001you all right good evening at this time i'd like to call it the governing board meeting to order let the record show that we do have five board members present ms smith is telephonically tonight at this time do we have any changes to our agenda good evening madam president members of the board no okay hearing no changes can i get a motion i will motion to adopt the agenda second okay i have a first and a second mr martinez aye ms pimentel aye ms wilson aye ms smith aye and chair votes i at this time would everybody join me in a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance please rise i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under
002god indivisible with liberty and justice all right we are currently on item two which is called to the public and i only have the one letter this evening to the governing board of gesd40 and to whom it may concern my name is ryan fox and i wish to share the following story to bring to light some perspective from teachers and one student's journey while at gesd three years ago i started a career i could not have dreamed of before teaching ten years before that i left my abusive household and began a journey of my own i found super superlative opportunities and discovered many friends but not without facing homelessness terminal illness dropout and constant financial instability after 10 years i obtained a bachelor's in biological sciences and a degree in culinary arts thanks to my
003teachers if i can be successful after that i can inspire others success no matter how long it takes i do not regret my journey because it led me here to gesd where i met students who were experiencing difficult life situations i was culturally shocked with the compassion hope and unending kindness in the families i have met despite the hardships students continue towards success with the support of their families and teachers students that have additional needs due to life situations are deserving of access to a quality education and it is every educator's responsibility to ensure that happens in my experience not all students were able to access a consistent education in this district all students no matter who they are or where they are from deserve a good teacher and an equitable education it shatters my
004heart to see this not happen on a consistent basis and i wish i could do more to alleviate these moments perhaps we shall remind ourselves that when we hold a certain power to influence young minds we must take care to ensure every student has the tools they need to be successful after we let them go it is unacceptable to let even one student fall through the cracks of the system it takes one caring adult to change the course of a student's future and we can all strive to be that caring adult regardless of our role in the system many teachers have felt a lack of follow-through lack of leadership and a lack of accountability and the acceptance of lost students in the system with or without a global pandemic are we forgotten it is not
005what we do that people remember more than it is how we make them feel while the district was planning to close five schools during this precarious year students and teachers were suffering in silence as if they were in an abusive relationship students and teachers were torn from each other and hearts were broken yet we persevered through the loss and grief how can we be all in for all kids with these actions how can we bask in the glory of the glendale star with these actions simply stated a one sentence email an appreciated teacher does not make i wish to witness a cultural and systemic change in education one day and the opportunity for gesd starts now i will continue to create a positive and atlassian educational impact for students until the end of days but
006i cannot do it alone thank you very much for your time and i wish you all a swell evening ryan foxx and he also included she she also included a couple websites which will be included in our minutes we are now on our consent agenda are there any items board members wish pulled aside for discussion i'd like i okay that was the international teach alliance program yes okay okay if there is not none others can i get a motion i'll move to approve the consent agenda omitting uh aye i will second hey i have a first and a second mr martinez aye ms pimentel aye ms wilson aye ms smith hi and chair votes eye okay ms smith you had questions about item 3i i did um i guess my first question is how long
007have we had a relationship with this company madam president members of the board superintendent sagada jones uh board member smith this company has just started that it's our this is our first time bringing an agreement former forward with them they actually cam we have a partnership right now with esi this is uh the international part um that's coming from esi okay then my second question is exhibit c so the last page can you just explain exactly what the fees are yes the fees with uh its ita is the first year it's 20 of the starting salary and then this year's two through five it's 15 so for an example a starting teacher salary is forty thousand dollars the fee would be eight thousand dollars to ita however the compromise or the the save in a
008sense it's a little bit of a cost for the district is since they are international teachers and we are going through the agency the district does not have to pay the fica or the arizona state retirement so the cost for example for us is around fifty three thousand eight hundred twenty eight dollars for a first year teacher the cost with ita would be fifty three thousand eight eighty so it's an additional sixty dollars even though their fee is twenty percent the cost in addition is sixty dollars to the district all right those are my only questions on this one okay would you like to make a motion just move to approve um bye second okay i have a first and a second mr martinez aye ms pimentel aye ms wilson aye ms smith aye and
009chair votee we are now on item 4a reports and information items gesd health benchmarks update yes good evening madam president members of the board at this time dr lafitte will present the current benchmarks good evening good evening madam chair members of the board uh so our data for this week and it's in your packet if you look at it what it provides for you is it's showing that there's been an increase over the past few weeks across the county and across the district as a whole for the county what we see is an increase in the cases per 100 000 and an increase in the percent positivity it's not been as sharp as an increase as it was months ago when we were in the heaviest part of the pandemic but it is an increase
010nevertheless so what does that look like for us so as a district what we've seen is an increase in both areas as listed in the county so moving from 9.19 to 13.4 percent on the percent positivity and the curse cases per 100 000 we've seen it increase as well earlier part of our conversation had been around um how within our zip codes we've seen increases decreases increases decreases this was the first week in a few weeks that we've seen increases across all three zip codes that our schools are in with regards to us in comparison to other schools or school districts around our surrounding area and other comparable districts we have seen an increase so we had seen a slight decrease now we're seeing that slight increase in that area one thing i'd like to
011kind of highlight is over the past few weeks you as a board get notified when we have closures of schools or students who or staff who are positive and that's even identified on our website with our number of positive cases one thing that i would like to communicate is we've gotten a call from the county and we had gotten one previously that we had what they would term an outbreak and so um i want to kind of temper that a little bit because what it means what it essentially means is there are two or more cases on a campus typically within the same classroom for our purposes because we already quarantine or isolate students and because we send the students home close down the classes for us there's no further action it's just a notification
