Governing Board Meeting February 11, 2021

001uh me it's all on the screen all right good afternoon uh let the records show that it is just past 3 30. um we are i believe we have all five board members present okay um at this time i need a motion are there any changes to the adopt the agenda good afternoon madam president member for the board no there are not okay need a motion for the approval of the agenda motion to adopt the agenda second okay miss smith how do you vote hi miss pimentel aye ms wilson aye mr martinez aye chair votes eye at this time would everybody please join me in a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance please rise pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it

002stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all at this time we are on item 2a which is our study session this does have to do with our budget boundary staffing um ms agata jones i'll hand it over to you yes madam president members of the board the purpose of the study session again is to be able to have those conversations about what happens next um in the process of phase one and phase two so that's what we will present to you you'll see um a quite lengthy presentation much of the information has been presented already but we just want to make sure because it does become a public document that for those that are community members that are just joining that they have the whole presentation so anything that is an

003additional or questions that we have to answer we will do that but at this time you will see much of the same information and again the executive team and i will do the presentation okay so we've this again just goes back to the history i think we're all clear that we began the process back in february 9th of 2019 where we began to look at the decline in enrollment and then began to set out a timeline in which we would be able to do things to help with the decline enrollment and what next steps would be so we see again we talked about enrollment in august 29th and we did list again those analysis again during the september 12th of 2019 we again presented the analysis of boundary changes the impacts on the facilities and

004then any statutory requirements needed and the impact of repurposing of schools we move into may of 2020 and that's when we did the updated demographic study we looked at the change in enrollment again and then that's when we had our demographer here to share with us and i think what we all learned from that was that based on the trends over the past 10 years the enrollment population ratio likely declined to about a 62 percent by 2829 and we shared over the last couple of board meetings and study session that that trajectory is on track again in september 24th of 2020 we did the legal advice for possible sale of lease of the district property then in october we came back and we updated phase three and we looked at the analysis of the boundaries

005we looked at the analysis of sale and lisa land formalized request to school school facility boards to replace schools and then we did those analysis of ban boundary changes to optimize program services for general education students and then we did the analysis of staffing models that took us back through october again and we looked at possible repurposing and closure for schools and we looked at life of facility program changes statutory requirements declining enrollment and again population density were in the future where we were going to have the most student population we get into november 12 to 2020 we look at phase three we look at the updated demographic information the boundaries and again building and repurpose enclosure whoops i think i went too fast and then december again boundary proposal what would be our next

006steps the analysis of transportation possible staffing models what would be a phased approach timeline to possible school closures and school repurposing and then again comprehensive staff and community communication plan to be developed and that will be part of the discussion that we have this evening then again we go into just a reminder of that average daily membership where we are where that trajectory is it shows um that can be seen in in this graph and i'm going to ask mr bergen do you need is there anything you'd like to add at this time madam president members of the board superintendent sagada jones just as a reminder that that 20 that figure of ten thousand eight hundred and thirteen that was based on the hundredth day and so we anticipated a three percent decrease for this

007year prior to pandemic and so knowing that we did build the budget on ten thousand five hundred kids however because of the pandemic we're getting paid on 8063. so in an attempt to be proactive and anticipate a decrease in enrollment we decrease that budget obviously the pandemic decreased the funding portion of that but what i want to be clear is that the downward decline was pre-pandemic so i just want to emphasize that that the proposal before you while complicated by the pandemic from a funding level has always been an issue from a decline perspective the decline was always in our forecast pre-pandemic thank you mr berrigan again here's the history and and the enrollment and you can see it just presented in a different way mr berrigan madam president members of the board superintendent sagada

008jones i believe it was at the december 10th meeting where we had rick brammer here with applied economics and in one of the conversations that we were having in preparation for for the board presentation he had made the comment that our enrollment this year is lower than what it was in the 95-96 school year so really just look at the far left and look at what it is from his report again in the enrollment decline um as mr begging has said it's always been in the forecast prior to the pre pandemic the concerns were communicated we started first communicating those back in 2016 when we started to see the decline in i believe in 2016 is when the city of glendale had the decline in birth rate and then we began to look at other

009factors such as we know charter schools but also we also know affordable housing was a concern for our families as well then the school's facilities board has gesd listed in the top 10 school districts that have lost adm from one year to the next in the following reports so june 15 2020 june 15 2019 june 15 and june 15 2017. so again this is another third party that has recognized that glendale has a declining enrollment uh concern mr berrigan madam president members of the board superintendent sagana jones while the superintendent has mentioned those various historical timelines that is really a timeline since she was super since she began her superintendency i do want to remind the board that prior to that we did have applied economics present to the board even before the superintendent sagada

010jones was superintendent so that information has been out there and if you look in december of that of 2016 it was the revised budget in which we notified you that enrollment decline was becoming to be a concern so then we have the again when we look at arizona auditor general has indicated on the classroom dollars report the following for fiscal year 2019 a decrease fiscal year 2018 a large disc decrease and then 2017 a moderate decrease and within this link can i hit that link again mr clark hit that link for us madam superintendent if i may just provide some background on the link that we're about to present here there we go madam superintendent members of the board this is a report that became available in december of 2020 as some of you may

011know several years ago the auditor general's office started to in that classroom dollars report provide a financial stress indicator and there's about five different categories in that metrics what they released in december was showing school districts that had a decrease in their enrollment and just if you could just really perhaps even write this the two pieces of information the 22.4 which is one a decrease from one year perhaps write that down because i'm going to reference that a little bit later and then 32.3 per their analysis the trend over the last four years has been 32.3 and i think when we sort that of 104 districts that fall in this category as you can see when i sorted it we're on the top that's probably not the right list to be number one on can

012we get out of the link now or is it going to take me out with a link this is me clicking you want to close it and close out the link yeah just go back to the powerpoint there we go okay all right now the expenditure budget mr berrigan one more time please madam president members of the board superintendent sagada jones this is a snapshot of what the department of education um through the budge 25 report indicated was that in emmanol alone they were reducing that budget by just shy of 11.4 million dollars we made some adjustments but you can see what that net difference is in this fund alone but in the beginning that reduction was 11.4 million this is specific to just the capital portion of our budget and that was also a

013reduction of about 2.2 million and so you've heard me say that for this year at least based on january's information that the department of ed reduced our budget by 13.5 so really when you take the 2.2 and that figure that was that i have reference of 11.3 that's how we get to that 13.5 million dollar figure the purpose of this slide this slide might be somewhat new at least in the last couple of months the document itself you would have seen in various presentations when we had updates in the beginning of the capital lawsuit when we had a company that we use to document what our capital needs are we realize that the data itself is very small but what we wanted to do and perhaps the focus is where it says years one through

014five the reason we believe this slide's important is because our needs are really greater than what we've asked our voters for so in november of 2018 we asked our voters for bond authorization for 35 million and if you recall and if not i'd point you to those prior presentations we have always anticipated what our capital needs have been and while we asked our voters for 35 million dollars we know that our our need is greater the reason it was 35 million dollars and not more is simply because of the formula that goes behind that request right so as property values go up and as you pay down your debt your borrowing part power grows and at the time that we went to the voters it was only 35 and so we asked our voters for

015for what we could which was a 35 million but truly to address our needs and if you just look over the next 30 years that's that's what it looks like this is some this information while this is the revised information the previous version has been provided to our attorneys as we navigate this capital lawsuit because they need they the state needs to understand what our needs are and so we just wanted to really highlight that that while we asked our voters for 35 million and we're very appreciative of that and for their continued support the need has always been greater than the 35 that we've asked for in the auditor general's link that we showed you i asked can you just write down that first slide that first column and i think it was 22.4

016now they're without over complicating it they take a the total weighted student count we simply take adm which is a little simpler formula but we calculated the decrease in adm of 23.21 and i think it was 22.4 if my memory serves me correctly so you know you're within a percent of accurate accuracy so they've identified that the enrollment has decreased we're within a percent or whatever that difference is when you look at the reduction of that 13.5 million dollars percentage-wise you're about 22 percent if i'm rounding and i just really want you to think about and not perhaps just the the board but perhaps our community think about what would happen if you lost 22 percent of your paycheck how do you then balance the various bills that we all have in an attempt to

017give you an idea of what the projected deficit could be next year we did make some assumptions when the revenue control limit decreases because of a lower attendance or enrollment or adm you're automatically going to lose revenue and the first big revenue source is the yemen override so if you were to look at our budget i'm going to round it to 9.4 million dollars next year because prior year funding is used for the purpose of the override you're looking at about 7.3 million 7.4 so you can see that difference as we get closer to having a final count of the 100th day and reconciling the adm obviously we'll revise those numbers but again we just want to continue to emphasize that the decrease in revenue based on the information that that we knew at the

018time that this was done if you look at classroom site fund i believe statutorily the jlbc has to provide the per pupil amount by march 1st again for the purpose of this analysis we just said what if it just stayed flat and you can just see that same approach was taken in those other two categories in the district judicial assistance we did assume that there was going to be the restoration of of daa an instructional improvement fund to give you an idea an overview and to simplify that we gave we made some assumptions and about a hundred and ten thousand dollars so again information will change as we get closer to um additional information becoming available whether it's from the the legislature jlbc will will refine these numbers and get you an updated figure i

