001good evening everybody good evening everybody I would like to call this meeting to order it's loud perfect good evening Miss Richards may I have roll call please yes president Wade let the record show that all five board members are present this evening thank you please join me in a moment of silence followed by the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America the stand Nation indivisible andice goodness it works I motion to approve the agenda agenda that was Miss Van Hook who seconded all those in favor I I motion carries 5 Z Miss Richards you're up president Wade members of the board another segment of higgle Adventures we're excited so many of you have joined us this evening and tonight we want to start out by oops sorry
002go celebrating our national board certified teachers so if I call your name in a minute please come to the front of the room because we're going to take your picture so today we're proud to in introduce our board certified teachers this is the highest and most respected certification a teacher can obtain aimed at developing retaining and recog izing accomplished teachers the new board certified teachers are Cammy mclen from Higley High [Applause] School we also have Rachel leam from williamfield high school [Applause] and we also have teachers who have maintained the national certification Michelle bordado from Higley High School and Megan spitler from williamsfield high school congratulations to all of you we are so very proud to have you in Higley and this is not something easy to obtain so we're going to take your picture
003and we're going to get our board members down here on the floor e I'm excited to share that our K5 math instructional coach Wendy stove was named the Arizona math leader of the year for 2025 at the Arizona mathematics leaders annual conference she was nominated by chael's assistant principal Mr pepper this award is well earned and deserved congratulations Wendy thank you so much for everything you do for our teachers and of course our students so Wendy's out there [Applause] every year ASU holds a Language Fair on their main campus and invites 3,000 students from all over the valley to attend and participate in their language competitions Higley High School students participated again this year in French Spanish and Mandarin they amazed the ASU judges and won many awards some of the teachers that were able
004or are able to join us today our French teacher murel enman and Spanish [Applause] teachers and Spanish teachers Jennifer Moda and Kristen [Applause] Schnell and I got cut off from all the happy Applause thank you Kristen Snell [Applause] Wendy Jennifer Moda and French teacher Morel emman what an amazing group of Educators we have in this room tonight from languages to Math teachers to everyone so congratulations most importantly do you have students in the audience students will you come up and join your [Applause] teachers we want to include our mandrin students because I know Miss leatherby was not able to be here this evening wow I could pass the mic and we could guess what you're all saying but maybe I wouldn't do so well teachers would you like to say anything no students to have
005a student that wants to say something in your expert language hey Carson you're nominated that's what I [Music] heard thank you all everybody knows that man any french here we go [Applause] good beautiful job talented students of Hig Unified School District we applaud you so we want to take a picture squeeze it really squeeze in [Applause] here are French students our Mandarin students and I know Miss leather wanted to be here she was unable to join us but she's celebrating with us and next we recently held our annual spring business and Community partner breakfast this event is dedicated to building relationships with local businesses and Community leaders at this event leaders gathered to focus on fostering College and Career ready Scholars which is part of H usd's portrait of a graduate the event featured insightful
006presentations from Gateway Elementary's no excuses University program higgle high and williamsfield high school students showcased their skills through the Career and Technical education programs in both early childhood development and criminal justice they even took people's fingerprints at the event these presentations underscored the district's dedication to equipping students for their future and we'd like to thank public relations and marketing for all their hard work for this wonderful event and I believe they were responsible for this video as well today was dealing with College and Career uh for us williamsfield we were able to present our uh CTE Early Childhood in that representation for us they were able to kind of share their experiences over the last couple of years internships they got out of it and hopefully where they're going to go in the future I
007think it's important to get career Readiness in elementary school and so I think we should integrate something where we do um mock career day where we have the students go in and interview at local small businesses and they kind of compete and the students that get the most job offers win and all the vendors would cool money so that we could give them 1,000 $2,000 $3,000 sponsorship that they can then take into their future I think it's important for us as a district to make these connections with the community because there are things out there we don't even know and there are so many people in our community that willing to help how great is it to be able to partner and bring them on our campus or have our kids go see what else
008is out there prior to even going to college the next generation of students is who is going to be our employees at our small businesses so it's important for us to get connected with the children and with our school district so that we're an integral part of them of their upbringing [Applause] so thank you PR and marketing everything looks very professional right every time so next we want to move to points of Pride and I need the principal of kolie Middle School to come forward Mr Chad kentell [Applause] sure I got it already in order so we should be okay all right all right good evening everybody thanks for being here to celebrate the points of Pride for kolie Middle School uh super excited to highlight some of the wonderful people who are on our
009campus you know it's it's always great and it's always hard deciding these things because you have so many wonderful people but I'm super excited to celebrate who we have and I apologize I'm not a great at memorizing things so I'm going to be reading some notes as I go um but first up I'd like to welcome our volunteer point of Pride Sam [Applause] Sano absolutely so Sam is in his first year actually volunteering with kie middle school but he has already become um just a staple around the campus he's uh mostly supporting our English classes most days of the week he's there for several hours uh giving his time and so we just really appreciate Sam and I wanted to read something uh one of the teachers that he volunteers with wrote uh we are
010incredibly fortunate to have Sam a kind and dedicated volunteer who has support who has been supporting our teachers and students for several years with immense heart and commitment Sam is more than just a volunteer he's become a cherished friend as a retired veteran and former air traffic controller Sam brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to each classroom he goes beyond merely assisting students he takes the time to learn their names and understand their individual stories Sam offers valuable advice and unwavering support to both students and teachers his presence is truly a blessing and our students are exceptionally lucky to have him around thank you Sam for all you do for us and your [Applause] students all right uh next up I'd like to have our classified employee uh Mike schlummer come on up [Applause]
011uh known around campus lovingly as Mr Mike um spent his first two years at kolie middle school as a campus safety monitor last year approached our admin team and asked about moving into a classroom to become a prayer professional where he has been absolutely amazing the teachers who work with him uh love having him in the classroom but more importantly the students even just adore Mr Mike he is uh just always have a smile always a positive attitude every time he goes into class the relationships he builds with our students each and every day allows him to make such a difference in each classroom that he's in um he does amazing things tracking every day what each student he works with works on what they needed that day how he can support them the next
012day literally in a notebook every single day it's really amazing and so we are just so happy and so proud to have Mr Mike on campus and so glad that he uh decided to move from campus safety into the classroom so thank you Mike do you have anybody here that you'd like to introduce do you have people here you'd like to introduce oh my family yeah I have my wife Danielle back there uh my daughter Madison my daughter Kate and my little daughter Paige back there my son had to work otherwise he'd be here Stand Up Guys stand up stand up stand up there they are y thank you all right next up is our um certified employ employee Chase Connelly Mr Connelly is a seventh grade math as well as geometry and a product
013of williamfield high school um he's one of the most beloved teachers on our campus J he going um Mr connell's inexhaustible work ethic is one to strive for um it's instilled in his students and Carries over into other classrooms clubs and organizations throughout the kolie campus he has such a great effect uh he has worked tirelessly to develop himself as an educator at kie taking time to attend various professional developments seeking out feedback from colleagues coaches and mentors and being willing to step outside his comfort zone to experiment in new strategies Mr Connell is always willing to to take on a new chask and challenge when asked and this year he took on Geometry midy year and has done an amazing job the growth received from our students on our benchmarks is just incredible um
014it's truly special what he's done in such a short time with them um he takes a lot of pride in the relationships he's cult cultivated with his students and that's evident in his participation and attendance of school light events um in support of his students he's positive and his calm demeanor and desired to be the best he can be as infectious and we are absolutely lucky to call him a cougar than you Mr and last up is our student point of Pride areli basos relli um was selected she's an eighth grade student at kie uh she was here for seventh grade as well and she has stood out even as a seventh grader and so we are so lucky to have her on our campus she embodies exactly what you want to see in student
015leaders um and students across your campus who are just demonstrate amazing qualities um I want to kind of highlight some of the things that are said her teachers love her positivity her initiative taking and her outgoingness as well as her hard work these things are truly what make RSL special um no matter what's happening around her her positivity shines like no other students um whether it's just a kind word or a smile to another student or a teacher RSL is always ready to brighten some someone's day whenever anything needs to be done RSL is the first to step up and make it happen with her peers and staff um she's the first to include everybody else in what's going on as well uh she has a tremendous sense of humor and when work needs to
016get done RSL is there to take the lead or support whatever needs to H make things happen and get things done we are extremely proud of all our vuer students but our Asel truly shines as a special student on campus so congratulations do you have people you want to highlight uh I want to thank everyone for coming especially my family uh my mom my dad my stepmom my stepdad my grandma uh my aunt my uncle my friend Kessa uh All My Siblings Lorenzo Carmela Riley Liam Milani and Esme um and all my teachers who came to support me miss alua miss a and Miss do thank you [Applause] over next we want to highlight williamsfield high school so williamsfield Administration please come forward Mr Dolan [Applause] everybody just take members of the board uh cabinet
017thank you guys for inviting us up here we're excited to kind of talk to you guys about the people from williamsfield um we this particular school year really try to push our core values uh mental toughness Integrity dedication and selflessness um uh what we one of our things that we give to our staff and we're going to give to everyone here tonight is uh it's a it's a kind of a challenge coin so anyone who here is in the military I can just tell you about uh 10 years ago went on an educational trip with the military and uh got a chance to sit with a gentleman he kind of explained to me what the purpose of the coin was and why he provides coins for people and it for him it was more about
018what people do and how they stand out and so um I've kind of kept up that when I was at sasman and again here because I think it's a real powerful thing so um that's something that we're going to give to the people today so the first person I want to talk about is our volunteer Mrs Allison mccaa can you come up [Applause] here who's here with you my husband Richard my daughter Hannah who is the class of 22 from Higley and my son Kyle who is a current Junior at williamsfield who hit me in the face with a pie today um at Williamsville we don't have a PTO uh there are programs that have boosters but we are blessed with parents like Allison uh she supports our football program but uh our school overall
019uh she has brought treats to our front office she comes with me to business partner breakfasts and even contacts me when people maybe on campus who don't belong on the weekend uh she is just so valuable to us so nice to us and we appreciate you very very [Applause] much I don't believe the certified person is here but um maybe that makes sense because he's we pulled him for the the word dedication um it's Randall Clifford he's our baseball coach so I want to kind of talk a little bit about him um he kind of displays our core values of selflessness and dedication uh on a daily basis he works with younger staff members to Mentor on how to be a good role model and educator in addition he's willing on a moment's notice to
020support our athletic programs as a ticket taker an announcer or security for years he was willing to teach marketing and PE because it was best for our campus um he'll cover a class he'll work with a teacher he plays games with his students and then he'll go water and take uh take care of his field prior to coaching and all the events so we are really really happy to have him and we appreciate all that he does for our campus our classified member is Gloria Oiler why don't you come up here so I asked her I was just talking to her and I said like how long do we know each other and so she has been in the district since 2012 and I've been in the district since 2013 14 and so first time
021I was at willfield and now back this time and her grandson Derrick was at uh s when I was over there too so a good long time so I'm glad I get to do this for you today um Gloria has been a main on this campus you can find her in science classroom supporting students as well as our selfcontained classrooms doing the same she has binders of notes worksheets and supporting documents for classroom work I think our teachers would would agree with me that they love having her in class because of the time and effort she puts in with her kids she's prepared friendly and gives 100% to our students every day dedication is the term that comes from I want to thinkk of Gloria so Gloria thank you so much for everything you [Applause]
022do and last is our student oh Gloria who's here with you oh I'm sorry my husband Roger my daughter Don and my grandson Zaden and Xander student Nolan Zavala come on down so I don't forget who do you have with you I have my wonderful parents Natali and Eric so just the other day we had the superintendent walking around and I wanted to pick students to do that and we sat in a meeting meting and uh as a staff were talking about people and Miss Larenz goes we got to have Nolan do that and not only that you know obviously be the student here but for some of the reasons you know he's kind he's caring he's knowledgeable and he just epitomizes our students at williamsfield that we're looking for so Nolan 11th grade student
023who works in our sports medicine program he's everywhere supporting our classmates he has been seen at games as a trainer he's part of our cheering section in the Big Red Rage and he'll also say hello whenever you see him he works hard in the classroom and certainly shares our core values daily I know he's injured right now so he's not going to be playing baseball but I know I was at a a weekend tournament and he was there so you know the the fact that he's not playing but he's still there supporting is is just uh says a lot about his character so thank you Nolan what who the kids uh yes appreciate it you [Applause] know congratulations [Music] perfect Tommy let see for those who are still here um because we have a new
024process we are going to say for today this is the last call for uh request to speak forms since we this is our first meeting of doing it in a new fashion figured this this would be the best time to uh do that President Lade you ready upcoming events everybody knows what happens next week it's called spring break so every teacher and every student is excited for that time Mar March 10th through the 21st we also have more than sad parent event it's virtual on Tuesday March 25th at 6: p.m. our next board meeting is on April 1 which is Tuesday and remember it starts at 5:30 where we do our celebrations and the regular board meeting starts at 6: pm. Thursday April 3rd is our school visit to williamsfield high school and that concludes
025upcoming events thank you Miss Richards it seems most people already did that but just in case you were here for some of the celebrations now is a great time to leave if you are not here for business as usual um the rest of the meeting is going to start now okay next on the agenda are the requests to speak so please play the video we value input from our constituents this time on our agenda has been set aside for anyone from the audience who wishes to address the board those that wish to speak should have filled out speaker cards which are due prior to the start of our meeting members of the board may not discuss comment or take action on matters raised that are not specifically identified on the agenda therefore pursuant to AR
02638-4 31.0 onei action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for further consideration and decision at a later date also we ask that audience members practice proper public meeting decorum refraining from either negative or positive responses including clapping or verbal outbursts to ensure fairness to All Points of View those that refuse to follow these rules may be asked to leave in accordance with policy bedh public participation at board meetings if considered necessary the governing board president shall set a time limit on the length of the comment period in order to ensure that each individual has an opportunity to address the board the president may also set a time limit for individual speakers thank you for your cooperation
027first up we have Jessica Campuzano we're live okay good evening members of The Board District cabinet and superintendent Richards my name is Jessica cazano I am a proud mother of three husd students and a certified general education teacher at kolie early childhood development center I wanted to take a moment to say thank you to the board and superintendent Richards for taking time to read emails and answer questions from the husd community I wanted to publicly give a gratitude shout out to Mr Moore our CFO Mr Moore you have shown your continued commitment to your hsd community time and time again Mr Moore your time communication with husd Community should be looked at as standard of practice you excel in this area and I want to say thank you for valuing staff and teachers you are
028an anchor for husd thank you for continuing this essential work as I'm looking forward to the 2026 2027 school year I'm eager to welcome our newest Learners giving a little plug we will be hosting our spring open house April 22nd at kolie Early Child the development center if you have a three or four-year-old it would be our pleasure to welcome them into our school family and provide your L young learner with essential School Readiness skills needed before kindergarten governing board I thank you for allowing me this time to speak thank you next we have Katie crear hi there my name is Katie crto I'm a parent to three children at SanTan Elementary and the member of a Santan PTO board I come to you tonight to request transparency and communication regarding the budget survey that
029was closed on February 24th we've heard from within the schools and rumors from even students in tear that our librarian Aid along with others such as crossing guards contracts are not being renewed next year was this the majority feedback requested by our community to cut specials such as library and music last year the board voted 3 to one to increase teachers teacher and administrated salaries when given two options by administrator the vote Ved voted the one that would give the administration the higher amount at the time president Wade you stated we have the budget for the option that we approved I here to point out that we no longer have the budget for the 230,000 administrated increase you implemented last year administrative staff should not have been lumped in with classified staff and received the
