last week when the when the district data showed an increase in the percent positivity it would mean that the that the gilbert public school district should be remaining in this hybrid return where we had split schedules students only about half the students were going to be on campus at a time but instead we were

055proceeding with uh you know a full in-person return and the definition of hybrid if it means some online and some in person it seems to me like it's you know few online and mostly in person is where we're at now and i think better maybe better definitions or better encouragement of students to maybe shift some uh away from being in person and being online to actually meet more of a what feels like should the fiber should be more of a 50 50 proposition rather than a you know you know 85 15 proposition which is i think what we're looking at now and whether that means continuing with the hybrid split schedule which we were looking at for a couple of weeks or at least encouraging more students to be online um i i feel like

056those are some of the issues that um you know the the actions of the board while uh being extensive i certainly have um you know met some some shortcomings i think i wanted to point those out thank you mr lankford ms franco hello members of the governing board and dr mccord my name is amber franco and i am the gilbert education association president our mission is to advocate for education professionals our members fulfill the promise of education public education for every student by preparing students to succeed in a diverse and independent world today i am speaking on behalf of gea members and education professionals along with educational support staff throughout the last month education professionals certified staff have worked tirelessly to ensure students are appropriately educated through an online hybrid or in-person platform each situation

057requires teachers to be flexible and adapt their curriculum and teaching styles in a short amount of time for example shannon rose a spanish teacher at highland high school switched to teaching spanish virtually at global and our special education teachers adapted to engaging students on an online platform rather than in person to you and to all the other certified staff i say a big thank you as for educational support professionals classified staff thank you for being so flexible in adapting your work to the needs of the district and the community i know it wasn't easy you are so appreciated and there are so many examples of your dedication to students for example paraprofessionals and bus drivers provided child care supervision for our students during the online platform all of these groups of education professionals should be

058commended for their dedication to their students colleagues and profession never in the history of education in arizona has over one hundred thousand education professionals tackled the challenges of what we have experienced to all the dedicated gps staff you are amazing and i'm so proud to be your gea president thank you for all you have done and continue to do as we move forward gea would like would continue to advocate for education professionals by requesting measures to ensure the safety and welfare of staff students families and the community we will continue to monitor weekly metrics utilizing the arizona department of health services dashboard to guide discussions and decisions around students and staff safety measures i would like to thank the governing board dr mccord and his cabinet for using the metrics making decisions regarding our schools

059we ask the district continue to monitor safety monitor to continue monitoring safety protocols including appropriate class sizes and ensuring compliance to safety protocols as they have been established and to be transparent with positive cases and staff and students these measures will help increase educators safety more safety morale and confidence at their web at their work site i acknowledge how difficult the pandemic has been for educators including our administration including our administration our governing board members parents and last but not least our students as we advance in the school year staff and student safety will continue to be the top priority of the gilbert education association together we can do more and i i is it okay if i ask for a point of personal privilege is it now mr president go right ahead okay i

060just wanted to say thank you dr santa cruz and and all of the board members after your for your thoughtful and considerate words towards the front line workers i mean all of us that show up every day for our kids so i just wanted to tell you thank you for your sentiment earlier i really appreciate it thank you ms franco mr goosey board president fellow board members superintendent mccord all gps staff parents taxpayers and last but not least students my name is joe goosk and i'm the lovable slightly annoying american citizen i'm the educational rx guy i've said this to you before and i've said this many times across the state and i learned this back in new jersey education is a community effort always has always will mrs humphrey has it right this is

061a community effort always has always will in a pandemic and not in a pandemic we must work together and make sure that we're all on the same page so i'm going to take you on a 20 hour flight from sydney australia and i'm going to give you some facts from australia they're coming out of their winter by social distancing by washing their hands by wearing masks they've had one of the lowest flu seasons i didn't hear them say in history but i did it was extremely low from their from their population down to a very minimum amount i encourage people to go the middle not the left not the right go right down the middle follow the basic best practices i had a doctor's appointment i said she asked me what am i doing i

062said i'm modeling you and the entire health care industry i've done it from day one i'll continue to do it until we get out of this so let's get on that 20-hour flight from sydney to my home state of new jersey where i came from when you get on a plane you're concerned there's many hands that make that plane there's many hands that go on you hope everybody does their job correctly and you do the very best you can you keep your eyes vigilant for who's on that plane and what's going on around the plane so once you're up in the air you're in the air and we're all on that plane and we're going to do the very best we can to make sure everybody comes home safely we can't guarantee it but we're

063going to make sure that we do everything we can and occasionally as we go through this process they're going to be bumps and we need to keep a steady hand we need to make sure that we don't go crazy um as the saying says there's lies damn lies and then there's statistics numbers jumble all over the place and we just need to make sure that we keep a gps know which way we're going and what we're doing and stick to those numbers so that we make sure that everybody who chooses to go to in-person education comes home safe and sound the best education and allow our schools to stay open so the economy can continue to grow back and we figure out how to get it a true solution so that we can get out

064of this so we're probably three four five maybe five hours into this flight keep a steady hand keep a cool head make sure we keep going in the right direction yes everybody's got an opinion and it's nice to have less people in the room and we'll allow a few of us to go over our time but we should always welcome any of that time when they do show up and be thankful that they did give you input because they helped you be grateful as john as mayor lewis former mayor lewis calls himself citizen john says feedback is a gift always take that to heart regardless of how if it comes if it comes in vinegar or if it comes as sweet as a kiss so i'll just end with that this is a flight this