019will say that the department of education and i believe i provided you all this last week there's the budge 25 and that's an independent document report done by the department of ad in the latest report which i think is dated january 29th the 13.5 million dollars that i just referenced they actually have it closer to 14 million so 13.9 something but my point is that in their latest report the short falls is more it's closer to this year so my guess is that information will change as 100 day becomes available on this particular side we're looking at the actual projected enrollment by school and then this again shows that trade a trajectory of where we would be so we are going to show you several different slides that will show what we look um to

020propose should there be possible school closures then what does that enrollment look like you had also asked us some of those questions about capacity and so we'll have those conversations and look at that data as well mr bergen oh i'm sorry i need to go back madam president members of the board superintendent sagada jones this slide um should be familiar to you it's something that mr bremer has provided or has shown in the past we felt that this document is is important for to bring understanding on the rationale so that you as those who have been elected by your community can have the information what questions surface about um board member payment that i think it was your question i believe at the last meeting of you know why was i'm selected and while there

021are many factors in into that recommendation if you just look at ions and if you look at actual which is the far left column of 542 and if you just take that straight across all the way to the 28-29 school year the enrollment pre-pandemic was expected is expected to be 388 if you look at sign in 2014 673 and again just go to your far right 388 as well and again pre-pandemic data i'll take it to coyote ridge 918 in 2014. i want to make sure that as we go through these numbers i would hope that you also reflect that we all reflect on the information and the comments that we've heard coyote ridge has declined i believe every year from 2014 to 2020 i can't see that far so please excuse me but when

022you look at coyote ridge from 2014 to where it would be in 2829 you can see that decrease now as you heard in the past and as you're going to hear again today there are variable factors that went into that recommendation and one important factor for coyote ridge where it's physically located in the access that the community could have to that site so the recommendations the information that you've been presented has all been data driven this other uh slide again should not be new mr bremer has provided this slide in the past obviously with different presentations the number might have changed but one of the key factors in that demographic study is the decline in birth rates and when there is a sluggish economy historically data has shown that birth rates decrease part of the

023recommendation to also in addition to just academic benefits but also the reconfiguration of that k348 model also has to do with that projected decreases in those grade levels in future years so if you're going to decrease in one whether it's a k3 or 48 you know that at some point those class sizes that enrollment is going to be low or lower than what we have experienced in the past and in order to be more financially efficient operationally efficient it also makes sense to combine those in addition to the benefits that dr petersen in corvallia has already mentioned in the past and i'm sure you'll even hear again today so again to look at these solutions or recommendations because of one variable that's not the approach that was taken there were a lot of variables that

024were taken data-driven approach for those recommendations i think also we did hear mr brammie tell us that because of the pandemic that there some economists believe that there could be an increase in birth rates however the latest research shows and data shows that actually it has dipped as well so there they don't anticipate that to be an increase in birth rates here we have this will be a new slide for you so it's the projected attendance area based on proposal rollover methodology so this is where we're looking at each school the capacity without portable buildings and then we look at phase 1 and 2022 what it would do to the number of students and then in 2223 and phase two what those student populations are we did purposely put zeros in phase two because in

025phase two if phase one occurs and then phase two those schools would not be there so that's what you see there so you can look where we look at capacity 1260 let's just just pick one landmark is 1260 you go into phase one and that is with um phase one being implemented you have 885 students and then with face to 859 students and you can see that all the way down i want to look at sunset vista sunset vista you see in phase 1 is 323 and then it goes to 6 21 that's because in phase 2 that's when if phase two occurs and that's where you see the change in the other school closures in addition though if you'll look at censors at 323 that number actually be projected higher we are currently would

026as we always do every year we look at um program services for our children with special needs and there will be some shifts to that school so that number will be higher than that but why you see the difference from phase one to phase two is because of how phase two affects um phase one or phase one affects phase two both ways i guess mr b or did somebody else have a comment mr peregrine uh man and president members of the board supernan scott jones what i would like for everyone to be mindful of is the balance of of really trying to accomplish two things making decisions based on the demographic study which again was pretty pandemic but also when you start to look at and i think the superintendent mentioned this at the last

027meeting is you know it's february we're going into march and we have to start beginning planning for next year and typically what we start to do about now is talk about meet with every school site about what their ftes or teachers are going to be and so we need to the reason for this is this is current students being rolled over that's why it's called the rollover methodology is we're taking everyone who was in first grade into second and then we kind of backfield kindergarten because you never know what that is right because they're new kids coming into the system just for the purpose of of of trying to understand what it would look like for next year you take those kindergartners first graders that were kindergarten first graders and then you put them into

028kindergarten so that gives you an idea what that enrollment might be and so it gives you an idea as far as capacity where we would be in either of those phases so if you just look at take glendale if you take challenger the capacity is 1410 by the time this rollover or the phase 2 would be implemented should you choose to do that you can see that there's still room to accommodate students here was the 2021 class size numbers and this is just letting you know by grade the level exactly what the standard classroom size is for gesd and the current number of students um and the current number of classrooms and you can just glance at that real quick i think ms valadez would like to explain um how this is presented to you

029ms valadez good afternoon madam president members of the board superintendent sagada jones so if you'll just take a look at the middle column i'll just go through a couple there as an example so you can see third grade our classroom standard in the district our size is 27. so what's that is telling us is a number of students so right now this year we have 16 classrooms that have 14 to 19 students in that we have 19 classrooms in third grade that have 20 to 25 students in them we have two classrooms that have 26 or 27 students in them and we have two classrooms over the standard of 27 so they have 28 or more fourth grade if you take a look the standard is 31 we have 12 classrooms with 15 to 20

030students in them 22 classrooms with 21 to 26 students in them and four classrooms with 27 to 28. as you can see that the largest fourth grade classroom in the district right now is sitting at either 27 or 28 students and then that's how the rest of of the grade levels read so you can see where we're currently sitting at as far as grade levels at this point in time which overall just to give you an idea out of 356 classrooms we have 340 classrooms that are at the standard or below just for your information previous year pre-covered we had 387 total classrooms and we had 309 classrooms sitting at the standard or lower just so you have a comparison thank you mr berrigan uh madam president members of the board super nintendo jones this

031is just really uh what a projection of what we think is going to be the deficit or you know the decrease in revenue for next year and again this is a projection as information becomes available we'll we'll update this slide so this gets us again to the phase one the proposed closures again i'm sign the i'm students it shows where they go to burton landmark and smith and then sign goes to burton and horizon and then proposed boundary changes are there phase two proposed closure and repurposing would be coyote ridge desert garden bicentennial north and it shows where each of those students would go to we talked again about desert garden being repurposed and we talked again about coyote ridge being repurposed in phase two we talked about students are being reassigned based on the

032grids jack would be configured to a k8 men's index is reconfigured to a k8 again that was based on student density here we go back to our grids just as you've seen where kids would be moving to and then the grid codes we'll talk about that in a minute i want to make sure on the phases and the repurposing again we've talked about um there's a garden again to put our recommendation is a preschool there a comprehensive preschool program there and that building is conducive to that and then again coyote ridge we talked about the systems of care that building is conducive to that and gives easy access for the entire district to do that so those are the reasons for the repurposing of those grid code can are we going to be able to

033hit that link or madam president members of the board superintendent sega jones this was just to give parents an idea or anyone who lived in the community you can it's already up there um you know we're happy to click on that again but it just kind of shows you if you live in this grid where your phase one or phase two impact would be uh we're happy to go through that um but just to remind you it's really for those parents that have students in our in our schools how that proposal could impact you and that's been posted already so i'm sorry then we go into we talked about phase one and phase two to optimize efficiencies um by conducting cost analysis to pursue we looked at as we said life of facility program changes

034statutory requirements declining enrollment student density again we shared this the preschool what we would do for wraparound services there this is allows us to do that again due to the space the location the layout then again coyote ridge as gsc system of care center we talk about what that would be the series of services supports are focused around a medical clinic and we shared all that before with you what we could offer for our families complete wrap around services again with clinical social workers encounters then we get into again the rationale we said the location the space the campus layout we really believe that we would want our parents to be able to go to one location for to receive each of those types of services we talked about again even how we do our

035food distributions that everything would be housed in the one location so we could truly have complete wrap-around services we believe it's a as we talked about it's um easy access to county ridge it's not within a neighborhood it has a great um we could have public transportation routes there and it would be um where people would feel they could go uh to receive any type of service again the framework again all the services we talked about from mental health all the way down to recreational services and juvenile justice services and those would be with partnerships again this we've already began some of this work just at our local sites and again this is through the grant fundings that we've received same next we get to um geo learning and the 21 22 school year so

036i'll turn that over to dr peterson and creva madam president members of the board superintendent sagada jones as was mentioned at the last um study session that um this there'd be no rec uh the recommendation would be that geo learning stays as is um with k-8 model um as it is our unit 118 our school 118 and um but then any kinds of programmatic changes would come at a later time once we figure out um success of the program and um if anything would need to change programmatically for next year but the organization of it would stay the same for next year the next thing we looked at based on phase one and phase two would be the staffing model criteria size of student population innovations eliminating the academic achievement gap cell support and equal