012that we sent to all the parents just to make sure that they're aware of what's going on within the school what usually happens is from the point at which it was deemed an outbreak after 28 days then the county calls us back they'll ask if there have been any new cases as long as we state no then they say okay it's no longer deemed an outbreak so i just want to kind of wrap that up there dr lafitte um so this if i recall this is the second time we've been deemed an outbreak correct correct any questions no questions can we can we go back to that first slide the the county metrics okay so i just wanted to point out to everybody the you know the effectiveness of what's what's happening if you look
013everything kind of starts to taper up right there about march 26th march 25th is when governor ducey rescinded the mask mandate and so you can see that on the metric on the rest of the slides everything kind of shifts up from that point on so i just want to kind of point that out to anyone who happens to be watching that if you are not vaccinated masks are absolutely an essential material that's it thank you all right no more questions all right we are now on item 4b revised regulation yes good evening madam president members of the board revised regulations and ms valadiz good evening again madam president members of the board superintendent sagada jones uh attached is the regulation with the recommendations from legal counsel removing the language regarding the rif and it being
014based on seniority as a determinant that was statute was changed years ago where you cannot use seniority as a determinant as part of your rif policy but it was still was included in our transfer policy which was very confusing because it was going against statute so we sent this off to legal counsel she made the recommended changes and that's what's attached do you have any questions okay moving on we are now at item 5a asba political agenda priorities yes madam present members of the board you'll want to look at your uh priorities and you will probably want to make a decision on those this evening we've included in there for you your priorities from last year administration supports those priorities and would encourage you also to advocate for special education funding as well as funding
015for children in poverty okay did anybody have any thoughts or comments on that so i know i for one over the years of hearing everything that has to do with the nuances of school funding that has been the glaring disparity of we don't get fully funded for the actual cost when it comes to the students that have greater needs than what we can support them with but yet we are bound by law to provide those supports which then takes away from a lot more students on the side so i have absolutely no objection to you know us adding those two items as a priority to be added to the political agenda madam president i i agree with you i think that our priority always has been funding and in reading what our top five priorities
016are they all equate to funding so there's no other discussion i'd like to make a motion to approve item 5a the asba political agenda priorities all second yep keep in mind we're adding to so i think we need to specify those two don't we special education and funding for students in poverty mr bear again uh matt i'm president members of the board superintendent jones because this is i believe for the following year if i understand this correctly what you might want to consider um after looking at it the acceleration of daa is in this year's baseline budget so that might be something that you perhaps would not have to advocate if it's done in this legislative session so it allows you to add to that based on what the superintendent had just mentioned well i'm
017looking at the submission form and it it still allows us to have the top five priorities plus two additional items and it could be then it could be done that way i can't hear what ms wilson says on the on the form it indicates your top five and then there's a space where you could add two additional that you that you would be able to do so at this time you could keep the five and then do uh your two additional for the two additional spaces that are on there are if you want to have items added to the full political list right yeah i think they need to remove items not add them there's a lot on there yeah you could use how many of those actually had any movement other than the daa
018i mean did any of those priorities get any traction at all i think when they when the delegate assembly convenes and goes through and approves it they're more responding to what is working its way through the legislation so if any of those items pop up they jump in to advocate for or against based on the direction of the delegate assembly okay i think from from what i've seen affected our district pretty hard is the whole the digital divide when everybody had to go to remote and then we had a bunch of students without capable wi-fi i mean the hotspots came later but that was that was a process and i think some of that's going to be an ongoing process because i would like to think that the internet should be almost a a necessary
019utility uh in a learning household isn't isn't that part of their uh their political agenda it has uh to equitably invest in technology and reliable internet access for all students i want to say that one was added this past year because i know we submitted that and there were other districts that also submitted that funding for special education and funding for children in poverty funding for women so are you those from the list were those taken from the list no they do not exist on the list new ones they do not exist on the list it's just under adequately and equitably fun on school districts the second to the last bullets is adequately fund programs under exceptional student services wouldn't that cover special ed it could yes it would cover special ed that could cover
020special ed so i think it's important then that we decide on our top five since you know that the special ed is already under there instead of adding um the two you know maybe that as mr baragon said that we you know take the daa off because that's not a top priority at this time and you know add the um what's the thing that wrote a special ed in there and then also you know then we decide if we want to you know put something in there about adequately funding the you know poverty schools does that make sense mr barrigan madam president members of the board i just uh remember smith i just want to be crystal clear considering our current litigation status um district additional assistance continues to be a priority of the district
021but i'm going to be optimistic that the legislature is going to fund fully restored daa so i just i just wanted to um clarify that specific point well and the the reality is every district that participates in this process will be submitting that so i i don't i can't see the committee not taking it off the table if there's a possibility that it still needs to be done because you know we have seen asba um because i have gone through how many delegate assemblies over the years and there have been times where something has come across the legislators table that was not necessarily one of those delegate assembly items that we you know voted for or voted against but they were still advocates because as a whole everybody you know supported that action so our