065is a journey uh though the one thing i will truly end on i want you to educate the adults inspire the adults and tell us the truth if you need more money for cleaning supplies send me a bill i don't care if every other community member refuses to pay the 50 or 100 or 200 bill i will pay my portion of it send me the bill if you need more supplies i don't want an override i don't want to bond i want you to send me a bill so that's where i'll end it and hopefully that's a gift to you so that we make sure that those educators and everybody from students to educators to staff are provided the tools to be successful this year and when we finally land the plane hopefully sooner than

066later thank you thank you mr goosey that ends our open call to the public we'll now move to item 5 5.01 our monthly budget report and 5.02 our fy 2020 bond and override report dr mccord thank you dr santa cruz governing board members we have for you tonight mrs bonnie betts our assistant superintendent of business services to present to you 5.01 and 5.02 thank you good evening dr santa cruz governing board members dr mccord i wanted to first acknowledge the finance team and let you know that the finance director jackie matanin is out in the audience so she'll be here to answer any questions as well as we go through the monthly financial report so to begin so we are through this information is through august 31st so represents really one month of activity and

067limited activity at that so very early in our yearly reporting so again the budgeted funds the 21 reflects the adopted budget approved on june 23rd and then all the cash balances the beginning balances are per the june 2020 financial report again we've just completed the encumbrance period so there will be some changes reflected when we when we continue through the monthly reporting over the next few months so first this is our our grid of our district operating funds again as usual you can see the maintenance and operations funds so we have an eva available balance of 20 just under 28 million dollars again i want to remind you this is very very early in the school year and all of the monies have been allocated out there is some contingency and there's some additional carryover

068but basically it's really early to end we can anticipate that most of that balance will be spent again classroom site fund the teacher salary wanted to bring that to your attention as we are looking at strategies to preserve as much as maintenance and operations as we can so that we are positioned well to actually go into the 2022 school year not fully understanding what's going to happen next year as the legislature begins their their work in january and then finally note the indirect cost revenue line where we do have an unexpended available balance of over 3 million dollars so we will be using that available balance again to preserve as much as of maintenance and operations as possible and then finally the unrestricted capital outlay we did receive more of available balance in the current

069year so we haven't allocated out much of that to date but we are continually working on that to get more money out to our schools so before i move any any uh further are there any specific questions regarding any of this it's our standard reporting okay great so again a reminder that that was the adopted budget we do know that we will see a 2.4 million dollar budget reduction you will see a budget revision uh in december this year to reflect that 2.4 million dollars at least and then so again the net available balance is about 25 and a half million dollars so i wanted to talk a little bit about the indirect fund details so indirect costs are applied to nutrition services as well as all federal funds the nutrition services fund is allowed

070to be charged a unrestricted rate but all the federal funds are charged an unrestricted rate so again just another comment you can see that in a restricted rate has been decreased by about 0.4 percent from the prior year and has continually decreased over the last three years that means less revenue into the indirect cost rate fund the unrestricted again also has gone down the good news regarding nutrition services is due to the change that was just announced from the usda as well as the arizona department of education we are back into that summer feeding program so we are able to provide breakfast and lunch to all of our students without charge so as an example during that first two weeks when we were half here our daily meals total was about seven thousand per day

071and as of today it's up to over fifteen thousand already so all of our students are taking advantage of that i wanted to talk a little bit about community education it is also an enterprise fund but it is not allowed to be charged indirect however there are expenditures that we do move into the community education fund such as utilities and other costs so that they are charged their fair share of the operating operating costs associated with gilbert public schools so our federal grants the one i wanted to point out is the esser grant so as you know we've been talking a lot about the enrollment stabilization grant and the esser grant so we do expect that there will be a budget revision also noted in december for the esser grant and in the next report

072you will see the enrollment stabilization grant we did apply and the application was accepted we have received an email indicating that they are in their review process and that we will hear something in the next couple of weeks any questions on any of that before i move forward okay great state grants again classroom site performance pay we have begun an effort in which we are encumbering funds knowing what we're going to pay for for performance pay so even though we pay in december and may you will probably see an encumbrance when we report out next month instructional improvement we're watching that closely we're expecting the revenues to decline significantly as that is the the gaming revenues here in the state of arizona and then the other notable thing is structured english immersion um thanks to

073some efforts in dr newman's area that uh grant award is nearly 500 000 this year from the 117 that we've received in the past so you will see a budget revision for that too and then finally the building renewal grant i'm only presenting this because of the negative available balance so we have not updated the budget that's available in the building renewal grant based upon an encumbrance so you will see that next at our budget revision as well finally just a note about the food service and community school these are the enterprise funds we are expecting them to turn around actually fairly quickly there's really good news about community education interests with vik as well as the preschool and then as i indicated the food service all the meals are free to our students but

074they are fully reimbursed from the from the the united states program and then unemployment insurance we have seen an uptick in unemployment claims but we have been sitting on a million dollar balance so we are right now limiting the amount of revenues and trying to decide when we will start taking those monies out through payroll so we're sure to have enough money in that unemployment fund and then this is the school student-based funds i'm still all in pretty good shape and then the final thing we wanted to talk about is the bond and the debt service funds so we wanted to point out that at this point because we've just we've just sold the the bonds we just closed at the end of august so now we have the new authority of bond bonds and

075as well as the old authority so based upon conversations with staff we've determined that the best thing to do would be to separate out the funds and so the 2015 authority is in fund 631 and the 2019 author authority will be presented in fund 6 30. so this is the project to date for the 2015 authorization note that we've added the bond sold here at a high level summary and note that there's that 98 million dollars which was the authorized amount and you can see how they're distributed through the areas that were communicated to the voter back in november of 2015. so right now that we did just uh sell eight million dollars and that's reflected here but as you know we sold 40 million dollars so the extra 32 million dollars will be reflected