030same increase removing this increase administrated would allow us to save several if not all our Librarians Mr Bo Mr Moore you told the board in February of 2024 that budget review that the the override fails there would be some contingency Monies to offset the probability and year the harshness of year one and two of the phase down where are those contingency monies you spoke of you were quoted in stating I try and pride myself in looking forward and not only to next year but to two or three years down the line I want the district to be stainable and have continuity not only with salaries but in everything we do end of quote presenting an administrative increase salary last year was not looking two to three years down the road it was coming knowing that
031the override was coming to the ballot and might not passed we are now in a position to put words into action to create continuity for everything we do which is Library safety of getting our students to the school by the cross guards and musics in our classrooms we have a student at Sandtown who comes to Miss Baker in tears and offer money out of her own piggy bank to save Miss Baker's position I ask Administration to look into their piggy banks to see what we can do lastly I'd like to understand from Administration and the board if the community has the ability to save this position through raising PTO funds to enhance our library we can rally together and to cover our librarian salary and support our students and do what the district is not
032willing to do thank you thank you next we have Kim Jackson board members it's essential that we carefully assess our current budget and spending as the financial decisions we make today will shape the future of our district the raises authorized last year by some current board members of this board should have never been approved given that we did not have the necessary funds allocated to sustain them Beyond one year board member Wade was quoted in the Gilbert Sun Times news on March 29th 2024 stating quote we have the budget for the option that we just approved unquote however according to the CFO we are now having to cut jobs because the district does not have the budget to sustain certain positions this contradiction raises serious concerns about how our financial planning and priorities are happening
033to address this I strongly recommend resending these raises at the administrative level if not entirely at least by 1 or 2% is it true that the CFO just informed some preschool staff that they will be take they will be taking if my mouth is correct a 15% cut next year no one party or area in the district should have a be asked to make a financial sacrifice such as a salary reduction admin at District need to help offset monies too redirecting These funds could help preserve the jobs and contracts of our teachers and even reinstate some of our Librarians who have been notified that their contracts will not be re renewed for next school year additionally I urge the board to implement an immediate freeze on District funded travel expenses over the last two years
034the district has spent a half a million dollars annually on travel total that's a million dollar um by pausing non-essential spending we can reallocate those funds to save critical positions board members your responsibility is to prioritize the needs of the students and Educators by advising District administration on how to do so effectively I ask the board to take immediate action to ensure our budget reflects these priorities to close I want to express my gratitude for Miss Montel at San Middle School she took the time to hand write a letter and mail it to my home expressing her appreciation for my child who is her student I deeply appreciate the effort she made to recognize and encourage him we are fortunate to have such dedicated Educators in our district such as Miss Montell thank you thank
035you next we have Kathleen Richards good evening cabinet good evening board members thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight um first of all I just wanted to thank you all in looking at the agenda for um the superintendent selection I think that we really need a champion for our school district and I'm really excited to see the direction as I know much of our district was rooting very much for Big Lots was it um and and we look forward to seeing what he brings to the table and the energy that comes from that um I also wanted to thank the cabinet for putting together the uh uh The Forum La I believe it was last week this month suddenly feels well it's March anyway um I wanted to thank you all for putting together
036The Forum that to discuss the survey that went out regarding things that could potentially find themselves on the chopping block um due to the lack of passing of the override on last year's ballot measure um it was eye opening for a lot of families I believe who were able to attend should the district hold another one of those I would definitely recommend attending while there were a lot of really new faces and some familiar faces um it was a wonderful opportunity for clarification on things uh in terms of what the district intention is with these cuts that will be necessary as well as what in investigations have gone forward um to lead to the choices that are being made uh there is a lot of information that's available to families um with just a quick
037ask or email or just taking a look through our website that has been so nicely redesigned this year so there are a lot of ways that you can check up on that but having that opportunity for Community for individuals to come together who don't all reside in the same bubble especially in the elementary areas where you just tend to sort of stick to your area for seven years before you end up thrown into the middle school pot um it was great to be able to meet those families talk to them and help them better understand how we got to where we are today and what we can do going forward one of the things that the fames brought up over and over again is how much they appreciate the teachers that they have how much
038they want to keep those things the things that make Higley special like our specials like the selection of classes that we have at the high school like our dual language programs Etc and how is it best that we can protect those things one of the things that came up was the fact that parents can be cheerleaders for our district I think we all know that we use Word of Mouth to find a doctor a dentist you name it we're asking a neighbor a friend our community and our community really needs to come together at this moment uh including everyone in this space to be the champion that Higley needs and to go out and speak positively about what we do really well and to speak positively about what we can change because nowhere is perfect
039thank you guys so much thank you next we have Barbara Summers hello um my name is Barbara Summers I'm a parent to a student at williamsfield um earlier today I came across a podcast from last month that makes me question as to whether all members of our board can accept the information from the novel committee update without bias the podcast I listened to had one of our board members as the guest and this board member spoke about topics like our novel committee during the podcast the board member mentions things like looking into the list of committee members and checking it against an employee list and also checking into the committee members voter registration they even go so far as to say that a parent investigated the committee members and shared that information with them one
040would wonder whether this board member felt that it was necessary to go into this presentation with all that information and if it was appropriate to utilize the voter database for this reason this seems to be a huge overreach that violates the privacy of community members involved and I want to bring this to the attention of all of those involved thank you thank you next we have Jenna schmidle good evening Higley Community Hing Rini my name is Gina Schmid it is nice to meet you my voice will bring awareness of and support for the Mandarin Chinese dual language immersion program offered in the Higley Unified School District the Mand Chinese program is one of the me many educational opportunities that add to the Halley Unified School District being one of the best districts there is the
041mandrin Chinese program is a unique asset to the Higley Unified School District Higley unified school district teachers are the best of the best with the Mandarin program teachers standing out giving Learners and their families every opportunity to grow and thrive in education in addition to Rich and vibrant curriculum in the classroom the these teachers provide super informative weekly newsletters complete with personally recorded vocabulary words YouTube links interactive quizzes and pictures and videos of our students in vibrant joy-filled classrooms Mrs P Whittier is the best possible beginning teacher for our kulie preschool Learners my first son is in the first grade program at Coronado Elementary School while my second son is in the kindergarten preparation class Mandarin Chinese parents are among the most supportive anded dedicated parents in hegle Unified School District we have built a
042strong and active parent support Community we work hard to honor the Dual language immersion learning contracts that we signed when enrolling our children in the program our children and families participate in at least two celebration activities a year including the full Moon Festival and Chinese New Year celebrations which are opportunities for the community to join in learning we spend extra time at home to support our luners with home library books home media learning apps such as du lingo and Chinese learning new ways to cook traditional food finding and displaying authentic Chinese decorations for our homes and planning time to get together with other Mandarin Chinese Learners these are opport there are other opportunities such as parent University classes for general education students and inclusion activities for all Learners I strongly recommend that the Hingle Unified
043School District continue to fund the Mandarin Chinese dual language immersion program as one of the best parts of our district brain science proves that learning a second language early in life is the best way to ensure success at being multilingual my first child would have been enrolled in the program had I known about it but my fourth child will join the program in 3 years please fund the Mandarin Chinese program and grow the mandrin Chinese program and our district will most assuredly continue to thrive thank you next we have Mindy brocker hi thank you for the opportunity to speak today I am a District parent I have three kids in our district and I recognize that we have great freedoms we have the freedom to choose this district and I do choose Higley to choose
044the school the classes and even the books that my children read I listened to this recent podcast one that sent it to Barbara and Anna van hul I will name her was the guest in her position as an elected official for our district she said in this podcast that in the recent Advanced literature class that everybody is debating that only one parent did their research um unlike you miss van hul I believe that parents are smart and they like I did did do their due diligence and can be trusted to parent their children accordingly I do not need you to protect our children from our own educational choices I'm only I'm also really grossed out by Anna's statement that while children that don't attend Higley schools might not need to worry about higley's educational decisions
045you do have to live amongst those public school students so you should care I'm sorry but our district students half of the children in our community are amazing how dare you infer that they are lesser in any way and because they read that's gross behavior from a board member you also said that you reviewed research from a parent and that book committee book committee members are left leaning or Educators do you typically investigate committee members is that investigation information you ingested and repeated in the media part of your public record you inferred that book committee members were not a blind selection you also grinned through the podcast host saying that people need to stop this at all costs you that encouraged everyone especially those who are not in our district to show up and speak
046it's their right but it's gross political Behavior you were very clear that you had no intent on listening to a citizen committee with an open mind I ask Anna van hul is not allowed to vote on literature reviewed by this book committee as she has publicly shared misinformation allowed and encouraged in threatening behavior and has encouraged brigading her participation in this process is highly inappropriate thank [Music] you thank you next we have Jessica D Ambrosio good evening superintendent Richards the cabinet and to the board I want to say thank you to the board and to the the cabinet for um having the superintendent Forum uh available online last week not everyone was able to attend for three hours but I felt like it was a really good um way for our community to make an
047informed Choice um or rather to provide feedback for who will be our next superintendent um I wanted to give a tremendous thank you to the community for their feed back and I am hopeful of the board's approval of Mr Len heiser's contract this evening um he embodies what we have going here at Higley and what we want to continue um supported teachers kids who are put first every time um I also wanted to bring out something that's happening at williamsfield high school um under the leadership of John Dolan um there's this program called the evit program and while I've been a teacher for 18 almost 18 years in this District I never really understood what went into it until my senior said that he was joining the program and I said for what he goes
048for nursing I said you want to be a nurse no but what he does want is a foundation so that when he goes to medical school someday he's going to be well off so um he has his teacher named Miss Bray over at the evit program and she has just really inspired him and so when I think about the evit program and for parents who don't know a lot about it it's phenomenal and if you're kid is anything like my kid and can pretty much graduate high school with a pretty easy load push him into the Eva program just check it out um because now his sophomore brother is like oh I'm going to go do the firefighter program which means he'd have to go to school a little early and for this kid to
049want to spend more time at school thank you um I just also wanted to throw a thank you to the early childhood education CTE program run by Miss Depo over at williamsfield high school um I visited her class back in like November or December and I saw a lot of my former students who are aspiring future teachers which uh is such a blessing because I feel like they'll Thrive as they go on into the future um misso had heard about a toy drive that teachers at HTA uh started about seven years ago she said hey we want to be a part of it too so with the support of williamsfield high school and HTA we made gift donations of toys to the military assistance Mission Sunshine Acres and star found star wght Foundation I just
050want to say thank you to higly have a good night thank you next we have Ryan Edwards good evening and um honored to be here with the board and and everyone present uh my name is Ryan Edwards I'm a Gilbert resident I'm a husband father Arizona native um I'm also a former teacher and administrator in the Gilbert Public School District of 10 years and currently uh 21-year employee of the Mahoney group in Mesa Arizona and I lead the educational institution's uh Commercial Insurance Division I live just outside of the district in the gilberg public schools district um from 20 from 2012 to 2019 I had the great honor of serving uh the district as the air to the trust that ensures the district um during that time at the end of that time period we
051found some discrepancies in some of the coverages and items that were being handled by the district as as an air you are given the task to completely review and go over everything that's being covered by them and and being offered to you we saw some things that were alarming and so we set out to um make them aware of that we did there were some adjustments made but year over-year those things stayed and so the decision was made in 2018 to take a closer look and so we went out and did a a three-year uh two to threee case study of your district with all the major carriers around the United States that brought some amazing results uh we ended up um that the district ended up going to RFP we responded to that RFP
052we won the contract and we ensured the district for the next 2 years um at an annual Savings of rough roughly $350,000 uh which we were very proud to do um then in 2021 as a result of uh a shake up in leadership some other relationships with people that came in that had relationships with the trust um the account went back to the trust they dropped their rates by a quarter of a million dollars in order to try to win back the business but we're still about a 100,000 High um we were disappointed because of all the great work that we had done and close relationships we had built with the district but nevertheless um we we stepped back and and let the the trust carry on I've been following the budget constraints and uh
053it pains me to know that the commercial insurance is is a piece of that pie and so as I've watched that over the last months I couldn't help but think you know why not start that discussion again and why not look at that closely again there's tremendous savings to be had for the district um to be covered adequately and and appropriately that would bring thousands of dollars back into the budget and back to Higley for the students as a former teacher and administrator I know how important this is um I can send the full case study to you in the morning this week if you'd like to read it again I'm sure it's on file here at the district and we'd be honored to open that discussion and um bring about those savings again and
054duplicate our efforts to the benefit of pigley Unified School District for the coming year thank you thank you this moves us to um oh I'm sorry go ahead um superintendent Richards if you can look into the um one of the speakers mentioned PTO funds possibly assisting with a librarian I'm not sure um what the ask was but if you can look into that please if PTO funds is that what you said could be used I think that's what that's what was mentioned um and I would like to make a comment um regarding public comment um Barbara and Mindy uh your obsession with me is quite concerning um I know you hate that I have a first Amendment right and that's too bad um I've I'm not going anywhere um you can continue to cyberstalk me
055and um I will continue to speak out and maybe next time I'll email you directly any podcast that I do so you don't have to go cyber stalking um I have no control what other parents pull and investigate and present to me um that is to District parents if that's what they choose to do um I will listen to them um but again I have no control over what other parents decide to do thank you this moves us to item 5.1 selection of superintendent of uh hickley Unified School District starting July 1 2025 contingent upon negotiation and board approval of an employment contract are there any questions comments or concerns before I make the motion you want to make a comment is that what that is if it's about this you want to do it
056now before the motion okay great I motion to recommend selecting David lsen Heiser as superintendent of Higley Unified School District effect of July 1 2025 contingent upon negotiation and board approval of an employment contract second Mr Glover seconded all those in favor I I all those opposed nay motion carries 32 Mr lsen Heiser would you like to say a few words yes I would thank [Applause] you president members of the board thank you very much for entrusting me with this position it it means a tremendous amount to me I'm truly honored and humbled to be in front of you today and in front of our community knowing that the task that's placed ahead of me and how seriously that I take this task into moving forward for those of you are able to attend the
057Forum hopefully I was able to express to you my beliefs and what a district should look like and what leadership should look like in terms of influencing our community and our students we are in a relationship business and like I said then I'll repeat it now the most important relationship we have is between the student and the parent and it's our job to support our students by supporting our teachers with guidance and providing them the necessary materials so that we can have Limitless opportunities for our kids I'm proud of the group of valued Educators that I'm joining not just in cabinet but at our sites and in our classrooms you know Higley we're really really proud of what we do and I don't think we shout it from the rooftops enough we're an a district
058we have a plus schools we're very very very successful when we do do we have things to fix absolutely there is never an organization that can't look at themselves and say there are things that we can do better at 100% And so I'm so excited that I get to join a new team honestly I get to team with the five of you up there and with me and make six and now we're a team that's going to help lead and provide the vision of what we want our district to be and I'm a team with all of the Educators out here and and as I look at at the opportunities that we have we have some challenges in front of you absolutely we do we all know them hey but together we can overcome this
059together we have the expertise in the room to be able to make the right decisions that are going to support our kids because we're all here for the same reason we want our kids to get absolute very best and that's what we're going to do in Higley and just remember together we got this thank [Applause] you thank you Mr Len Heiser now we're going to move on to the consent agenda items I motion to approve consent agenda items 6.1 through 6.15 second thanks Mr clever all those in favor I I I motion carries 5 Z with that we um like to recognize the gifts and donations so thank you to hickley High School choir boosters Katherine Ortiz Kent MidFirst Bank chapparel PTO and Higley girls basketball boosters for their generous donations to our schools at