022discussion right now with mr baragon needs to be under the um well the adequately funded area and third to the last bullet on the on the left it says index district additional assistance you know for funding and inflation which is not the acceleration so we're expecting the you know the acceleration to happen so i would say we could take it off of our priority and then put it back on if if it doesn't happen this year and like i said asba wouldn't not fight for it if that were coming across the table so i say we leave it on do what i'm just going to say i think we should leave it on as a priority yeah i'm kind of kind of torn between taking it off because that train has kind of left the
023station and beyond optimistic that things will happen versus let's keep hammering at home until we are absolutely 100 sure that it is done but i think i'm leaving i think i'm really leaning towards just keeping it on keeping it on make sure it gets done don't do anything half measured um you know if we're gonna if we're gonna champion for something and push for something let's at least see it through and make sure it gets done as opposed to pushing the ball down the track and then moving on to something else because it's boring well if we leave these five on here i still suggest we add the one with regards to you know the other funding to make sure that you know we need people to understand that every student doesn't cost the same
024amount to get them to the point of success so do we need another one another additional just to clarify it just a motion to clarify it so they're remaining the same all the their priorities are remaining the same and they're going to add to to the list the two that's my understanding yes yes so we still need a motion though to reflect that correct i will i will motion to keep the five priorities the same from last year adding the two additional items special ed that's special ed and poverty yes i should have wrote that down i guess i'll watch it back on youtube later okay we have a first oh second okay we have a first and a second mr martinez aye ms pimentel aye ms wilson aye ms i'm going to vote no
025right now because i don't believe that we're doing this form correctly there should be top five priorities and then additional items that aren't already on there is the concern the additional item with special education well the additional items the special education and also the the funding you know for poverty schools is already written you know under their priorities so it's there they aren't additional items you know and so additional items is something that's not already on their priority list and we should be listing the top five priorities that we really want them to to look at well we already have three votes i miss smith nate for the reasons that she stated i will go ahead and vote i one of these days we'll get really good at this we are moving on to 5c
026the 2020 2021 expenditure oh sorry my apologies 5b salary placement tables fringe benefits and extra duty stipends for the 21-22 school year yes madam member for the board ms valadez will present that information or answer questions you may have madam president members of the board superintendent sagada jones attached to have the extra duty the fringe benefits and the salary schedules the extra duty schedule you can see the yellow highlights those are recommended changes that the extra duty stipend committee put together there was a representative from every school site and it was facilitated by jackie horin and norma haragi and the committee met quite a bit went through the document made the recommended changes and those are the ones listed in yellow the salary tables other than the change to uh oh i just the starting
027rate of pay which is i can't i just lost the word part but it's 12 15 an hour that that's on there for the minimum wage there it is the minimum wage the salary tables there aren't any changes and the fringe benefits package we were advised by legal counsel to just list what our wellness incentives are the fringe benefits there were no changes except at the very end of the document you'll see we we listed the wellness incentives okay today board members have questions hearing none do i have a motion i will motion to approve the 20 21 22 salary placement tables and fringe benefits and extra duty stipends okay we have a motion do we have a second i'll second okay we have a first and a second mr martinez hi miss pimentel aye
028ms wilson and miss smith aye and chair votes i now we're on item c the 2020 2021 expenditure budget revision number one yes madam president members of the board mr bergen will present that up madam president members of the board superintendent saga jones this first slide is you might recall it was one of the slides that we used during our public forums community forums and some of the conversations we've had over the last several months and i highlight that so that you can just refresh your memory of what we've communicated in the past when we built the budget the budget was um using 10 500 adm and when we started this this process the department of ed calculated our adm at 8339 and so there's a difference of about 2100 uh students which reflects almost
029a you know 21 percent adm loss there but when you look at the dollar amount under the decrease in revenue control limit you're almost losing about 23 percent in revenue there and what we kind of briefly talked a little bit about over the last several months frankly it wasn't briefly it was just to some great extent that we would be using some of those federal dollars to help offset that shortage or that deficit um because of a lower enrollment and so you can just kind of see i just wanted to bring that just to refresh your mind there's this is a very busy document but you've heard us talk a little bit about trust and verify this is a department of education report and this was the report that we used the basis of our
030communication to you and to the public but there's at 8 thirty nine and that's how we initially came up with some of those assumptions that we talked about um over the last several months and the reason we're showing this is just to kind of show you how this process evolves and then we also shared with you that from the department of ed's perspective they just had us as a deficit about 14 million i think we showed about 14.3 so we were within that ballpark this report is that same report that i showed you a couple of slides ago that showed eight thousand three thirty nine this more recent report which is on may 5th shows 8128 and i'm running that so you you're seeing a decrease in that adm same report that i showed you
031a couple of slides ago that showed almost a 14 million dollar deficit this now has it at that fifteen million seventy four thousand three fifty four again these are reports that we did not generate these are the reports the department of ed education puts together for school districts and for the general public so again it was with that whole idea trust but verify the information that's being communicated this kind of shows you that adm and what we wanted again just to point out is this was the 40th day which i believe that's 8063 in our presentations to you to the public we talked about 839 the most recent report shows 8182 the bars to the right just reflects what was projected pre-pandemic so the board you all approved the budget back in july and you
032can kind of just see where we're at today there's a decrease of 2318 students which represents a decrease in adm of about 22 percent and you're talking about 24 percent decrease in revenue that's that's significant and just truly think about what that means to you on a personal level when you lose 24 of your monthly or annual income it's significant again we would be using some of those federal dollars to offset that uh deficit what you're going to see kind of as a change i believe in that very first slide that was just over i mean around about 9.1 million this now is about 9.8 9.9 and that's because the state deficit grew so we're going to have to use additional s or 2 monies to offset that deficit i would say this this is