076in the new fund bond fund 630. i just want to say thank you for keeping that clear i think that's really really important yeah to keep them separated it gets confusing for me too yes and so you can see the project to date for the new authorization which is uh the 2019 authorization note the total bonds authorized was 100 million dollars the bond sold to date is 32 million dollars you can see that there's a little bit of spend and encumbrance there that's associated with our cost of issuance so before i move any further are there any questions at all about that okay great thanks then now here's the the project to date that gives some more details um this project to date shows the 98 million dollars against the total project expenditure and encumbrance

077again showing the 16.7 million dollars available and that was the last slide i wanted to share on that so again right now it's difficult because we're talking about two separate authorities but i wanted to make sure that we started that conversation with all of you to keep it clear in the future and then finally um the uh the bond funds available this is the summary of both of them together the 2015 and 2019 you can see the full year-to-date balance of 48.5 million dollars and then the reason that we included this particular graph is to show you so this is the year to date august 31st this is relevant because we're going to be sharing with you the bond and override report after this so the beginning balance that you see in the first column

078represents the june 30 beginning balance but it was important to show the encumbrance release so as we as we're in the summer we're doing lots of summer projects in the summer but we have to end the school year on june but all the projects are not completed and that's what happens with that encumbrance release so if you look at facility renewal as as an example in the yellow column there's 5.6 million dollars that was released in encumbrance but you can see that we encumbered it right away in the new year of a little bit more than that leaving an available balance of 2.3 million dollars okay and so this is this will be the detail that we will be sharing on the bond and override report and then finally this is just the 2019 detail

079and then the bond debt service fund just as just a summary and again remember that the bonded service fund is not directly related to any of our bond proceeds this represents the debt service for all of our bonds that we've sold over the last 10 years did that service allow them so that's all i have for that which is not a little bit board members any comments questions okay okay so as there are several of us that will be presenting on the bond and override report i'm going to go ahead and move to the podium just to facilitate the transfer of the clicker is the is it on okay great thank you time okay uh fiscal year 2020 the bond and override report uh this report is required by statute and it needs to happen

080sometime between august 31st and october 30th 31st october 31st so we are presenting it to you this evening today's report we will give you an mno override brief history give you the 2020 mno override spend the bond project financial summaries the project to date the the 2020 detailed bond spend mr trace toby our director of transportation will be presenting the transportation information mr john castellano the executive director of technology will be presenting that information and then mr albert dutch over the director of facilities will be presenting that information and then finally just to end uh end with a gps tax rate history graph for you so as true of everything since last year when the strategic plan was developed and published and approved by all of you all of the bond and override spend in

081the prior year is totally consistent with the priorities of the strategic operating plan and just to remind you these are the five main priorities all of which we can relate to this spend so the mno override again to remind you we all know that we passed an override in november of 2019 but we're talking about 2020 which is the year we just ended and we had a 10 override in in 2020 so i wanted to make sure that we're all in the same year as we go through this presentation so in november of 2015 these were the commitments made to our voters competitive compensation maintain reduce class sizes deliver high quality academic programming provide affordable access to visual and performing arts athletics etc and finally provide programs supporting career and college readiness i wanted to

082make sure though that we were acknowledged acknowledging the fact that we did pass an override in november of 2019 and these priorities are comparable with an addition of adding social emotional supports to our students throughout gilbert public schools so over the last um 10 years you can see what our override levies have looked like you can see that in fiscal year 2020 it began increasing we did see some increases in student count in that year and then you can see the projection for fiscal year that's representing the 15 override from the 10 percent override okay so the override details the 10 override generated 20.7 million dollars for 2020. this override was in effect for seven years starting in 2017 through 2023 however we were successful in november of 19 with a 15 override which will

083be in effect through phasing down in 2026 and 2027 if not renewed finally the mno override amounts are calculated based upon the prior year average daily membership not the current year so these are the summaries of all of the areas that that we've committed to so you can see that the 20.71 is largely made up primarily of competitive wages and reduction in class sizes for 2020 and then note the projection that we've shared with you already for fiscal year 2021. so any questions on that one of the things that it was notable to me is if you look at the uh the difference between the 14 million dollars for offering competitive wages and the 21.7 that only represents about seven million dollars and we know that we allocated out 14 million dollars in compensation increases

084so the remaining of that the 14 minus the seven or so million dollars came from the carryover as well as the state funding increases coming into fiscal year 2021 i just wanted to make sure that was clear okay any questions before i go on okay great so now going through and talking about the bond funds fund 630 and 631 already shared that 6 30 is actually the 2019 authorization 631 is the 2015 authorization that was because 630 was the 2007 authorization prior to that so we're going to use these two funds going back and forth so these are the two bonds this is the same thing i just shared on the monthly financial report you can see the total amount available right now is about eight and a half million dollars again we just sold

085forty million dollars worth of bonds and we closed at the end of august so the november two thousand nineteen a hundred million dollar spending authority so we committed to dollars in facility reinvestment performing arts venues security camera systems technology and student transportation for that total of 100 million dollars now to share though the november 2015 spending authority which is what we're talking about tonight because this is what was spent in 2020 so these were the commitments that were made back in november of 2015 and these are the details today so notes the technology and security the beginning balance again this is the beginning balance now going into the 2021 school year not the 2020 school year so again i just it was just notable to share with you that the facility renewal in particular that