037access to related arts and then again this is just a draft of small medium of large schools and then we would have to determine what those are so that's still in draft form here we talked again about we shared with you just policy for dcqa if there would be a need for reduction in force so that's just the policy that was shared same policies then again where it brings us to the to have the conversation this evening about the school closure timeline so the special board meeting took place last week on february 4th february 10th the public hearing notices to be received in homes and i know we've had people receive them at home they know [Music] so hopefully everybody got their notices that's somewhat out of control once we send them and give them

038to the post office but we met all the uh timelines that we were to meet and then on february 25th the public hearing for boundary changes we want to talk about and then march 11th the second meeting regarding boundary changes school closures and repurposing and possible action taken by the board we'll and we'll talk about that on february 25th i just want to remind us for a public hearing for boundary changes that would be here at 5 30. what the planning is is because we are still in in the pandemic we still have to pay attention to what the executive order says about crowd size and everything we are still going to be six feet apart so it will be set up like this we will bring people into the board room and probably groups

039of three they will have three minutes to let us know their concerns there is no dialogue that's strictly a public hearing like we said before to make sure that we're accommodating everybody we will have monitors outside and they will be able to not only see what's happening in here but they'll also be able to hear everything so as they wait their turn for that so we will begin that at 5 30 and we will listen to any um public concerns from then in between we talked about last time and that's why we wanted to have the study session this evening is be able to present to those schools affected in phase one and phase two present to them particularly the rationales behind their schools and then that also gives us a question as the executive

040team to answer questions that the public may have specific to their schools so we did create that for you and we'll share that with you and that is just and you know our best thinking at this time and then a march 11th then we go into that's a normal board meeting and that's where the recommendation will come regarding boundary changes and school closures as well so the proposed community engagement meetings we looked at march 1st at 5 pm at north um march 2nd at desert garden march 4th at cody ridge march 8th at sign in march 9th at iams the reason we decided to conduct those at their home schools was simply so that [Music] the community would not be they would not be able not to attend because it was somewhere where they didn't

041have transportation we wanted it to be in their home school setting so that they would have easy access to that and we would avoid anybody that couldn't get to another location again the same process in our mind is is what we would be thinking is we would do a presentation we would have locations within the site and we'll have to have and we'll have conversations with our building level administrators but we would have a for example if we did a cafeteria or a gym then we would have as many as we could in that we'd do the presentation answer questions and then we'd bring in the next the next group so that everybody has an opportunity to hear the pr a very short presentation but also then the opportunity to ask any other questions meanwhile

042we've been trying we've posted i believe it's up there today as well is the frequently asked questions that we've had come to us so we've done that also from the february 25th public hearing we assume there'll be a lot of comments and questions we will capture those questions so that we can also get those posted as well and um so that people have a if there's even further questions when we come to these dates they would be able to do that so that's um what we're thinking about the process for that we would want to get notifications out to our community as quickly as possible as well as we want to make sure that it is done in both in particular spanish and and uh english to guitar communities both for the 25th february 25th

043public hearing we will have an um an interpreter here so that if we have a language um other than english in particular spanish we do have um the next population language that we would look at would be arabic and we will work to get someone here for that as well and then depending on the site um we can pull by grids what languages there are in particular again we would focus on english spanish and arabic okay so that's kind of what the the proposed oh i'm sorry i'm going to go back to that those are kind of our thoughts on what we could do um we we really would like it to be at home schools so that anybody within there can do that and that would be for those that live in that homeschool

044area that's affecting them i do want to state and i think we've stated that in it states that on the postcard when we get to february 25th for the public hearing that is really to hear from those that are affected within the resident okay so that's important to know and then when we get to this it would be for those that are affected um by their their own home school and to be able to answer those questions so those are our that's what we're thinking we tried to choose dates we didn't want to do dates back to back because we didn't put an end time you notice there's not an end time we don't want to put in time we want to be able to hear what the community has and we want to make

045sure that they're informed and they have all their questions answered so that's why you do not see an end time on those okay that that concludes the presentation i know um it was lengthy but some of it we've seen before but i think it's important that we always go back to that but at this time then we can answer any questions that you have questions about timelines your i your thoughts on that we are we will make sure and do everything we can to follow what we can to keep everybody safe since we are still in that we will do [Music] our six feet apart we will make sure that when they come in for this particular 25th hearing that they come to the podium we will sanitize in between we'll make sure they're lined

046up six feet apart and do that because we want our community to remain safe the same thing will occur at the sites as well and we'll just have to think about what that looks like when we bring groups in as well okay at this time do any board members have any questions i have i have some questions going back to page 10 of the presentation [Music] and suggesting to the community that i've spoken to to look at this one thing that has been brought to my attention i'm sorry board remember pimento tell me when i get to 10 okay it is the average daily membership graph okay it's enrollment projected when you see history go one more yeah keep going one more one more there we go there you go this is a concern that's

047been brought to me several times and it's a visual thing so when we look at the current number of 8063 what has been brought to me quite often by community is why is that bar so short and shouldn't it be almost as tall as the 9005 for the 2000 2029 school year it is perceived to be something that is um i'm trying to think of the proper word here not honest and this is this is something that's been brought to me a lot so i just wanted to bring it to your attention that the bar should be taller we're happy to answer that mr barrican uh madam president members of the board board member would you just elaborate of of specifically what's not genuine about that 8063 number sure so if you look at the

048number prior where it says the 2021 budget it's 10 500 right and then if you look at the bar next to it where it says 8063 it's less than half of that number so visually when when the community is looking at it they've asked me why is that bar so short that number looks like it should be under 4 000. so it's just the visual of the bar i'm not sure that i understand necessarily the question maybe perhaps let me attempt to answer it this way that the 8063 is a number that is actually provided by the department of ed and if you recall on friday's board memo i gave you a copy of that and so simply the answer is whatever people perceive we can't control that i can only tell you the department

049of education is paying us at the time that this was put together based on 8063 students the enrollment stabilization grant which was an initiative by the governor was meant to provide school districts financial security if you will when it comes to the pandemic and so basically and let me just kind of remind everyone that what he said was we're going to be we understand that there's a pandemic and what we want to do is provide everyone with financial stability we're going to give you through this grant the the greater of current year funding or prior year funding up to i believe it was 9 98 if i remember correctly that didn't play out that way and so not only did our school district get hurt by it but others as well and so i'm happy

050to provide you and i think i've done that in the board memo that we're getting paid on 8063 which is the result of that 13.5 million dollar deficit you know if it was up to me to make these numbers i'd have it at the highest point of 1353 and everything would be great but that's not our reality and so while we don't like the information i do think that we have to understand the brutal facts of our current situation and so i would point to to you to anyone of the public where that number is coming from i would point them to the arizona department of education's adms 46 report thank you but it's i apologize for cutting you off it's the visual of how short the actual bar is not the number can i

051try to explain please okay so i had the same question you did last week and i looked at it um the the problem is the y-axis of this graph does not start at zero so when it's chopped off like that you see this huge gap in there so if you look at the space between uh 2016 and 2020 which had a decline of 2 300 students it is about equal to amount of space between 2020 and 2021 so space-wise just a different it looks it looks funky because the y-axis doesn't start at zero it probably starts 7 000 or something um so everything looks skewed uh but but i i sat there with a piece of paper and i was measuring the bars uh last more meeting because it looked funny to me too so

052it was a visual presentation really the issue is a skill correct and we're happy to adjust that at the end of the day the data doesn't change there's two thousand almost two thousand four hundred and sixty three students less and there's a thirteen point five million dollar deficit while i apologize for not having that to scale it doesn't change the fact that the bigger visual that we should be concerned about is a 13.5 million deficit thank you can i add something on this slide also if you look if you look at that slide and you look at the current state and it says 8063 and then you go to 2022 and it's up to 10 1 000 you know 200. i mean it has our demographer been able to adjust that 10 000 to a

053more realistic number or not or is that really what we're expecting in the 2022 school year madam president members of the board um superintendent scott jones member smith if i understand your question correctly you're looking at the 2022 data really through 29 is that correct really it's i'm just looking at 20 22. we're saying that we're going to jump from 8 000 to this pandemic and then we're going to jump the ten thousand two hundred following year you know madam president members of the board remember smith let me um let me try to explain the the slide maybe a little bit more better so i apologize for the confusion that that may have been caused 2001 through 2020 is actual adm and again those numbers you can verify that through the department of education the

054ten thousand five hundred the logic between that uh let me just maybe walk you through the logic and you can tell me if that helps or not ten thousand eight thirteen was our group a hundredth day for prior year we projected based on the demographic study i think they had it at 2.9 i rounded to 3 so i just took 3 less to build this year's budget what i'm trying to demonstrate in this slide is that we built the budget at 10 500 but in reality we're only being funded again at the time that this was put together 8063. 2022 and 2023 it's not that we project the increase what we should have included on there was this was the projection prior to the pandemic based on the trend so let me just explain this

055and hopefully it doesn't confuse you remember that and i think the example that i used is if you have students kindergarten is the easy one and it's probably the most the easiest one to tell if you have 20 30 students in kindergartner as you're teaching you see 30 kids but when i see the report i see 15 because remember that the state only funds students at half so while in your classroom you see 30 i see 15 right so just kind of keep that in mind as well but what we do is we take that 100th day and then we just apply the percentage identified in the demographic study to give us an idea of what funding would be in future years so 2022 through 29 really is data based on the the pandem us