060this time we move on to information items we're at 7.1 novel and supplemental committee update Miss Davis that is you good evening governing board um I am here today to um bring forward our recommendations for the prek 12 um supplemental committee and the sixth through 12th grade novel committee um the goals of today's session is to um review our state statute and board policy review our district definition of supplemental materials and novels and then to also um go through our process for the selection and use of the supplemental materials and novels and then I will walk through um the recommendations for each of those two committees and um the next steps from there so on the screen OHA I went too far on the screen you'll see the state statute um 15 um 71 721
061rather that guided the work the district policies um that also guided our work and then two related policies as well and those are the policies that we went over when we pre when we initially launched this we have two main definitions for this work um that being our supplement supplementary materials our in stral materials that are outside of the district adopted curriculum that the district site department or grade require for use for all students and then our supplementary novel um or books are a set of novels both fiction and non-fiction on an approved book list that are identified through a stakeholder process with a rubric and then we also have our curriculum page on our website through our ed Service page on there you can find all of our core content adoptions but also you'll
062find um the links to our prek through 12 supplemental list and our 6 through 12 not approved novel list as well which will be updated after we make it all the way through the process and then want to give a big shout out to our prek through 12 supplemental material committee we had four meetings throughout Theo school year we had 10 uh committee members that were made up of parents and community members and a mix of teachers and district office staff um the picture on the screen is a small group that was meeting um to go over a couple supplemental materials I would love to pause I know I have a couple Comm U committee members in the audience they would like to stand so we can recognize and give them a little bit of
063thanks you are on the supplemental for being able to review the supplemental materials teachers and administrators were able to propose a new material that they would like us to review throughout the year um parents and teachers community members were also able to submit a request of the previous or our current list as well if they would like something reviewed that's currently on the list um and then we would take it through the process of the larger group would meet we would introduce um each of the items go into small group so the small group would be assigned um the supplemental material they would review it independently and evaluate it using a rubric the rubric would include or does include um judging is it meeting the standards is a grade appropriate does it have educational value
064and is there any sensitive content in there um and then we would come together as uh for a committee meeting when in those small groups they would discuss that instructional material and make a small group recommendation so each small group would meet and then we would come back whole group and they would do a presentation on that material and share any positives concerns and then their recommendation on that material and as a whole committee they would vote um yes or no on that recommendation so what we have for you today is that completed list of recommendations so on the screen I have for you um the six supplemental materials that were put forward this year for request um I have two that were not recommended um given the criteria in the rubric for um standards
065educational value um and if they're meeting the standards and even the value of who's putting forward um that M the author of that material so we have the K3 structured literacy culum by primary Bliss um ince and math Hands-On Equations and fractions those were not recommended by the committee to move forward and then whose reading um was recommended for k6 students ST Math was recommended for K8 students bird CV was recommended for k6 students and esgi was recommended for k6 students for formative assessments only and then I do want to note that these are site-based purchases and then I'm going to hop us into the sixth through 6th through 12th grade um husd approved novels and just a reminder of the expectations that we set forward beginning of the year that all of our teachers
066have to um communicate with the families at least two weeks prior to teaching the novel um that a novel will be um used for instruction that can be done on their website a newsletter they also list them in their course syllabus at the beginning of the year um parents do have the right to opt out of the reading and an alternate text will be then provided and um we do have that husd um parent consent that all teachers utilize that will identify the sensitive content and context around that so those have been utilized this year we started the year off with 26 committee members for the novel committee and due to life we ended the year with 23 um and that was again a mix of parents community members um husd staff and that is
067a picture from our last meeting and I think I have a couple committee members here as well so if they wouldn't mind standing so we can recognize and thank them [Applause] and we did meet um we were scheduled to meet five times this year but ended up meeting four um again illness life scheduling and similar to the supplemental process um novels were selected for review based on teacher proposing new books to be added um parents community members um teachers admin could put in a request to review what's currently on the list um or if a teacher would like to have a novel change of grade level if their um site curriculum team couldn't come to that decision then that would have come to us but this year we just had the proposals for new texts
068um again similar to that supplemental material process we did the small groups um so each small group was assigned a proposed novel they would read it independently and score using the rubric that rubric was based on standard and GR appropriateness instru value um literary merit and sensitive content and then they would come back together um and meet so the whole committee would come back together meet in the small groups to discuss their novel come up with the positives and the concerns and then make their small group recommendation and then as a whole group they would share out their presentation and recommendation and then they would vote yes or no on that recommendation um so that is the list I have for you today and also during that recomend recommendation they would name if that would
069require a permission slip based on those content areas things that we considered with our novels um again that alignment to standards great appropriateness um statute ARS uh 151 12.03 ensuring that the committee was comfortable moving forward with it that all voices were heard and that whatever those concerns were were noted in our presentations that they were completing at the time so with that I'm not going to read all these novels out loud to you I'm going to pause and have it on the screen so you guys can review them um these are our final recommendations for novels that do not require a permission slip good okay and then this is our final recommendation for novels that do require permission slips so next up so today we're in our first read so bringing it to you
070guys to get the information and it also act activates our 60-day review for the public um and with that um our committee page um so from the community website off of husd we have a committee page that has been kept current with everything that's been happening um was updated today to reflect the recommendations for both the supplemental and the novel recommendations and it also includes a feedback form for each of them so if a um Community member teacher whoever would like to go and provide feedback they would click the right form and then they would identify which material they are reviewing and then answer the questions that are there there's 10 questions total for each form um and then we will use that um the feedback um from there um to we'll synthesize the information
071give it um to you all and it will also help um uh evaluate any other um concerns that might be brought up by the community and then we'll come back May 13th um for the final um or the approval vote um so that is where we are from there Miss Davis are you going to have these forms available on paper okay I meant to turn my page and I turned my microphone off um yes we will have printed copies as well of each um feedback form available at the front desk so if um somebody is more comfortable with the paper feedback form that will be available do you have Madam president may I is it okay to ask questions may I so uh thank you for all of that I understand I've been teaching in
072this area uh well for a really long time I understand it's a conservative Community um I understand that we have people who opt out I'm I'm all I'm fine with that hopefully it's not too often the only question I had was on um page nine I have racked my brain to try to understand how one could make this happen so either maybe you could explain or maybe maybe I'm Miss understanding but it says teachers are expected to have an alternate text for all novels assigned in the classroom along with teaching plans for including all students in classroom novel discussions I just I don't know how one could do that if you're talking about character development those kids that aren't supposed to hear those things are going to hear naturally some things so what could you
073just explain or maybe I'm dumb no not at all um thank you for your question um so parents can indicate if they would like their student to go to an alternate location and then if that is the case then those that instance would occur that there would be alternate um lesson available for them to how they would respond um to that alternate text no I I get but it says for including all students in classroom novel discussions how could they be included if they're not so they would have they would have an alternate assignment um but but they wouldn't be in the room would okay that's not the way I read this well so they could still be in the room for the discussion if the parent is okay with them remaining in the room
074okay maybe that needs a little little bit extra added to it I think maybe because I I misread that or misunderstood go correct me if I'm wrong I believe sometimes the novels that are read the discussion is more Global for lack have a better word for themes not specifics and that might be a case where they would potentially remain in the room so all right but it it it says that they would it says including them all and I read that say all the time and I just see that would be problematic because they would be exposed to things that they're trying to not be exposed to so I'm married to an English teacher so we had we had some healthy debate on this one president Anderson board member Glover um so the based on
075the my understanding from last time um this was discussed uh unfortunately those kids are having to leave the room and self-educate in a different room which is really unfortunate um but uh I I would like to uh say I'm going to read a statement um that I wrote regarding this um there's been a lot of misinformation out there um including a recent a central article um that was put out and I I want to clarify some things um this law passed in 2022 and the district did not implement this law for 2 years um and parents were given a syllabus uh with list of book titles without an explanation of their content for 2 years um the last parent who spoke about his child being given the book never got a permission slip before his
076child was given the book so there was a violation of not only his parental rights but also the district violated the statute meanwhile the novel committee made up of approximately 25 members and I understand some members resigned due to conflict um is only relying on a recommendation of just three to four people who are actually reading the book and if you can confirm that after my statement i' I'd appreciate that um if those few individuals don't raise concerns about a about a book the rest of the committee remains unaware of any issues it's my understanding that every book has been approved unanimously without a single dissenting vote even when explicit and inappropriate content for minors was openly acknowledged on top of that the teachers recommending the books are in the room and are part of
077the committee and our voting members which is made up of more than 50% of husd employees the committee is this raises serious concern about bias and whether the process truly represents the best interest of students and parents there are countless of books that meet educational standards without exposing students to graphic material yet we continue to select books that create Division and controversy when parents opt their children out these students are removed from the classroom and forced to self-educate in a separate setting when more appropriate books could have been chosen from the start let me be clear adults are introducing the content to minors and if this happens outside of a school setting it would be completely unacceptable why are we normalizing exposure to sex sodomy rape drug use masturbation and beastiality in a school environment
078the argument that these are college level courses is irrelevant these students are still minors it is deeply troubling that educators are making these selections and that Administration continues to allow it if alternative novels exist why aren't we using them that way a child does not have to leave the room and could be in their educational environment we have laws that say that we can't do things in a classroom that disrupts the educational environment but here we are doing it and from my understanding even colleges aren't assigning such books we should be focusing on education not exposing minors to appropriate divisive and harmful content if we really want to keep and attract students something needs to change yet this committee has approved every single book and every one of them requires a permission slip that's an
079absolute disappointment you can't say we care about increasing enrollment while making decisions that drives families away and I just hope that we can make some changes to reverse that because that has caused our district a lot of harm financially thank you president Wade I um I know that there's a lot of parents who are very proactive on um what their children are exposed to obviously there's a lot of apps out there and all kinds of things in order to kind of prevent certain situations and I just really don't think that this is wise I I I think that overall if we could figure out uh less of a mature rating of books that suffice the state standard I really think that would be wonderful and would accommodate a lot more people and also not be
080a burden on the teachers the teachers are going to have to manage the students now and who can go in there and who cannot and then potentially you have the risk of certain conversations coming up in that class and so I just I don't think that we need to necessarily go there and um there's Summers there's weekends that parents can decide which books are more appropriate more one-on-one adult topics that they can take on with their kids but overall I don't think this is a necessity in this kind of situation thank you uh thank you madam president I just want to I I just I have to go home to my wife who I said is an English teacher and I just want to say so when the when she has had to send people
081out um it's not I I'm not just it's not they're not self-educating she had to also prepare lessons um and check in and do some of the same things it's a lot of extra work for her as well I agree but also this this is a good time to mention I think well it's probably not but so you could let me know it's not um you know the things these kids carry around in their in their pockets and the uh the iPads and things like that that we give them as a sixth grade current sixth grade teacher um just we're talking about these things just be aware your kids are on a lot more things than you think that they are I was surprised I'm I'm shocked honestly about some of the things that they
082are exposed to so this can also be just a good reminder to keep an eye on your young children especially because the internet is is the wild west um and we can't control what's in their what's in their pocket on their cell phone we can't we can TR we can try on devices but anyway it's a good reminder just watch out for your youngsters president Wayne um I just would like to clarify a couple of items um overwhelmingly the majority of the committee read all of the novels and each of the small groups had five to six committee members on them so it wasn't three to four um that were reading them and making the decision for the whole committee um and the whole point of of the small group was so that they could
083come up with the positives and concerns of the novels and I have to say it was endearing how much the whole committee dug into to not only the positives but the concerns of the text and hearing the parents and the teachers talk about what concerns are in that book and the parents talk about what was an issue and what was a non-issue for them we had a representative group across the district that dug in to this committee and talk about what was their value at home and what was a value in education for them and that came across in every single committee meeting um and in the end we did actually have more parent committee members than we did husd members I will say only by one but it was still we still had more
084parents there um and each even when a concern was brought up it was taken very seriously it wasn't just well that's okay we'll permission slip it it was no is this a book that kids need to have in their hands or is there already a book on our list that does that job um there was something else maybe it was um board member Glover um to your point about the lesson plan if they are leaving the class CL yes if um the parent has asked that they not be in the room for a discussion the teacher is planning an alternate lesson for them outside of the classroom and doing extra touch points with that student as well so they are not just self-educating that is not a thing that we do here at higle um
085so just wanted to touch point on those president Wade um so the parent from um earlier this school year he had mentioned that his child was given extra work um when having to leave the classroom it wasn't equivalent to what the rest of the class was doing that it just seemed like uh it was much more work that his child had to do um and felt like it was kind of a punishment um for opting out of a specific book um so I want to ensure that these kids aren't in fact been being given extra work uh when they're opting out and uh how many of those how many books were rejected out of all the books uh no Books Okay so it was brought up concerns were brought up and yet they were all
086passed unanimously correct um yeah very very disappointing um and then as far as uh kids having a lot of stuff on their phones um I get that um but the fact that this stuff is given um by schools is the inappropriate part uh we shouldn't be the one um giving children minors uh this type of information in a School setting president Wade um I just wanted to ask the question I'm sorry if it already got answered but were there any alternatives for these higher mature ratings that suffice the standard that was trying to be met by that potential literature are you asking did we name alternates to go with these were there any alternates Al alternates like um any other options that suffice the same standard that you guys were trying to achieve by that
087book by that literature um I would say yes but they also fit the same criteria in terms of the sensitive content um like it would it's an equal trade and and things that we were looking at um I if I'm understanding your question correctly so Miss Davis correct me if I'm not communicating clearly these books were brought to the committee by teachers that wanted them evaluated for new to be newly added to the list they are not current novels on the list correct president Wade um I believe what uh board member jarman's asking is um are there alternates which yes the the answer is yes so when a parent opts out there's an alternate book that they they select there um there would be an alternate text provided yes if a parent would ask that
088um and you're saying that that alternate is equivalent to the content no I'm sorry I misunderstood her question um me go back so if we have an alternate why can't we just use the alternate instead of um the explicit content that still meets the standards and doesn't create controversy or chaos or put in the new alternate I'm sorry to interrupt it's okay sorry I got really excited about my um most times the alternate texts are not meeting the standard and they're not of the same rigor um they're usually grade levels below um that we're pulling from um as alternate texts and there's not a similar grade level text that would qualify for an alternate um not often so you're saying you looked into that yes we have okay um we've been very particular about what
089gets a permission slip and what does not um to meet the needs of our community and that has honestly narrowed the the scope of what's out there for an alternate because an alternate cannot have a permission slip tie to it um um in six of our new recommendations have permission slips the rest of them do not have permission slips tie to them president Wade board member Van Hook um these books if they make it through the full process and are added they will be added to our approved book list which contains lots and lots of books so when you ask if there's an alternative we do have several books the book lists provide the book list provides an opportunity for our teachers to be able to select from the approved what they will be teaching