033going to be a move in target between now and frankly the end of the year so um something that we've on a monthly basis continue to monitor but again this is about a 9.8 figure that we would be using to offset that additional deficit that i just walked you through this is a little bit more detailed this is really page seven of the budget it just kind of gives you a side by side comparison and again the revenue control amid a decrease of just over 15 million dollars it's significant budget balance k forward slightly increase of almost 200 000 prop 123 add-on just shy of two thousand but but while the deficit is about a fifteen point um i'm gonna round it 15.1 million the net change is about 14.8 14.9 million so again uh
034it's greater than what we even communicated to you several weeks ago now we wanted to we've talked about this but we wanted to illustrate specifically what that meant what that's going to mean moving forward uh the allocation either it's a real allocation or a projected allocation so the esser one uh the first row is the the true allocation of the district 4.6 million we we would be using about 1.9 to offset that deficit uh the 2.7 million you heard us talk a little bit about we used those federal dollars to provide hot spots to implement geo i believe in some cases we purchased additional devices it's just a laundry list of items again those were other expenses incurred but not used to offset the mnos that's why we thought it was important to illustrate this
035one of the questions i think you and the community have asked is well there should be money left over so we want to walk you through what that's going to look like um the enrollment stabilization grant and i'm going to talk a little bit more about that in the end of the presentation but that was four million twenty five thousand four ninety three three point two would be used to offset that deficit seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars was used specifically to create a cova 19 defense legal fund because at that time the legislature had not provided covet liability protection if you will the yes or two it's our projection of 19.7 19.8 million we would be using almost nine uh 9.9 million dollars to offset that deficit which is how we get to that
03615 million dollars you're using a little bit of everything to address that deficit how much money would be left over from sr2 you can see about 9.9 the capital there's just uh in trying to keep the budget intact as best as we can the biggest difference really is we actually had less expenses last year into this year about 890 000 and we just removed the negative interest of 65 000 and so you can see that for the cap on the capital side you're it's actually increasing to about 954 just again putting some of these historical cuts into perspective we would have generated about 4.9 in the district additional formula had it been fully restored luckily there's only a reduction of about 16 percent i think in the prior year was about 32 which means that
037just about 4.1 uh has been made available to address our needs but from 2009 to 2021 those legislative cuts and i do believe this is a conservative amount we've talked about this doesn't even include the cuts to to full day k and some of those other cuts but you're looking at about 41 almost 42 million dollars of which about 38.9 is specific to capital funding um just kind of final thoughts there's an ongoing recalculation of the revenue control limit again that's going to be based on where that adm is and that's frankly been a move in target so change change in deficit is what it meant to say changes the amount of sr2 funds used which means change in s or two funds available in the subsequent year so you can see it's kind of
038a domino effect um and it's truly just a moving target and so one of the things i know that we talked about in finance was will the legislature this department of ed will there be another opportunity between now and june 30th to make another final revision i don't know um because i do believe that it's that's kind of a move and target with the recalculation of adm specifically the distance learning the enrollment stabilization grant did not pronounce did not provide financial stability for the district that was the intent it did not happen in our case and so that's important to highlight uh because it truly had it not been for the federal government we would have been over we would be overspending our budget as we speak and so again the esg did fall short
039of those expectations uh madam president members of the board i'm happy to answer any questions that you may have does anybody have any questions for mr maragon madam president i do have a question and um because i honestly don't know the 750 uh coveted legal defense fund is that what that was that's correct what would that be possibly used for aside from legal defense what would uh madam president members of the board member pimentel um specifically currently it's related to the cobid what we've talked about during the trust board meetings um is if there is protection to school districts for against frivolous lawsuits at some point um and my thoughts were in my discussions with the trust board was maybe 12 to 18 months that if there were no claims then um we might have
040to divert or reallocate those potentially into the medical fund within the trust board but even if there are frivolous lawsuits it will take money to defend those lawsuits 750 000 you know one of the conversations we had during with the trust board members was you know is that sufficient and i don't have a great response to that it was something that we allocated in case but i would imagine that in 12 to 18 months if there are no claims we would reallocate that or redirect those funds to like the medical fund thank you do we have any other questions okay hearing none at this time do i have a motion to adopt the revision a motion to adopt the expenditure budget revision okay we have a first do we have a second oh second we
041have a first and a second mr martinez aye ms pimentel aye ms wilson aye ms smith aye and chair votes i we are now on item six discussion items first item is board meeting procedures ms sagata jones yes boyd manny uh good evening again madam president members of the board i think the discussion on the dis uh was to determine whether or not you wanted to um open the board meetings to call the public and call the public can be done we would not have to do anything additional then to have it it will still live stream the board meaning they'd have access to that you could call them in as a call to public and you could then have them exit once they did the call to public if that's what you would wish
042to do as far as opening up the board meetings you would still be limited to the space in which we could accommodate you saw the metrics and what the metrics are today so i would think you would can take that in consideration but i think the last was on at least having the call to public done which you can do we would then remove the call to public from the electronic piece and it would be the in-person piece the other recommendation is you could wait until you're new school year to do that if you'd want to since we have minimal board meeting left minimal board meetings left we've not had huge numbers of call to public and typically in the summer we do not but it depends on the agenda items so that's the information