056it's data based on the demographic study the concern that was mentioned at the last meeting was yes we're currently getting funded at 8063. next year will be very telling next year's information will allow us to reevaluate and reassess what those next nine years are going to look like the question and the concern that i would have is what if that trajectory is accelerated that's the concern board member smith i don't know if i answered your question but that was my attempt to i think it's a good explanation of you know how these numbers are there and the funding and i would think that as we go forth that we need to be aware that we may not be funded at you know it can do in our future planning you know and so that's a

057concern also as we're making our decisions on on why we're closing schools because we're you know we're we don't know what we're going to be funded at but it's and it's the current year funding that really is an issue for us that is correct board member smith we share that same concern board member smith do we have any other questions yes i have another question i was looking at the new boundaries on page 29 and you could look at either 28 or 29 with the arrows or without the arrows probably with the arrows is more helpful there you go and having been to smith i know that it's right on is that maryland it's right on maryland and it there's going to be kids who can't walk right across the street to go to their

058school is the way it looks here is is that are the numbers so great in section n e and i and i think i can go look at that myself probably where it wouldn't be a factor in sending kids to smith instead of challenger right so any would be crossing 67 right well and he already goes to challenger right am i reading that caller right yeah but they would go to men's and dick jack can i oh sorry madam president remembers the word word member pimentel can i just check for understanding is the question why can't students in n a go to challenger is that the question no they it looks like they that's going to be the boundary change correct and e will go to challenger but if you're in ne and you're right

059there on the south side of maryland and smith is just on the north side of maryland and i have i'm a parent that has a child that can currently just walk across the street to go to smith like say is that 63rd 63rd maryland that can walk across the street and go to smith and now they're being sent to and i apologize i don't know what the current boundary is there looks like any currently goes to yeah i need to go back to see the band uh so i don't know if they could if if the families in any currently go to challenger or where they go but it seems that it's just right on a boundary yeah it's the change in the other k i think dr peterson might be uh you want to

060answer that go for it yeah let's make it go ahead madam president members of the board remember pimentel um my conjecture without knowing who this specific person is or the parent is currently their home school is challenger however if they are going to smith it must be an open enrollment okay to smith and then open enrollments would continue even with boundary changes so currently n e is part of challenger all right correct yeah okay then it's probably moved i apologize and then i have a question about the system of care yes i want to go back to the the board member appointment because that will be important um just so remember we have the grid that actually which is nice that anybody can see where their current you know where they currently reside and then

061where their current school would be so we'll make sure that that's clear for parents as well to do that and i think that's already posted on there as well but thank you thank you yes i i it and that was just my question just no absolutely at the map going on to page 38 and 39 of the for the system of care am i on 38. one question i've been asked and i probably don't answer as well as i would like to is if we can't keep coyote ridge open for students how are we going to open a system of care and i think i have a very basic grasp of the answer but if that's something that we can touch on a little bit i can answer that and i can have dr lafitte

062chime in as well the the system is of care is not based on student enrollment or students coming that's a system of care for all families and students within the district so it wouldn't be based i mean keeping that open is because you're now providing all these services to everybody within the community it's not tied directly to a student enrollment number if that's the question dr laffy i think that's the question correct it is the question okay it's how are we going to fund this the same way we fund these services but some of these services we already have it's grant funded so that would be the majority of the services and then again dr lafitte talked about um at the last time the partnerships as well that do that so that's how that's funded

063yes thank you that's that's pretty much the way i've been answering it great and i think it's wonderful that it's a little bit more clear today and remember we have those um particular grants in which we need to provide those services so yes and i think my last question is on page uh again we have uh the school site staffing model yes do we have a definition of what is small what is medium and what is large we have we have not looked at that miss pimentel we have not we have not determined that what we what the conversation came of is knowing when we looked at the different demographics and what the student populations would be at sites was we knew that we would run from a small medium and large and so really

064the question was regardless of small medium and large what first of all were the services we wanted everybody to have just because you're a large school or just because you're a small school doesn't mean you need those same services it's going to depend on the needs of your your particular population at that site but as far as small medium large we've not looked at that we haven't looked into depth of what that would look like but that would be again our next steps yes okay and i i apologize i do have one more question uh going back to the slide uh number page 21. we are looking at the schools um in phase one and the numbers that they will have and we're trying to get there next one there we go and in looking

065at bicentennial north and south for example uh it shows and i apologize i did not add this up so in the phase one it shows that bicentennial north has 547 south has 409 which takes us to 9 56 and then the following year at bicentennial south okay well the math or 956 so the following year in phase 2 2022 once bicentennial north is closed we show that bicentennial south will have 851 with a loss of about 105 students is that how accurate wow okay but you also lost one of the current boundary grids so like that one that was that little one from challenger right the immediate one below that still within that square mile of smith would be going into that jack and men's and dick configuration so that's part of why that would

066be different okay mr peterson did you want to dr pearson did you want to say something uh madame members of the boards superintendent scotty jones one of the other compounding factors is that our eighth grade numbers are so much higher than our kindergarten numbers right coming in so when a larger eighth grade group leaves that's going to create a bigger gap when your kindergarten group is not at that same number same number in enrollment for enrollment reasons and we see that i mean that's what we currently see right now anyway so it just seems like such an incredibly huge gap that's what we're saying i had a question regarding that same slide and the numbers for the advice of the capacity was 870 and then the production that was in the phase two they have

067861 and i it's pretty close to capacity there and i would hate just to have to change boundaries again you know in the near future because we're so close so what conversations been about by itself and those numbers yes madam president members of the board board member smith um we would not propose changing boundaries again if there had to be additional uh buildings uh or reconstructing reconstructing there that would be the approach we do mr berrigan yeah madame president members of the board uh member smith and really let me if i may just elaborate on that this also because we wanted to kind of give you a worst case scenario this does take uh geo kids into consideration so as so we do believe that there these numbers would decrease depending on how on what

068geo looks like so so we wanted to give you kind of that as well like if every kid within their grid went to their school this is what you'd be looking at from a rollover method right methodology there will be kids or students that will enroll in geo and so it you're going to see those numbers decrease however if if capacity becomes problematic which i wouldn't say it's a problem it means that we're you know moving in the right direction but we also do have money in the bond that we specifically identify to address these issues and the recommendation of doing a phase one and phase two is to allow time to accommodate those facilities for that k-8 model yes i have a question for for those sites that are moving into more of a

069wraparound service and i'll use coyote ridge as an example i understand that a lot of the people that will be staffing that facility will be from other sites throughout the district or are we talking about coyote ridge people staying and then adapting to a new a new sort of a new job at that point i'm just curious as to is there anybody that's to say like let's say there's is there anyone at coyote ridge that will end up staying at coyote ridge or do we end up shuffling them out and then moving different specialized staff in again it's not based on servicing a student as a school this operating as a school it's a wrap around services so teaching staff would not be there teaching staff would you know be um not at cody ridge

070teaching kids you know so no teaching staff would would not remain there as far as the delivery of programs that's really for example we have some programs that we would shift over which already have people in those positions and then when your partnerships you would have staff within those partnerships that already are there mr lafitte you want to comment on that i'm sure madam chair members of the board board member martinez um superintendent sagada jones is absolutely correct but what happened in this case is think of it as the partnership so an example touchstone is a partner we would shift them over and they would we would allow them to use our facilities for housing to support students and adults depending on the scenario with their mental health needs we work with other partners to

071house them in terms of our own staff it will be those staffs that provide services district wide as mentioned earlier so an example we have district social workers we would shift them and they would be housed there as a unit and so it would be that in terms of the current staff there they would be moved to other sites around the district in their respective roles okay thank you based on the need so almost like one of those medical facilities where different offices are all there doing different services they're just at one location that would be our hope yes a lot of these services we provide already they're just at different locations and then i have a question regarding um your proposed meetings at the sites are we not interacting with people that will be

072impacted by phase two at this time because we have a lot of campuses that also are impacted by boundary changes that takes place during the public hearing so we're not going to offer opportunities for them at their home schools at their home schools um give me an example you mean jackman's yes that's that shifts to a k-8 they're not really i mean it's just it goes to a k-8 model and of course there's students coming in that way so we didn't plan to present at a jack mends for boundary uh changes for that because really we're talking about almost our entire district has some level of shift and that's that's what we are meeting the statutory requirement by having the public hearing on february 25th our focus for the community is so they can we

073can really address those questions that they may have because because of phase one phase two boundaries we just need to do the public um meeting through those comments and we would be able to be take those and put on our frequently asked questions and then address those that way now at these particular meetings will it present kind of an overview of the entire here's phase one here's phase two here the upcoming changes that way if any parent from those other schools happens to go to one of those meetings they're going to be able to get that information and ask questions at that time we'll have a presentation that explains phase one and phase two yes okay and then are we going to include our social media platform to help direct our families to the website

