001e e good evening I'd like to call this meeting to order Mrs Richard may please have the roll call yes president Anderson let the record show that four out of five board members are here this evening Miss Reese is not able to join us thank you please join me in a moment of silence followed by the Pledge of Allegiance e I motion to approve the agenda seconded by Mrs Wade all those in favor I I I motion carries four to zero all right right Mrs Richards are we ready for Higley Adventures president Anderson we absolutely are we're excited this evening we have several students joining us first I want to acknowledge our Chinese Bridge contestants that we'll get this in a minute there o sorry these students um Higley High School students Carson weard a
002senior Dylan Phillips also a senior naara M Dua Jr and freshman Cody Hill all participated in the Chinese Bridge online competition in April where they delivered speeches about their Journeys in learning Mandarin they also showcased their talents in the competition's talent show Dylan impressed the judges with a martial arts performance Nara wowed the audience with an ice skating dance and Kobe performed a Chinese song on his trumpet Carson's Talent was a captivating piano performance combined with singing and Mandarin Carson's exceptional performance earned him first prize so I'm going to going to have Miss pan leatherby come up with Carson and I believe Kobe is here this [Applause] evening I want to highlight a couple of other things about about Carson here are some photos of Carson while he was in China for this competition in
003October this is he won the first place regionally and then represented the US and the world competition where he came in second place it was an incredibly close competition he represented the United States in Arizona exceptionally well so we're excited to have both of you here with your teacher this evening and before we take pictures I'm going to let Miss leatherby say something and then Carson can you teach us something in Mandarin well I have to say I'm super super proud of my students and the support from the school district and Al Carson give us the short lesson okay um I guess you might hear this later when I speak for a moment but good evening is guys want to try yeah nice good job perfect yeah if I might grab my speech here did
004a lot of speech memorizing while I was there so I figured I'd take a break and bring some prepared for fore [Applause] uh we'll go one more time in the English here H good evening everybody principes District administrators Schoolboard members teachers and parents it's an honor to have the chance to speak briefly tonight to thank you not only for the recognition but also for all your support um my recent opportunity to travel to China and compete in the 17th World Chinese Bridge competition was an unforgettable Unforgettable experience made possible by my supportive motivating encouraging and hardworking teacher and Coach Mrs leatherby or as we know her in Mandarin class pan and by extension the Higley Unified School District that supports all of our initiatives all our successes that we can achieve together are not only
005from our hard workor but from this community and this support base that we have the district teachers and parents all work together to make us truly grateful and they motivate us to succeed thank you all again for your encouragement your recognition and your time have a good night [Applause] we're not going to leave kby out he's going to teach you something else in Mandarin so pay attention I'll teach you guys two of the easiest ones hello and goodbye so hello is knall so let's try that knall and then goodbye is zen zen see we have teachers up here too great job I've known Carson since fourth grade fourth grade he was one of my students at Bridges Mr Bickle is giving you um booah uh I appreciate you guys and I appreciate you being put
006on the spot here and teaching us something so I know the school board is interested in taking a picture with you guys get over here [Applause] oops in a minute all right next we are excited to represent or present and let them represent the Spartan Wrestling program it just had its most successful year in history finishing as the runner up at the East Valley Conference Championship tournament their season was marked by multiple victories while it was a true team effort these three young men won the champ ionship for their weight class and played a significant role in the team's success we are proud of what they have accomplished and look forward to seeing what they continue to achieve next year so I need Mr Brandon keing to come [Applause] up all right and I would
007like to invite up Coach T and Coach Nisbet and Coach Smith as well as our tremendous athletes um Remington I'm sorry Kingston Jud um who else was here tonight Carter wahre and Hudson Smith and since you guys already learned some manderin tonight coach tid said he wanted to teach some wrestling moves as well thoughts if you don't mind I'm just [Applause] just kidding so um it was already mentioned in the in the bio but um coach tid has been working really closely with higgle High to build a really strong connection between our programs and um the effort from the coaches and the effort from our 40 plus athletes that were part of the program this year um really showed itself at the end of the season and as much as it was a team effort
008um the individual effort from the the young men that are up here tonight um were just exceptional throughout the season they put in hours of hard work dedication were coachable um and listen to the wisdom of these three men and and they had a great season um we look forward to what they're both going to do at higgle High and um our our other wrestler who couldn't be here tonight um is actually going to be a Spartan again next year and so hopefully we get our first backto back next year individual Champion so which we will Coach says [Applause] [Music] [Applause] congratulations next we are pleased to announce that last month at the Arizona inter Scholastic press association's annual conference our own williamsfield yearbook took home 19 out of 24 possible Awards their top award
009was excellence in theme development and design for the 2324 yearbook their teacher Mr Devin Adams also was invited to present on streamlining yearbook programs in secondary schools his session was attended well and we want to acknowledge these guys for their hard work so Mr Adams [Applause] thank you so much um I'd like to bring up a couple staff members we have Olivia Ernest who is last year's editor-in Chief as well as several editors from this year ladies if you'd like to come on [Applause] up we got a couple shy people back there so we really appreciate the board and administration and the district to continue to support the journalism programs the yearbook programs at both high schools as well as the middle schools and we are very honored and blessed to be here and have
010such wonderful wonderful human beings who are leading the staff into uh the next couple years thank you [Applause] take forever okay we're ready for points of Pride here we want to start with Bridges Bobcats Mr Jeff Bickle and Elizabeth melter president Anderson members of the board cabinet superintendent Richards thank you for the opportunity to uh honor our best and brightest it's truly a full circle moment for me right now as Carson wingert was up here six years ago with us with Mr Berg and I and we were able to honor him in this capacity so uh we're passing the torch to Grayson sudor our student of our point of Pride this year come on [Applause] up congratulations okay so if you want to stand here I get to say a few things about you Grayson
011so Bridges Elementary School is thrilled to honor Grayson sudor as the 2024 Bridges points of Pride recipient Grayson exemplifies a growth mindset daily approaching challenges with resilience and an unwavering willingness to persevere each day she arrives at school with a smile ready to learn and Tackle new experiences with enthusiasm Grayson's Integrity shines both in the classroom and on the playground where she treats others with patience respect and kindness she collaborates seamlessly with her peers always willing to lend a helping hand and Foster a supportive learning environment with focus and determination Grayson accomplishes her goals and consistently produces work that reflects her pride and commitment to Excellence through her kindness growth mindset and respect for others Grayson enriches our classrooms and elevates the entire Bridges Community congratulations Grayson on this huge accomplishment I'm so proud of
012you and who did you bring with you tonight my mom my sister and my dad fantastic well welcome suitors thank you for being here okay congrats and at this point I would like to call up oh hang on Grayson you're gonna you're gonna hang right here we have some gifts for you too so you can't you can't leave yet uh at this point I would like to call up our certified staff member Renee [Applause] Kelly this is long overdue I've been able to work with Renee for the last 10 almost 11 years now and she is excellent excellent As Good As It Gets and so Renee is a fifth grade teacher at our campus she embodies the qualities we value most in our Educators she is an outstanding teacher who brings unwavering passion and commitment
013to her instruction every day creating a classroom where students consistently Thrive her remarkable test scores reflect her immense level of Effectiveness instructionally yet one of her biggest strengths lies in her deep authentic relationships with both students and colleagues Renee is a positive uplifting presence hardworking intentional and exceptionally insightful her love for teaching shines through and all she does and bridges is truly fortunate to have such a dedicated and inspiring educator on our campus Mrs Kelly enriches our community truly making it a better place to learn and work [Applause] congratulations and who did you bring with you tonight my husband Mike Kelly Miss melter if I can please have Miss Amy shoy up to the [Applause] Amy shudy our media Aid at Bridges Elementary is truly deserving of the 2024 classified staff member point of Pride
014Award with years of experience in similar roles Amy brings invaluable knowledge and expertise to our campus her warm welcoming presence transforms the library into a space where students feel both inspired and supported and her positive spirit is wonderfully infectious proactive dedicated and highly professional Amy Works tirelessly to ensure that every student's Library experience is enriching and enjoyable on behalf of our entire staff I can confidently say that Mrs shudy is an indispensable and cherished member of the British of the bridges team [Applause] oh who'd you bring I brought my family with all eight of my grandbabies and finally can we have Mrs Morgan tanon bomb up front [Applause] please you're good morgan tanon bomb is TR deserving of our 2024 volunteer point of Pride award as a long-standing member of our PTO board Morgan's dedication
015to supporting the students staff and community at Bridges is truly remarkable she brings a dynamic fun and Brilliant presence to every Endeavor working with exceptional organization and tireless energy to make a positive impact from early mornings to late nights in every moment in between Mrs tanon Bal goes above and beyond to enhance our school environment her contributions have made a lasting difference and we are immensely grateful to have her as part of our bridges family and who' you bring with you uh my husband Steve tanom my son Colton my daughter Ava my son Logan also know as meatball and my son Owen [Applause] now we're going to pass out cookies or something yes and Mr Bickle did you get some information today that's worth celebrating I sure did we were named the number 11 Elementary
016School in the state of Arizona out of 1,700 today 11th huge thank you what I'm most proud of though is how long we've sustained this type of ranking it's been nine years now where we've been at the the top of the state and it really goes back to the people in our building our amazing students staff and teachers it doesn't get better than that so thank you we appreciate it thanks for the recognition congratulations congratul conat [Applause] all right next of course is Coronado Elementary Mr Brian Griggs and Alice [Applause] stortini president Anderson members of the board thank you so much for having us here tonight to celebrate uh just the great things that are going on at Coronado and the people that we highlight tonight are definitely a key uh reason for all the
017great things that are going on in Coronado uh as introduced so Dr stortini is our assistant principal so she'll kick it off with our certified staff member all right can I have yay laure come on [Applause] up all right yeah La Shure is one of the most energetic teachers that we have ever worked with her positivity and encouragement towards teachers students and families and other staff is on display every day as the Mandarin classroom teacher in our kindergarten dual language emersion program she sets the tone for students experiences in school specifically what it means to be a Coronado coyote in the DLI program behind the scenes Miss Jay is the sounding board for all teachers to to get ideas and encouragement and how to best improve their classrooms when we talk about someone who can