090in their classrooms to meet the standard before I uh move on I would like to comment just on a couple of things um first and formost to the community members the staff who took the time to do this committee um I'm greatly appreciative uh as a teacher I find it frustrating sometimes that aspects of our autonomy are are take it from us from individuals who maybe aren't taking the time to understand things or aren't in a position to have the same level of training and expertise that we have with respect to our topics um the idea of going through this process sometimes is a frustration so uh look I'm a reader and I've been a reader for quite some time and reading is something that we you know put forth in our family a lot
091reading about something versus visually seeing it really does impact the brain in in different ways and that is an aspect that is important um I also again when it comes to to messaging I feel as if we're getting mixed messages sometimes we routinely hear from the community that we need to prepare our kids for next steps of life always and I agree with you and we have members of our community who are the victims of rape who are the victims of incest who are the victims of some of these things that are in the books or are suicidal or have these other things and I've had conversations with individuals in the community who I would argue probably are more conservative leaning with respect to do we have to have a books that have these content
092and I recognize and understand a parent's right to choose and again we have always had that so in 2022 we had permission slips we updated them two years ago so it's not that we weren't in compliance with the law but maybe we could have made better steps and so now we're making efforts to do that we have asked to make better steps and we have gone through created a community uh sorry a committee to come through and take these next steps and yes even though there are difficult topics and it is understandable why we have these difficult topics the merits of what they give deserved us to to push them through as an individual who understands that in high school sometimes or as an adolescent things can be difficult to talk about and it is
093a safe space to be able to talk about these things in a way where you can understand that I am not the only one who experiences these things or it creates Avenues and opportunities to say hey now I can report some of these things that are happening because I did not understand what was happening to me was not okay and being able to talk about it in these ways are are part of that we are also existing in a changing society in which people are making efforts to try to limit information and that causes harm so I I think for those people who have concerns about the book I think it is okay you can decide that you are the parent and you get that choice and it is one we have always maintained here
094even though it is extra labor and effort but I also ask that sometimes maybe we take a step back and recognize that as much as I want to Shield my child from all of the ills that exist that is an impracticality it is not possible and at the end of the day if we are doing our jobs our jobs are to provide them with information and tools and how to navigate so I recognize that there are difficulties I struggle when we use words like pornography because that is not the legal definition of what pornography is reading a book that has a scene that depicts rape or depict sex whether we like to admit it or not some of your teens are having sex some of your teens have been raped and maybe they have not
095talked to you about it these difficult topics especially when it is a college course especially when it is a college course and if your concern is that my kid is going to be othered because they're not part of this then maybe don't sign them up for that course because again you also have to give permission for them to take that course these things are part of it I I I understand the concerns and so I think it is important for us again to recognize we have jumped through your Hoops repetitively and yet we still end up with books that have Merit difficult topics yes but Merit for the future adults that we are breeding into this world and for any kid who may not feel as if they understand or are aware that this happens
096and it helps create better citizens to be aware of these types of things and for those of you again who still have concern if it's not this year then maybe it is next and so we still have Choice parents if you have this you still have that choice but we have gone through this process and again I'm grateful the fact that we had to do it I find frustration in but I was part of the process that approved it because again now we are here and I go thank you to those who took the time I recognize that it was diff difficult and I also understand that it will be difficult for our students who discuss them and maybe they can do it in a safe space that we all can grow and learn from
097perspectives that either are our own or will never be our own and so again I'm grateful to the books that we provide and the things that we offer for the students and the opportunity of other uh issues because the world around us is is not always the safe welcoming comfort that Gilbert provides I'm grateful to live here I'm grateful to raise our kids here but that does matter president Wade um it's also not the teachers's responsibility to have these talk talks with students it's up to their parents um and so to assume that it's a safe space and that uh a teacher can have these conversations with minor students is not okay and and yes I'm glad that uh we do have laws in place to allow parents to make those decisions but at the
098same time uh parents can buy these books for their kids anytime they want and have them read it anytime they want but in a school environment to expose these children to content that their parents are opposed to and if they opt out then they're sent out of a room out outside of their educational environment I don't find to be appropriate um and in the instance of the student from earlier this year that student didn't have an option but to take this class because they had taken every other class there was no option so there are students in that situation as well miss Richards to clarify there are other English 12 options that they could take but it might not have been dual enrollment is that correct correct yes thank you and again to reiterate no
099child is exposed to this if the parent does not sign the permission slip that is important and again if you are signing the permission slip you are condoning your child to engage in a conversation in class about this material Miss Schultz go ahead president Wade Miss Davis I correct me if I'm wrong but we're going above and beyond with this committee right beyond the law and how many other districts are doing this do you know with the book committee it feels like I mean we're we're covering all our bases and making sure everyone's included and 25 voices 23 sorry at this point sounds like a lot of differentiating voices to me um correct um most don't quote me on it but most districts in the East Valley are um have a committee very similar um
100I don't know all of their makeups um but yes we are going above and beyond the letter of the law with this thank you um and I do just want to clarify that the conversations around the novels are about the standard not yes the content is in there but it's driven by the standard not the content like the exact sensitive content that's in the novel it is about the standard so it's about theme it's about vocabulary it's about symbolism it's not about insert sensitive content to provide an example Miss Davis because it was used previously the book that the the parent spoke about in the beginning of the year is talking about slavery and rape is often a tool of an oppressor and so in the context of Oppression and those types of things that
101is why that book was chosen um yes because that would get to theme this brings us to uh item 7.2 independent PE credit Mr lsen Heiser president Wade members of the board very excited to share with you some research that we have done not necessarily about Clifford but um although I remember those books well when my kids were little so we just want to talk about independent PE credit we had a Community member come and talk to us and said hey there's other options out there for our kids especially within our middle schools can we look at those and when she spoke here at the board the board said hey can we go and look at into this and so we have done it and so I need to give a shout out to my
102ed services team who went in and did the research on this and I'd like to present the findings to you today along with our recommendations and and I'm happy to come back at the April 1st board meeting if there's a vote that you guys would like to do about the direction we would like to move forward with with providing opportunities for our students so these are the surrounding Gilbert uh the surrounding districts that we looked at Gilbert Chandler Scott s Mesa Queen Creek and Tempe Union and then we have our Higley proposal so the the course that was originally brought to us uh we think is actually a fantastic idea and kudos to Gilbert for looking at it but it was an independent PE course with seventh and eighth graders where if they're in highly
103competitive club or League Sports who use practice and competition outside we get it parents are busy kids are busy they're always at practices in the evenings club sports is huge in our area we understand it I need to throw in Dance and Cheer as part of club sports as well because we know competitive dancers cheerleaders that's a lot of time that they're spending practicing um they're allowed in Gilbert they have to complete 100 hours of the organized Sports activity and then uh they log that and there's a way that they submit it to the school to get it they are allowed a release time either a first or a seventh period and so the parents are responsible to coming in and picking them up for their transportation and they get a a pass or fail
104so they don't get a letter grade it's not like hey you hit 89 hours sorry you get a B+ no you you complete the hours you get a pass or fail and that's the independent PE option additionally within Gilbert they have at South Valley Junior High School a Sports Performance Academy where the students only take their four Cor content classes and then the district actually drives them out to different locations to go attend their different training sessions and things but that's a school within a school model they've done for the middle schools and that's at South Valley Junior High within 12th grade they have kind of a unique option honestly when I coached there 26 years ago they had this option then as well and I think we've kind of grown past it but if
105you're on a sports team you can get permission by your coach and the ad that you would get credit just for going to practice and so that's one that has that has consistently been within Gilbert actually they're the only place that has anything like it uh I know when I when I called the District athletic director who I used to coach with and said how is this still working well it's it was a way that they could support athletes to give them uh perhaps a different opportunity to increase maybe a GPA or something or something through that within the 9th through 12th grade but they have to be on a School athletic team has to be approved by the ad and the head coach so this is not for outside work that's happening for club
106or anything like that it it's a specific one within the school that is designed and honestly it was put in place before we had online learning before we had other modes that we could ask kids to be able to earn the PE credit differently so those are when we researched within Gilbert that's the feedback that we got from the Gilbert people uh talking to us about it very exciting options they do in kudos to Gilbert for doing that within Chandler for the 3rd through 8th grade they have an Elite Performance Academy again the four core content areas um are from 7: to 12:30 and then very similar to the South Valley they bus at the end of the day for specific gym a center or a studio but there's just a third through eighth grade
107in it's house on an elementary campus and that's their Elite Performance Academy um for you to get High School PE credit uh you actually take the class in person or you can take it online and um any the beauty of that and I can speak as a parent of a student in Chandler who took PE online because she did not want to do it in person and uh she would have to log her time outside similar to if a student went to practice they could log their time but she had to log her time submit it as well as communicate with a teacher on a curriculum throughout the semester in order to be able to get her credit within Scottdale they don't have anything in the middle oops quick hands with in Scottsdale they don't
108have anything for the middle school but they have a program for 9th through 12th called Elite athlete and what this is this is specifically for those kids that are training to be Olympians honestly when you look at our swimmer from Higley High that competed in the Olympics we did this informally to help support him because we know those those super high tier athletes are training all the time their Competition schedule does not depend on a school okay and so how can we then turn around and support them so if you take a look up there it is for elective credit again it's the students have reached the highest level of performance for their age group okay so maybe it's a super competitive dancer that is getting to that point maybe a lot of times it's
109swimmers or gymn gymnasts we know that gymnast spent a lot of time within there and so they have a training and Competition schedule that uh prohibits them from attending for the full day the student is required to verify that Elite status this again is Scottsdale turn in their weekly training log and then complete two independent study assignments per the half uh elective credit on the outside so that's what Scott still had when we looked at Mesa here if you take a look at this one this is for grades 912 outside school activity and so this one's a little bit different because it's designed for students who participating in sports or athletic activities outside the typical School sponsored Athletic program or School sports they phrased it that way to again to go to an elite gymnastic
110there's no High School gymnastics so we can't provide that opportunity for them honestly this could be hockey in the past I've had kids who are on traveling hockey teams that are um Semi-Pro and getting ready to do that and and their schedules again don't align if you take a look at it it has additional assignments and documentation must be completed they have to do 60 hours participation but and this is the difference we'll talk about in a second non-competitive sports non-organized sports activities gym membership and or personal daily exercise does not meet the course requirements so you can't say hey I went and worked out right I went to Mountainside I got my workout in does that count in terms of my hours no this is again designed for the elite athlete who's doing something
111that is different than what we're offering as a High School athletic program so that's what's happening in Mesa when we take a look at Queen Creek what we have is they offer a PE electric elective through their online program again there's nothing specific outlined uh when we had our discussions for uh specific individuals and then Tempe Union does not allow for PE credit outside their sports for outside clubs or Sports and so we took a look at all of those different things and said what could we do in the immediate what could we recommend in the immediate and what could we prepare for the future to provide opportunities and so what I'd like to talk to you about today is our proposal so what's nice is currently we offer PE online we have the hva
112and if a student doesn't want to take PE during the day or if they're really busy and they have outside commitments that they need to do for the 9th through the 12th graders we offer an hva PE class already and so they can take that PE class so would it mean they could leave school early absolutely they could miss sth hour because they are taking a class online but that goes to any of the students who are taking any of our online classes it's a blended model or hybrid model where they could be at the beginning of the day or the end of the day where they don't have to be in person but we already offer that PE option for them to get their PE credit would their outside practices count for the hours
113that they're doing yes and so that would they're going to the gym and just working out count yes that would work out for that now for the middle school we would love to be able to uh pilot the Middle School independent PE similar to Gilbert I'd love to Pilot it this year because I think what would be great is we could see the need and the demand and we could help support those uh students we already talked to the middle School principles they said yeah we're on board we'd like to do it where the kids leave early uh at 7th hour log their time very similarly we met with our it uh department and we can actually go through Synergy so parents don't have to do a handwritten form they could submit their hours online
114and submit it through that and using the instructional time model we could be allowed then to have them meet their goals and so that's part of what we're already doing um for the elite student athlete we You' already have that instructional time model and I don't know if you guys remember when we presented it I want to say it was last summer the instructional time model allows us to give credits for kids who are in different uh areas of attendance based upon if they're completing projects if they're putting in time it allows us to work around kids who have needs maybe Health needs that they can't be at school but we actually talked about Elite athletes at that time if they have a competition schedule that does not allow them to be there we can
115work with our teachers to provide them the what they need need to be successful in their courses and yet we can still get our ADM because we're following through with the instructional time model it's an agreement that is made between the school and the parent that they will complete these hours and submit them to us and so it's a really positive thing for us to do now starting an Elite Performance Academy or an athletic performance Academy is not something we would want to turn around overnight or want something we want to turn around over months I think that needs to be part of the further discussion as we continue to look at different ways that we provide opportunities for our students not just within Athletics but I know that we've already had discussions about what
116what are some other options we can provide especially when we get to our elementary students in terms of programming there and I think it would be important for us to have that athletic performance Academy be part of those discussions our we're looking to move forward so in summary what I'm asking tonight is this is what our recommend recommendation is if there are other things that you guys would like to do I'd very much love to hear the feedback and be able to look through that but but I think we do have an opportunity and I do want to thank I think this is an example of the community coming and a Community member coming to us and saying hey this is something that really works for us and so when we got into that and
117started looking at it within an ed services department we said we agree this is good and and how can we help incorporate that to provide the opportunities for our families so it's a it's a nice model of parents who had a voice and then we've looked at it and these are the recommendations coming back to you as a governing board so with that I'll take questions and you'll notice this is a different picture because they were all used to be for chemistry class but now we have an athletic picture for our questions on the very end so questions um president Wayne um Mr ler um thank you for turning this around so quickly feels like it was just last month or board meetings yeah so thank you I appreciate that um and I like all
118these ideas sound great and the idea of an athletic AC Academy moving forward I don't have can you go back to the other side go back um as far as the um piloting this program so when could we roll this out because I know many people have already selected their schedules and things like that or is that something that we can go back on or 2026 I'm sorry I just want to make sure I'm correct the reason the reason I said pilot with the governing board's approval I would love to be able to communicate directly from the principles to the people who are at the school and en rolls and say hey we're going to Pilot this program with governing board approval and that if you're interested please contact us and we can work on
119those schedules right now okay thank you and so if if we look at like an April first gole for we can get that communication out and I think it's important to be able to explain to parents hey here's what we need you to do do does the activity that you're doing fit within our need right can you get that 100 hours per um per semester to be able to receive the credit and then as long as we know upfront and ahead of time then we'll have the process ready to go in directly from that communication perfect thank you president Wade um I I know we had the conversation as far as like why it wouldn't work at the high school level um can you go into just kind of explain based on our conversation as