074our community to the website yes you've got incoming families that may not be aware yet yes we will we have we always will send out as we do with notifications to family with the emails that we have that are current our administrators will work with their staffs as well to get that out we'll use social media as well we will use radio broadcasting as well we'll do all those things so that everybody knows that's why we want to get the timeline out quickly so that people can see when those are and then we can plan from there okay and then can we have [Music] a simple presentation that's done both in like english and spanish that we can put up on social media so we can direct people to the website if they have more

075questions the presentation can be translated into another language absolutely i do have one more question apparently i'm full of them tonight um on slide 45 with regards to the reduction in force 44 i apologize um it i know that that i believe the number was 165 staff we generally have overturned over every year if i remember the number correctly due to various reasons retirement moving different reasons will there possibly has it be considered to offer an early termination i'm sorry wrong word early retirement package to possibly avoid a reduction in force we have not um again that takes money but we have not addressed that no would you say that the average loss of [Music] teachers is how many did you say per year average so last year we hired 160 certified positions just last

076year and then in january with our intent to return we had well we had over 60 but we had just uh speaking of teachers we had 47 teachers that already have resigned their positions for the following school year but going in as it is and then when contracts go out we gave contracts to appropriately certified staff at this point in time we have other staff under um other types of certificates so we are waiting for that as a new phase so only appropriately certified staff are getting the first go around of contracts thank you okay to piggyback on that and you may not have the answer but um how many of our classrooms because i know we've struggled with finding certified teachers so how many are you know either that's the appropriately certified numbers yes

077miss validus we have 59 that were are not appropriately certified that we are holding off on issuing contracts to and then do we know how many like long-term subs that we've long-term vacancies most of our long-term subs are contracted people and i don't have the number off hand are in our self our special ed positions that is where the majority of our long-term long-term or contracted positions are is getting uh certified special ed teachers so that would also kind of absorb right so they they automatically i mean if they're contracted we do not that's always our last resort is to hire the contracted people absolutely try to get the appropriately certified other questions i think i have one more uh on page 22 uh this is with regard to the class size numbers so it

078looks like we have four or nine 12 13 maybe 15 classrooms that are over the standard size which out of i apologize i don't remember the number 356 356 that's not bad can we anticipate these numbers if if we go ahead and if five schools are closed can we anticipate that these numbers are still going to be looking like this or would they be let me take that back can we still anticipate that we will have classroom sizes still at standard at the same ratio we miscella does i'll let you answer but we always our goal is to staff at the standard that is the goal as far as being financially responsible you know with that it's always the standard obviously you can see we're under the standard but our goal is to always staff

079at the standard to get it as close to that standard as possible thank you you're welcome okay do we have any more questions at this time i had a few things i wanted in the future in our presentations that we've seen i haven't seen numbers about students that are affected can i get a report about how many students are being affected by all of these changes the students that are affected by moving from side to side as well as is that the question ms smith yes i decide you know the closing of school just you know so i can see the the numbers of what we're doing it's results or something how many children are being affected by our vote yes and and then one other thing was i don't remember what which page but

080it's up in the the beginning and where you have the cost breakdown where it talks about the 17 million shortfall and i really think we should have some more information that explains how much we're saving by closing this school and and whatever else could be there in a simple form i would say so if we're short 11 million but then we're showing that these sg's and e-s-s-e-r are giving us to us as you know and then and that was like for 11 million and if we're still high you know i would like to have something simple up there that says okay just no school year like we're still dollar shy um closing students will be it's going to save us this amount of money and so that we can as the community understand you know

081where this needs so someone comes up and says why don't you get rid of the administration well okay we're gonna say administration this is you know hypothetical numbers you know it's like we heard of administration it's going to save us 100 children this is gonna save us two million dollars you know they're it's really the visual that most people understand why you have to close the school and how how it can help you have a financially solvent board member smith we apologize it was really hard to hear some of that could you um make sure that gets the miss powell in writing so that we understand what is that i i think one of the i don't i'm sorry it was difficult to hear but this i understand what the savings would be if you

082started eliminating positions and then also the we had shared i i don't know if that was the question i thought i heard was the average cost of closing a school the savings is about 2.9 million so and then you're asking what it would be if you removed one category if you removed all administrators how much that that would be and i i be passed that i didn't understand the rest of the question we had hard time hearing unfortunately but if you can get those to us so we can at least then ask clarifying questions that would help us i'll do that thank you and then i would ask if we can possibly because we know that this is going to cause a change and everybody feels it as a negative but i think it's really

083important if we can also point out some of the positives you know what are the positive things that are going to be able to happen that we can do for the students that maybe we haven't been able to do you know if the services are improved if specials are more consistent if sports are more available you know those kinds of things that because we're looking on we need to cut millions of dollars but we also need to show where this can be a positive thing for our kids and our families i mean no matter what we know it's going to be an impact but we need to show where there's also a bright side to this thank you board member rotells i have one more question um in my neighborhood i know there's a new

084housing development going up and uh i've been told that there's new homes going up by american which i'm i'm not sure about that yes i i don't know how those projections come into play ever yes we can address that we're aware of the it's the glen oaks golf course and then we can look at also we'll address the other one i'll let mr berrigan but also remember you have to make sure those um new housing are going up within our district boundaries um in particular but we are we do have information on those as well as the glen oaks on golf course and mr bergen madam president members of the board um when rick brammer was here and and has done throughout the years not just the last three but really at least during my

085tenure here in that demographic study it talks about what he refers to as the capture rate and you might have heard me in some of the previous study sessions that we've had but what goes into that and so look i'm going to truly just simplify it i hope that gets the message across we can just use that development as an example and we're going to go with 200 because i think that was the number that i heard whether they're homes units or whatever they may be and again i'm oversimplified i'm sorry mr berg and just to clarify we're talking about the property that's near apollo high school american and horizon correct i believe it's right at 55th and northern if i if i understand correctly but even if it wasn't just the whole concept i

086think my hope is that you take away from this is they're building 200 homes we assume that every home has a 0.5 student that is that is eligible to go to k-12 okay you take that into consideration and so if there's 200 you multiply that by 0.5 that means that there's a hundred kids that could attend glendale elementary as an example but there's a in the demographic study and it's going to vary on school district the capture rate and ours is decreasing and i would encourage you to please look at that report because i think it will answer some of those questions but basically if it's 70 that means of those 100 kids only 70 students will come to glendale and elementary so as you see and i'm sure as people ask but what about

087all this residential development just take that concept even if you did 2 000 madam superintendent can we go back to that adm chart that i apologize the the 8 000 is not to size but i still think that it gives hopefully a visual so even if you take 2 000 students and you apply that content just make up the number 5 000 just use that that idea and that concept and just apply it okay but in reality if you even take the 8063 we would really have to grow by what it was in 2014 truly overnight and be able to maintain that for nothing to change and if you look at the demographic study mr bramer always tries to provide information that says we know that all these permits construction permits were pulled this is

088what we believe may happen and while there is residential development it won't be enough based on the information that we have to go from 8063 to what i'm gonna round to thirteen thousand so just please consider that as you see development yourself residential you can look at those taylor morrison homes on on on glendale wherever they might be just use that and then it gives you an idea okay 70 kids and just know that with every year as we get closer to 2029 our capture rate decreases so please look at that demographic study and by year it will give you the projection of that capture rate as we update this demographic study sometime next year you're going to get revised data revised numbers and so we just have to be mindful you know if it's

08970 today could it be 66 for the following year and so that in that example obviously you're going to have less kids in your sys in the system so just please take that into consideration i've oversimplified it the calculations a little bit more complicated but if you just take that concept it will give you an idea of yeah there's development but it's not enough to change the course at least not on the infra based on the information that we have those capture rates are for kate kinder through 12th grade correct or is it specifically for in our studies at k-8 madam president members of the board um president uh bartels it's going to be specific to glendale so if you look at it because the report while there's other data and i would encourage you

090to look at the data but if you look at the data it's going to be based on the projections that mr bramer has used in some of his presentations does take that into consideration in the in future years right so if if the capture rate in 2027 as an example i don't know what it is off the top of my head but if it were 64 he's taken that into consideration based on the development and growth that he might be seeing based on the data that he's getting from the city or county or whatever it may be from permits so even using your example and let's say being hopeful that there is one student in every home being super hopeful we would take a american using that location as the example we would take american

091from excuse me uh from looking at our projected enrollment i'm not sure what's there right now the projected enrollment for this year was 578 students would take us let's say 678 students but still that would not bring the school american up to a capacity no madam president was born that's why we thought it was important that you see and have an idea i i would say this i would be extremely shocked if you got into a situation where we were overcrowded and if it happens that's great because we will build and we need to increase that number i just based on the information that we have and again the data that we showed you includes students that live in the grid so if geo kids you take those from that chart that we showed you

092and that would even decrease it gives you more capacity at that site whatever set you want to focus on it just gives you more capacity thank you so madam president members of the board i'd like to just go back to the timelines for the communication to our community i think that's critical so we would begin those setting out i think it was brought that we want to make sure it's on social media everything we will do a generic um script so that the message is the same for everybody so they all understand what that message is so that we truly have the the accurate information out there and they will we will do it through social media as we said before and then we will work also um to establish those guidelines to make sure