018provide a premier education for all students in their classroom we are talking about Miss yay who you who' you bring with you uh I bring my mom and then my sister and then there my team member and then everyone yes [Applause] thank St all right and I'm excited to introduce our volunteers so miss Merl come on [Applause] down so one of the things that I I appreciate about Miss Merill is she is a person of details so she is our PTO treasurer and she is also someone who uh with the bulletin board for the birthday so you want to talk of an important details making sure a kid's birthday is accurate and timely making sure the finances for the PTO accurate and timely but most of all she makes sure that every single thing that
019we do on campus lines up with that Premier education for every single student Miss Merill is the treasur of the parent teacher organization at Coronado Elementary she advocates for the vision of Student Success and the support of those who make that happen she devotes many hours each week using her attention to detail and focus on the kids she helps communicate the financial aspects of the PTO And Timely and meaningful ways her work on the student birthday bulletin board brings a smile to students faces as they walk through the hallway during their birthday month her presence on campus as a classroom volunteer PTO volunteer and just an allaround just great person to be working with is someone for the sake of the students and all the students and staff are greatly thankful for all the work
020that you have done so thank you Miss Merill who'd you bring with you I actually couldn't bring anyone because I coordinate everyone getting to where they need to go so what I hear is Miss Merill has a night to herself and so she can have fun [Applause] okay can we have Miss Kelly Harkins come [Applause] up okay and Miss Kelly Harkins is our classified staff all right Miss Harkins is a crucial part of the Coronado team and helps set the tone of our front office she is one of the first individuals that new families interact with as as they enroll she walks them through the process is gracious in answering their questions and her attention to detail is greatly appreciated her care extends to the students and staff as she is the one to remember
021and celebrate milestones for individuals Miss Harkins is quick to assist wherever help is needed and encapsulates what we mean when we say we are one who did you bring with you I brought my husband Todd and my son Nicholas [Applause] all right Hayden Weaver come on down this is our student that we are celebrating today Hayden is a sixth grader at Coronado you excited all right so when I consider Hayden I think of the word faithfulness so she is someone that you can count on day in and day out so she is someone who is constantly kind hardworking she positively perseveres she acts respectful and she works the potential every single day that's what we expect of every single Coronado coyote she embodies that every single day so nice job Hayden so Hayden when we
022discuss what it means to be a Coronado coyote we look for students who demonstrate that positive perseverance act respectfully work to potential and stay safe you do that consistently on a daily basis you work hard you're a person of character other people enjoy working with you Hayden you are someone who is proactive in encouraging others you spread positivity around campus and it does not go unnoticed your teachers love having you in class they're so proud of you I'm proud of you Dr stortini so many people are proud of you all the hard work that you are doing we are so thankful that you're part of coyote Nation we're so excited to see the great things that you have done this year middle school and Beyond okay you're going to do great things Hayden we are
023so proud of you and with that who' you bring with you I brought my brother my mom and my dad there we go all right I think we're ready congratulations Coronado great job [Applause] conratulations okay president Anderson next we have our upcoming events Thursday November 28th and Friday November 29th maybe I'll wait a second and let people transition this is a great time thank you everybody for coming if if you would like to leave go get some dinner take care of what you need to for the evening we're proud of you and we thank you all for coming tonight congratulations just in case you don't know it's M's birthday today yeah we president Anderson now we're ready next Thursday and Friday November 28th and 29th are holidays which means no school for Thanksgiving we wish
024everybody a safe wonderful time with their family Tuesday December 10th at 6: p.m. there is a virtual team mental health parent presentation and we also have a board meeting that evening here in the governing board room and I would be a miss right now if I didn't say happy birthday to the board president Michelle Anderson we can either sing or clap which [Laughter] [Applause] one happy birthday thank you it's great to be 35 okay all right thank you everyone next is the request to speak if we could go ahead and 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
025the 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 ARS 38-4 31.0 1i 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
026period 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 okay first up we have Kathleen Richards just kidding good evening governing board and members of our husd Administration thank you for the opportunity to speak I wanted to take a moment to address with the failure of the override continuance to give a very public shout out to all of our specials teachers I know over the last several weeks many have asked me if I knew what would be coming down the pike should the override continuance not pass many of them have served our community and students long enough to remember the last time an overy did not pass and are very worried for the future
027it breaks my heart that the community was so sharply divided and by such a small margin the majority leaned into believing the lie that districts should be able to do more with less the reality we will now face is that our families will still bear the brunt of financial gas gaps Supply needs fees and more instead of Distributing the needs across the community over time we will be faced with cuts and increases and that is truly disappointing since it was very clearly avoidable I want to encourage our whole Community as we head into the holiday season to think beyond the obvious value of our general education teachers and be sure to acknowledge the small group of teachers that are guaranteed to work with every single student on an elementary campus these amazing humans provide incredible
028outlets for our students support the general education lessons that are being taught in classrooms and our schools would not be the same without them I know the board will have some very difficult decisions to be made in the coming months the decisions that get made should value the whole of education and not become too exclusively pigeon hold in the Reading Writing and arithmetic that some choose to hyperfocus on every day our teachers are doing more with less and it is deeply disappointing that we could not come together as a community to at least continue a level of support that we have already committed to giving over the last several years I hope all teachers understand but tonight especially our specials and electives teachers that despite what it may seem both from the Das and our
029community they are in fact very valued they are appreciated and their impact is felt in our homes and our families every day in the growth that we see in our children we would not be the same without them and we will continue to support them as best we can thank you next is Mindy brocker hi thank you guys I am a parent in this District who has committed myself to trying to make a difference in some small way sometimes it's to use my voice this tends to challenge people and I will continue to challenge people who I believe are acting in an unethical manner one thing that I will continue to speak up about is book challenges there will even there will even be some here today coded on the agenda as ratify payroll and
030expense vouchers there is a small group of people who have a larger political agenda who will try to insist that they are protecting the children but in fact they're trying to control and remove parent choices using the board but these challenges are ultimately are homophobic and racist at their core allow me to explain in May of this year I was in a bit of a heated exchange with a Facebook account by the name of Tim Lee when I continue to insist that as a parent I am fully capable of deciding if a book is appropriate via permission slip Andor syllabus and I would in fact prefer to be given Broad and challenging literature choices for my children allowing me to parent them as I see fit Tim Lee saw it fit to post the following
031and I quote Mindy brocker I am not afraid to address this issue directly your actions demonstrate a serious lack of ethical standard it is alarming that you have influenced your child to question their gender identity this raises significant concerns about your mental health and unfortunately your child is suffering as a result I'll be honest I was floored who would talk about my child in such a way who would have the audacity to imply poor ethics to queerness or mental illness to gender identity and what pray tell does this have to do with literature it was only the last couple of months that I learned that it is a Higgly unified board member who is the person behind Tim Lee which made me wonder is this member really willing to as she quoted under her Alias
032address this issue directly well what she does I want to make it very clear being queer is no more a matter of Ethics than is being a brunette questioning or living in a different gender identity does not make you mentally ill mothers of such Brave and amazing children are not mentally ill nor are they special I'm just a mom who like many of you out there will give every last bit of everything she's got to make sure that her children are happy healthy and loved I want to take a moment before this board to thank teachers at Higley un that stand up tall to defend and protect our students and their educator colleagues no shame to those who cannot this is your livelihood we're talking about but for those of you who do in a
033million different ways big and small I see you and I treasure you I end this with a call to action to those listening especially those parents who hold so much power it's hard to stand up it's difficult to be vocal against those who are so awful finding pleasure in harming the marginalized but silence is compliance if you see something that isn't okay send an email reach out to a struggling family check on a teacher let your voice be heard finally to the board member be yourself Embrace Transparency stop hiding behind fake and nameless accounts if you want to argue with disparage and harass parents of Higley students at least summon a fraction of The Bravery of this trans community that you hate and say it with your full chest thank [Music] you next is Barbara
034Summers good evening um tonight I must voice my deep disappointment and frustration regarding the actions of a school board member who has chosen to hide behind a false online profile this profile has been used to Target community members and hardworking staff criticize the district unjustly and attack candidates who have stepped forward to serve our community this individual has taken it upon themselves to spread misin information and engage in attacks that go beyond criticism and become personal and damaging furthermore it's deeply alarming that they have been working alongside others with the intention of Legally challenging Educators aiming to dismantle the support system that our students rely on every day these actions are not only un unprofessional but deeply concerning these actions undermine the core values of our district our board members are entrusted with the responsibility
035to act with integrity transparency and respect for the very people they are supposed to serve when one of our own chooses to manipulate information and act in secrecy they erode the trust we place in our leaders and set a damaging example for our students the repercussions of this Behavior are significant this misuse of power and influence not only distracts from our mission but also sends a harmful message to our students that they may be targeted for standing up or speaking out that their educators are under attack and that those in positions of leadership may choose to operate dishonestly rather than openly for the community's best interest this behavior is absolutely unacceptable our students deserve a safe and supportive environment and our teachers and staff deserve the freedom to do their jobs without fear of legal
036threats or Anonymous harassment I urge this board to take a firm stand against these actions let us commit to upholding transparency integrity and respect in all that we do if any member of this board canot meet these standards then it is time to reconsider their place on this board thank you for your attention to this serious issue I hope we can move forward with renewed dedication to the values that Define our district thank you next is Heather balsh good evening everyone it's a true privilege to be here tonight to talk about something that's new near and dear to my heart the importance of preschool and the powerful bonds that we build with children and their families from a young age preschool is more than just a place where children learn their ABCs and how to