086release of encumbrance and seeing that it's encumbered right away that 5.6 million dollar spend is included in our presentation tonight we're sharing photos of the pro of the projects that were completed really through august 31st and then this is the year to date as of june 30. so i wanted to point out again looking at facility renewal that 11.4 11.5 million dollars or so is what we will be focusing on on the facility renewal part as well as the dollar showing for technology and transportation so transportation before i move forward here i would like to hand this over to mr trace toby our director of transportation good evening um thanks for having me here for 10 months it's been a whirlwind but we're catching up so uh part of what we what you authorized before

087i got here or shortly after i'm not really sure of the date was up for 30 vans white 10 passenger vans we opted to buy a little less than that so we bought 26 vans because that meant the needs we didn't need all 30. so that's a cost of 928 486. if you look this is what the vans look like they're 10 passenger mainly used for the mckinney-vento program but also for some special edge education students some field trips and outlying students it just doesn't make sense to run a bus to so they're a lot more efficient to use and as long as we keep it under the 10 passenger it's legal to use to haul students the insides are are very nice they will they all have radios they will all have zonar gps

088equipment and cameras in it the purchase was somewhat delayed because of covid ford shut down making vans and went to making ventilators our vans got caught in the middle of it so we got some right away and then we are short one more it should be in in a couple of weeks but that was our ventilator vans so any questions the vans very good thank you mr toby i would say they look very comfortable good evening dr santa cruz members of the board dr mccord so uh before i start i just want to thank technology services and none of these projects would be possible without them i also want to thank the the community for supporting those um these categories here the same categories that we've been working on for quite some time now as

089bonnie mentioned with the 2015 uh bond override i'm going to go through some some of the pictures and explain and just point out a couple things but really it's a continuation of what we've been doing and then some of our refresh cycles that have rolled around since then cabling is something that's ongoing we try to do six to eight schools a year and that's part of our infrastructure project um i mean our pictures aren't too fancy but so this is a mdf we call them or a a main distribution frame in our schools the mdf is where the services from the street will come in whether it's our wide area network connection which brings in our internet phone lines that we used to have old phone lines coming in of course now it's all ip

090based but the blue cables that you're seeing here it's all fiber so when we recable the site we do the fiber and the data cabling more known as cat5 or cat6 and so that's a mdf that you're seeing here at one of the sites so this is a very large high school all those fibers are connected to idfs around the campus and that's how we get data eventually to the classroom and to our end users this is one of our idf's um james said i wouldn't put a picture of him here so i did he james moore is one of our network specialists he's a born and raised gilbert uh kid we still call him he graduated from gilbert high school and stayed with us so we're really happy to have him part of the

091department uh he's also very very sharp but this is idf in one of the buildings so smaller buildings normally have one idf or intermediate distribution frame and that's where all your wireless access points cable back to your phones will cable back there and any data drops in the wall will also cable back there so these refreshes are great not only for upgrading the wiring but it gives us a chance to really clean up the closets and make it a lot easier to work inside of those another part of the infrastructure of course is our data center so basically what you're seeing here is is a cluster of six new servers so if you would have walked into the data center even five years ago it would have taken multiple racks of servers to do the

092same thing now that six servers are doing so iraq is about seven feet tall so it's interesting to follow the history of that over the years what used to take multiple multiple servers now takes less servers with software of course that then means we need less electricity less air conditioning etc so costs for those utilities have come down on the right is our storage array and that's about a 92 terabyte storage array for the district so most of the data in the district is stored on that one single device right there so uh it's kind of a geeky thing but over the years hardware has really uh been made less needed because of software is there a backup system in case something happened to our data center yeah absolutely um the picture on the right

093there there's another one of those uh somewhere in the district at a secure location that it's backed up too absolutely the other thing that we needed to do it was part of the refresh cycle but we were able to do these just a little bit early is because we increased the speed of not only our internet but our wide ac area network uh the the hardware you're seeing here is also eradiable uh as well as our internet and our land connections um but on the left you see those are redundant firewalls so that is really what sits uh between the world and us and that's a a high dollar piece of equipment however there's layers of software on there that also helps us keep out the bad guys if you will to put in the

094simplest form and on the right in the middle is our internet router so we increased our internet connection to the district up to 10 gigs and we increased our pipe we call it into the data center up to 40 gigs so they were able to get traffic in and out of there so those are both expandable we can go up to 100 gig on the firewalls which is a picture on your left and we can increase from 10 to 20 40 or up to 100 on the right so we do have expandability in those devices for the next about five years or so with those devices before we need to refresh those the last thing is our one-to-one program that obviously continues you know i i mentioned thanking the community earlier really that's what allowed

095us to handle some of these issues since march that we had because we were lucky enough to have the devices so that that's really huge and i know we've talked about that before we refreshed our seventh grade students this year our incoming 7th graders in our 9th graders as we do every year the 7th grade schools were still able to get those devices to those students the 9th grade we have we held them off a little bit on that because if you remember we had all the secondary students keep their devices so they will be trading those devices out over time of course once we get back and things settle down a little bit so we'll work with the high schools on that so and then we'll have those devices to uh take and pass

096down as needed we did switch uh vendors this year we're using dell products if you remember a couple years ago we started buying a a package with these devices that when they do break we have an outside source that fixes those that's been going very very well some of the decision wasn't made around the availability for parts and so that's been working working very very well so those are the areas if you have any questions i'd be happy to answer them for you mr casano i'm sorry did i interrupt someone uh this is not to put you on the spot but yes to put you on the spot a little bit in a more perfect world and this has nothing directly to do with what you've presented but some of the recent communication we have