093that we're adhering to those because we are in the middle of a pandemic and we do know we that tomorrow cdc is coming out with some new guidelines but really from what we can understand and dr lethe will probably address that during the board meeting under his metrics is that from that it's really about focusing on mitigation but other things are really still in place so we want to make sure that we are following that and we'll make sure that it's clear to everyone what the requirement will be because we still are not you know open to the public but we will make sure everybody is clear we'll be able to better accommodate everybody that comes comes to come us to those meetings do you have any more questions concerns i do have one more

094question i keep saying that so the last slide is the proposed community engagement so we have march 1st at bicentennial march 2nd at desert garden march 4th at coyote ridge march 8th at sign and march 9th at iams and and i'm just curious is there a reason we didn't do sign and i'm first since they are part of phase one we we didn't do it in any particular order i mean we just chose what we i think what we tried to do at first we thought if we could combine schools you know then but then we figured that wouldn't work so we just decided that we would do it in in that particular order also to be honest we anticipate and we could be wrong that at sina nimes because they are part of phase

095one with closures that we will have large numbers and we need that time to prepare for those large numbers so that was the only rationale in that particular piece is because we anticipate and we could be we could be wrong but we anticipate because they are phase one identified as phase one that they would have a larger uh public coming and we wanted to make sure that we have enough time to prep those facilities thank you yeah we also have the february 25th so chances are there may be a higher number showing up for that meeting to speak it's really just prep on our side all right anybody else at this time can i just call for a break and then we'll resume at 5 30. all right so moved i don't think we needed

096to vote on it do we need a second for that no because i'll second it [Laughter] we're good we'll be back at 5 30. uh ah uh um uh fact uh max uh i right you i uh alright you it right uh thanks alright right back right that's uh right me uh um uh right um uh um that's uh back uh right uh back uh crap uh ah father back ah fox ah do we have sarah now hello all right can you hear me better i can yes thank you all right it is 5 30 and if you are just starting if you are just joining us we are on item 3a call to the public our first one is from jeanette rios hello we are parents of two active students at cody ridge school

097and in august we are expecting that our third kid will enter at the same school for us that school has been a great help they have given support to our family teachers and staff have always supported us and we disagree that our school is being considered for closing i don't think any school in glendale should close with covet around we need to consider smaller groups and it is necessary to have space and all the schools open uh geo for some students are not working and my kids are them please do not close glendale schools from the glendale education association dear president board president members of the board superintendent sagada jones as the timeline for school closures repurposing continues we encourage you to move forward without the 2223 school repurposing plan currently known as phase 2.

098it was said in the previous board meeting that school closures repurposing could be taken off the table at any time we urge you to take action tonight to remove the 2223 currently known as phase 2 from the current timeline moving forward with the 21-22 school closure repurposing plan currently known as phase one we believe the following questions need to be answered before all stakeholders can take part in further discussions due the pandemic our student enrollment has drastically declined what has the district done to find these students what is the district's plan to obtain the missing attestation forms all stakeholders deserve to see a detailed cost benefit analysis of closing schools we have been provided with our budget deficits due to declining enrollment when can we expect to see how much money will be saved from

099closing or repurposing schools three what is the district's long-term plan to attract students in the future how is the district involved all employees in these discussions four what will be the what will the additional transportation cost be for the newly reconfigured boundaries and five what are the plans for the 2122 schools currently known as phase one if the school board votes to close them this is from travis uhlin please keep this school open it is a great school for the community and he is re referencing save coyote ridge and at this time i'm going to ask miss gotta jones to assist me in spanish reading madam president members of the board this is from teresa it says india i only have one translation hello good morning i am a mother of a student from coyote

100ridge it makes us very sad that they want to close the school we love this school we love its teachers if it were up to us the decision would not be to close it and continue in it and then the second one virginia taurus hello we know that you want to close coyote ridge we are many families who belong to that school we ask you to reconsider your decision and keep it running thank you in advance all right at this time we are on item 4 consent agenda are there any items that board members wish pulled aside hearing none can i get a motion i'll move to approve the consent agenda i will second okay hearing a first and a second miss smith how do you vote aye ms pimentel aye ms wilson aye and

101mr martinez aye and chair votes eye motion passes we are now on item five which is reports and information items yes madam president members of the board at this time dr lafitte will present the gst health metrics benchmark update good evening madam chair members of the board superintendent sagada jones can you can you click the clicker or do you want me to get i'm the clicker okay thank you so as you'll see last week we started to have the conversation about the benchmarks with regards to the cases per 000 decreasing so this week we have seen a significant decrease though is still in the substantial area moving from the 600 range down to the 400 range but our percent positivity still stayed in the same range just decreasing slightly statewide the covalent illness numbers have

102begun to decrease moving back into that into that yellow range um and we'll see what that begins to look like over the next several weeks as some of the reports are showing a decline across the state so when we look at all of the schools within our surrounding area we're still in that middle grouping again with some districts in the 300s and some in the 400s so we're at a 412 and if you look at our neighboring high school district glendale union is at 385.15 and their percent positivity is just slightly lower than ours by zip code we're seeing the same trend we're seeing those decreases come in so when you look at 85302 and a5 303 where we've seen some of our bigger decreases in our numbers and um our daily numbers if you'll

103notice those are starting to see a decrease as well so a couple of things just to kind of add in this um you can go back one more slide so if you start to look at our data um just one thing to keep in mind when we think about our numbers and our movement we do know that cdc will be putting out new guidelines that they've stated will come out tomorrow for all of the um for all schools to look at with regards to moving back to hybrid or an in-person learning model so when we get that information we'll really take a look at it to see what's new all of the indicators now or that it's really going to be focused more so on mitigation factors and things you can do to mitigate versus

104vaccinations and other things like that we are still doing our vaccinations with partnering with glendale union and washington elementary this weekend the 13th and 14th that will take place for us for our staff our site is independence on saturday and moon valley on sunday we do have several volunteers that will be participating in this then our staff has signed up as well so this will be an opportunity for those who want to get vaccinated to get vaccinated so any questions i don't know if this is valid but do we have an idea of how many staff have been vaccinated yet or no we don't madam president members of the board no we we do not uh track that information okay thank you okay uh moving on we are now up to 6a and the item

105is in-person learning yes madam president members of the board i believe that was requested by board member smith it was requested by me and i appreciate what dr laffy had to say and the report that we had but i'm bringing this um to us because i'm just going to start by saying is i think our children need to um be back in our in our schools attending and and there are multiple reasons and though i'll give you my reasons and and that way we can discuss this one as i was watching the the news or whatever this week or last week i i saw what the head of the cdc say there's no evidence that covid 19 spreads you know in our k-8 schools and and then the other reason i think children should be

106in there is because we have the mitigation strategies in in place because we've already started the the hybrid earlier in the year and we spent three million dollars and and the district has done a great job um you know getting the mitigation strategies in place and then another thing that it says on the cdc site is which also can can be changed but it says can hospitals handle the cases and and i know that we can i saw on the news also that now there's fewer coveted hospital beds in use than there are other in the icu so we have the strategies and the hospital beds and those are some of the things that were listed on the cdc site and then as it was mentioned you know in you know the the past presentation

107that the teachers are immunized or they're going to be you know at least this weekend or they've had it already i've seen some people already have that and then i'm going to bring up one of our neighboring school districts so peoria school district has had their children going to school every day and they are not having you know the the spread like they they have you know everything that the cdc is saying and um i looked at their numbers they've been at like 25 which is about the same percent you know that you know we are in some areas and um so you know to me that shows you know that you know schools can't be open and children can go and then also our the high school district is sending out a survey on

108friday to all parents on reopening i have no idea what the survey is going to say but that's happening also so they have a committee that they're using in order to you know discuss whether they should reopen and and then we've been you know talking about repurposing and closing schools and i i really feel that it's hard to make you know financially sound decisions if without the knowledge of where our adm really is going to stand and i think the sooner we get our our kids back in the school then we can know a little bit better about where our financial problems you know are going to stand and and then right after this is then we're going to you know be talking about uh our um a resolution about you know systemic racism and

109i feel like not having our kids in the classroom is not meeting the gap that some of our our poor students are having and you know we need to get them back in our school so now i'm done with what i want to say so now the rest of you guys can talk thank you board member smith is it possible that we can discuss a potential date but um here's what i think we as dr laffy said we'll look at what cdc here's what we know that we've had discussions about so far and there has been as of today and dr peterson and carver will correct me if i'm if i'm wrong we do know that through arizona department of education that we will be required still to do a zelda testing and we will

110still be required to do az merit testing azmerit testing there's been conversations whether or not the 95 percent tested would be waived at the federal government level it has not been waived at that time so those two types of assessment have to occur and they have to occur in person so at some point we will have to return students back to the classrooms to take azmerit as well as a zillow there has been no indication that ade is going to waiver on that so with that i'll turn it over to dr peterson but with that there obviously to get all of our students tested to do it in using our great mitigation plans that is going to take longer than it typically would sometimes so edge service has already been working on what those schedules

111might look like so although our metrics and we've made the decisions as we said based upon the metrics we hope that the trend on the metric continues to go down and that we would reach a hybrid model before we'd have to begin testing it's hard to predict that but if we do not see a hybrid in the yellow which we did last time when we were in the yellow we did a hybrid model we don't see that we will be forced to bring students back anyway because we have to do testing for them at least in grades three through five so we have just begun those conversations uh yesterday in fact because we were thought we were going to hear whether or not the 95 percent or any change in testing would uh would occur