037count to 10 it's where they start to build trust confidence and a sense of belonging it's where they take their first steps in socializing with others learning to share developing empathy and in some cases speaking their first words and it's not just about the children it's about families too by creating strong relationships with parents and caregivers we form a support system that helps children Thrive both at school and at home we can connect with the children early on we're not just shaping their academic Journey but helping them grow into curious kind and resilient individuals when we build these bonds with families we make sure that every child has the support that they need to succeed after all it truly takes a village and preschool is where it all begins thank you for being a part
038of this incredible journey you're going to hear some exciting information about our program later this evening and I just want to um encourage us all to continue to Foster these great relationships with our youngest uh students thanks okay moving on to the ENT agenda uh president Anderson yes um is it possible for me to ask admin to look into some of the things at least that were presented in terms of like status or how we can contact to get information that was expressed tonight from public comments board member Wade can you be a little more specific for me please well I mean there were statements made about behaviors that seem to counter our current policies so I'm just trying to understand what is and isn't so if we could you know follow up with that
039Madam president miss W the request for uh the administration to review the issues been made thank you president Anderson I'd like to address um a few of the things that were said um to come here and and act like you guys in the community aren't creating chaos is absurd because those of you that spoke are creating chaos in the community and you are part of the organization of sending having a Community member send me a sexually explicit book with a bundle of rope to the district office as a threat you guys are part of a text group that's called shoman Ava AVH Haters Club so don't come here and act like you guys are are doing some good when you guys are creating the chaos that's all I'm going to say thank you I motion
040to approve the consent to J items 5.1 to 5.13 Second seconded by Mrs Wade all those in favor i i Sor oh hi oh motion carries four to zero that's okay and with that I'd like to thank everyone that has made gifts made donations have contributed to the school district as stated in one of our um oh it is excuse me for not knowing the exact number uh 5 0 I want to thank everybody that has contributed to the district uh moving on to information items 6.1 the 2023 2024 a to F letter grades with uh Mr birkshire good evening president Anderson members of the board uh I'm excited to share our district and site letter grades tonight we have much to celebrate with these at each of our sites and my goal tonight is
041to share those grades as well as individual celebrations for our sites additionally I'll be showing how our district compares to neighboring districts as well as how our sites performed compared to charter schools within our boundaries our Focus tonight is on our strategic anchor one teaching and learning and Student Success specifically we are focused on indicator 1.5 which is supporting a collaborative culture using data and research-based practices oops so we are an a-rated School uh District um so that is our first celebration of the night um and I think is deserving of Applause Mr Len [Applause] Heiser District letter grades are calculated uh by adding the number of a schools multiplying by four then the number of B schools multiplying by three then dividing by the total number of schools similar to a GPA uh so
042our district score was a 3.71 out of 4.0 um 34% of leas in the state of Arizona earned an A so we're part of a a rare group uh the top third of the state 45% earned B's 177% C's 3% D's and less than 1% earned an F as a district um last year we were at a 3.86 that was uh due to us having 12 A's and 2 B's and you'll see on the next slide uh this year we had one school that was a c which lowered our our letter grade percentage just by a little bit um here you have our comparison to our neighboring districts um when letter grades were first released in 2017 Higley had six A's and seven B's uh we continued to improve prior to the pandemic uh with
04312 a and 1B in 2019 there was a 2-year Hiatus on letter grades due to covid when letter grades returned in 20122 um we have improved from 8 A's and 5 BS to where you see us today uh where we have 11 of our sites that are an a uh two of our sites are a b and then one s's a c um want to point out that virtualems because we're going to be talking about hva probably a little bit later virtualy Chandler and Gilbert are both bees masik and kirne have shuttered their aois so they no longer have the virtual Schools Queen Creek is their soul C and then Scottsdale's D is their Virtual Academy as well some highlights uh we want to congratulate corado Elementary they earned the maximum growth score of 30
044points or 50 points and they also had the top percentage earned in the district for K8 schools uh williamsfield improved their overall percentage by approximately six points Bridges earned the maximum proficiency score uh for the third year in a row uh that's a total of 30 points and and that's actually capped so they Pro they earn more than that it just shows up as just 30 um bonus points four of our sites earn the maximum of Five Points in the bonus points category for a site proficiency and sped enrollment those were Centennial chapparel Cortina and power ranch uh continuous Improvement we had five sites that have improved their overall percentage earned every year over the last three years those were chapparel Coronado Cortina power ranch and saucan and then chronic absenteeism we had eight sites
045see a continu decrease of chronic absenteeism over the last two years in the K8 model and those are Centennial kolie Coronado Cortina Gateway HTA Santan and San moving into our site letter grades uh we're going to start with our K8 schools the K8 model uh before I talk about the the percentages I want to remind you that a school's letter grade is kind of like a students grade um it's a collection of evidence um and and not based on a single Factor the State Board of Education when they first adopted the letter grades in 2017 were trying very hard to reflect the overall nature of a school um and what the state expects out of a public school which can be difficult to do when much of what a school does for students can't be
046numerically Quantified um what you see here in the models is their best effort to take those components for which we have solid numbers and represent them in the final calculation for a letter grade so for K8 schools 30% of a score is based on student proficiency on aasa 50% is based on student growth from prior State assessment performance to aasa this past spring as compared to like peer students 10% is based on El proficiency and growth and 10% is based on acceleration Readiness measures which include subgroup Improvement chronic absenteeism Improvement special education inclusion and improving performance in e8th grade math and third grade e there's also the possibility of bonus points with science providing up to 3% and special education up to 2% additional points for a school those bonus points are added in after
047the overall percentage score is calculated um and and gives our final score for each site additionally something to keep in mind is that in order to qualify for points in any area we have to have an endc count or a minimum number of students at 10 uh so for some of these categories especially El we don't have 10 El students that are full academic students um full Academic Year students at those sites so their overall calculation is out of 90 rather than out of 100 points so moving into our sites uh we're going to go alphabetically Bridges earned an a with 95.4 s points um they did not have the minimum Inc count of 10 fael students so you'll see that they just have the three categories which totals up to 90 um and then
048they take those point the the points that they've earned divide that by 90 that gives a percentage and then they add the bonus points on to that um I want to emphasize here that Bridges had that perfect proficiency score of 30 out of 30 they also had the highest AI passing rate for our students at 67 66% of their kids passing the acsi test in fifth grade Centennial Elementary earned an a with 91.8 six points they had enough El students so they have that El category in this in this case um centeno one of their celebrations is they've improved the math proficiency of their low social socioeconomic students every year for over the last three years so they've done a lot of good work with those students chapparel earned an a with 91.26 points uh
049they had 13 out of 18 English Learners that improved their proficiency level on a Zella which far exceeded the Statewide um average so that's very impressive the work that they've done with their eel students at chapparel kolie earned a b at 76.2 Four Points uh one of their celebrations is working with their special education students they have improved their sped proficiency from the previous year in both Ela and math and so they're doing a lot of good work with their special education students Cor earned an a with 9711 points as I've said that's the highest percentage in the district and and again celebration that they earned a 50 out of 50 on the growth score as well that's a huge CA earned an a with 92.5 Four Points uh Cora is right there behind Bridges
050that's their biggest competition they had the second highest proficiency score in the district right behind Bri Bridges so I actually met with their Administration today and they gun in for Bridges Gateway Point earn to be with 80.1 Point uh one of the impressive things that Gateway Point has done is they have improved the math Proficiency in six out of seven of the eligible subgroups that they have on their campus that means that those subgroups had 10 or more kids in that group um over the uh the previous year uh so that can be very difficult to uh because you have a lot of variability in those subgroups especially when we get down to there might be 12 one year that sixth grade group had five of them then they they leave and it's a different
051group of kids so that's very impressive that the the work that they're doing with their subgroups especially in math Higley trditional Academy earned an a with 9.97 point seven points uh one of their celebrations is with a specific subgroup uh they're African-American subgroup they have improved in both Ela and math every year over the last three years uh which is very impressive power ranch earned an a with 9.87 points um they as well improved their sped Proficiency in both Ela and math over the prior year so so again a lot of good work happening with that that specific subgroup Santan Elementary earned an a with 92.7 n points uh their growth score has improved every year over the last three years so they're doing a lot of great work in pushing kids and and really
052helping them to achieve and move even if that doesn't necessarily reflect in that proficiency area and then finally in our K8 model San earned an a with 85.3 s um one of their impressive Feats is you get points for improving the number of kids highly proficient in math 8th grade and decreasing the the percentage of kids that are minimally proficient in e8th grade math and they have done that every year over the last two years moving into our 9912 model um 30% of the schools letter grade in 9th through 12th grade is based on proficiency on the ACT and what the state identifies as being proficient uh 20% is based on student growth percentiles between act and Aspire and the ACT this is a change from last year um so they've had a little bit
053of a challenge with AC when we came back from covid act became the state test for 11th grade nth graders got act aspired so this was the first year that we actually had data on students that took ACT Aspire in 9th grade and then took act in 11th grade um so that growth score is looking at same peers and how much growth they made between ACT Aspire and act last year they were looking at subgroup improvement from the prior year so um in proficiency uh graduation rate and dropout rate so the scores are a little bit different this year related to growth because we're measuring different things um whoops let me go back um El proficiency and growth is also uh 10% and then School's graduation rate is 20% and then CCRI which is the
054College and Career Readiness index is 20% for 9 through 12 they received bonus points for a side performance up to three uh points sped enrollment up to two points and ACT Aspire participation up to three U points so starting with Higley High School they earned an a with 91.66% of a traditional 912 schools in the state they're actually in the top 9% but 10% usually is where we we like to go Williams Field High School earned an a with 97.77% increase of almost six six% is to be celebrated um that increase is primarily due to what happened with their growth score um in the prior year because it was calculated different they had 12 points out of 20 for for the growth this year you can see they have 18.04 points and now we get