043i have sorry i apparently lost my connection so did you say you couldn't have electronic and in person you could i don't know why you would do both we would we would just revert back to um in person but you didn't get counsel that said you couldn't do both correct no you could you could you could do both um i don't think legal counsel is going to say you cannot do both but when we opened back up i wouldn't recommend it would not be my recommendation you do both you would go back to as normal madam president uh superintendent sagata jones so we are from what i understand we council says that we could open up and it would be our prerogative that if someone came for um call to the public to have them
044leave afterwards just for that portion yes we can do that and would we still have a limit of the number of people being in here under our current mitigation plan yes we would considering our numbers and just to make it clear we would still require masks yes we're still phone as you saw cdc guidelines new guidelines posted today they're still recommending in schools and that mask have been worn so yes thank you okay do we have any other questions about this item i'm not overly convinced of the need to reopen that up i mean we're right within a couple weeks of ending the school year if it's at this point in the game worth to change those procedures and we'll just finish out the year as is i mean it's as uh mr gotta jones
045pointed out the cdc came out with new guidelines today people continuing to get vaccinated stats continue to change new data becomes available i think we're on a good direction with some of the new guidelines and i'm hoping that once we have a better idea of how those are going to affect everybody i would like to just open it up to everybody at some point but i think it's too early to do that i don't i'm not convinced of the value of just opening it up for call to the public i agree with board member martinez and i uh i think it would be prudent if we wait until the beginning of the school year and possibly bring this up for discussion again at that time i'll agree i agree that uh it would probably be
046in the best interest to just wait until the beginning of the school year and we can see what happens during the summer we really don't have controversial items during the summer so i don't think there would be a need for a call to the public during the summer well we have three board members that consensus so that would be you know for us to hold off and we can revisit this again as we approach the next school year all right we are now on item 6b conference summaries and as we had stated before we would you um if we attended a conference which yeah this year has been all virtual so it made it a little easier in some regards um we would submit notes from what we gained from it so everybody could share
047in and then if anybody wanted to discuss any of the items in that for me nsba that conference one of the big takeaways to me because a lot of the sessions had you know covered a lot of the things that we have done and put in place to support our students the ones that were struggling getting some of those social supports we shouldn't have to fill those gaps but we need to fill those gaps in order for our students to be successful but we've also you know just the world has become very angry in a lot of ways and unfortunately you know our children as well as the adults don't necessarily know how to change to a positive mindset and that was i think one of the more valuable sessions from the nsba conference that
048i listened to i don't know about anybody else but i'd rather be around people that are looking at that glass half full and finding something positive even in the midst of chaos than the person who is only focused on what is wrong what is wrong what is wrong and we all know somebody that does that and you tend to distance a little bit you know because you don't want to go down that path with regards to the asba equity conference i i think we as a district as a board we can do a better job of you know trying to get those voices to hear those voices especially when they are the ones that are being impacted by a decision we're going to have to make you know from our students you know to our
049community to our business partners we present you know this is what our reality is what ideas do you have what do you see as a problem what is the challenge we might get a clearer picture on what it is that we're looking at because what we think is a problem may not be what they think is a problem or what we think is working may not be what they think is working i think we have a really good opportunity here especially with our student voices kids will tell you if there's good stuff and bad stuff may not want to hear it but they will tell you i uh i had copious notes and i found one page of them and i so i do apologize i i i will tell you from the nsba one
050of the things that really stuck out in my mind um the one that that the class that i took it was about lgbtq protections for students and staff and i would like to go back and revisit that policy to make sure that we include as much protections for our lgbtq students staff community because um as you said children will tell you what's good and what's bad and sometimes children won't tell you anything at all and we're back in class now and we need to make sure that our students specifically who are gay straight non-binary transitioning exploring trying to figure out what and who they are that they feel that they're in a positive space where they can speak up and speak out so i'm really proud that when my son was in fifth and sixth
051grade and he wasn't sure who he was he had teachers that were caring and uh protective and they were very um inclusive of not just of who he was but of me as a parent so i would like to that that was that was a really eye-opening class session and uh their suggestion is go back and look at your policy go through it once with a fine tooth comb and go through it again and make sure that you have protections in place because we may read it and look at it and think okay yeah that's that's good but i i think that um revisiting that is not a bad thing and and that's um that was i think one of the most important things i i took out of that one that was really important
052to me um and then there was one i'm looking at my note and it might have been something before that and it was about dismantling racism in schools and this again was nsba and one board member said how she had to water down policy in order to get board members to buy into what she was trying to take care of and we passed an anti-racism resolution a couple months ago and president bartel said we can't just sign this and shelve it we need to live it and we need to make sure that we are are making this a living document and so i agree with that and so some of the things i'd like to do i'd like us to explore and discuss is looking at different i'm going to take another step back here
053um because my mind's going all over the place trying to remember this so one of the other things that that i think that's important is that we have i'm sure we have them i've been in the libraries that we have in our schools but to make sure we have books about different cultures all different cultures and i always get amazed when i hear how many languages are spoken in our schools and you know your average person is going to think oh three four maybe five i think it was i mean somebody correct me here wasn't it over 20 languages spoken in our schools and do we have culturally appropriate books for each of those languages talking about traditions cultures children how they grow up in different different areas how they've gotten here and we need
054to respect that because sonia nazario she talked about how more than one in four children in the united states are either immigrant children or children of immigrants that's 25 percent of students across the united states and i would liken to say that probably in our district that number is much higher and that that was another discussion that i i felt was just really strong but we need to know that our immigrant children and families know that they are welcomed and they they are respected that their cultures are respected so um there were so many other sessions i took and i just wish i could remember more but those were the two that really stuck out um at the equity event there was a really great speaker in calvin tyrell and he said we let's see