112it was made very clear to us that azello there you will still test those students and it was made very clear with azmerit that still will have to take place so again how do we create those environments a good testing environment for students we need to remember that we have some of our schools who have not um staff has not been here teachers have not been here since last march so we need to think about timelines for that so that environments are conducive to that and what that looks like as well and then we have kids you know obviously have not been on campus as well the focus right now for us is three through eight because those students have to be assessed so i'll turn it over to dr jerry peterson and gravia madam

113president members of the board superintendent sagada jones entirely right it is azm2 otherwise known as azmerit is still required at the state level and a 95 percent participation rate is still in place at the federal level um as of today azsai which is the new ames science test is on the same kind of platform and the same kind of 95 tested the thing that you may have heard um in the news or through legislators conversations is that what the state board of ed has done is that it has put forward a resolution to legislators to waive the adaf accountability system which would mean that the letter grade would be given but yet a test would be required so to know where your students are academically so third through eighth would be taking azim m2 and

114azsci and then obviously our k8 ell students will need to be taking a zella as well they have extended the windows for all those assessments azm2 and azsci cannot start until april 5th but we have until may middle of may at the middle of may to end that assessment with all of our students in third through eight um zella we we the window used to be february to the middle of march now that window is extended to may 18th and so just mapping all that out in order to see where we're at whether it was in a hybrid model or an all-in-person model we would need to start assessing our students in order to get them all the way through the process let's just say we're in a hybrid model because as that means it's

115only half your students are taking all those tests every other day um we would need to start on april 5th and that would take us until may 18th to get through all those assessments we are fifth and eighth graders if you're an ell student in fifth or eighth grade you would be taking the most assessments because you have a zella azsai reading one reading two math one math two writing all of that would have to happen in that amount of time so um that would that would need to start by april 5th at the very latest thank you dr pearson and kavaya i'd also like to add to that in preparation to that and i know board member smith said that the neighboring glendale union high school district was doing a survey we've also began

116to craft a survey because knowing that we will be doing the testing we would like to know from a parent's best guess of if their students are returning because we need to plan for that we need to do this shift from meal services would be in person we need to get transportation routes ready those things again so we need to prepare for that as well so it would be our intent to survey our parents just so we know exactly how many would be coming through the doors to do that but so that's what we have on the latest is that unfortunately the testing has to take place and dr peterson and his team have worked extremely hard on trying to extend that window as late as possible so that we could get at least to

117a metrics that had a hybrid and hopefully by then it will be in that but if it's not then we do have you know strong mitigation plans in place also with that and i'll let him continue with at the conversations that we've had and we'll have with teams and our and our site administrators and those that the testing has to be um as you said it could be on a hybrid model but also with that we need to think about allowing time for our teachers our teachers have not been in their classrooms and so i don't and also we have talked about and will get input from people as well is a transition for students it seems like if you come back the first day and you're going right into days and days of testing

118that might not be the best thing students haven't been back in classrooms they haven't seen some of their peers in that so we would want some type of adjustment for that but again we would seek input from those about what how much time and preparation our teachers would need and how much time in that for a transition for students it would it just feels i guess the word for me is uncomfortable saying welcome back and okay you're going to sit in hours and hours of testing when they've been gone and i and our teachers as well you know they they've seen their students you know obviously virtual but it's different to see them in person and be excited and i think they need an opportunity to take time for that as well so we are

119just beginning those conversations i think we i don't know that we thought it was going to change with ade um but those planning of actually what uh an actual timeline would look like takes a lot of prep so that's kind of where we are in that and i'm sure we can answer or dr peterson can answer any questions you might have if i may add to that um superintendent sarah garcia jones um obviously geo learning is an aspect of this that has to be added into the whole mix because even though those students you know would be learning from home normally pandemic or not um they still have to test in person and so with azm2 azai anazella so in order to make that occur on campuses whether it's hybrid or even all in person

120what campuses can have the capacity to allow that to happen to rotate students through that really are not even that's their home school so um that uh we are starting to start to figure that out um but like i mentioned to the administrators today during a meeting is okay we have hybrid plans in place we have all in-person plans in place and we are starting to talk about what if it's still in the red or decisions are made where we're not in person at all how we need that plan in place too like so we're having instead of just creating one assessment schedule this year we're having to create at least three um just to plan for just in case and again amongst the other districts and we participate in those meetings as well you'll

121start to see that across the other districts as well they're beginning to have conversations about what does a return look like to accommodate the testing so it's not unique to gsd it's it's what's going to happen have to happen and i'd like to add i think you know let's face it this last year and a half has just been horrific for all of us i mean mentally we we know and unfortunately had to report to us about students and former students that you know for whatever reason just not handling all of this isolation well we know adults aren't either so you know i think that mental aspect is critical right now too we've got to give we've got to give everybody hope i'd like to add that i would love to have kids back at

122school and i understand that i know that peoria is already in person but i have friends and family that have kids that go to peoria and every single one of them has been home on quarantine at some point because of exposure why they had at school and just looking at the graph that's on the on the monitor here um nine out of the ten weeks that are on this graph peoria had a higher case incident than gesd so i don't know if that's the that's the benchmark that we want to set for ourselves to reopen i think we set the benchmark to what was supported by the facts and supported by the benchmarks that were given to us by the cdc and arizona department of health and we stick to those i'm not here to

123be pressured by another school district because they decide to reopen prematurely i'll let them deal with that as far as my kids are concerned i will send them back to inside school when it is safe and not a moment before thank you board member martinez yeah i'd like to make sure that our staff feels safe as well um you know we certainly don't want to pressure them to come back when they don't feel like you know they're ready so um you know like uh board member martinez said i think there's there's a lot of factors involved and um i think the uh wait and see what the cdc says and and what our positivity rate is and i'm not pressured by any other school district as well thank you board member um wilson also with

124that i know um the i just want to make clear too and i think board member bartel's brought that up we don't track um stu our staff that has been vaccinated but also um we can't assume that they all have been i think all of you have shared at some point if you were being vaccinated or chose to some frustrations with trying to get appointments again the pods are for um for our staff that want to is this weekend and then still they still need a second dose and that's still you know 28 days and that's if they choose to do that vaccination or not so i understand that i appreciate your comments i will let others speak as well we've always looked at those metrics and we want to do that i am not

125proposing that we open the doors i want to make that clear to our staff and community because we said we would make decisions based off the metrics however when we are required by the state to test students then we have to do that and that's that's the only reason we would consider going against the matrix is because we are being forced to test our students and i think that's important for people to know i do appreciate your comment mr martinez i have a grandson who's been quarantined three times who attends another district as well thank you other questions okay so when it was a survey that you're putting together going to come out we have just began looking at that survey so it would go out early next week we have a short week next

126week with the holiday and they want to get that survey into spanish as well and then after you get the results then how long does it take you to get that together uh the results is pretty quick turnaround you know we you know within it within a day within a day or two depending on what we ask in the survey but that's a very quick turnaround for us to do and then your other part was you know getting the school you know back ready and people and classrooms what's your estimate and amount of time to get you know a school ready to get back to normal um you know our classrooms already they've been ready and they're cleaned all the time and they're all set up for mitigation because at any point you know we

127could we could go into a hybrid so we've always maintained that i think the concern then we have to have conversations with our principals and they can talk to their teachers and that as well is to return to testing environment you have to remember we set up for teachers who have not been back we set up their classroom so they need time to orientate themselves of what that classroom looks like and so those conversations i think is best answered by teachers and their administration so we'll we'll look at that as well but we just haven't started those conversations but there has to be time for them to get into their classroom and then we need to talk about [Music] what to expect on what we need to do as far as any other program services

128for how many kids might be returning any other questions okay all right hearing then we are now on item 6b anti-racism resolution good evening yes madam president members of the board uh yes i believe board member pendleton asked to bring some resolutions to you to have a discussion tonight good evening i have been wanting to do this for a while and i don't have small children but i i know some and uh there's a lot of questions that have come up in the last year about racism and um i i compiled a list of different suggestions for a resolution anti-racism i feel it's important for our students our community our teachers our staff to understand that we will not put up with with any racism as a district i feel it's important for our community

129to know this and so if you take a look at what we have uh the first the very first resolution that you see in front of you it is from asba with the exception of one column that i added in that i borrowed from another district and there was i took res i took some examples from all over the country and so you'll see that some are a lot longer you'll see some are a lot shorter but i think this would go a long way in showing our community that we won't condone racism of any kind and i'm hoping that we can come to an agreement tonight and actually have this done at the next board meeting do you need this what was the uh the change that you added to the asthma one the

130it is the one two three four five six whereas i i included that this this that i took the the first page uh with exception with the exception of that sixth whereas is from asba they sign this and it's on their page i got this from their african-american network chair i'm confused so the first one so we're in the believe what has been added is correct me if i'm wrong whereas members of the um governing board condemn the killing of george floyd that's the piece that has been added no that is part of asba oh that's asb's i'm sorry what has been added says is the equity one whereas the district has a shared core value of equity where we celebrate our diversity and will provide the necessary resources and supports to eliminate barriers to