055to Higley Virtual Academy uh HBA is a hybrid School meaning that last year it served students in grades 7 through 12 um so they get scores on the K8 side and they also get scores on the 912 side but they only receive scores if they have the the right number of students so when you're looking at what you see here the K8 side you see a zero out of 10 on the acceleration Readiness they only had 8 students that qualified for scores on proficiency and growth um and at pretty much everything else which means those categories they don't get points for the only category that they actually had enough students to receive points for was for chronic absenteeism which is worth two points out of that total of 10 and you have to approve that
056chronic absenteeism with virtualems we track that absenteeism very different than we do with normal stud students it's based on ours participating um it it gets really messy um but they didn't qualify for that so about 177% of their overall score is based on that one little piece the other side 912 uh we had enough students this year to qualify for most of those categories we had 15 9th through 12th graders that were full-time full Academic Year students at the Virtual Academy remember the Inc count is 10 so I had 15 this year last year um we had let's see 22 3rd through e8th grade students at hbaa that's where we got all of our points last year and one of the reasons why HBA was an a last year was because they received a a
057lot of points on that side we only had nine 11th graders last year and so we really didn't qualify for any points on the 9th or 12th grade side a lot of variability with virtualems because you have small numbers of students and those small numbers of students can change wildly from year to year uh so it's really hard to to maintain scores or predict scores with virtualems and you as I pointed out earlier Scottsdale's Virtual Academy was a d this year last year they didn't have enough students to even qualify for a letter grade so uh it's hard um but um there are a lot lot of Firsts for HBA this year so they had this is our first year with proficiency score on act this is our first year with a growth score on
058from ACT Aspire to act last year they had enough students to look at gra fouryear graduation rate this year we have four and fiveyear graduation rate so they they qualify for more points in the graduation rate side and then they improve their CCRI U score as well again this is another challenge for virtualems because half of the calcul for cc you have college readiness indicators and then you have career Readiness indicators which a lot of those are CTE courses and our Virtual Academy doesn't really offer any CTE courses so the only points that those kids could get were if they were enrolled in one of our brick and mortar schools in a CTE course and then moved into HBA uh later on so again HBA is hard uh to to Really qualify for for points
059moving on uh K8 Charter comparisons so these are charter schools that are within our boundaries as a district um the dark vertical line on the right uh marks the division between A and B scores that second one on the left marks the division between B and everything else underneath that um you'll see that there are some sites that I identify as K8 because they're hybrid schools they actually serve K12 so what I've done is taken out the K8 side shown you what their K8 side score would be on the next slide you'll see their 912 side so uh some examples of those are ala um North and then the let's see here Learning Foundation and Benjamin Franklin that they serve more than just a 912 population so they get points on this side as well
060and then here we have our 9912 Charter comparisons again some of uh a lot of our charter schools within our boundaries serve students in more than just 912 they're usually 712 or K12 configurations ASU Prep I just want to point out very specialized stem school students are encouraged to pay tuition to receive credits at ASU from coursework taken at ASU Prep they're not really a comprehensive High School like we have uh at williamsfield and Higley they don't have have um Athletics they don't have other comprehensive programs like we do uh so it's not necessarily an apples to oranges comparison so as you can see we have a lot to celebrate in Higley uh this is a testament to our site and District leadership our teaching and support staff our families and ultimately our students at
061each and every one of our sites I'm proud of that I've had the honor to share these with you tonight and I'm excited that the work we have done and continue to do for student learning is something that we can celebrate and recognize each year and with that any questions president Anderson I don't have a question so much as I just for those who aren't necessarily a part of this to be an a school or even a b school and maintain that grade is really difficult to do it is so very easy to drop and it is hard to stay the same and even harder to continue to grow growth and as we look around obviously all of us involved in education are like yes mhm this is true um but I just don't think
062that maybe necessarily parents and our community members are always aware of just how those numbers come down and how difficult of a feat that is so to all of our schools you know Well Done um yes I Echo what Miss Wade said that um this is amazing um one question because I'm just being a little bit competitive and so it's just a little um on the 9 through2 Charter comparisons with American with uh ala 9 through2 and Higley are we exactly the same or they it's my own clarify that for me so um you have a comparison the 9 through 12 Charter comparison chart yep right there and so nope that's not it uh yeah it is it is okay and so is it exactly the same it just it looks the same and so
063you want to know why we're not above it yes oh um I want to know why we're not above it are we exactly the same their score was slightly better than ours okay fine uh I I don't know the exact number off the top of my head but it is from score to score so uh they were just a little bit that's my own is um congratulations to Coronado amazing um as well in their growth um I also want to make sure um there was a question by a board member on funding and I just want to make sure that everybody knows that this has nothing to do with funding because I think if someone on the board was confused about that maybe the public was confused about that this has nothing to do with
064funding and so I just want to make sure that's clear especially since um override there's yeah the override and then there's issues with making sure we know we're funding comes from so there's any questions on that that's it thank you great job president Anderson um do was this grading system always like this the letter grades as they are currently constituted were adopted by the State Board of Education in 2017 prior to that they used a system um oh boy I trying to remember the words that they use it was a very different kind of system uh they were you you were an excelling School you were a um and and the calculations that they were using were very different than what we're using now so so you can't really compare what happened prior to 2017
065to what we're using now yeah I just the fact that like an a is from 84 to 100 um when like we you know for our kids we grade them 90 to 100 as an A so it's weird that they would create this grading system that is not even equivalent on on how we would grade our students I'm happy to address that so in 2017 when the board adopted the letter grades um the uh State Department of Education and the technical advisory committee which are a bunch of nerds that are really they they look at numbers and and can dive in they're called psychometrician they brought to the board multiple models of what it would look like one of those models and they do this every year still one of those models is a 90
06680 70 60 um and uh the model that was ultimately adopted was a standard deviation model so so they basically looked to see what percentage of schools would fall in trying to get kind of a bell curve to start out with but the goal has been since that time time to keep the cut scores the same so that the goal posts aren't moving every year because if we use a standard deviation model then basically every year you have the same percentage of a but that cut score that you're trying to achieve will change every year um one of the things they find with the 90 80 7060 um and even with the current makeup is that schools in high sces areas tend to score in the A and B level schools that are Title One
067tend to score in that CBC level a and so the the standard deviation model had and and emphasis on growth and some of those bonus points were all put in place to try to even out and and ensure that schools that are doing good work but just don't have the same advantages as other schools are recognized and rewarded for for where they are thank you for that and then if you can just explain so the overall proficiency rate is uh what what was that score the percentage for proficiency it the it is 30% at um not per school but like just overall for the district was it like 5 District proficiency that doesn't get reflected in the the the district letter grade the district letter grade what they decided to do at the State Board
068was just do an average of all of the scores uh of the the letter grades of school sites I can certainly bring that uh through status send you what our proficiency level was for for ELA and math for for the district as a whole that' be great I just don't know it off the top of my head great thank you and um along with the graduation rate um the new graduation rate because I think the last one was like 96% our graduation rate really hasn't changed so that's the reason why when you see both pigley high and williamsfield they're getting 20 out of 20 um 10 of that is for improving graduation rate you get that 10 points automatically if you maintain a graduation rate of over 90% so so 10 of those we get
069automatically the other side is four five six and seven year graduation rates and basically they take your rate and multiply it by a a a multiplier so so they're weighted four years is weighted higher than sevene and we exceed the 10 points in that side as well uh which is why we're getting the 20 out of 20 basically we go from 96 95 96 to 98 .99 by the seven-year graduation rate so our kids that may need a few more years we do graduate them um before and and help them move on excuse me and how does the like just to understand the math behind like proficiency rates compared to graduation rates is the graduation rate does that not count in the proficiency rate no okay proficiency is based purely on your scores on aasa
070or act a and so um there's a lot of work done at the state level when those tests were introduced so um originally with a merit um there was uh meeting at the state level I got to participate in this where we basically looked at the assessment and identified what the cut would be for a just barely proficient student and we went item through item and said would this item be where would this fall that kind of thing and at the very end again people that are much more mathy than me were able to put together this is what a score would be for a proficient student what a score would be for highly proficient and then the last part of that is they threw those numbers up and as a committee as a whole
071we looked to ensure that there was consistency from third to Fourth to fifth to sixth to seventh to e8th grade and at that time it was 10th grade as well because we had a merit they did the same thing with act in ela and math um and again I was lucky I was able to sit in the room participate in that process um lots of good dialogue about what proficiency looks like because act we're using that as as a Statewide test typically it's a college readiness assessment as a state we're using it as a College and Career Readiness test so our cut scores for proficiency are lower than what that Benchmark score you typically see what act is because we want to ensure that a student that's proficient it's not necessarily about college it's also
072about career a and so lots of dialogue around that those cut scores um so proficiency seat encompasses those graduation rate is separate got thank you so much you're welcome thank you that um I think for at least for here you've hit the nerd status and you're pretty mathy so I appreciate you and all the information you provide and it's great to ask questions and get really detailed and um good information that a lot of us aren't familiar with um I don't have a question um I just I just wanted to address one of the questions that was brought forward um how can parents and community members contribute to supporting these goals and improving our school performance and the response was parents and educat Educators should communicate on a regular basis and all that but is
073there I mean if just right now like as a teacher I mean there's things I'd say hey you know how can we get them involved more um I think this district is pretty great with the opportunities and um seeing all the posts online there's a lot of um after school and fun things that go on in the schools but um with the grades we're doing great but if there's anything else if this would be a great time to say like how could we how could we involve our community and parents um and I don't want to put you on the spot you don't have to say anything but if this was a time this be great to hear it um but before that I just wanted to say before I forget I just want to