097received uh can you give us just a sense of cost and hardware etc if in that perfect world all of our instructional spaces were set up and outfitted to a degree that interactive communication could occur on a video conference between student and teacher a full class what would that take to do knowing that we have 40 schools that would then require that yeah that's a great question we've had a lot of discussion and in our classrooms are not set up to do that really to compare it to something it's like the boardroom right here right the equipment is is back in that room that allows us to talk anywhere in the room have the microphones be on the other end and be able to if we wanted to with this room we could actually have

098that interaction back it's it's some of the hardware pieces and of course the cameras and classrooms that we don't have so that whole distance learning environment it's not easy to teach in but we also aren't prepared to do that now if we took and built a distance learning classroom where we plan to have the teacher in the room maybe some students and then other students at home roughly if we did it the right way because there's cheap ways to do it but in my opinion if you did it the right way anywhere from 15 to 20 000 a classroom now that's full interaction back and forth with the students at home that's just not a student at home watching a a webex or a zoom right that's full interaction and so that piece is not

099difficult to set up the difficult piece is learning how to teach in that environment and i've been involved in some of that in the years past and that was the hardest thing scheduling and then the training for the teachers to really be able to teach in that environment effectively thank you so somewhere in the vicinity of fifteen thousand dollars per teaching space and you could maximize that by perhaps organizing a few of those spaces on a particular campus rather than every classroom yeah the biggest thing that always comes up is we're taking a class at this high school how can we you know pump that over to another high school student sitting in a classroom and yeah one or two classrooms per site that that's not a problem and it could be a fully interactive

100setting um it's the scheduling piece right that's usually what breaks that whole thing is our schedule doesn't match up with your schedule it seems like a very simple thing but that's that's that's what i saw when when we when we did that uh it's the hardest part but but yeah and we've discussed that before i there's a lot of people advertising right now by this camera and you can teach from your classroom know you kind of get what you you pay for that experience is just not good you can do it but it's just not good in my personal opinion thank you for that information because i i have a suspicion that i won't be the only one or the last one to ever ask that question here as we move forward but uh sure

101it's it's a frame of reference so i appreciate that absolutely all right thank you well i i do want to add i know that technology has also worked really really hard through this time of trying to resolve issues for families and sometimes it's on our end and sometimes it's on their end but thank you very much for that hard work so um this next section will mostly be handled by um mr albert dutch over i told him that i would do the beginning boring slide so that he can have all the fun with the pictures so that was how we decided to share this this presentation so this is the the full project summary you can see the 11 and a half million dollars there at the bottom i wanted to share you know when

102albert and i presented uh in april what what the plans were for the summer projects we thought it would be a good idea to show the various projects by school site so that you've seen these slides before so you can see the mechanical projects this mechanicals lighting electrical and central plant hvac you can see how those are distributed across the school district and then even more you can see how we're spending the money depending upon the age of the school so the schools that are oldest 1993 and back or have have been dealt with already and in refreshes over the years so we've been focusing at least on mechanical projects to schools that are around the year 2000 were built around the year 2000 and most of those are the hvac and chiller components and

103those generally last about 20 years so we're right on schedule or very close to being on schedule the next main category is our structural category so this is uh all the other types of of projects you can think of from classroom remodeling flooring paint parking lots performing arts portables roofing school offices so that's all the other projects so again this is the summary by elementary school site you can see all the different categories that are at each of our schools so we are spending bond dollars across our schools in an appropriate way and then this is again by year you can see that the school that was built in is receiving a fair amount of money but that's in the parking and bus lane so that's val vista lakes and then you can also see

104in 2001 i think that is a gus ashland ranch i think is that right albert in the 2001 time frame yeah and then the structural project by secondary school site you can see again that there's money being spent at every single secondary school site i wanted to note the canyon valley the canyon valley amount there does include the amount that we are asking you to approve this evening for the remodeling of the power-based transportation facility to add the science classrooms so that's why the eight hundred thousand dollars for canyon valley on this listing and then again this is by year no 1993 that was when highland high was built so there's been a fair amount of money spent there we did we did do work at highland high on the restrooms back in fiscal 19

105but this was completing all the faculty restrooms and all of the locker restrooms at highland high and then in 2003 you can see the the gray um i think that's the oh the expansion and remodeling um which is a general category do you know which one that one is albert the 2003. that's canyon valley also okay so then the final major category which has become really important in our request in november of 2019 we added a lot of security requests on that that voter request and so security will become a major category as we move through these bond projects over the next few years so to end i'm going to now hand it over to albert to complete this presentation to all of you thank you thank you dr santa cruz dr mccord members of

106the board as bonnie left off we'll we'll go into some of our security projects and enhancements that we've done over the past year so this was security fencing at greenfield junior high this was their a la carte area which was completely exposed in years past and and that was a major concern of staff and and administration on the on the facility so we enclosed the the campus and made it more of a usable a usable space and as most of our schools do they they dressed it up and made it look better than just a plain old fence another major project and which was a catalyst to some additional projects we're going to be doing in the future is the mosquit secured entryway in collaboration with our security director alan kane we we came up

107with a a concept or an idea as well as with the the school itself of kind of a need for the front area you can see this is mesquite high school entering from the east entrance looking towards the west towards the courtyard it was kind of a an awkward layout with a lot of exposure so we did a more upfront entry point secured entry point allowing only access into the lobby area so that the site staff could convet any anybody coming in and verify students staff and other other needs so along along with that uh one point with those secured entries is card access so with each card with each entry point we're doing card access as well as at canyon rim we did a larger card access project with installation of uh eight points