120to um why that wouldn't work in order to be able to Pilot this in our district at the high school level well I think for me we we already have a mechanism that allows them to achieve credit by not being at school and for getting credit for something additionally and that's our hva program because within PE you you have to log hours you have to do those things the hours that's spent practicing in an outside club or doing a different activity would work for that but I don't think that we need to reinvent and add something different a process we're already using and so think about with hva right if a kid wants to take English n online right they don't come to school for English n they they take English n online and then
121they come to school later very similar to PE for that option and that opportunity for we don't limit the number of PE credits they could get so if they wanted to take PE online and be part of their electives and do it every single year for all four years we can do that but we already had that system built in to what's happening and so for a parent that who wants to come and pick their kid up early right they want to come in and pick up their kid early and they're going to take it online good that's available at our high schools and it's actually available right now we don't need to add anything additionally to what's going on through hva uh there's so for the kids that currently have like work study um
122what would they do in that situation would they maybe switch to like fourth hour work study or cuz I think is it fourth or and 7th hour like the the lab like I don't know which periods the labs open or sword so that's that's at the middle school okay that's not the high SCH so that doesn't impact High School no that doesn't impact high school and then um the itm MH uh that only works for students that have to miss three consecutive days and actually with the with the itm we have the ability right as long as we have the parent signed off so if they have this kind of competitive schedule that's very different and it allows us to allows that creativity and it will work and that's one of the ways that that
123they can make sure that it continues to work this the instructional time model no it it can cover the needs of what we need for them to be able to do in order to receive their credit what how we've anticipated using it and honestly we haven't used it very much okay after we've rolled out is for those specific instances where yes this could also help when you're talking about missing specific days not related to sports I have some other issue or something else going on we can use that instructional time model to support a student who's really at need because they are missing those big blocks of time and the itm allows us then to to capture the ADM for those students while they're out as long as we have the agreement in place and
124as long as we are are following through with what kind of model we're using whether it's hours based whether it's Project based okay thank you good no I oh Madam president I just wanted to thank the community for bringing that forward and for the uh cabinet for taking it seriously and moving moving something forward that uh that is good for kids because I that's why I'm here thank you I agree this moves us to 7 point Sorry yep go ahead one more thing uh President W uh I just um I know there was a situation with this and uh where a parent was promised that this would in fact be implemented in the district and I want to make sure that we're not making such statements before it comes to the board for approval um
125and we shouldn't be promising things before that's done and then as far as uh if the if the pilot program is successful um will there be like an expansion beyond the current model um like what what I'd like to do with the pilot because we've already got our course guide approved okay and so let's say the pilot comes back and I have parents that are really into this this is working well providing for the needs of the community as we go through the course guide process next year then we can add it as an official class when it comes in and we can present it to you guys as part of the changes that we're looking at again for the seventh and eighth graders at our Middle School we think this could really have a
126positive impact for those and support those families absolutely now again going back to expanding the program or looking differently if we start looking at those elementary kids on the Elite Performance Academy that's part of a bigger conversation about the direction of what we want to do with our elementary schools and how we want to oppose that and so I think that will be part of those ongoing conversations not necessarily related to the junior high pilot if that makes sense yes thank you okay thank you Mr lson Heiser this moves us to 7.3 GCB professional staff contracts and compensation first read to you Miss Johnson good evening president Wade and members of the board um tonight before you have the first read of um GCB and the noted changes are in Blue uh what would be
127removed are in red and if you would scroll down just a little bit thank you so much perfect uh those changes are listed below it's basically giving the superintendent some authority to go ahead and wave all or portion of the liquidated damages based on the bulleted points below president wa um I was just wondering if you guys worked with legal on this policy Madame President Miss Van Hook the policy uh is my work product okay um based on my understanding this policy is in violation of ars1 15545 which specifically States um that teachers cannot resign after signning their contract without board approval um and those who do May face disciplinary action additionally legal precedents have upheld liquidated damages um as a legitimate means of offsetting hiring costs ARS 47 2718 um and these proposed changes
128contradict state law and set set a dangerous precedence on how our district would handle resignations um and I believe that um not only based on the law but uh that we need to keep these decision-making Powers um where they belong and that's with the governing board in um full view of the public um and then the policy is also missing these statutes um that I mentioned as well um and they should be added Madam president miss Wade uh Miss Van Hook so ARS 15544 is a statute that applies to teachers it states that the teachers cannot resign without governing board approval when the governing board assesses or doesn't assess liquidated damages you still are approving the resignation so I do not believe that the changes to the policy is presented violate that law thank you
129president Wade um Miss mlen um so we would we would then be approving so if they decide if the superintendent decides that somebody can resign and not have to pay their liquidated damages how and so they can approve anybody but teachers is that what you're saying Madam president miss fin hook the superintendent cannot not approve the resignation only the board can approve the resignation this policy only delegates the right to wave liquidated damages which is not governed by Statute it's a contractual Arrangement between the district and your employees there's no requirements that you charge liquidated damages there's no requirement that you wave them this is something that is within the local control of the school district so this policy by delegating to the superintendent the ability to W liquidated damages um subject to ultimately the
130governing board's review of this policy and any um acceptance of a resignation you're still retaining your ultimate Authority as the only entity that can hire and fire Madam president yeah I just there's there are circumstances where you have um you know this I I hate that this happens but it happens there are teachers who are for whatever reasons um miserable and they make everybody around the miserable and there's really no when you um you know I mean teachers a lot of people in this country are about you know three paychecks away from some real financial trouble so when you have a situation where a teacher is unhappy as a principle I mean you you have these conversations all the time and and uh I just think this removes a small small hurdle to help get
131somebody out and a lot of times when I've talked to teachers in this predicament they they kind of agree that like it's best to move on and so I think it's I think the liquidated damages acts as a deterrent sometimes and you have people sticking it out so I thought that it would be a good idea to give the superintendent some discretion um to be very clear if someone commits a crime that is not something that I would ever want to see weigh we are Mand reporters and that's not the case sometimes we have um you know people have family circumstances that they got to go take care of somebody and anyway it it just it holds it up and uh I just want to have the best people in front of our kids you
132know as quickly and as often as we can president Wade I I understand that um at the same time uh we continue to give away our responsibility as a board um and it it's our responsibility uh the board was elected to protect the taxpayer and we're giving that Authority away to the superintendent um and we're removing the checks and balances that are required um and and part of our duty um there's also the lack of oversight um to be able to quietly resign um and have no you know the fees waved um and the cost that to the taxpayer that we're here to protect uh there's having to get subs there's having to put you know market for a new hire there's the impact on current staff that's going to have to take on the
133burden while a replacement is brought in and I I don't understand why why we as a board would give away our authority to the superintendent and I mean this it just it continues to happen and I it just doesn't makes sense to me and obviously not with the current board but just in the last two years that I've been here um there's been instances where we are giving away what our responsibility is and we were put in these seats to make the decision the best decision on behalf of the taxpayer and this doesn't do that this ends up costing the district much more money because we allow teachers that to walk to be able to walk away from their contract with no consequences these are adults signing contracts we all have to sign contracts as
134as adults and the understanding should be you're signing a contract you are held to this contract until the contract terms end and you shouldn't be able to just walk away easily president uh board member Van Hook which out of those four bullet points don't you like like impa incapacitating medical condition or injury seems like a good reason um to not have to pay liquidated damages spouse's relocation due to employment to a distance reasonable um or um a promotion I wouldn't want to hold somebody back from taking a promot promotion in the education field so which one of those would you take issue with um it's not necessarily um the it's it's the last one the agreement to separate employment all the other ones we've already been doing but the board's been approving those it's just
135an agreement just to separate from employment is wrong like they're they're signing an agreement they shouldn't just be able to go oh I don't like it here I'm going to move on and then we're going to go okay we're going to wave your fee and then it's it's going to cost us more money to have to replace them President we um to uh board member Glover's point that if somebody's here and they're unhappy it might cost us more in the long run um if they're creating chaos or issues based on um what he's saying as a teacher and and we employ the superintendent to I hope make educated decisions and decisions based on what they think is right for the district well if it if a teacher is creating chaos then they should be terminated
136and have to pay their liquidated damages um a teacher shouldn't be creating chaos just because they might not be happy that they signed a one-year contract I mean that's that's not a I can't sign an agreement for my employer and be like I hate it here I'm out and then you know you can't do anything about it that's I just I don't think that's right like we're adults we have to we make decisions and we have to abide by those decisions for whatever the term is Madame President um might have be heard on the termination issue so the process for terminating teachers in the state of Arizona requires a statement of charges if the board were to adopt a statement of charges you would not be assessing liquidated damages because that wouldn't be a resignation
137these liquidated damages only come up when there is a resignation um by adding the agreement to separate employment what you would be doing would be permitting that tool to be used by the superintendent to um potentially allow a resignation in lie of a termination the board and the district would still be required to comply with all of its mandatory reporting responsibilities including to the Arizona Department of Education regarding certification um so it was my understanding based upon the last board meeting that Mr Glover wanted to see specifically that option given and that's what you're considering and debating tonight but the if the board were to seek the termination of employee and employee through the statutory means the liquidated damages Provisions would not be charged because the employee would not be resigning president Wade uh we've
138had at least one situation that I'm aware of where a teacher resigned their liquidated damages were waved and they were reported to the State Board of Education correct and we didn't find and I didn't find out until after the fact because we aren't given names When teacher let's say a teacher is placed on administrative leave pending investigation the board isn't given names so that's a problem because if if there's enough information to report somebody to the State Board of Education we shouldn't be waving their their fees just because they resign Madam president miss Van Hook that's exactly what's before you tonight whether you want to give the District administration that option with all due respect board member Van Hook we hire and employ all manner of staff to do their jobs and for ours specific
139we hire the superintendent I I think it is important for us to maybe take a step back and some of the scenarios with which you are describing um have not happened we also get to approve them so as far as your oversight comment we still would approve this or not so if you don't want to you don't have to that is our still oversite that exists so if we are in a situation in which we feel our superintendent is abusing this process we do not have to approve it so we aren't changing the checks and balances that exist and I also so again considering the way our state department of education is structured anybody can get reported to the state and that doesn't necessarily mean that the state comes back with anything other than they
140got a report they followed through with the port and that is it so again I still think it is important for us to a remember we are the ones who are approving this at the end of the day and B we have the power should we view that this is being abused to make changes to that or say that this is not something that we are approving to sit here and just say all of these abuses are going to happen I is is hard for me in that that is why we have policy in place and that is why we have these things until those things happen and so if you're in a situation in which you see this employee and you go I don't think we should do that then don't vote for it
141and I again that is still our oversight um I'm appreciative to for legals response to some of these things if you would like to make another comment please by all means otherwise we can move on to the next item this brings us to 7.4 third review of the 2025 2026 maintenance and operation budget sorry Mr Moore that'd be you thank you good evening president way members of the board tonight I'll be presenting the third review of the maintenance and operation budget for fiscal year 2026 as my slide placeholder our budget timeline um we are working towards again that June uh proposed and adopted budget for 2026 as you know uh and as you see later on our agenda um we have to get through um this tentative approval and get the board comfortable with a
142budget as we issue contracts on March 15th and so um this is our my third presentation um of this 26 budget um and that will hopefully set the table for the uh later agenda items on the board meeting tonight so go um looking at the FY 26 projected budget highlights currently the legislative process is ongoing um there's a number of uh bills that have been heard both at the Senate um and the house um a couple that I'm keeping an eye on that are kind of keen to uh K12 are the proposed a or aggregate expens limit um legislation um there's a number of different bills out there um several incorporate an exemption into the state budget process some exempt it completely uh my hopes is there's enough conversation regarding this topic that we get
143a permanent solution to this um as a reminder the last two years this uh legislation has done one-year exemptions to this um agre expenditure limit and so um I'm hopeful this gets permanently addressed whether that be in the the legislative process or potentially um on the ballot so in addition um sp sp 107 is bringing back uh the authorization for tax credit dollars to be used for Capital items and so this fired last year and so I think there was enough District interest and I know I personally reach out to some of our legislatur uh advocating to bring this back because it allows the flexibility for our our sites who receive uh designated tax credit dollars to use those uh beyond the traditional tax credit uh criteria so authorizing the use for Capital items just
144gives them greater flexibility for those locally donated dollars some of the known budget implications that we're taking into consideration with uh respect to this budget projection for 26 are the estimated 2% inflation adjustment to the base level support as I stated this is included in this budget projection and I footnoted at the bottom that the legislature is obligated to increase um by a minimum of 2% if the GDP price um deflator is running above that like I said previously in presentations it's currently hovering around 3.6 uh 3.5% so I fully anticipate the legislature minimally obligating that 2% inflation adjustment to the base level support in addition the Arizona State Retirement System is decreasing uh they've had good returns in terms of their Investments and so we'll see a decrease both on uh as a reminder
145both the employer and the employee pay into the state retirement system um so that decrease represents for the district side about $200,000 savings um um and then the individual employee can calculate that but that 027 reduction that will be more money back into the employees paycheck um in addition we have an alternative contribution rate those are for employees who are retired and that have retired from the ASR system and then hired back um there's very few employees that participate in that ACR that alternative alternative contribution rate some of our husd uh budget special items I I would say our um our annual uh transfer from Capital to or M to capital for our Middle School lease payment um we have 28 more years left on your lease payment our current principal and interest payment for
146next year is anticipated to be $3.5 million and so uh we are recommending again to continue to transfer M dollars to Capital where we have to legally pay that lease payment from um to continue to support that outstanding lease in addition um we are projecting an ADM decrease of uh 300 for 26 I have some additional slides to address and and talk about how how we are coming up to that projection and then uh phase one of the M override reductions as uh the board is aware um this last November we did not renew our override and so we are going into year six which um starts the phase down and override phases down in two successful years by 33% and then 66% and so I do have some additional slides to cover what phase
1472 would look like um and highlight some of the survey resp responses so first looking at our ADM projections for 26 there's a couple factors that we take into consideration when looking this far out right we're we're projecting for July of next year um some one of the the simple calculations I would say is to we look at our EX visiting 12th grade class uh comparing to our incoming Kinder class and so when you look at our current 12th grade class of 952 minus our estimated incoming Kinder class of 661 uh we see a difference of about 291 students and so um this is a a clear indication of of just the the less students that are attending higly schools and again this is a national Trend as I've stated and I presented to the
148board um um all our neighboring districts are going through this same um declining enrollment and if you look at it it's a lot of it is stemming from the Kinder in the earlier grades um we'll continue to see as this uh Works its way through um that kinderg grade Works its way through um our educational system um this is going to be a ongoing issue that we'll need to address and and continue to monitor as we budget from year to year so this second uh factor that we look at is so as of um July we take all our registrations and and kind of look at the movement between um midy year right so everybody who's registered as of the first day of school um that is one number and then as we look at
149new enrollment and withdrawals throughout the school year um I've created a graph here working with our assessment team to kind of identify um in four categories where our students are going or where they're coming from and so um looking at the graph uh in green is highlighting students enrolling in the district throughout the fiscal year and then in purple is those students withdrawing and so starting on the left you can see enrolling from other Arizona Public Schools um this is again throughout this year we're looking at a snapshot of fiscal 25 of this school year uh we've enrolled 98 and in the flip side we've had 271 withdrawal to go to an Arizona Public School School looking at other Arizona Charter private and homeschooling um this year we've enrolled 840 from those Charter private and