074thank the students I want to thank the parents I want to thank the staff I want to thank I want to thank Community um this this is one big group this is everybody working together and it's a great job I in terms of parents I think um every site has communicated with parents about their their their letter grade status and and and those celebrations that H that that come with that um it the the the work that our teachers are doing on a daily basis and and the learning that we're engaging students in um all of the communication that happens around all of that and the support that families have for our staff in that learning process those are all huge um a and it's hard to quantify one single thing um because there's a
075lot that goes into these um we were at a site today where they were asking what's that what's that Magic Bullet and the reality is there's no magic bullet uh it takes a lot of work and hard effort from everybody involved um so it's that communication and partnership between parents and and schools I think that's that's imperative so president Anderson um members of the board I think we have such great PTO and site councils and that's a great way for you know parents to get involved the community to get involved and know what the needs of the school you know is and all of our higgle helps initiatives that we're doing that that brings that brings the community in plus our business partner breakfast and yeah we absolutely want people to be involved and I
076think a lot of schools um bring in parents to help do like stem day you know where they teach about their profession that's an awesome example and we could come up with a whole bunch more but that's one thing about Higley our parents are involved and they care definitely wonderful thank you anybody else okay thank you Mr birkshire thank you very much all right we're going on to 6.2 the 2025 2026 course guide with Mr Len Heiser president Anderson members of the board tonight tonight we're going to talk about the course guide proposal this is our information item uh we'll talk about the changes made to our course guides and then we will U move forward and be able to answer any questions that you have so within your board pack we had the presentation
077but you also had Redline copies of the the draft of the course guide so that you could see the red line is what we're getting rid of the blue is what we're adding and so hopefully you had an opportunity to go through that because tonight I'm going to touch on some of the different changes that were made and uh that we are proposing to move forward so this timeline and process started right when we get back from the start of school we start August 6th where we put together our um timeline so that we we follow these different steps as you can see listed up there we review our current courses and information with our ed services Team Ed Services team is the district instructional coaches and other directors involved in the ed services department
078we review it we also ask for proposals from sites anything that they want to change or add they work through their instructional coaches and bring It Forward we do a final review we did that on October 29th where we went through all the different proposals that uh teachers Andor the district had proposed to changing courses adding courses deleting courses or changing general information um tonight we're bringing the information item to you because what's really important is that action item on December 10th we have to approve the course guides for the next uh next year on December 10th seems a little early but it's not because we start registration in Janu January and we start that process of um students selecting their courses in our secondary schools that allow us to then determine Staffing allocations and
079where we're going to put it to meet the needs of our students like to give a shout out to the different people that were involved in this process um basically what you have up there is a list of our directors and assistant directors within the district office our instructional coaches each site is represented by their principal uh as well as their assistant principal and their lead counselor and so each piece had a different uh part throughout the entire process but when we came together for the uh final review on October 29th everybody was in the room as we made determinations about the proposals that were moving forward so we'll jump right into the high school honestly the most of our most of our changes come at the high school level that's by far the biggest
080book and has the most different things that happened so I want to highlight a couple of the proposed changes to our general information Pages those are the pages before the actual course descriptions are listed out uh we updated the language about the act in our testing section we wanted to be specific so that if parents looked at it they knew that the Act was our mandatory state test for 11th graders and that ninth graders are required to take the ACT Aspire test as you just heard we're measured on the growth between their nth grade and their 11th grade so we need them to take the test in both so that we can determine our growth uh we are proposing removing the husd service learning honor for excellence seal and an initial thought would be wow
081this is crazy why are we removing it well we haven't had anyone apply in the last four years for this seal um there is another seal through the uh State of Arizona it's the Civics literacy steal seal and and part of the Civics literacy is a really huge component about Service Learning and so what we want to do is direct students who have that service learning to the Civics literacy seal and that's something provided through the state and it's not a Higgly local one uh we changed the format for the diploma seals to direct families to our website so here's what happened in the past we would list all the requirements for each one of the seals in our course guide which we approve in December to then get published basically in January for the
082next year then the state would change the requirements and so by the time you looked at the requirements that were in there by the time we got to the end of the year they were different than what was in our course guide so by dir and by giving a description of what the seal is and then directing to our website we can constantly keep that updated in case the state turns around and changes the requirements for the seals and so it kind of condensed that section A little bit it still gives a description for what the seal is but it refers us so that in casee the state changes any of those requirements we can keep it up to dat and it's not out of date within our course guide one of the things that
083we really focused on this year was uh trying to give parents an opportunity to understand all of the different and dual enrollment opportunities we have I'll be honest we shine in this opportunity we're really good at providing dual enrollment opportunities compared to our peers uh around us our districts and so to really emphasize that when you took a look at the course guide you saw we had three pages of a giant spreadsheet that showed at each High School which courses we offered for duel and then what course and what educational partner and how many credit hours they got now it's all contingent within dual enrollment if a teacher leaves and we can't find a dual enrollment certified teacher to come in and replace them we can't offer it that year but we did want to
084give the parents an opportunity to understand there are so many different dual enrollment courses not just in our core academics but through our CTE as well we really wanted to highlight that uh this year within the sections and so when you take a look I think there's four almost four pages the list all of these different courses some of the courses you have to complete both first and second semester to get dual enrollment some of them are just semester by semester so that you can get dual enrollment maybe three credit hours first semester and then three credit hours second semester our major partners are Chandler Gilbert MCC and SEC and finally there was attendance information that we listed within the general guide the consensus was this is also in our handbook and so we wanted
085to make sure that the messaging stays the same about attendance and really attendance other than audit status which we left in attendance does not have an effect on the course guide and so we're removing it this time and we're going to focus and have people look at our husd handbook and that's where you'll see attendance information about students required attendance so those were the changes that we're bringing forth on the general information so when we looked at updating course descriptions Andor prerequisites I listed out the courses and you were able to find them within the uh course guide with the red and blue lines uh looking through it so these are the courses that we've changed either course description many times teachers send us course description changes because they're like hey the curriculum has changed
086we need to update this what we have in there might have been what was in there 12 years ago we need to update it for what's currently being taught in the class and so when you see those the course description changes were for honors aerospace engineering honors electrical and computer engineering AP Computer Science principles AP Computer Science a beginning Ceramics intermediate Ceramics Advanced Ceramics AP human geography and American Arizona history all of those we just updated the course description so when someone reads it it more accurately aligns with what's being taught in the course Roc is a unique program where they basically teach one class per year and they just alternate between four classes so someone who's in there for four years gets four different classes and so we just update the schedule so we
087move it over one and take the one that was last year and it goes four years from now and that's when it'll be part so that's the update that you saw there um honors bioscience one in order for a student to get uh science credit for bioscience they have to complete the sequence meaning they needed to finish bioscience one and bioscience 2 we had previously listed you could get a science credit for honors bioscience one that was incorrect and so we removed that from there so they have to complete to get through honors bioscience to to get a science credit for that course and then finally when you take a look at Algebra 2 and pre-calculus what we did is we changed the grade level on those and the reason we did that is that
088Algebra 2 typically um we removed 9th grade from there because if they're in nth grade and they're in Algebra 2 they're really in honors Algebra 2 not on level Algebra 2 and so same thing with pre-calculus we remov the ninth and 10th grade because if they're in pre-calculus and 10th grade they're an honors pre-calculus not on level pre-calculus and so we wanted to clarify that for our students AP World History we added ninth graders to make sure ninth graders have that option to move into AP World uh we'd been making exceptions for that because if kids are really talented in that area move forward we just formalize that okay so when it gets to additions or deletions this is something that'll be new being added to our program and I'm excited about three of the
089new courses that we're adding this year first one with our CTE exercise and wellness one and two this Falls underneath Sports Medicine what this program does and think about CTE and we talk about career Readiness right now now in sports medicine the path that we have a student who goes through that typically then to go right into the workplace they have to go to college and get a degree to become an athletic trainer and then where we see the career aspect is after they've finished college going into that uh field with the exercise uh and wellness program it allows them to get a certificate where they can be a personal trainer and they could immediately go into the workforce so think about personal trainers at gyms or even people private doing personal trainers there is
090a certificate for that we' have developed a program where these students can work on that skill while in high school and like many of our CTE programs get a certificate and be immediately employable once they have that certificate and so when we talk about that school to work pipeline that pipeline doesn't wait them for four years for them to get through college they could go immediately into that and I Know It Williams Field they have really tried and worked hard to develop that underneath the sports medicine and we'd like to offer that opportunity to allow our kids to work on that certificate uh higgle Hy proposed a unified dance class if you're not familiar with a unified program and our best pries program we know it's a wonderful uh way that our our partners and
091their peers get to work together and our best buddies is a great program we currently have unified PE the ask was can we have Unified Dance because really those students would be in unified PE for four years if they wanted to could we give them a different opportunity and we would like to allow them to have a different opportunity opportunity to go into a beginning dance class um for our students with special needs and their positive peers to be involved in the Unified Dance so they'll give them two options instead of one um we had a business Chinese one at Williams Field the goal of next year would be to bring business Chinese to this course is an extension after AP Chinese 4 where we have students who've gone through perhaps our DLI program and