055he gave us a couple things here he says one term that we need to really use is help me to understand help me understand what your plight is help me understand you and i think that uh maybe we don't do that enough maybe we assume and i say we and i i should maybe i shouldn't but you know it's it's interesting one of the things he said is we talk about diversity and equity and inclusion but what are we really doing to make a difference in our schools with our children with that so he was um he had a lot of interesting things to say and i i appreciated the the take that he took and in critical race theory and it's something that i think that we need to have more conversations about and
056i'm done i'll just add to that and um there certainly was a big push for the social emotional learning aspect and um a couple of the sessions that i uh sat in on or listened in on was um how the performing arts really can be a big part of that and it doesn't have to be you know an after-school program or you know this huge performing arts where they get up on the stage it can be done in the classroom as well you know where a child has a chance to you know read poetry or read um you know something that they've created created or done and a child that is um very quiet in the classroom and maybe not so apt to raise their hand and speak you'll see though they really shine when
057it comes to you know performing so um i was glad to see you hear that and so that uh to add to what you had said um you know that's uh important that we give children that chance well another thing that was pointed out was we all walk around with biases no matter how hard we try to deny them or pretend they don't exist we all just inherently jump to snap judgments and it's when people and students feel that their uniqueness is truly accepted and appreciated will we reach inclusion and you know we do need to do and i know it's a tough game to be you know trying to teach kids but we're also trying to help them grow up to be great citizens and if they don't feel accepted now what is going
058to happen to them when they're an adult in our communities so i will be i will throw myself under the bus i missed a huge chunk of the nsba conference um i was technically at three conferences at the same time for all of those days but uh the the amount the workshops that i got to attend i think the one that kind of stuck out to me the most and i want to say it was on saturday where they talked about um and it was a discussion that we had here months ago we talked about the relationship between the board and the superintendent and how they work together and and the kind of the ways that they do their evaluations of each other that i thought was way different than the forms that we were
059given when we did our evaluations this year and i know we had this discussion at the end of last count you know december maybe we talked about revising how we do those uh sort of evaluations and that just kind of brought it back in my mind and it's been a busy four or five months here so i i want to put that you know when we get to the future meetings topic i want to make sure that we kind of put that back on the agenda somewhere because i i think the way that we are doing it now for lack of a better word not good i don't like it it's not enjoyable at all not that they should be enjoyable but they shouldn't be difficult and there shouldn't be any uh ambiguity in what
060is expected or what we expect of the superintendent as a board and what you know the superintendent and the school itself expects from us so i want to make sure that we kind of kind of touch on that again other than that i thought it was a i thought it was a really interesting conference i've been to several online conferences and i thought this one was unique in the way that they they did the sort of mixed format so you went from videos to zoom meetings back to videos back to live sessions um so i thought it was it was very very interesting like that i can't wait to see it at some point live i think it'll be much better and i will be much less distracted but i enjoyed what i saw and
061i thought it was uh i thought it had value for for everything that i saw mr jones do you have anything to add no i do not i think um each of the conferences there's a lot of information in there for us and um i think you've hit on the same topics performing arts and equity uh anti-racism types of things as well as making sure we're meeting the social emotional well being of all students and um making sure we're respectful of all all students and their identities all right do we have any more comments all right moving on we are now at item 7a which is future meetings agenda item request which we do have board retreat and the superintendent's evaluation instrument and expectations is on that retreat madam president members of the board at
062this time we would recommend that may 27 special meeting does not need to occur you do have the june 3rd board retreat recommendation would be that you set a time beginning time and end time and then actually there's quite a few items on there do you want to prioritize what they need to be so we can be prepared for that retreat i think under the circumstances um superintendent evaluation instrument the goals and the performance pay criteria i think we need to because we in all fairness we've never actually done all of this on time and this is our opportunity to actually change that and do it right from the beginning and get that set up i think we typically have that at 4 30 is it is scheduled for four i'm good at four does
063anybody else have any issues okay yep thursday the third miss smith does for work for you yeah okay so for clarification please board self-evaluation i'm sorry pro where am i on that so we're going to do superintendent's performance pay criteria as well and that has a july 1 date and then as well as the superintendent's evaluation the principle instrument the goals so we're clear on that in your performance because the two need to go together great those are have to's does anybody have priority for other items if we can hit them i think the discipline report is we you'd ask to see that broken down um a little bit differently and i think we've been doing that in the board update i'm not sure what other if if the discipline report hasn't met the needs
064within the update we can make adjustments to that um as well the discipline report was something that i had asked for so that we could um look at you know our discipline reports which we get weekly and you guys do a good job with them but you know maybe we need to you know it's not at some point we need to discuss if there should be the different priorities if we're really talking about you know people's you know making sure that there isn't racism going on it's one of those those things that you know needs to be discussed at some time but i don't feel like it has to be done if they return the retreat i think that one stems because there have been many conferences over the years where that implicit bias hides
065in there and unfortunately you know we if we don't look at it deeper and see you know what is are we helping to create a an iniquity with our kids i'm just questioning bringing it up at the board retreat well that's why miss smith said she doesn't know if it needs to necessarily be the retreat but i would i would think that would be part of a greater anti-racism discussion anyway like ms penantel mentioned earlier we passed the resolution saying we should be anti-racist but what does that really do yeah uh and i think the discipline report and other metrics that go along with that i think feed into that conversation so i think the discipline reports while while important i think it's part of the larger discussion that we need to have at some