150homeschool um options whereas we've seen 731 withdraw for those options Charter private or homeschool on the next category other state or country these are students who have or parents who have indicated that they're enrolling um either out of the state or the country um and so enrolling from out of State into Higley we've had 409 and then again flip side leaving um Higley to move out of state or out of the country 252 the other and unknown we've had this is a a magnitude of different options so these are this could be medical issues these could be um either the parent didn't indicate why they're leaving or enrolling within the district and so we're working hard to kind of continue to gather that information so we can this is very powerful information so we can
151share not only publicly um but use as resources as a District administration um so that other category again it contains a bunch of different other options but enrolling within Higley 166 and then withdrawing 271 if we look at the total green of enrollment um again through this fiscal year year to date versus the withdrawing we see a difference of about 12 students um to the negative so overall um this just highlights I think higgy's and maybe the East Valley in general is the the choice right school choice parents have choice and you can see throughout the year that choice is very evident but uh for the most part you we're relatively flat in terms of people choose Higgly um and they choose hly um over other options and um you know these two variables in
152addition there there's several other variables that go into um projecting enrollment but these are these are safe variables um that are kind of known options and so uh that's how we kind of get to that 300 number and where we feel comfortable using that as a projected enrollment um decline or less 300 students for 26 so looking at our budget uh in terms of numbers so currently this is the top budget number this is our current budget it was revised as of December 10th 2024 of the 125 million um again that includes our current um ADM budget loss of 239 our transfer to Capital and our estimated ending budget balance carry forward of 21.5 million looking at 2026 uh the 11 16.6 million includes again the 8 the 300 ADM less that we're projecting for
153next year the M override phase down of 5.1 million the transfer to capital for a lease payment and I I highlighted in red um this whole full presentation and the in both the first two presentations um we were under the assumption and we're going into the Assumption for next year of having a pay frees um from the M budget um as you can see we're projecting a proposed budget decrease of $9.2 million um and just want to make that publicly known as as this presentation is um proposing that recommendation for 26 of no compensation increases in a pay frees for 26 so look at somewh of our fixed costs um and how we are uh working to address that $9.2 million decrease uh property Cas Insurance we're seeing an increase about 110,000 um the reinsurance
154market is is running about 8% majority of this increase is coming from prepaid legal costs as we pay um our prepaid legal through our property insurance um uh our property insurance premium so um that is a three-year average and it's based on usage workers comp uh we actually see a no increase there um a lot of that can be a test to this is our third year with the trust and so they provide a loyalty credit um for uh three years uh part of that loyalty credit is for district uh employees to attend several trainings professional development um to help continue to keep us informed with the national Trends and put in Pro proactive measures to keep uh employees safe our utilities um it seems like every day a new uh utility increases um SRP
155has approved a 3.5% increase um we now know Queen Creek water is also increasing by 15% um and so that 200,000 represents those two increases we also uh were aware of town of Gilbert's um I believe it was sewage uh increase so all those are taken into consideration into that $200,000 number in which we anticipate seeing an increase in utility costs on the flip side we worked uh with our department leads and our School principles um to reduce our budgets across the board uh we are reducing about $750,000 in uh department and school budgets um not an ongoing thing I would say uh but we are taking some some drastic measures to try to address this $9.2 million deficit next year so those totals uh represent a decrease of about 440,000 from what we're calling
156our fixed costs and then looking at this in a whole again our f26 projected budget of 116 million we're looking at a proposed budget decrease of 9.2 million as the board as was presented on uh the January 14th board meeting we presented the phase one position reductions of 5.1 million we're now adding the fixed cost reductions of 440,000 and again uh we're projecting a budget decrease next year of 3.7 milli million and so we've heard the board's uh and and the public really U point that our budget balance is too high and we we are budgeting to a deficit or decrease um to bring that carry forward down and and leverage that next year um you know going into this phase down and so um that estimated 17.5 million in budget balance carry forward takes
157into consideration that decrease at 3.7 million so uh we'll be bringing that down from 21.5 to approximately 17.5 um in fiscal year 26 so as a reminder the M override um is going to continue to phase down if we the district does not choose to do uh anything and lets this fully expire and so um as we plann for this we uh took into consideration um the option to do a survey we've spoke with staff we spoke with a parents via a community meeting um it was very well attended I was pleasantly surprised um in my in my tenure here that was the most highly attended community meeting um and I answered questions well past uh are anticipated in time and so um very thankful for that turnout um our leadership our principles our directors
158have all been involved in these conversations to try to come up with a plan and on what we would do if this continues to phase down even our students uh Miss Richards has a superintendent advisory Council or committee a team um and those students uh also went through this exercise and provided some feedback on on what their initiatives are and what their priorities are in regards to um our survey and so looking um again as a reminder this is the phase down timeline I updated it slightly to include um fy2 is is really already reduced um so we're really looking at 27 28 um as the as the phase down will continue again if the district does nothing uh going forward so looking at uh the survey results uh for a potential phase two uh
159we sent the survey out I believe is open for just over two weeks two and a half weeks um the survey started with 4,134 uh respondents um what we did see there's so much nutrition um throughout the survey so we had 4,134 start with this first question uh and then if you add my numbers you're going to see some attrition uh as the survey uh goes on so but out of the respondant approximately 74% were parents and higly unified and so um that was great feedback um in terms of the parent response question two ask those parents who responded uh What uh where where did your student attend and so we saw of the parents who took the survey 70% were elementary students uh we had great I think feedback from the preschool those are
160good numbers from the preschool uh and then our high school and middle school uh represent about half of our enrolled population there so looking at question uh four um I just want to publicly acknowledge like we we fully acknowledge that this could have been worded differently we had some feedback and I'll cover some of that feedback um there's some confusion regarding um contradictory language in terms of the category and how we asked individuals to prioritize but the general consensus was we asked uh people who took the survey please prioritize from first being your number one item you wish to eliminate versus 20 versus the last item you wish to eliminate and so again we acknowledge the feedback um some of the language uh specifically regarding Mandarin um you we wish we would had a modified
161Mandarin or restructured Mandarin option um just to provide uh that flexibility and and not be so rigorous on eliminate so um again I wanted to publicly acknowledge that and and state that because I know both the board and District administration got some feedback on that so with all that said uh I do want to present the results as the survey was presented and so looking at the survey results how I prioritized this was the average ranking and so um taking all the responded um responses and then averaging the uh categories um by the lowest number essentially and so um looking at the first one um eliminate Mandarin again we wish we had some other language or had another category for that um but on average that ranked 5.99 so in terms of um people prioritizing
162that that was the number one in terms on average um budgetary reduction item I'm not going to go through this list extensively um but if there's questions after I'm happy to answer I just want to highlight a couple items that um maybe how did you get to to that cost estimate or um how did that item fair so on um provide free half day kindergarten um that 825,000 represents so the state funds us for half day kindergarten um if those families currently within our district were to pay for that other half which is approximately $2,500 that's where that number is derived from um I would say the only the other option is on um it seemed like band and Orchestra ranked higher than art and music uh that was interesting in in that came across
163um and this as people prioritized um the total here these are the 11 items the total on this page was $4.3 million just above $4.3 million looking at the next page um we have a number of different items um I want to jump to the bottom though it was very clear throughout the survey that uh individuals responding to the survey did not want to touch teacher pay and or um staff salaries uh class sizes were also very lowly ranked in terms of prioritizing the classroom um and so that was very prevalent throughout the survey the red line indicates about five just about $5 million which would be essentially our next reduction um so that would include both this first list and these two items on this second list now again this survey is just a
164tool for both the board and administration this wouldn't be the exact items in which we would look but this is a great representation of what it would take to as we proceed if the board chooses through phase two um you can see that the number of cuts that would need to be made um throughout our district um the total page one and then page two uh gives a total for both pages about $8.8 million um we had an open-ended question um after the ranking of the survey and again I've kind of highlighted a little a little bit of this but I I kind of categorized it in five items so there were several educational concerns so the most discussed topic uh was it was very clear statements about Cuts should not affect teachers in class
165sizes there was um very passionate individuals who took the survey and that is um reflected in um prioritizing teachers and our class sizes budget and resources there was many respondents that raised concerned about how the district is budgeted um how we are um where budget cuts are being proposed um there was concerns and comments that wasn't admin cuts on here um there was resource allocation in relation to prioritizing funding that we should continue to prioritize more in the classroom stop spending money on admin um overall I summarize that some confusion on how School District's budget works and what is required uh from a budgetary standpoint and and a district responsibility State and governance um significant discussion how little support public Ed receives um concerns about District policies and government involvement in education um to further
166support education there's some legislative discussion there was some discussion about you know why doesn't Arizona support K12 more um and that's kind of summarized in that category number four support for programs um a portion of the response is focused on the calls for increased support for specific educational programs and again music and art were mentioned far more greater than some of our other programs um but throughout the open-ended questions uh a lot of the attention was here to support our programs that we are offering as a district and again I mentioned and and as a District administration team we understand there was some confusion uh regarding the uh categories listed or the survey format um but again there there was um only 11 mentions the last time I counted so of that so A small
167percentage of the survey respondents um did have some disagreement about the categories Andor survey format the last excuse me the last question was should the override pass for 2627 um we will strive to preserve the items on the reduction list but to support student retention enrollment growth which of any of the Innovative programs options would be interest Ed in the district exploring dber at one of our existing School sites about uh Stam Academy was the highest ranked in terms of programmatic schools um but you right after that was do not add any special Theory programs so um interesting feedback okay the last piece is that we are here tonight right with the third review as I said this timeline is is largely contingent on um our HR team getting contracts out March 15th and so
168um on the agenda further um with the survey results presented with the um know implications of the override uh we are asking the governing board to give the district Direction um on whether to pursue an an election in November in April we'll switch our Focus to our capital budget and we're talk about the first review of the 26 capital budget um with that uh we have I have some uh considerations for a possible sale lease or exchange of real property and that's really related to our vacant piece of land behind Target and trying to leverage some options as we know a bond is probably not in our future so how do we leverage some of our resources to uh support our Capital needs and on April 22nd I'll present the second review and attentative approve
169of our capital budget again we approve our uh tentative approve our capital budget to get out ahead of purchase order items so we have long lead items on several HVAC products those um large purchases uh tend to have four six 8 week 12 week lead times so um we ask for tended approval so we can issue those POs and start to secure those items for our short summer window where maintenance has an option to to get those installed before start a school um and then in May we'll we'll present our final budget revision for this current fiscal year and that will reflect um our final ADM numbers and and where we anticipate ending our year in terms of budget balance carry forward in that so with that I'm happy to take any questions um just
170looking at the uh survey results and people will naturally vote for things that their kids don't participate in um you know for instance if my child's an athlete you know I I'm more willing to to pick art uh but I want to ensure that um we do uh take into consideration every student um within our district and ensure that we support uh all of them no matter what they participate in um I've spoken before about uh our carry forward um and as the presentation mentions we'll have a 7.5 million um Carry forward after the all the reductions correct 17 I mean 17.5 um and so basically again that's you know we're we're saving that um we're setting that aside for a rainy day um I believe uh that's 15% of our budget um and as
171I've mentioned before uh the state used to cap us at 4% um um and I believe that if we are able to utilize more of that and I'm not necessarily saying to to reduce that to 4% um but if we are able to reduce that further um then I believe that you know none of these Cuts have to be made um we don't have to make such drastic cuts um on top of that uh you mentioned we do have um the parcel behind Target and the cash market value for that is 7.3 million um and so if we were able to sell that um that would be money that would be able to go to Capital and uh would allow us not to have to transfer the 3.5 million from emota Capital um so more
172money um going back to m&o um um and if you if you the new auditor general report came out um it's available for anybody to go look at um when you look at the report all expenses have increased um and one of the the major things that's decreased is the the classroom spending and that that was cut by $154 per student um in 2024 um at the same time um administrative costs increased by 100 per student um and at the last meeting we talked about the uh the audit um my biggest concern with that is I wanted that presented uh so that the community can see that um the district spent $2 million more on admin last year than they did in the classroom um even without comparing us to other districts just comparing our
173own numbers year-over-year uh we keep spending Less on our students and more on everything else um and I as a parent um have concerns with that uh and I mean and I've I've spoken to many parents that you know they can't trust um the district when they see decline in funding into the classroom um and so we see it in our in our survey results um as well uh we need to ensure that our students aren't directly impacted and when you look at the the numbers um all the impact is directly to our students um which is in the classroom and that needs to turn around in order to regain the trust from from our community and our parents um so that they know that we're putting um our students first and our teachers first
174um that's it for now couple of things uh Mr Moore and than in response to at least some questions that I have um I agree with you board member Van Hook that um this is going to impact students there is no way that it will not when we are losing funding because our m is sunsetting um with respect to those reports the reports also talk about how Higgly comparative to our other counterparts and Mr Moore you were the one who is the expert here um we spend more in classrooms than our counterparts do we not member or president Wade yeah comparatively and I I do um would like to present that classroom sub report from L General at the next board meeting as it was just issued I didn't have enough time to obviously bring
175it here but um to go into more detail regarding that report um yeah comparatively we are about 6 percentage points higher an instructional spending versus our Pure districts and also um Mr Moore administratively we are also lower than counterparts is that correct or at least comparative yeah per the audit general report we are low in administration yes yeah we're like 9.1 or something but I don't remember numbers in the same way so I could have also just totally made that number up is it 9.1 I don't know the percentage because I don't want him to speak either but I know we're comparatively low I believe that's correct either way you will present it to us on the first the reason I'm bringing this up is because I I think there is a misconception uh on
176a couple of things first and foremost the biggest thing that people always talk about is we pay administrators too much I'm going to challenge that and I'm going to say we pay teachers too little and here's why Mr Moore you are remarkable at your job and there are a number of things that routinely come up that show us how remarkable you are at your job and dear God do not leave us and go to to the private sector in which you will be making more money than we could ever pay you here don't say that I mean he's aware of it he's not he's not an idiot he's a smart man and numbers are part of that he is aware of that he is here because his heart is in this and it's clear by
177some of the things that you have done to try to figure out how to protect preschool teachers for example right I I feel like education for so long has continued to be beat down in terms of we are spending too much money or it is wasteful and the reports do not show that I'm not saying other districts haven't had those things I can only speak to Higley and this is what we are about we pay our admin well because the job they do requires it we don't pay our teachers in the same category so when you look at the disparity that's part of the reason that that exists and yet we still exploit teachers and their hearts for why they are here because they believe it matters and I'm grateful to that because not everybody
178has the opportunity to leave like I did because it's hard to do we have a a situation in people continually talk about we need to make sure hickley is great how do we expect to do that if we do not pay our people competitive salaries our teachers still rely on our administrative cabinet to provide to do things to put in the work for HR to put in the work for for sped and security and everything else that we do we need it that is a vital process to that our structure for our state is not in support of public education we structure it to where our public schools have to beg for money in ways that our competitors do not this puts us at a distinct disadvantage that is hard for us to compete with
179at the end of the day when you have individuals who are good at their job and we wish to continue to have the best people for that you have to pay them the idea or the expectation that we just hold on to that and still expect great or even better results they do not match that is an unrealistic expectation for us and if you talk about when these MOS do not happen we can talk about what our turnover weight was in 2013 because as a teacher good news there's a lot of job security in that and if I go to a different District I can get a salary raise and so what did people do they switched districts all the time to get those raises because everywhere else is on pay frees which we are