092have gone through kie and have gone through williamsfield and now we're looking for an additional class as a junior and then we would come back next year and look to add one as a senior and so that's one of the programs that um you know our instructional uh specialist Rebecca Rodriguez have been working for and they worked and found some uh curriculum that will allow us to continue to push those kids uh within high school for our DLI Mandarin students and then finally we had a course in there called World Language ta so it's been in the book ever since I've been in here and no one has ever signed up for it because we haven't used okay I think originally what I was told is back in the day you had someone who was
093really good at a World Language and they wanted to go help maybe they were in AP Spanish 4 they would become a TA in Spanish one and really we have not used this program so we just want to delete it since we're not having that be a part of what's happening so here here's where we have some fee changes that we want to talk to you about because I think this is an area of uh concern where we need to make sure that we have appropriate funding to meet the needs of our programs as you know costs for everything has increased and we have not changed uh these fees uh for many many years matter of fact our athletic fee is Prem me and I'm on year five and so we're looking to help um
094support the athletic programs uh and more by increasing our athletic fee from $150 to $200 per Sport with a maximum of $800 per family per site um included within or additionally we have allowed family passes for students who are attending our games uh and families to buy this annual family pass where they could buy the pass and they can get into any game all year it's up to four members in the immediate family it was $135 but we've raised ticket prices but we never raised this and so the equivalency in order again to help us uh recoup the cost of running our events and our games we're asking to increase that to $200 for the single season family pass that's $100 that would be like I just picked football and I only wanted to go
095to football because maybe my kid picked football so the family were able to buy a pass there and so that's you'll see the increase from $60 to $100 uh parking permits we B we know that there's a lot of things that happen within parking and for us to have the ability to do improvements and or support things parking related we're looking to increase that from 80 to $100 for the year instrument rentals has always been a tough one because you asked to talk to someone where we rent the instruments and if it comes back damaged the 125 and even the 150 is probably not going to cover the cost but it it's going to cost to repair the instrument and so through the rental program this helps us be able to support but we do
096have to supplement if we need to repair equipment that's been returned and the final fee change that I'd like to look at addresses students who uh take the esas and then want to take a class from us okay and we currently don't have anyone in the district doing it but other districts do and I put in some interesting wording in there um basically an Esa let's say it's $7,000 right now if a student wanted to take one of our courses we provide six courses to kids we will charge them one sixth of the cost of the esa because that's what it should be uh the reason I put it at that is we don't know if esas are going to stay consistent and so if an Esa let's say all of a sudden now they
097get to have $10,000 a year well once the of it would be one six of the courses that they would take if they were part of our school and therefore that would be what would we would ask for them typically where our peers have found this out as athletes they want to participate they want to come in and do weights typically weights is a class practices after school for them to be able to be on campus during a uh class time they have to pay for the class now to participate in athletics that's the same as the athletic fee that we have currently we don't have anyone doing that within our district okay but if the need arises this is what we would do and we would have it in our course guide to be
098able to charge those fees so when you take a look at uh those were the high school proposed changes when we looked at the middle school changes um much smaller uh options and looking at what's happening in the middle school because it's a much smaller uh course guide um what we're looking to do is we updated Ceramics drawing and painting names into and descriptions to 2D art and 3D art because it more represented when it says Ceramics they're really creating 3D and there's a lot of different mediums that they use and so we wanted to be descriptive of the mediums that they are using so they proposed 2D and 3D art and we agreed with that we updated applied technology and robotic names and descriptions because current we had Advanced applied technology and Robotics and
099we had it for a year but yet that was the second year the first year we had them split to appli technology and Robotics and not combined and we're asking to combine them so it's a year-long program and so the first level would be the applied technology and Robotics the second level would be the advanced applied Robotics and Tech and uh Tech applied technology and Robotics the third uh description was for our elas courses currently our elas courses are being taught as a block and so that means the kids are in the same class for two hours and then they have two teachers for two hours to to look at numbers and the the commitment financially of doing that uh that's a really heavy commitment to be supporting that because really you're looking at taking
100the number of kids in that class because there's two teachers for the course load you would cut it in half so if they had 40 kids in the class really our ratio is 20 to1 they have 35 kids in the class our ratio is 17.5 to1 and so what we felt like when we T discussed this with the uh Middle School administrators is in order for us to maximize FTE if we do not block pocket meaning one period they would have the social studies one period they would have the English it would help us recoup FTE that we could continue to use to lower class sizes everywhere else and so we're looking to change that instead of being a blocked program it will now be still a concurrent enrolled program teachers will work together but
101they won't have two teachers in the classroom for two hours and that's the changes that would come through for elas when we go through to hva and here's one that there was a question right away like how why are we no longer going to offer the Middle School um it goes back to numbers and being fiscally responsible right now we have 11 students in our Middle School online and we're it costs more than the money that we get in order to be able to service those students um it is the number of full-time online has continued to steadily decline the further we have gotten away from covid in fact currently right now we have no ninth graders that are 100% online the largest class that we do have at the high school level is our
102seniors we have 28 seniors but if we have zero freshmen as that starts to matriculate up it's going to become smaller and smaller for uh online and so our goal right now is to remove the Middle School from it and so we will continue to offer the high school online we are exploring options right now of what does it look like if we took hva and it became a program and not a school and with that we we would still offer online classes because we have 730 kids who take at least one online course through us that's a lot that's meeting a need for those kids and those families however you just heard that how letter grades fluctuate so much so if there's an opportunity through us through the instructional time model where we can
103have kids be a instead of a full-time online hva kid a full-time Higley kid and we could still offer them online or a full-time Williams Field we can still offer the courses online but it would be a program and not a separate School we're exploring that option and we'll bring it back to the board with more information as we get closer to that time uh in order to declare if we're going to keep the hoi or not oh sorry aoi not hoi so I threw a whole lot of words and stuff in there and I know you guys have got some questions for me so um once again this is our this is our information item tonight love to answer your questions but when we come back on December 10th that's really when we do
104have that action item because we need to be ready for our enrollment and registration process that happens in January got Anderson um for the um High School course guide the Multicultural um course um and obviously this this course has been um you know an issue uh recently um due to the books and just going reading through the um description of the course guide where does this is this description coming from the college or um do we have the ability to change the description the reason why I ask is because um I think it would just as as an informed consent ahead of time um to include in there uh you know it talks about literature comes from authors of both genders and all ethnicities um but I think it would be great to be able
105to add that you know explicit content including you know books related to graphic sex sodomy rape beastiality critical race Theory um just so parents know this information ahead of time um so that they can then make a decision of signing up for the course instead of not knowing this and then signing up for the course and then after the fact when the you know they find out what books are on the syllabus then they're possibly you know trying to either move out of the class or now they're having to deal with parental consent forms and the kids are being sent out of class so I think it's important to be able to add that to the to the description um so that parents are notified ahead of time so that they can make a decision
106of not picking that class um if they oppose to such material um another um oh gosh sorry I lost my notes um I'll have to come back to it oh um the I discussed this last year um for our um special ed um Community skills communication skills um the fact that uh we utilize Castle um I I personally oppose anything related to Castle just based on um just their Concepts um that they use I I don't agree with um and so I don't know if there's any other form of you know when when we have kiddos that need need any type of social emotional um assistance um that first it's individualized and not implemented across the board um and that it's done with parental consent um obviously if there's IEPs involved um and 504s that
107would be included if um if the student requires that type of service um but I don't know if there's another type that we can utilize other than Castle um and then for the fees you said they haven't changed since when uh I don't know exactly when it was adopted when I talked to my athletic Recs I want I want to say it was uh prior I'm 2020 so it's prior to me okay and then the the fees are the same for Middle School the Middle School we've looked at the how we're budgeting for the Middle School and talking to the principles we wanted to keep that one the same for this year and then we'll evaluate as we go forward and perhaps look for increasing it next year but no the fees for like a
108for an athletic team at middle school is not $200 okay yeah and less that Middle School sports are only only a quarter right high schools are much much longer right yeah and then just to watch the games I don't remember ever paying to go to watch games for Middle School no we don't for Middle School charge so that when you look at the family passes and things like that that's only for the high school that's where we only charge ENT thank you um and then um for the instruments how often are the instruments rented versus um students bringing their own I I don't have that answer but I can ask and see what our number is and give that to you status I don't know how many okay thank you um and then I just
109want to say you know I I appreciate um being able to allow um Esa students to participate in our sports that's definitely you know form of revenue for the district um but also uh you know being able to uh help these kiddos out to participate in any type of sporting events um or you know Sports um so I I do um appreciate that we're allowing them to do so so thank you president Anderson um I have a question so you had mentioned on the preal course and I believe Algebra 2 I only put pre-cal you said that they're now I guess they've always been honors courses but they weren't listed as that or now they're honors course we have both we have l pre-cal and we have honors pre-cal okay prior to this for on
110level pre-cal it it said it was optional for 10th 11th and 12th graders but in reality if you're a 10th grader who's gotten to the pre-cal level you're in that honors track and you're at honors pre-cal and so we just wanted to make sure that parents understood or and students understood that when you get to the regular pre-calculus that's typically our Juniors and our seniors who take pre-cal okay so they were already weighted this same as far as honors like they were already getting that honors there are there is an honors class and I'm only addressing the onlevel courses and I'm just removing those bottom two ninth grade for Algebra 2 and 10th grade for pre-calculus so if you're a typical onlevel student who comes in you take Algebra 1 then you take uh geometry