066point um you know what is it that we're going to do it's it's easy to i believe i believe the phrase was easy just put words on the paper but what are we going to do to try and make that happen and we had talked about the diversity of you know our district and all the different languages we speak and you know how each of them comes from a different culture and they're all they're all amazing i would love to meet you know i would love to meet representatives from each other because i would love to know i know all the the only culture i know is my own right um it comes down to it and you know i've mixed culture i mean my mom is a five foot nothing southern texas girl and
067my dad is from indian reservation out in parker arizona so i i get a really big weird mix already but i would love to learn more about this but it's part of of learning how to combat racism how to increase diversity how to increase awareness of different cultures um i don't think that's that that may be a whole meeting in itself other than a board retreat though perhaps we can look at a presentation in the fall i know dr defeat and his team has done a lot of work in this area and are looking at trends across the district and across individual schools so we can prepare for you let's say in early fall a presentation on and by that time also they within his own department they were talking about um what else they
068want to see in that report and how it could change and so and how that information is being gathered and how it's actually input into the system as well so i think at that time we'd be happy to come back and have that conversation also the class sizes maybe that's something that we need to wait and see what uh what the fall brings you know when we start the 21-22 school year okay well i'm thinking if we have you know the time available we at least look and have discussion as regards to um board goals on how we operate as far as you know how we're going to do our job more effectively that way we're not doing you know board level at the surface we you know discuss how we can actually go deeper
069and and do more do more good for our district so so i'm sorry if i may ask what are our priorities for the meeting so am i correct in believing that it's the superintendent performance pain evaluation those are two different things yeah the criteria for the performance pay the superintendents evaluation the instrument that you use for that and then the board self-evaluation the superintendent goals because that needs to be part of that performance and then my thoughts were board goals and then we're not talking like how you know what we expect the district to do what we as the executive you know how we interact how we approach information what kind of information how we work as a board to help them do their job better so we do have quite a full agenda at
070this point but if it makes us better then that's the right thing to do okay okay all right if we're ready to move on we will go to item oh miss smith i would like to get added onto the gender request item that discussed community tasks the community task force yes miss smith and um thank you for bringing that um on to the um agenda items um because when we roll into the fall we've already begun that pro kind of define what we want to do for that for those community task force for in particular transition schools so we can bring that to you as well thinking maybe the june meeting probably july okay one june or july meeting yesterday okay anything else yes and and oh i'm sorry you're good okay miss pimentel if
071uh we could look at a time where we can review the policy on student protection student staff protections for lgbtq are we ready all right we are now on item 8a superintendent report yes ma'am president member of the board um just a lot of you know this time of the year even though it's a virtual so many things are going on i'm so proud of of all of our staff i wanted to make a few announcements and then i want to end it with a video if you don't mind on my section anyway um the exemplary principal if you saw me tweet joe de lauerta was honored this week by maricopa county school state super superintendent steve watson um a couple months ago we received that request for a nomination and it was very clear
072through the executive team that the work that mr de la huerta has done with his staff at desert garden has been just phenomenal and so we submitted that and with his staff helped to write that recommendation and then he was honored this week so extremely proud of joe and desert garden staff and christie and the work that they have done so it was great to be there he had no idea what was going on and so i'm just very honored the comments from mr watson and his team were that they were just blown away with his interviews when they when they met with him so congratulations to joe we're very proud of him also we have met we've been notified that we've met the criteria for virtual health arizona worksite platinum levels so we've met
073that criteria we look forward to that also we have begun this week high school registration sites to try to get our eighth graders registered we haven't had a huge turnout on that but we could we've continued to push that and we've been working with glendale union high school district to do that also um as we stated before one of our zip codes is the highest where we have the least vaccinated residents and so tomorrow at smith we are working it will be a vaccination site and so that will be taking place tomorrow please look at the calendar of events there's a lot of things going on with the promotions and that so we'll work on that and then also we were notified through the youth council members are recording a pca for touchstone health services
074regarding separating myths from facts on social media and that commercial is going to air on 98.3 fm and they've asked that we use some of our students that have been involved with touchstone so we're excited about that we'll put a blast out on that as well and then um we did as you recall um i hope you got to see the celebration of excellence awards and then that's posted for people to watch and so we did that we're very proud of all of our nominees as well as those who won extremely proud of them as you heard i me state this year has been an incredible year many things and many decisions have had to be made and we could not do that without the support of the governing board so at this time as
075i did with every employee i declared them an everyday hero and we would like to declare each of you as an everyday hero too and we thank you for your continuous support so we will give you your certificates and then with that we want to go into the video and what you're going to see we've had the transition meetings with our schools eins and sign with the closure of those schools we began having our students and families and teachers make that transition to their no schools and it's been going on over this week and we've been extremely pleased with the turnout and just so couldn't be more excited for the students and the families but just how the receiving schools as we expect no different have really just done a remarkable job in welcoming our
076students and families you'll see that in the videos and i guess some of the comments that we have heard is when i've been out the at some of these and with students um shirts were given school shirts were given to the students and the next day i believe at sign they were wearing their horizon shirts so that was being and then there was i spoke with um principal carrillo over at um yesterday or last night and she was telling me that they the kids came back and said well do you have this at your school do you have a boys club at your school do you have and it even came down well do you have miss strickler at your school because they were running out of things to think of i guess but they