108of entry onto the campus with strictly card access we've also have multiple facilities operations as well as technology where we are utilizing some form of card access the mechanical projects again central plants hvac and electrical and lighting here's a quick overview of the costs associated with it and some of the scope this project was done with snyder electric which was to touch all of our secondary uh gymnasiums to enhance the lighting within the playing surfaces this is desert ridge high school and obviously the after picture as well as the after of mesquite high school again with some of the electrical components that facilitate our schools and our facilities we we had some aged areas again we had an issue out at a ashton ranch and we kind of put us in a bind so we

109to be proactive we hit a few of our other facilities that looked as if they were there on the verge to um a failure augusta ranch being won we changed the the the main control switch this again is the before as well as highland high the main electrical supply for the portables on that facility here's the afters wow central plants we we touch multiple central plants uh this is specifically is carroll ray's central plant this is a before picture of of the central plant are the chiller banks uh four chillers on that on that site this this mirrors uh multiple campuses that we touched uh boulder creek uh boulder creek and ashton ranch as well again this is the front end and we also as we do these central plant upgrades we also touch the

110pumps and other components tied to the to the main hvac system and here here's the afters oh my goodness and again with with anything that we can mainly the mechanical portion we do try to do the best as far as making the decisions based on energy efficiency anything that's going to add value to our our facilities as well as reduce our our uh electrical in our our electrical usage again desert ridge central plant i was actually joking with bonnie and i told her we painted these probably about i don't know 10 years back and they actually still looked in pretty good shape but that's just the exterior we've had component issues and then here's our afters mr dutch over how often and this this may not apply to to these particular slides but how often

111do we evaluate and fire up our backup generators where those exist and are we in good condition there uh yes we currently are um with all our backup generators on our facilities we have them at the secondary as well at all the high schools as well as technology and the district office again we do you fire those up actually they start once a week for an hour just so that we can exercise the components and we are in pretty good shape again we do evaluate them we do inspect them we do do oil inspections have those out for testing and and other things thank you exterior lighting again two of the older high schools uh they had old and obsolete lighting for the mainly the courtyard so we started to have a lot of dark

112areas especially towards the where there's high traffic in the evening or school events so highland highs to the left you see the ballard style lighting that's in the majority of their walkways as well as to the right you have mesquite high school of courtyard lighting on their interior courtyard so we added new style fixtures to both campuses and here's a side by side at highland high obviously to the left that's the the old ballard style lighting there as well as in to the right is the new led fixtures and the same main walkway flooring renovations again quick overview as far as scope for the the flooring expenses that we we we had taken care of this this past year so this is a picture of the main hallway of superstition springs elementary so you can

113see to the left we we had vct originally um we had been going carpet there's a couple requests for for hard surface floor at the facilities they these this one in particular in particular as well as another one um opted not to get carpet in the hallway so we wanted to come up with a different alternative so we decided with lvt to utilize lvt which again it gives it a different look a more welcoming look it's it's not as uh institutionalized i guess or as as what the vct shows as well as there's a less of a maintenance factor to it so they don't have to you don't have to strip and wax the uh lvt as you do with the vct you strictly take a wet mop over the top um and then again

114it gives you a better better look and a and a more of a more of a welcoming look to the facility uh this is val vista lakes elementary again with all the flooring jobs we do we do touch all not only carpet but solid surface floors and we replace their their vct in their multi-purpose room and i want to say here they opted to to put their logo to dress it up and it gives it a quite a bit more appeal parking lots and bus lanes here's the overall impact and cost this is val vista lakes here there was an issue with pickup and drop off it was a tight location minimal space bus and and parent traffic were interacting uh quite backlogged on that surface street there just to the east or the lower

115end of the picture so we were looking at ideas and we we tried to brainstorm and and had multiple ideas and then ultimately we got with the uh civil engineer and and they they gave us a good uh they brought to the table a good idea we went with the school to to verify that they were good with it because as you can see you really have no real estate in that parking lot really nothing to adjust off so we decided to see if they were as long as they were okay with it utilize some of the the off i guess the off-centered space or the unutilized space on their playground as long as we could still maintain a good playing surface and and make it and maintain functionality for them and this is what

116we got oh wow so now we have not only there to the left you you strictly just parent pick up and drop off as well as um extended parking we've added additional parking uh stalls for the faculty that are yeah for the faculty and parents which again was an issue parkings always at a premium they would park in the neighborhood they'd park along the street um then to the right there we've added the bus lane which is strictly a bus lane uh during school hours where buses could go and they drop the kids off in that back circle circle drive and they exit onto the playground as well as additional parking in both those lots one one idea we were looking at originally was going to take away their basketball court here we still maintain

117their basketball court and they still have quite a bit of play area there ashton ranch same thing uh drive space is at a premium and most you could hardly see it but to the far right that's the i believe ashland ranch drive and where a lot of uh parents during pickup and drop off tend to queue on that road again it's a two-lane road to two-way two-lane street so residents are are backed up as well trying to get home and it really bogs down traffic so what we are looking at is an option to try to figure out the best uh the best way to remove parents from those two lanes uh we did look if you look at the upper upper right there there is a bus lane and a some uh parking spaces

118we were we did plan on putting a decel lane there but there were some infrastructure issues we had so we were unable to to do that but another low cost or lower cost idea was to it not only to widen this far this south entry point or the south parking lot area and add two lanes so it'll pull some of that traffic off of the road i didn't have a cool picture like i did at val vista but i had some some ground views and you can see here where we took those southern parking stalls out again i do want to i do want to say that we we did maintain the same number they had we just relocated them so they didn't lose any spots if anything they gained one or two i believe