111Algebra 2 and pre-calculus that's a typical like the most standard math four-year math track that we have okay and so what the teachers asked for is is why would we say that as a nth grader you could take just onlevel algebra 2 if you're a nth grader and you're that advanced in math you're going to be taking the honors algebra too the grade okay thanks I just Chang thank you for clarifying I just think I was not clear on that um I have it's kind of a strange question but you maybe it's stupid I don't know but dual teachers you dual language certified teacher I mean dual enrollment excuse me teacher certified teachers you mentioned if a teacher leaves and someone doesn't come back if it's the middle of the semester and say a teacher
112leaves do those kids then not get credit for that class we we work with the institution okay and what we can do to make sure unfortunately sometimes the answer is yes they can't do it if we can't find a sub that can come in and help qualify that sometimes we have additional other members of the department that might help pick that up and help support them through the duel and we work with our partner we want to provide that opportunity for the kids as much as possible so then would they I I don't know that this happens very often I guess I'm just trying to clarify then would they lose that money than they paid for the dual enrollment too uh I I I don't answer I can't answer that we haven't had that in
113a okay okay um and when I talk about them leaving I'm more talking about the end of the year so if we had gone no I know I know that just occurred to me when you said they were leaving I get that it's the end of the year I just thought oh what if we lose a teacher do the kids lose out on the dual enrollment that was my question um I love that you added the UniFi dance and um the um business language Chinese sounds like are great to me too um and updated and the esa fees that we charging for that so um I think that that's all I have I had another question but I'll wait until after Miss Wade answer a question uh president Anderson uh could you clarify for me
114just to make sure I'm understanding I mean it has been quite a minute since I've had to write a description for a course that I teach for an updated course guide um the information that we would put in there for our classes would be an overview of the classes less specific and part of that reason is kind of on what uh board member Schultz brought up in that sometimes we have different teachers teach it from year to year and so this way we don't have to continue to update the course guide if there are specific things that still meet the course so for example some of our dual enrollment electives or our AP electives are decided by other things and as the teacher I get to decide which of these books or which of these
115things I'm going to be using and so I would assume that as we progress and we look at some of the the courses that we have in there we keep them as not necessarily overwhelmingly specific the idea I'm trying to address is essentially board member of Van Hook's concern so I can understand when we go through on the 10th what works best for us the idea of of being super specific in a course guide is not usually what we do because it's overview a lot of times if there is a student who has those questions or parents who have those questions because of the way we sign up for kids and all of that and they have time A lot of the time it's the parents who then can contact counseling or the teachers to
116get the kind of information that Miss Van Hook was concerned about specifically is that am I correct in understanding our goal and how we write the course guide for that we try to keep it a kind of a 10,000 foot view yes so that we have some uh opportuni so they understand the general themes I mean we're distilling it down to two or three sentences what's going on there and then as we get into the class I think that any time that we have a parent or someone who wants to know what the syllabus of the class that they're signing up for absolutely work with the counselor so that you have that opportunity to see that thank you president Anderson um obviously there's parents who read the basic uh description and didn't realize that there
117would be sexually explicit books assigned to their kids so adding some something in there to say that that is that is a possibility because otherwise how is a parent supposed to know to be able to go ask that question um they're just every parent's just going to have to call and go hey is there sexually explicit stuff in here no um so as as information ahead of time to let them know that this could be a possibility um one teacher might choose books that don't contain this information and another teacher can obviously you know that's where we're at um so it it wouldn't hurt to let parents know ahead of time so that they can decide whether they're going to sign their child up for this class or not um the other uh concern I
118had is um I know currently there's at least a couple students that are in this class um who have no other option to they've taken all the English classes they could possibly take so this is the only class that they're able to take in order to graduate um and we do have some flexibility there and for each one of those people that came forward we did provide options and there was a choice for the two and some one decided to stay in and one decided to not and one of the things I think I skipped on there is when we looked at Pathways and things like that we haded sub verbage to say pathways are suggestions they're not mandatory and they're not required and so if what we do is we try to help parents
119who probably I look at course guides a lot parents probably don't look at course guides a lot right and so what's easiest for them to understand some sequencing and possible things but we have always have opportunities to change to different Pathways or to different courses and they can work with their um counselors to be able to do that so when parents are signing their kids up for for classes what is sent to them are they receiving a course guide or there to the course guide and this year we're actually really working hard to do online registration so we'll be sending things out to the parents and the kids where they uh through the Synergy and through the parent view and the student view they can go in and select their courses from there um we're
120working through the process of either one or two things would happen so that parents get that oversight to know what their kids have signed up for one is there's a way that we can lock it through uh parent view and so the parents then can have access and say hey here's the courses yes I agree with that they click a button and it locks it in and that's their course request the other way is we can do an audit where we do a mail merge where it's kind of old school we would get a print out and kind of the old parent signature at the bottom hey here's what You' signed up for take it home get your parent to sign up so that they understand what you're signing up for and then come back
121and we can have that documentation so there's two different ways we want to make sure that parents are communicated with about what the courses their students are signing up for our course guides are on on our um on our website we'll put them up there as soon as as soon as we get the approval for next year here and to put it up there and then those links will be included when the communication goes out of our registration okay yeah I just I I would like to for parents to be able to have informed consent ahead of time um that's all I'm asking and then we avoid um any future issues that we've recently been been dealing with thank you president Anderson um something to at least remind the community of and I think considering
122the fact the way we had uh board me meetings this past August uh about this specific course in general parents get informed consent so for parents if you are concerned when you hear this information which I think is is fair and is valid because we all have what is good for our home and what we feel is best at the start of your kids uh semester for all of these books that there could be or even topics that have this we give out parental consent and we updated this summer those specific parental consent forms with more detail Ed information so these things are here they're part of our practice and it's part of the reason that this book became an issue in general because we had as we've expressed some parents who were not necessarily
123thrilled about it and those parents decided for those kids what was best whether that is to go to a different class that was an option or stay there I I I hear your concerns I also think it is important for parents to take responsibility of what their role is with some of that we are asking so very much of our staff and our schools with respect to information and if we put too much information then we're guilty of well I just had there was too much and I didn't know either way there is going to be that opportunity so steps we take as a districtwide practice is that should there be a Content area that is something that might have an issue for individuals that info is sent home to parents so they can make
124that informed consent so it is there it happens I recognize it's not necessarily in the manner with which board member Van Hook would like at this this current moment but I do think it is important for our community to recognize that that does exist um as a teacher who had to collect those papers I am so grateful that we're moving that to online just you know a delight so for all of those teachers who had to spend forever trying to make sure kids brought those papers home with that lovely signature uh the online option also as a parent who is ADHD the online option sounds fantastic so thanks for that President Anderson um I have a question so you talked about the hva program or changing it to a program is that something um for
125the year after next that you're thinking about I mean I know you don't have a crystal ball or anything but I'm just wondering we would actually look at implementing it for next year okay and and please understand we're exploring this option and we have not made that decision yet but the option would be we're still providing the opportunities for our students were not have no change in service absolutely it would just be that instead of being an hva kid if you lived in williamsfield boundaries you'd be a williamsfield kid you would graduate at williamsfield so we wouldn't have a separate graduation or we wouldn't have a separate anything like that and so when you look at testing State Testing and you have these small numbers those online full-time online students would be then included within
126the entire high school and for either of them and so now we're talking maybe we only have 10 kids well five might be williamsfield kids five might be higgle High kids and now they get included in those counts and we don't have to worry about hey we don't have enough kids to even qualify to be able to earn the points to be able to move forward and that's why you've seen two of the districts you mentioned two of the districts already went away from their aois and have supported it differently through their local schools and so that's what we're trying to make sure that we have all of our ducks in a row before we come back formally to you to say this is how we'd like to move no that sounds great to me
127especially as we're facing different decisions with funding right now that we need to look at so um sounds like a great use of funds and thank you um regarding the uh additional language uh for the class just to be a little more um informative I I am listen to both sides and I think that they there's great information brought um could we not I understand being proactive and informing parents and Guardians prior to signing up for the class and I understand we don't want to sit there and spell it out and do we need to be explicit in the language that we use no but could we put something in there to say this may require a um permission or permission slip or whatever what is the word is it a permission slip consent God
128consent form for some of the material that will be brought forward for reading can we not just put an aster or any just a quick line we don't have to be detailed of what they may be reading but can we just say hey this there may be material that would require a you know as I'm processing this now I I think we have permission slips that are required in a lot of classes and but when we get into the dual enrollment aspect and in the understanding that people are taking college level courses that might contain college level material that might require then permission slips then perhaps the line goes in with the dual enrollment part says if you're taking a dual enrollment class please understand that these are college courses and they might that's just
129what I'm thinking about so I I I just don't understand the putting the stop on just informing parents you know that that that's my thing teaching science classes teaching biology what I had in biology back in my day is not the same no it's not we don't dissect anymore what's up with that right frogs right and so um there when I hasn't been brought up now but I mean we cover topics that are hot topics there are things that are being concerned that hit with you know some religious concerns and um you know parents just don't know what's in the class they just assume it's what they experience so I I don't see a problem with just adding a line to just say hey so I'm just saying that I I I would support just