077were going back and forth with what the things their new school had i did have the opportunity also to engage with some of the parents and the parents you know they asked questions they seemed very pleased we had transportation there and so the kids could get on buses as well the parents that i spoke to were very excited they wanted to know their um bus routes and we're still working on the logistics of that but they were excited they were excited they did not have to wear uniforms um just a lot of positive things from the experiences that i had so with that we want to show you that in a video clip [Music] so just a special thank you to all staff and um for what they've put together as their welcoming it's it's
078been remarkable and so we're trying to make those transitions as smooth as possible and so we do appreciate staff for all the work that they've done with that that ends my report okay we are now on the governing board report mr martinez it has been a very busy couple of weeks it seems like there's so much going on the kids getting to go see their new school sites which was i thought was amazing kind of seeing that go down thank you for the video um the uh the talent show happened thank you for all the kids who joined in the talent show and if you know i hope you get a moment to go back and review your videos i will tell you from experience seeing and listening to yourself on video will never not
079make you anxious it will be like that forever i cringe every time i see myself on video and i'm like do i really sound like that yes i do there was some amazing talents on there it was great to watch thank you everybody and thank you and all the all the heroes and all the uh you know the teachers that year um the administrators every year thank you for all your work over this past year it's been an amazingly difficult year sometimes um but you've here we've gotten towards the end and we're coming out a little bit better a little bit stronger for that and last but not least cdc open up vaccinations for kids 12 and up this week i put my money where my mouth is and all three of my kids have
080appointments this weekend to get their covet vaccine that is the only way we'll ever get out of this it seems like so sometimes you just have to put one foot in front of the other went and got my shot kids are going to go get their shot i haven't told them yet it's going to come down the line as uh hey kids you want to go get some ice cream and then we show up at uh gila gila river casino or the at the not the casino i'm like they're too young to go to that but the arena and just you know walk them down the line and get shots so um kids i hope you're not listening we're gonna have fun this saturday dad we'll make sure but uh thank you thank you everybody
081that's all okay miss pimentel would like to reiterate everything board member martinez said and uh when i watched the video on the everyday heroes superintendent sagada jones said every person in our district is an everyday hero and i couldn't agree with you more from our smallest tiniest student in pre-k to the parents to the teachers administration principals our food service everybody thank you thank you thank you thank you parents became teachers and realized just how difficult that job is and how much we don't know because i can't help my little nieces and nephews i'm no good at that um so thank you everybo everybody is a hero and it's not to say hey everybody gets an award thing it this has been a trying time um the talent show i only got to watch the
082very first one and then i got interrupted by a phone call but i will go home and watch the rest of it because i heard it is quite amazing um congratulations to principal de la huerta that's an amazing amazing honor and and he more than deserves it and i do know that again vaccinations are now available for kids 12 and over and we have a vaccination site at smith smith school so please consider that for your children make sure everybody is being safe and 8th grade promotions kindergarten promotions pre-k promotions are coming up i really wish i could have signed up for so many of them and i think so many are all at the same time so congratulations to our students coming back as kindergartners congratulations to the kindergartners coming back at first graders
083and congratulations to all of the eighth graders going to high school wherever you're going go and do well and uh congratulations board member um i just want to correct the va if i wasn't clear the vaccination side at smith is just the adult vaccination still we haven't got approval for children yet so thank you for that clarification miss wilson well to add to all those congratulations uh congratulations to all those who received awards yesterday for the celebration of excellence which was uh done very well by the way i uh i remembered it from last year too when you had the had the video so um that was nice to be able to watch that at our leisure really when we had the time um and then of course the talent show was we sat as
084a family just all of us sat in front of the computer and watched it and and really enjoyed it and hats off to all those kids that had the courage and and the talent you know that came forth a special uh congratulations to our retirees um enjoy your retirement as i do and um it thank you so much for your dedication and service to the district um and uh last but not least uh dr peterson and cavalier congratulations on your new position um i hope it's okay to say that it's out in the open now or if it wasn't it is now and um yeah we're certainly going to miss you i'll miss your ties and your socks and and how you match and and uh wish the best for you i know you're just
085going to be great so we miss thank you miss smith well i think it ditto on everything but i'll personally say you know congratulations to um joe lorta at desert garden that's a nice award that he was given congratulations to our teacher of the years excited to see a pe teacher when that was nice and congratulations to our retirees and our everyday heroes i did enjoy the showcase of talents also and also i want to publicly and wish um jerry peterson and cravaya a um happy new endeavor and he'll be great at what he does and and i also wanted to wish everyone a happy end of the school year then so we won't be having a meeting before the end of the school year okay oh the the dreadful last person to speak when
086everybody has already said so much but i think everything that was pointed out we have so many people to celebrate uh we've all changed and you know like our students and our staffs they're going to you know new adventures next year and while it's bittersweet for us we you know wish everybody well on everything that they are doing um you know we have so many great talented students in our district and i got to tell you those kids have more guts in their little fingers than i do because i i like to sing but there's no way i could do it by myself even on my own camera in my own room um you know they did a great job and our district did a great job bringing that together so we could share it
087out if we couldn't be there in person i think we reached a lot more people this way um and it just shows that that creativity that this year has you know pushed us out of our element a little bit but for the better and so i applaud our district for that um with that being said i need a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn go a little slower second sorry all those in favor i did i heard no nays have a great evening and good luck on the rest of the year everybody