180right now dear God teachers stay but we are on a pay freeze right now we aren't doing it next year that is part of this so when we look at that and you look at this and go where is the money I am telling you you can come sit down with Mr Moore I apologize I'm giving up your time here in this regard and he will explain to you we have done it repetitively over years and part of the way we are capable of doing this is relying on our community to say whether or not you have kids here you benefit from our schools you benefit from how great our schools are because they are attractive look at the number of people from out of the state alone who are here we also routinely hear
181people say things like we're having 300 families that's not the case that 300 difference is a low birth rate and that is a nationwide issue that is not a Higgly issue in fact we're losing 12 and I argue if you look at the next year I'd be interested to see what those numbers are as well so statements of people are just leaving higgle because the choices we are making is not accurate it's not they are coming to Higley or staying at Higley and might there be other circumstances in which they leave and for the 12 individuals who might let's say one of them or all 12 for that matter unhappy with something that is part of the that we have Choice I'm sorry that you leave and should you come back we'll welcome you with
182open arms in that regard ultimately it comes down to our community and what you're willing to support these programs are what make our our district remarkable these programs are why some kids come to school in the first place because academically we are great and while I love my children who are very smart especially my eldest school is an afterthought he is there for literally anything else he tells me every day and part of that reason is because these things are what give kids mental breaks they tell kids and and and feed their curiosity in ways that help education Thrive so if you look at this and go these are great programs we need to keep them we must look over here we have done it so if you support these programs if you support our
183kids you support our students right now the m is what needs to happen that's how this comes down and it's a problem it is a frustration that is something you should take up with your state legislators because they do not budget appropriately they handicap public education and give other institutions more money who don't have to go through the same Hoops who don't have through the same thing and that lovely report from the auditor general talks about you want to talk about high administrative costs take a look at our charter schools because it's 22% it's more than double what we have there is a lot of misinformation and at the end of the day nobody wants to look at this and go yes I'm willing to give more money because everybody is hurting financially but if
184you go it matters to students these programs matter because these programs have impact and I recognize that at the end of the day you have some people who say I don't appreciate pulling on the heartstrings of things but this is where we are at that is the way this works if you care about these programs the m has to happen and again remarkable go sit with Mr Moore and he will show you all of the places in which we have found where we can save money where we can change money and other things to the carry forward Mr Moore can you please correct me if I'm wrong if we spend that money that is for this year it's not like it's every year we have 17 . 5 million is that correct so when we
185spend it it's gone yeah so carry forward is a onetime budgetary obligation it's not ongoing funding correct so if so right now the cuts that we have to make in this coming year might that save us for next year great what about 2027 2028 and if your argument is goes we got two years on that awesome what about 2028 2029 these are the long steps that we are talking about we had individuals today talk about we should not have given those Rises because there wasn't forethought with that again we need competitive folks to stay here we need competitive folks to do these things this is a hard situation and this is not fun for anyone and again I encourage you if you don't wish to do it see what happened in 2013 and see the
186immediate effect that losing some of these programs had and why we turned around and did an override after that because parents realized oh this sucks this is not what I want and we agree with you constantly people talk about all of these negatives that just aren't true and again our own report will show it and I'm looking forward to surprisingly a budget explanation come the first because it is showing the remarkable things that education has been forced to do we are the craftiest of folks in that if you want to know who knows how to budget well poor folks they're the ones who know how to budget well and education is poor it is and so at the end of the day these remarkable things in our community we want it we were 317 votes
187shy 3177 so for the 317 people who go oh I do not want that excellent I am here to work with you so we can make sure it overwhelmingly passes thank you Mr Moore for your time and all of the wonderful things that you routinely do for this District in terms of putting Staff first because that ultimately is what benefits uh students the most and I am greatly appreciative of that having two children who are young and will be here for quite some time president Wade Mr Moore um I appreciate everything you said president Wade um but I have uh can you repeat what you said about the mandrin program I missed that um and to board member Van Hooks point and I believe Miss Wade uh then you know people tend to pick the
188programs that their kids aren't in which I understand the mandin program is a small program um I might be biased towards the mandar room program but I will leave that out but I just um wanted to hear what you had had to say about that keeping a portion of it or can you remember president way and member Schultz um in our reflection of this survey in some of the categories the straight elimination of Mandarin shouldn't been our only option that's our reflection there's other options to restructure like I have here there's other options um that in our reflection in some of the comments and uh feedback that we got that we should have had additional categories U to help um again further provide different options for survey people or people who took the survey to
189uh further uh categorize that better so that is our self-reflection um in response to the survey thank you I appreciate that um we did receive a ton of feedback from parents who as as the parent pointed out earlier Mandarin parents are passionate um and involved so I appreciate you clarifying that for them thank you oh I'm sorry one last thing um I want to say I really appreciate your slide number five um that does put in perspective you know neg only a difference of 12 and that we are getting so many students from Charter and surrounding schools um I I I love that chart so thank you so much for putting that um into clear perspective for US president Wade um we know what we have financially and we know what we have to function
190with as one of the speakers Did quote you from an article and now we know you are wrong decisions were made that should not have been made the way that they were because it was in the hopes that an override would pass and we don't make decisions based on hope we make decisions based on the money we have now and I think for far too long we got comfortable with having extra funds from the SR funds from covid money and that's how our M managed to balloon up so big and we got too comfortable with that the funding from the state and federal doesn't stop that money continues to come every year so to to say it's a one-time funding with the with the m no we still continue to get state and federal funding
191our bank account's not going to go to zero we're still going to keep getting money and yes we are getting students that are coming in but we also have students leaving so imagine if those students didn't leave and the impact that that would have the positive impact that that would have on our financials so the difference might be 12 but it's still a huge difference the fact that we have these numbers leaving so to say it's only 12 is not true because these have a huge huge impact financially so let's do something about it and I do appreciate all the work that you've done and and the fact that you do budget conservatively I I'm probably more than anybody appreciate a conservative budget but when we come into this situation and we need to figure
192out how to fund it and we have money sitting in the bank let's figure out how to use that to where we don't have to make these Cuts we have land to sell we have declining enroll moment that we could potentially consider consolidating a couple schools look let's look at the bigger picture and and the options in order to function within what we have and then go from there but to you know for for us to create this I mean we we saw the emails that we were getting and unfortunately there was information that was you know incorrect so it kind of created a bunch of stress but um we we have to learn to function um with what we have before we continue to say give me more money because I have money sit
193in the bank that I'm not willing to use uh Mr Moore I'm going to ask can we go to the slide that lists all of the things that we ranked and the amount of money that that would do I have no idea what number it is that's the one thanks sir um when we look at for example School closure consolidation of smaller Elementary sites that is $750,000 Mr Moore um the remaining 66% of the M&L that is sunsetting can you remind me what amount of money that is yeah president wait it's on this slide so approximately $9 million if thank you so very much um so again these solutions that you're providing I'm not saying do not immediately solve what we have in front of us but then I ask what does that mean for
194the future we also just talked about how for fiscal year 2026 we are not giving raises what will happen if we cannot continue to give raises and so while we're able to use this money right now for next year then that means no more raises after that because that's where the money comes down to right if we sell off our land at $ 7.3 million which is great the second we spend that $7.3 million that is gone for us and so there are other options I know that you are going to present and how those things are I cannot emphasize enough that while we have these things available we also have really old buildings again williamsfield air conditioning went out this past summer and we talked about potentially even having to send everybody home because
195dear Lord it was very very hot I think it was like August or something and this is Arizona and you know the temperature is real we also had a water main break at Cortina and the amount of money that that unexpected expense is so I ask yourself individually at home when you budget if you know that your uh job is no longer expanding at all right uh and your income is going to be fixed and you have a small pot of savings ask yourself Is it wise to use all of that savings right now now knowing the potential Financial hardships that are in your future or knowing at the end of the day that inflation is increasing and the cost of it you just merely existing will go up how many of you would be
196overwhelmingly willing to take whatever safety net you have and just get rid of it that is what we're asking when we say get rid of the carry forward and again you have in an appropriate and conservative fashion look to the carry forward when we can the point is what is sustainable beyond that Mr Moore I I wish to challenge the that you lied to us in terms of the raise that we put forward it was not you alone who presented that there was a committee of individuals who were part of the citizens group who came forward to also recommend that they are also not Liars in what is in front of them they looked at the value of retaining teachers they looked at the value of telling teachers that you matter and administration that you
197matter and this is the raise you deserve in order to exist in the society around you because cost of living is getting very scary and we again do not pay our teachers very well in in terms of our starting salary our base salary is less than $50,000 these things matter in the grand scheme of things when you are looking at or saying I love teachers and overwhelmingly that's what our like that's what our community is telling you I love the things that are here then show value to it because we don't have any other options you have go ahead Mr GL thank you madam president so um you know I Liv through some budget cuts uh gosh 2008 2009 and I will tell you that everyone here that the wounds from that in a different
198District are still there some people have never gotten right about things that were cut um so you know I I've came on in January um you know and so it was kind of like this is this is what we've already been going through and this these are the cuts I'm just want to make a comment and say you know of course one of our roles as board members is to pass a budget so I just want to make sure that you all know that I want to definitely be included in these things I highly value Elementary Librarians I highly value um our our Elementary music programs all of them um The Mandarin program I'm supportive of so I just want to make sure that you know everyone is fully aware that I it's really hard
199for me to get things like on a THD and then like have to be in front of people on a Tuesday um you know I don't need to make all the decisions but I just would like to be a a more active participant than I have been in January um as these things are being you know decided or floated out there that's all and I'm probably going to need a restroom break soon why don't we do a five minute recess because I would also like that that'd be great do we need a second I don't think so okay I yeah look at that it's a little embarrassing that's all on camera now but anyway I asked once that's why I'm aware so it is 8:37 we'll be back in e e e okay have something
200to say before you move okay all right thank you everybody for and I apologize for the re we are going to uh continue back where we were go ahead miss van hook um and just to your last Point um when we know things are tightening up um do we go to the bank and say give me a loan cuz I might not have a job for long or um things are getting tough so I need a loan that I might have trouble paying back I mean those are things to consider um or or do we figure out how to budget and and function um based on our income and uh what we have on hand I can say something real quick can I say something go ahead just okay obviously like sustainability is a really
201good goal um and so it's helpful to know this chart is helpful that it's about what is it 12 million or um and it would be pretty empowering to kind of be able to maybe do it kind of on our own um so I just since we have the carryover um if we could possibly utilize that and um it's kind of saddening to see that all the cuts are in the classroom I don't know if we can regroup and just double check that like I don't know if it's a little uh Dr uh the theatrical effect but um just it would it might be pretty empowering to kind of figure out a way if there's a way to do it without the ML and we know how much that is and if we could really
202uh strive for more self- sustaining I think that might be a good feeling thank you president Wade um we can function barely because there just isn't any money this is again because of the legislators have set this up this way and the way schools are funded in our state president wait could just make a comment the functioning I just want to clarify the list again that we provided was a plan for phase down into 2027 so again this is staying in place for next school year July 1 26 this is in place we are absorbing $3.7 million and basically a budget reduction to keep a lot of these programs in place um in order to operate without the override it would take eliminating all this list and we can look elsewhere too but 85% of
203our budget is in the classroom and programs and so um we can cut our grounds we can cut Administration we can cut but we're not going to get to to $14 million is what is what the override has been supporting the district with so um I just want the board to know if we continue down this road and we want to operate without an override we can certainly expect a majority of this list would be have to take into consideration um you know in addition we can we can look at other areas as well but yeah I just wanted to make that clear but one this is is a planning phase this is information this is all in place for next year but as we continue through these conversations um that's that's what this really
204survey represents so uh thank you for the clarification Mr Moore I think it is helpful especially when you remind the total M that is a $14 million uh aspect to our budget that we've been operating with when that goes away we might be able to handle it one year or two years but what happens when all that savings is out it's a it's a valid argument and I appreciate uh the reminder of that this brings us to uh 7.5 update on classroom site fund again Mr Moore this is you president way members of the board um I wanted to break this presentation out from the m&o conversation this is a separate bucket of money that we have uh and to your point earlier of leveraging different accounts uh to maximize what we do for our
205teachers and and our staff this is one way that we are doing that um in the classroom type fund bucket um this is One Fund that we have available to us that is statutorily um um that was introduced statutorily um several years ago and then I'll cover it that was renewed but just to highlight we're we're talking about this bucket in isolation we just talked about M um on the left we'll talk about Capital um at a later date those are our two main State uh buckets if you were um this classroom cund bucket is what we're going to discuss in addition we have 43 other buckets that uh we leverage we utilize um for all of our programs throughout our district looking at this Sor I had some little highlights emphasize that bucket um
206the FY 26 classroom site fund just to kind of recap or refresh um the board or or Community um this funding stream is statutorily um listed under 15977 the CSF was extended another 20 years by the legislature in 2018 um and again this funding stream is uh for public education that comes from sales tax this fluctuates annually um we're currently in fiscal year 2025 operating um receiving Revenue in the tune of $792 per weighted student um back in 2008 2009 this was down to $100 and so this is another where we have to look at um how much can we obligate on an annual basis and make sure that this is sustainable um the CSF allowable uses is ined to support K12 um and increased teacher salaries in 2021 s SP 1130 expanded the use
207of class CSF to include student Support Services examples include spad and instructional coaches and also uh this is where you know again the board received some notification we originally were under the impression that preschool is not eligible for this bucket um but we did look through uh State Statute and AG opinions um and and was able to justify putting those individuals back into that bucket and so um there's going to be no change to that uh we did have some recommendations um to change that but we were able to correct that and again I personally take some responsibility for that interpretation but um it doesn't clearly State preschool um and so it's just a difficult um responsibility that again I take ownership of so we fixed it and tonight that those Preschool teachers are included
208in this plan um and will continue to be um so hu history the total amount in CSF pay uh perform per performance has continued to increase um the state as a whole so this bucket has been operating and growing exponentially um sales tax in terms of like Arizona looking at a whole right we've hosted World Series we've hosted a number of different events and so our e economic impact in terms of sales tax and the activity in Arizona has continued to rise which has increased the funding per weighted student in this bucket and so we've leveraged that and you can see over the past four years we've increased this uh amount that we're paying from this bucket to teachers um over $3,000 and so uh tonight uh we are recommending an increase again from this
209bucket to uh support our certified teacher salary schedule um as you alluded to earlier our current base salary which comes from m is under 50,000 we currently are at 46210 the rest of these Buckets come from that the rest of these line items come from that classroom site fund bucket um and again that totals uh just over $112,000 in terms of $2,597 and so our plan this is unique to Higley but each district creates a plan in which how they want to utilize these funds um our plan includes a base amount a supplemental pay which is paid in uh December and then a performance pay which is paid in June based on uh evaluation criteria um the line item in which we uh meet and confer discussed increasing was the base amount um and that
210represents an 8% increase in total teacher salary pay but it's actually 6% increase in that class s fund bucket and so uh We've looked at that bucket again we feel like this is sustainable for the next uh 3 to four years again I can't predict sales tax um if we go through a recession that can drastically change overnight um but we do have a sufficient amount of money in there um like you said earlier how can we get this money into Teachers Pay and leverage these different buckets to uh continue to honor our staff and one point of emphasis is through the meet and confer process the teachers selfishly you some of the conversations were regarding like this is unfair just do teachers but um you know I I honestly pushed back a little and