131success and foster a more equitable future for all our students questions comments i think being being black history month i think the timing of this is especially important and if we can hammer this out today to put it on the agenda for later this month um i think that kind of sends a message i don't it's the number one thing i'm not big on four resolutions um but i don't see anything wrong with it this kind of reflects away what i believe all of us kind of feel uh i know that if i was privileged enough to spend the rest of my days smacking down nazis i would consider the life well spent um obviously that's not in the resolution but uh i i don't see anything here that should cause any sort of conflict

132man and present member of the board also we would whatever direction the board wants to go we would also run this through legal as well just to make sure well and i think the most critical thing in this because equity is talked about and in fact i actually listened to an equity symposium earlier today and this was a key discussion and the reality is we need to keep talking we need to actually as a board do a better job of you know asking those questions about our policies about our plans you know how making sure we're not creating those disparities that we know exist that's correct and we can't overlook anything because that's the only thing i don't want this to you know i don't have any objection to this i just don't want to

133see it sitting on a shelf and we never go back so we we need to truly make this a core reality here yeah and i i think it's important that the board make a stand on this it's uh you know important for the community to know where the where the district stands where the board does um and i think this covers you know a lot depends on everything and i have no objections to this i think we need to move forward so by moving forward we would go ahead and send let's identify which one we want to send to legal counsel we'll get their guidance on that and then we would bring it back to the next governing board meeting and we're talking about the first one the first one is the one that that

134i did get from asba um i found interesting if you look at the second resolution from a local school district i found it interesting that what they put in their resolution is that they are committed to continuing to address systemic racism towards black students and will continue to prioritize and targets target their achieve academic achievements i'm sorry i'm trying to find where they were going to do this through teaching including include um this in their curriculum uh here it goes um it's the last paragraph on page three and they said that adopting updated policy discipline policy and providing training and curriculum that is cultural culturally responsive and i didn't include that in hours however i believe that may be something we can come back to as president bartel says we can't just let this sit

135on a shelf this can be something that we take forward i just want to say that one i don't really care for resolutions either but i have a problem with the first paragraph i don't like naming the people you know i would just prefer that we just say that we don't like injustice and systematic or systemic racism those type of things and just not name the people that are up there because i feel like it's too political instead of just broad i think it's important that we have examples to remind our staff our students ourselves of very real people very real cases and very real reasons that we need this resolution i would personally leave the names in there i i think it shows why you know we have to have a resolution or you

136know where exactly um you know it was developed and why it was developed it's it's these these are factual names i would i would definitely agree with you it's kind of like it's kind of like trying to separate rosa parks from busing issues are from you know issues of the the bus system um i think examples are good i think they're pointed and they cannot be ignored because if you just say this group of people has bad stuff happen to them it it just rolls over it it doesn't it doesn't make anything but if you could tell someone this person this person this person this person this person and unfortunately that list just goes on and on um i think leaving that in there makes a point that not only do we recognize the broader

137scope of the issue we recognize that individually this is impacting people in our district yes okay with that then we can seek legal counsel um they will give us their advice we'll bring that back to you and then we'll place it again on the next um agenda which would be february all right we are now on item seven future meetings and events and at this time if any board members have items they would like added this is the time to do it we will obviously add february 25th we'll add a recommendation for a resolution now the other question is does anybody else need another study session before that meeting for any more further updated information that maybe we did not get answers to tonight with regard to any specific issue or [Music] phase one phase

138two well you would be able to still have a study session prior to the march 11th board meeting i would recommend that on the 25th you can't the time is 5 30 for the public hearing so can we make sure that all other board business is done before 5 30. we um that's the board can decide that the the the time for the public hearing cannot change and it has to begin at 5 30. um so you would have to determine a time to start the regular board meeting at this time do we know what kind of stuff we might be looking at for that meeting um i don't not i don't know what's on there that we wouldn't necessarily have to have ms valadez are you bringing anything for the 25th i think if

139we can keep the agenda light for the 25th it shouldn't really be much of an issue because we kind of some of these we can kind of zip through pretty quick so maybe i i might recommend if i may and mr bergen might have something to say i think he was going to say something i would i would leave it after because that's typically where it would fall and if there's not very many items you're going to it'll be done very quickly anyway and then that doesn't then you don't have gaps in between starting at 5 30 or if it extends past the 5 30 we can't afford for it to um not start on time for our public hearings because that's the required time we've posted mr barrigan madam super madam president members of

140the board supernatural skills the only thing i just want to remind everyone is the sell of bonds i believe will be about the 25th if i remember correctly so i just don't want to lose sight of that in the discussion and that would be a little bit more of the formal presentation so i just want to keep that on the radar so can we maybe keep tentatively like 3 30 start time so that hopefully we can you know if it's not if it's a lighter one except for that bond presentation we definitely would need a little more time because we can always stop the meeting go to the hearing at 5 30 and then finish whatever's not done but i'm thinking if we've got a bond presentation if we can start that and get it

141done beforehand otherwise you're going to have somebody sitting here for a very long time that night that's the direction of the board which what you'd like to do i can be here at 3 30. i can i would rather keep it at 5 30 that i can be here at 3 30 if the rest of the board wants it that way okay i'm kind of torn um so you so your suggestion is to start the board meeting at 3 30 and then just pick up um the public portion of it after dude at 5 30 or whenever the public meeting has the hearing has to begin at 5 30. oh okay it has to begin it okay that's that's that's fine that that works um i i can be here at 3 30. as long

142as the public meeting starts up at 5 30 so that would have to that everybody has a chance to get here yeah because we can always rearrange that agenda so that those things that may take up more time start earlier that way anything if it if we just can't get to it after the hearing it may not be as critical or could maybe even be handled telephonically as a ketchup item within a few days afterwards depending on how long that night goes did any board members have any items they wish to have on future agendas okay all right hearing none we are now at our summary of current events starting with ms agata jones uh yes man present members of the board just and i think we've we've shared all of our summaries and current

143events but some things just to remember that we've done a lot of our um celebrations there are celebrations for our cells and counselors and support staff and social workers again on friday will be which is tomorrow we'll be celebrating our transportation department love the bus we do want to thank publicly peter piper pizza for their donation yesterday was national pizza day and for our office staffs they delivered to them pizzas shaped in a heart so the office staff was able to enjoy that again thank you to all of our sites they've done some incredible virtual things that are taking place also we look forward to the read across america and they're asking a lot of virtual readings to take place so we look forward to that but everyone working extremely hard and we we appreciate

144we appreciate that we appreciate still the partnerships that we we have during during this pandemic again thank you to all of gesd and also to the community for bringing their concerns to us we appreciate that and you know happy valentine's day on sunday that is my favorite holiday of the year the love bug comes and i like to see what the love bug does and brings to little children makes their heart smile so on that day please make someone's heart smile with that i conclude my report at this time we are on governing board report miss smith do you have anything you'd like to say i just want to thank our administration for their hard work this entire past year and thank you for giving us the information that we need and for going forth

145you know with our our plans to make the district financially solvent and everyone just enjoy your valentine's day thank you mr pimentel yes i would just like to say i think it's pretty amazing that we were able to set up vaccinations for gesd and guhsd and i believe washington wesd because when i tried to make an appointment for myself at the stadium it was a no-go just didn't happen so i think it's um and it was probably that way for a lot of our teachers as well so for the teachers that and staff that are getting vaccinations um keep going and and and take advantage of that because that's a great offer good luck to our students who are going to be in the spelling bee they are better spellers than i am by far

146and i think that's that's just amazing um as always a big thank you to our teachers our staff everybody employed here at gesd into our community and everyone please mask up be healthy okay miss wilson i just um happy valentine's day and enjoy your three day weekend mr martinez happy valentine's day i brought you nothing just just like i brought everybody else um no i was a thank you to the administration again for getting all the information i know you've been bombarded with a ton of questions i hope we answered a lot of them during the study session today and we still have all those public sector those public sessions to go through so if you have questions ask somebody ask us ask the administration send in an email put a sign out in my

147front yard i don't care we will do our best to answer everything you sent to her so again awesome work thank you again for setting up the getting the vaccination site set up actually volunteered to go help out at the vaccination site and they said they had so many volunteers that they didn't need me that's correct they were over at first we when we communicated with um and superintendent uh brian kappas finally was it was we were and and with superintendent paul sandwich how many are we gonna do we have enough volunteers and what do we need to do and so very much people uh volunteering their time and he had to send the rejection letters out because there were so many but we do appreciate that so thank you it wasn't the first rejection

148letter i've ever gotten but thank you it was it was my uh my pleasure to volunteer even if you didn't meet me so thank you okay um i'd just like to piggyback on everything everybody has said up to this point um but i also want to remind people while we're all in the same storm we're not all in the same boats you know we do not know the challenges that each other has going through all of the stuff over the last year and beyond um but i would encourage everybody you know just make somebody smile this weekend it's the weekend of love whether it's your kids or your kids for you but find joy we all need a little joy right now um definitely everybody enjoy the valentine's day even though to be cold and

149possibly rainy but at this time i need a motion so moved second okay all those in favor aye aye okay i hear no nays wait nay have a good weekend