119so but just to the south there we took those those parking stalls out and we added two lanes to add for for uh more queuing to bring that off of the roadway we added some ground striping for crosswalks as well as a couple additional speed bumps for safe crossing from the neighborhood into the school portable renovations the quick overview cost for for each portable we touched this year this is desert ridge high you kind of see them a portable is a portable in a sense again what we've tried to do is just enhance the portables they're just kind of a necessary evil at this point and so we've tried to do what we can to maintain it is as best as possible and incorporated into the facility so they those who do occupied it though

120occupy those portables don't feel as outcasts and this is a complete other structural projects along with some of these other remodels what we've done we've done recently as well as in the past few years is now that we're not that as technology is picking up and the traditional computer lab is no longer needed we've taken that space and turned it into a more functional educational space a more traditional educational space so instead of having the perimeter and center countertops with computers we've we've completely gutted it out we've added sinks and drinking fountains in each facility our each room as well as cabinetry and additional storage space and then we've done it to re remodeled it to look like a more of a traditional classroom that's all i have you guys is there any questions as

121far as i really appreciate all those pictures they were really worthwhile thank you oh you're welcome so you can't have a bond and override presentation without ending on the tax rate so this is just a a graphical representation of our tax rate over time from 2015 to the to 2021. so note that even with going to from a to a 15 override our total tax rate is still less than it was in 2015 and in 2017 just due to the incredible growth here primarily in gilbert public schools and that's the end of our presentation tonight thank you all very much thank you ms betts thank your team and thank all of you for your very timely presentations and and illustrations pictures etc board members any additional questions doesn't appear so thank you miss betts if

122that we move to item six the consent agenda items uh they are listed and you have had a chance to review them is there a motion i move that we approve the consent agenda items as presented thank you mr jenny is there a second second thank you mrs humphries any discussion seeing and or hearing none we will vote on the consent agenda all those in favor of approving the consent agenda as printed and presented please signify by saying aye aye all those opposed the same motion carries four zero now move to item seven action item dr mccord 7.01 is approval appointment of delegates to the arizona school boards association uh conferences correct uh what you have before you there's three asba events uh coming up and which the district will be asked to vote on

123the direction of asba in the next coming school year the first one is the county meeting which is in september october at which the county director will be elected there is the delegate assembly assembly which is october 17th and that is the asba political agenda is decided and the asba annual business meeting which is december 3rd and this is where officers are elected and the board is asked to approve one delegate and an alternate for each of those or a single delegate and a single alternate to vote on the board's behalf okay we can take them from top down i think mrs humphries uh requested that this item be placed on the agenda typically i will represent the district at the delegate assembly as part of my legislative function but that remains open i had

124asked mrs humphries if all of these meetings will be virtual this year and she has affirmed that they will so we'll start with the county director election and it's simply a nomination and a selection of our delegate to the county director so that is just of the county director up for election is the other maricopa county director and i believe the meeting is october 29th 29th i am attending the meeting myself if there's anyone else attending i would be happy for them to take that on but if no one else is attending besides me i would be willing to do that board members any one desiring to represent the district at that county director's election meeting if not go ahead i think that mrs humphries has done a very good job for us so i'm

125perfectly comfortable with her continuing in that role okay all right thank you all right so mrs humphries will be our selection for the county directors meeting and our delegate there uh is that affirmed by you miss wood yes thank you thank you there is a need for an alternate it appears is there someone who wishes to fulfill that responsibility and that is october 17th correct the delegate assembly that's the the delegate assembly oh i'm sorry you said i'm looking at the alternate for county county director i'll be glad to do that if she can't attend okay i'll miss you jenny miss wood did you have an interest there i'm happy to let mr cj i was gonna offer the same thing but that's great it's misty jetty i could be an alternate on another one

126okay so we'll designate miss eugetti as our alternate for the county director election meeting for the delegate assembly i would be happy to be your representative there and that is october 17th i believe yes october 17th uh if there are no objections i will gladly occupy that space all right then that will be me there is an alternate to the delegate assembly and that is in conjunction with the annual conference isn't it no it's usually in conjunction with the law conference but this year um they spaced it out they've separated them out yes okay so is that an area where someone is interested in being an alternate delegate there if there are no other volunteers i'm happy to be an alternate but if someone else wants to do it i have done it in the

127past and find it very interesting so um if there's no one else who wants to do i'd be happy to do it and mrs humphries really helped me out last year because i was unable to attend the delegate assembly so she was there in my stead so if there are no objections then mrs humphrey and i will represent the district at the delegate assembly and then the officers business meeting and name officer business meeting delegate and it tell us a little bit more there mrs humphrey well that meeting will take place during the annual conference so it would be virtual but it would be i believe it's usually on thursday and that is so my understanding is this year they may change the way that officers are elected previously we've had a nominating committee and

128we they usually select one person to run usually the slate is pretty much those who've already been serving plus the secretary this year they will be opening that to allowing anyone who puts their nomination in to run to have a slate of candidates to choose from i believe they will be giving us some information in advance we probably want to put that onto the board agenda and then instruct our delegate um it can be quite uh the one last year came within one vote so um we definitely need someone there to represent us says um what's so we will place officer business meeting on a future agenda and make a selection of a delegate and representative at that time that would be fine we can do that now it's just that we need to talk