211said this bucket is for teachers and um we eventually came to you know like we want to use this to continue honor teachers and keep our teacher pay moving up um total teacher pay uh for 26 would be just under again this is a starting teacher salary would be just under $60,000 um with this increase and so um that is presented and recommended in the salary schedules that are on the later in the agenda and uh also in the certified teacher contracts again certified Preschool teachers are included in this teacher contract so just short presentation uh regarding this bucket any questions or comments before we move on to action items this brings us to 8.1 approval of award RFQ number 25-0 2-30 construction manager at risk uh CM for weatherization of schools to Concord General
212Contracting uh Mr Moore you also have a comment on this one yeah president way members of the board I just have a brief comment um the district issued an RFQ uh for construction manager at risk for uh several uh seven approximately weatherization projects that we are in the application Phase uh for the school facilities division um through this process bundling this with one single contractor the district felt that we'd get better pricing uh in the long run and so uh the committee as you see is presented in the is in the agenda um and they participated through two uh interview processes um and ultimately recommended a Concord to be the contractor of choice for these projects again these projects are not I want to State very clearly are not funded currently if this state Awards
213these we now have a contractor in place to um go forth and uh start the construction on these so um we are optimistic this August again depending on the legislative cycle and how much budget is allocated towards the sfb for next year that some of these projects will get approved in August so um from that point we would bring back um the total construction cost for the board to approve tonight you're only approving um the contractor of record uh if and when these these projects get approved so thank you do we have any questions or comments before I make the motion I motion that the governing board approve the award of requests for qualifications RFQ number 25- 0230 for the construction manager at risk CM for the weatherization of Schools project to Concord General Contracting
214thank you Mr German for the second all those in favor I motion carries 5 next this brings us to 8.2 tentative approval of fiscal year 2026 maintenance and operation budget do we have any questions or comments before I make the motion I motion that the governing board tentatively approve the fiscal year 2026 maintenance and operations budget to allow for the issuance of contracts to all employees for the 2025 2026 school year second thank you Mr Glover for the second all those in favor I I I all those opposed are you abstaining did you say I oh sorry my bad I did not this is 8.2 that's that's correct okay so then motion carries 5-0 this moves us to 8.3 direct District administration to proceed with M override resolution for the November 2025 election Mr MO
215you have comments for this yeah president way members of the board um the district is seeking Direction uh We've presented survey feedback we presented uh a number of different um resources for the board uh to determine whether the district um as a whole should pursue a resolution this is not approving the override to be placed on the ballot but really to bring back a resolution asking for That official do U to be placed on November so um or excuse me giving direction for the district so um we would just like some clarification and not make any assumptions throughout this process I also included the estimated cost of the election on an off-cycle election slightly higher than an on-cycle so president Wade Mr Moore what's the the 100,000 um what's that based on because the off
216cycle does special elections C definitely cost more yeah president Wade member of um so in an on cycle election if the town of Gilbert is also issuing an initiative uh we can split the cost for voter registration um so there's 60,000 approximately registered voters within our 24 square miles the district is obligated if we are placing something on the ballot to pay for each one of those um ballots to be mailed out and that's a majority of the cost um there's also some legal costs and the mar County superintendent's office has an election fee um there's also some translation fees in terms of translating pamphlet language so but a majority of the costs are related to the expenditure to pay for those ballots to be mailed out and by law we're required to mail out
217to all registered voters and does this include also uh the cost for possibly putting the sale of the land on the ballot which would require voter approval if not sold to a government entity yeah president way member Van Hook this is only regarding the M override election I plan to discuss that other agenda item at a later date so um M of sorry I would point out though that adding another question does not increase the cost the biggest initial cost is creating the pamphlet so if we were to add another question there's typically not an additional cost I I thought there was a cost per question on the ballot not with the the mailing okay oh yes mailing yes I forgot about that so it would be a mailin only ballot okay um sorry I'm
218just reading through my notes all right I'm good for now I motion that the governing board authorize District administration to proceed with drafting a m override resolution for the November 2025 election second o I'm going to give it to Tiffany she like get greedy Mr Glover all those in favor i i i oops if I may explain my vote please uh all those opposed um I would like to explain my vote are you in they I'm trying to make sure I write it down first that's why I just don't know what I would like to explain my vote before I say um I um have concern um because 2 months ago I mean we want to talk about the will of the voters um two months ago the voters again turn down the override um
219and I I want to be able to get more information and more more options on um on what we can do um so uh at this point I'm going to abstain um but I would like to uh schedule time to meet with you Mr Moore um to figure out uh what other options we have um that we can potentially look at um before moving forward with this thank you motion passes 3 three to one with one abstention item 8.4 wave second read and approval of GCB professional staff contracts and compensation do we have any questions or comments before I make the motion I motion that the governing board wave the second oh sorry 8.4 um I believe uh this is a violation of our policy bgb which states first meeting the proposal should be presented
220to for review second meeting the proposal shall be presented for discussion and action and bgb says policy policies may be adopted or amended at a single meeting of the board when the proposed policy or amendment is consistent with statutes and um other policies and board members are unanimously in favor of adoption I'm gonna wait on you miss thanks Madam president I'm trying to find your policy so no worries I just letting the folks at home know you okay I'm there give me a second um so uh Madam president M man hook did read the portion of the policy correctly which says that policies may be amended at a single meeting of the board when the proposed policy or amendment is consistent with statutes and other policies and board members are unan unanimously in favor of
221adoption um so the question would be whether if you wave the second read which you are permitted to wave policy um can you wave the provision of your policy that requires the unanimous approval does that make sense no okay let me let me try to explain it again you have the ability as a governing board to wave your policies what you have as an action I'm is the waving of the second approval so the legal question is whether you can both wave the second reading and wave the requirement for un unanimous approval so in other words decide to be to suspend policy bgb for this board meeting I would tell you that your safest course of action if you there's not unanimous approval would be to have a second read next month which would not
222impact your ability to issue contracts so do I to make a motion to have the read uh if or just table you I your safest thing to do would be to table okay would you like to do it and then not all right I'm going to motion that we table this then so we're following the laws for our second read of GCB second oh thanks Tiffany I should write that down that would be Miss Schultz seconding all those in favor of tabling hi y okay great uh the table will carry Z this brings us to 8.5 approval of 2025 2026 salary schedules Miss Johnson comments um Madame President yes um just to let you know and this was in status last week but uh the changes to the supplemental oh wait yes seller schedules so
223supplemental is the changes that were described in status last week as well as what Mr Moore alluded to with the classroom site fund of the increase of $487 no other salary schedules were changed only the supplemental and that one changed to the CSF all salary schedules remain the same for 2526 thank you Mr ch do we have any comments or questions before I motion I motion that the governing board approve 2526 fiscal year salary schedules as presented in the attached documents affected for the new fiscal year July 1 second that would be Miss Schultz seconding all those in favor I I motion carries 5- Z Item 8.6 approval of 2025 2026 employee contracts uh I actually have questions and comments uh so miss mlon um question I have because something that was removed from these
224contracts per our last board meeting um is uh clarification of protected uh classes essentially for individuals who are uh are employees and that classification would be sexual orientation and gender identity and as far as I understand it um and you can correct me if I'm wrong uh currently the issue of that protection is within the courts and so I I'm I am asking if we are in a situation in which the federal government says this is the minimum requirements of protections and we go above that knowing that there is some potential legal changes to those classifications in the future are we in violation of that if we continue to have those qualifications after sex in our protected classes does that make sense my question president wait it does um you are not in violation of
225the current federal or state laws if you include the parenthetical however the parenthetical whether it be in your contracts or in your policy is subject to the interpretations of the US Department of Education and of the the Federal ederal courts those things are in flux right now um as you are aware the uh 2024 regulations implementing Title 9 UM of the Education Act included um identifying gender identity and sexual orientation as a part of the definition of sex protected by the various statutes that the US Department of Education overseas including uh title 7 Title 9 UM the uh recent recision of those Federal Regulations um would revert the definition of sex back to how the courts interpret it and currently there is not a US Supreme Court decision with respect to that definition in the
226title 9 context um so it would not be uh it what whatever this board decides to do in terms of its contract language and or its policy language is going to be subject to the decisions that are forthcoming okay so um before I make my motion I'm going to allow opportunity for others to speak should you desire to do this um considering for me personally the idea that there is a question and we are not in violation of any laws we don't have any concerns of what that could mean until the the gray area gets decided by the courts um I look at it as I I the idea that we would remove sexual orientation and gender identity as telling our staff that whomever you are whomever you identify whether I agree or not you
227are still a human person and based off that identification you should not be discriminated against is something I personally will fight for and I personally choose to stand behind which is part of the reason why I'm I'm going to end up making this motion again after I give other individuals the opportunity to speak I think a a a business that works with all manner of people should stand up for all manner of people and for those who are online and looking at our contract if you continue one of the other protected options is political affiliation I I think the idea that would remove sexual orientation and gender identity regardless of where we are at especially considering that there is a uh potential gray area because something is not decided at the present moment I personally
228am going to make a a statement of we should honor and respect and do all we can to protect uh all groups regardless of how we personally feel or see those issues uh if somebody else would like to make a comment that is this is your opportunity and then I can make my my motion before I motion on the agenda item to begin with President Wade um miss mlen you said that we would be subject to you know if the decision where we're at in the courts what does that look like for our contracts though like if we left it on there and we had to change it or I'm just trying sure sure uh president Wade M Schultz so what I mean by that is that ultimately what your contract language says is it
229mirrors your policies and state and federal law indicating that you can't an employee can't discriminate against an individual it is meant and included within the contract documents to provide notice to the employees of the their obligation to act in an anti-discriminatory manner with staff students visitors so ultimately what would mean if the courts do not include those terms within the definition sex is that you couldn't discipline potentially or you or if you were um if you were looking at um how that policy was to be interpreted that's what that would mean thank you so with that I sorry go ahead um So based on um I got to bring up the contract this is item 8.6 so current language is person sex race religion color national origin age disability veteran status political off affiliation and
230genetic code so by saying person sex that should cover a person's sex and based on the executive order yes somebody's challenging it but at the same time under the direction of the Department of Education they reverted back to the original language for title 7 and Title so I don't understand how we can you're saying that we can include the language and not risk being impacted by a violation Madame President Miss V hook the the definition of sex whether it being in your contract or your policy is going to be subject to federal law so if you said that you um protected let's just take gender identity and the courts ultimately find that you cannot protect that that it's not protected then the interpretation of that contract would be subject to the federal law whether that
231be a federal law that's uh published by Congress or whether that be a federal law that's established by the courts I thought it got resented Madame President miss jarm the US Department of Education published regulations in the title 9 context that contained an expansive definition of sex and it was rescinded in January of 2025 so now the definition of sex is sub solely to the interpretation of the courts without um guidance from the US Department of education's regulations president Wade and what about the other executive order related to um male and female Madame President Miss Van Hook so again that executive order is also as I understand it currently subject to litigation so all of this when you describe it as gray I would say that's accurate we don't know how the courts will come
232out with respect to this issue especially in light of the US Supreme Court's decision in bowo where they did extend the definition of sex to include sexual orientation in the title 7 context so it's very gray it's it is in all transparency it's my office's recommendation that you remove the parenthetical just so that you then sex is up to the courts right but I it's a decision for the board so again um recognizing all of that and I appreciate your legal advice I personally am choosing to do this because again we are a uh an entity of people and whether or not I agree with you whether or not I see you as a person doesn't mean that you are any less human or have any less value and so at the end of the
233day I argue that until the courts decide this and there is some potential legal ramifications because my job is to serve the best interest of Higley that while it is gray I am going to say that we should include the parentheticals because whether or not you agree with them queer folk exist transfolk exist and so I personally am going to uh motion that we approve employment contracts as presented with the exception of retaining the parenthetical information following the word sex in the anti-discrimination requir second Mr Glover seconded I was going to write that on the wrong thing oh goodness Christine I do not know where you want me to write it but I'm writing it down right here Mr Glover seconded that thank you uh all those in favor of including that language the parentheticals
234after uh the word sex I I all those opposed nay that motion to include um when I make this motion for what we have before do do I need to say including anything of the motion that we just carried or is that kind of understood I just want to make sure I use the proper language yeah so now approval of that yes um so you've you've amended the contract language and now you would approve the as amended okay so I motion that the governing board approve the 2025 2026 contracts as amended second Miss Schultz will second that all those in favor I I all those opposed May motion carries 32 go ahead I just want to quickly say I I don't want to discriminate against anyone and if it's not a legal ra ramification then
235I I don't understand why we would go backwards so president Wade if I may um yeah I don't think anybody's going backwards um I think uh I I think that no nobody should be discriminated no matter what uh everybody should be treated as human beings um and uh at the same time nobody should require special treatments um based on a specific belief um everybody should be treated equally um and uh equal as human beings so um to to require anything additional um I think is discriminatory uh within itself so I just want to clarify that nothing we just voted on gave anybody special treatment correct Miss Mullen president weigh Miss Schultz that's correct thank you item 8.7 approval of over wait that's what we're on right yeah yeah okay sorry didn't mark uh 8.7 approval
236of overnight Andor outof State staff travel we have any questions or comments yes um okay so um I did notice that some staff members are scheduled to speak at this conference um however um with the current Cuts uh spending $112,000 to send um what looks like um admin staff to a conference I'm not sure is a um responsible use of public funds um and and this is again I if I mean this if we're considering you know for instance the Mandarin program uh 50,000 I mean this I'm sorry the Mandarin is 500,000 uh I think the numbers changed for some reason because I remember there was like coaches on there too at like 35,000 and that's different um so this was before I saw the numbers change but anyway I mean this is like a
237whatever is 50,000 this is a quarter way of of being able to fund um that and I and as a speaker mentioned uh we did spend half a million dollars last year and the year before on travel related expenses um and we need to consider those expenses when we're dealing with cut that's um that's all um first again board member Van Hook I agree with you in that we should not do frivolous spending especially considering where we're at for the cuts some things that either you may not be aware of or at the very least certain members of the public um our administrative staff our certified teachers we are contractually obligated to do PD uh it is a state requirement in order for us to retain our certifications and so the idea that we as
238a as an entity would provide that funding uh I existed before in uh Higley in which we weren't paying for some of that staff training and then what happened staff didn't get the training and our results kind of reflected some of those things um so while I hear you in that it isn't uh you know Wise to just do frivolous spending I again these are contractual obligations that we have for our staff the expectation is that they in order to maintain their CTS have to reive professional development and as an organization if we are requiring that you do that um the state doesn't provide the funding for that it has to come from somewhere otherwise we run the risk of having less qualified teachers um and something else to keep in mind is again our
239neighboring districts do provide funding for these professional developments and so what that means is if you're a teacher you don't come here because we won't pay for it and it can be costly and that's tough um so so I I I just think that aspect is important having that c that requirement I don't know how many people are aware of the fact that it is literally a contractual obligation and I'm required by the state of Arizona to do that uh training in order to maintain my CT uh president Wade in regards to this specific travel um I believe this is 13 admin staff um and I do understand the importance of professional development but when we are making cuts um sending 13 people to Laughlin for several days um is something that we could maybe
240look at and consider otherwise um but I do get the professional development is required uh but again we've spent a half a million dollars um the last two years in a row uh for that and we need to look at the bigger picture I motion that the governing board approve the overnight n of State travel uh request as presented great thanks Mr glver all those in favor I I I all those opposed motion carries 32 items for future agenda this agenda item is for the governing board to have a running oh wait do I even need to say that do we just have does anyone have any requests for future agenda items oh goodness the last page I motion we adjourn this meeting thanks anav Van Hook seconded all those in favor I I motion
241carries 5 Z thank you for everyone who stayed thank you than you for