129about who we want to vote for at a future meeting yes so and we don't have that slate no we don't have that slate and we only have one vote between five people that should be that should be coming so yes uh miss wood would you have an interest there ms humphreys would you have an interest there um i will be attending the annual conference so i'd be happy to serve in that role if there's no one else that wants to but i'm happy to let somebody else as well i have no objection i could be the alternate okay so would be miss humphries and ms wood as the alternate for that particular meeting and we will have our discussion once the slate of officers is released any other business related to this agenda item

130if not then we will vote on item 7.01 and that is the approval of delegates to the meetings and as they were printed it would be and i don't have that in in front of me anymore so um i'm the i will be the delegate for the county meeting and missy jetty is the alternative alternate i will be the delegate for the delegate assembly and i will be the officer humphreys is the alternate and then i would be the delegate for the business meeting and mrs wood is the alternative is the alternate all those then in favor of that slate of representatives uh well i think we need emotion first i think i moved it already though did you move that i think i did i move that we approve the slate of officers as

131presented by dr santa cruz okay is there a second second thank you miss humphries any further discussion saying and hearing none we will vote on item 7.01 those in favor of the motion as stated please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries four zero we moved item nine board committee reports and we have the gilbert education foundation ms humphreys um dr santa cruz if we could go back to item eight i did have a uh item for a future agenda okay so um the item i was going to ask for is i'm going to ask for a board retreat i just think um you know this decision has been a big one for the board and and for the community and i just thought it would be good for us to

132have a board retreat and i would like to bring in a facilitator i will send out information through i will ask gabby to send out the the asba person and her phone number so that we could each talk to her before we put it on the agenda next month to vote on whether or not to have a board retreat it would probably be several months away it would not be right away because we would need to schedule it and plan it okay so that would be and i apologize i skipped over item 8.01 and that would be item for a future agenda yes and that is discussion aboard retreat on that future agenda any other items now now we move to item nine nine point zero one gilbert ed foundation ms humphreys um okay i

133do have a great report on the gilbert education foundation first i wanted to um one of the things that gilbert education foundation does for us is they have classroom grants for teachers and they have just finished up a mindfulness room at gilbert high school so that students and even staff can go in and have time there to relax to kind of get focused and they have yoga mats they can do yoga they can do other things in there to kind of deal with the stress level and bring their stress level down so they're also doing two fundraisers the first one is the power of one and what they're asking for is a donation of one dollar per student and that would go towards their classroom grants in that fundraiser goes through october we're already off

134to a good start and we just really encourage everyone i believe there was an email sent out and encourage everyone to donate so that we can have those classroom grants because they are quite helpful to our teachers the second fundraiser is the gilbert unite that's the employee group groups that can do that to donate to the united way the shane program or the reaching hands program which is ways that we can reach out and help our employees who might need additional support there also have a bowl-a-thon scheduled on november 19th hoping those metrics are really great and we can all get together they're looking for sponsors to sponsor the lanes and and that's been a really good fundraiser and a really fun night and then uh lastly in memory of cindy woods a special education

135teacher at desert ridge junior high there will be a cindy woods scholarship and they will be offering a 2 500 award to a special education teacher and the applications for those will come out and that will be a part of our scholarship program in may very good thank you ms humphreys 9.02 city of mesa liaison ms wood anything to report to report tonight miss wood can i can i you probably don't even know this i don't know if you've talked to mr councilmember thompson but he and i talked i think yesterday and he is asking us to send a proposal to the city of mesa for air purifiers for those schools that are in our in the mesa city of mesa because they're going to use some cares fund back to to try to purchase

136those so i just wanted to make sure you knew that as well we'll be sending over proposals within the next week oh that's very generous of them thank you thank you dr mccord and thank you miss wood and please extend our appreciation to councilman thompson mr carr has needed to depart so item 9.03 and 9.04 uh nothing there at this point miss eugetti item 9.05 insurance trust i would like to just say i'm always very appreciative that we have the meeting for the insurance trust just before this meeting because i can remember what happened at the meeting but um it went very well uh we are once again in good shape um many of our elective surgeries and such were canceled this this spring and summer because of covet 19. um our consultant that reports

137to us um said that we're you know as i said in in our insurance trust is a very good shape um i did ask the question about how many cases of covet and so on and we're we're not high at this point in terms of our our employees but i did ask him the question that i referred to earlier this evening and he once again reiterated that no matter what that they're they're they're absolutely recommending that we continue no matter what with masks and and the protocols that we have in place um to ensure the safety of of not only our employees but our our children and our staff and and they they look at they don't just consult for school districts they consult for businesses and so on but they're totally you know do

138all the insurance industries so i really appreciated that and i would like us to reiterate that thank you thank you ms eugetti item 9.06 is the legislative information i think the biggest deal has been the covet assessments and the governor's press conferences i don't have anything specific from asba to report but as we get to the legislative agenda and the legislative meeting at the delegate assembly there should be more to report at that time future meeting dates item 10. dr mccord dr santa cruz governing board members october 13th we have a board work study and a brief board business meeting october 20th is a board policy committee meeting and october 27th is a regular board business meeting the first one was what 10 uh october 13th okay thank you sir you're welcome we are now

139at item 11 11.01 is a motion for adjournment is there a motion so moved thank you miss humphries there's a second second thank you mr jenny any discussion seeing none we will vote on a motion to adjourn those in favor of adjournment please signify by saying aye aye aye those oppose the same thank you motion carries for zero we are adjourned we appreciate those who were online and viewing live stream and those of you who have been here this evening board members i appreciate your indulgence and your support for the statement that was read on our behalf everyone have a good night