130a small little bit of language it doesn't have to be explicit and if you do it for other classes or these ENT forms are involved in other classes is it it's also because of mature content in books yeah we have some of our AP courses and and you'll look at our approved list when you look at our novel list that lists any of the novels that are being used that will require uh prior parental consent and I know AP when you look at our AP English courses they have some of those that AP says hey you need to be able to do this these are the books that we're using and we'll give consent for that as well and there's no language for those at all it's just it's just known that they're going to
131be correct home okay all right um I'll stop at that point but my questions were regarding the fees the proposed fee changes um can you hit on some of the topics for some of the areas where the fees are changing what exactly is increasing on this end to cause the increase for the families on their end like what what is pushing those increases uh yeah so when you're looking at the athletic fee uh increase I think the cost of running Athletic program whether it's equipment whether it's Transportation those things whether it's how we can uh support our uh workers game workers and different things all of those things tie in together um specifically to looking at the increased fees the amount that we supplement and do uh through uh Transportation or through you know we
132split this fee up and the coaches can turn around and buy equipment from it the cost of equipment has increased tremendously than since 2020 no less even longer than that and so then where do those additional fees from come from we supplement and we support Athletics through District more District budgets and I know when we're talking budgets and we're talking money in districts I don't want ever want to step on Mr Moore's toes talking about that but I know that we're getting into situations where perhaps our M and our Capital budgets are are not going to be as big as they used to be because we know we did not pass an override or a bond yeah I just wanted to ask to put it out in public for parents that are listening because question
133oh it's going up a lot of money everything else is going up I I want them to have understanding but also um it just I'll lead to my next question are there any is there any assistance for families that can't afford these fee changes because I don't want kids to miss out on opportunities anytime we have a family now or with that has an issue yes there is a process where they work through the bookstore and they work through the principal where we can wave fees absolutely we look at students and famil situation ations I know students on free and reduced lunch as they go through we provide addition uh additional supports for them as well and and that gets a little tricky because we don't turn around and add the amount into the P
134to the bucket we just don't include it at all and so um but yes there are opportunities for families who are struggling we don't ever want money to be the reason why they don't want to participate in one of our programs excellent I just want to make sure that that got out there for for the public thank you president Anderson not to beat a dead horse um just a final comment is um the the current um state of the consent form is after the fact and I'm just asking that it be ahead of time um so then we're not worried about transferring classes and and all that stuff that's all thank you president and Anderson I just want to add any course at any time that um apparent objects or wants an alternate assignment book
135whatever we work to accommodate that and even we even have some younger kids getting parental permission for novels or whatever so I'm just sitting here thinking it is a global practice to ensure you know if parents want something else done we work to accommodate um so I think we can discuss as ed services and what that looks like an update and status or whatever so because I assume parents all know that and they may not you know so they know they love Higley I know that yeah I and I know that you you try you all try to accommodate everyone so I appreciate that anybody else for this no thank you Mr ler I appreciate it all right we're going to move on to I need new glasses thank you 6.3 the Community Schools update
136with Mr Armstrong president Anderson members of the board tonight we are highlighting our uh ecdc program as well as our community programs and I'm going to ask Miss Amy coaches and Marsha Hoster go ahead and come up to the podium uh they're going to highlight their wonderful preschool program that is absolutely amazing and the the efforts of these two wonderful administrators is really going in deep to their programs this year and I want to thank them so you're going to have you're going to hear highlights and you're also going to uh hear a proposal for uh a fee proposal for the upcoming school year as well so I'm going to go ahead and turn over to Mrs coaches and Mrs hofstead thank you so much good evening board members administrators staff and Families my name
137is Amy coaches I'm the director very proud director of The Early Child de Development Centers this is Marsha hoffstead she's our assistant director let me Begin by first reading our mission statement our certified Early Childhood Educators and staff Inspire curiosity build solving skills self-esteem and Foster a love for Learning and our young children within a nurturing and play based environment we're excited to share a little bit about our preschool program and the incredible work that our staff does daily at the heart of what we do is our commitment to nurturing young students our certified early early childhood staff are passionate about inspiring curiosity among those students We Believe believe that building self-esteem fostering a love for learning are just as important as their academic skills that's why we create a supportive play-based environment where children
138feel safe valued and they're very eager to learn it's truly a joy to watch our students Thrive and develop in such a positive engaging atmosphere we're proud of the foundation we're building for their future success and it's all thanks to the dedication of our our amazing Community our families and our staff I'm going to share a little bit about our unique program offerings as you can see up on the screen our Mandarin program our Mandarin program is located at our kolie campus students in the program receive Mandarin for part of the day and English the other part of the day this program feeds into our Mandarin program at Coronado we we have our Spanish dual language program that's located at our San campus students in the program receive Spanish for part of the day and
139English for the other part of the day and this will feed into our Spanish Immersion program at SanTan Elementary we have our think program our highly gifted Academy this is located at our San campus this program will feed into our bridges Elementary School this program provides personalized instruction to actively engage exceptional Learners in an Innovative thinking environment that Fosters creative thinking talk a little about a little bit about our conscious discipline we have the incredible opportunity to provide workshops to not only our staff but to our families within the district so we have those here at the board uh office quite often conscious discipline was created and developed by Dr Becky Bailey it's a social emotional program that teaches children how to regulate manage their emotions in order to make safe and healthy choices you
140can think about it as discipline not as something that you're doing to children but something you develop within them the goal is to teach students how to respond instead of reacting to situations throughout our day within the school another piece that I wanted to speak about is our um a First Things First Quality first program uh quality first is a program that helps providers throughout the state improve the quality of their programs they provide coaching for our staff professional development they support us financially through scholarships for our students materials that they provide for us and then we have an opportunity for assessors to come on our both of our sites and really give feedback and provide feedback to us as directors as well as to our staff regarding our classroom environment as well as our
141staff interactions with students daily we have our CTE Early Childhood programs this is both at kie and saucan this incredible program provides opportunities for high school students both from Higley and williamsfield to spend time with our incredible staff at our campuses they engage in Hands-On experiences with students and staff to develop skills to prepare them to enter Early Childhood in that career we have our Middle School Tas uh that is currently at San middle school students are able to take electives they get to walk right next door which is really great and share time with our students and our staff and this opportunity also helps them to develop uh skills for career in the future in early childhood education a little bit about our special education services and our on-site evaluations we're extremely lucky we
142have an incredible team students can be referred by staff and families with concerns with students with developmental delays eligible students then can receive Services through our case managers speech pathologists occupational therapists and physical therapists I get the opportunity to speak about ecd DC through the years over 10,000 students have gone through both kie and saucan uh since the beginning in 2013 over 2,100 special needs students have attended both of our campuses historically with our attention of students enrolled in our husc kindergarden over 76% of our students a little bit about our brilliant Beginnings in our Kinder prep uh those full day and am classes that they have the highest enrollment historically for us a little bit about our BB program brilliant beginnings and our Kinder prep our brilliant beginning program is for students that are
143aged threes threes and fours focuses on social emotional friendships relationships taking turns caring and sharing uh early exposure to words and phrases Beginning Sounds counting to 10 number recognition and name recognition our Kinder prep program students that are four and fivey olds focuses on preparing students for kindergarten hopefully continue on in Higgly science through investigation letters letter sounds uh left to right writing and reading identifying numbers to 10 handwriting exposure for uppercase and lowercase letters and an exposure to word families site words and Counting above 10 starting those um addition skills as well he's trying to go through almost there all right so for ecdc So currently uh right now we have 530 tuition students between our kie and San campuses 169 of those are our special education students so that's a total of 699
144students and still counting because we add them daily um as they turn three our staffing involves uh 33 certified incredible certified staff 61 classified staff um again an incredible evaluation team 14 uh preschool and eval team that includes our speech our OT our PT and our VI so we're extremely extremely lucky thank you for allowing us the opportunity to share a little bit about our program yeah so as you as you can see up here um this is our our Kinder prep full day comparison to our our neighboring districts uh currently every one of us has certified teachers within our classrooms uh the monthly tuition currently is 750 and you can see it's 5 days a week 7 hours a day um moving into the new school year we are asking and this proposal is
145coming tonight as an information item and then we will be asking for consent come December in our next meeting we're going to be asking to increase our full day uh Kinder prep program to $800 from the 750 Gilbert and Queen Creek will also be looking at an increase for the upcoming school year as well and so we'll keep us right around where our our true neighboring districts are our Kinder prep half day that is up as well uh Chandler does not have a halfday program but our our District Gilbert public and Queen Creek unified all have half days very they're identical um for the upcoming school year we are also asking that we increase tuition from 400 to 450 um a lot of these increases are being asked in terms of completely having the program
146running sustain sustainably if that makes sense we want to ensure that we can continue to offer the outstanding program they are offering as well as potentially offering new ideas into the program um currently we do need assistance with that and this rate increase will go ahead and and help us there that is our ecdc program do you guys have any questions president Anderson I have a question um right now Queen Creek shows currently oh I'm sorry yes 805 is there not a reason why we don't make it the same across the board I mean I know that we've had in the past we used to um have a deficit as far as the preschool program Gres now we're even correct we're almost barely if not Mr MO not to put you on the spot I'm
147sorry Mr President M uh the presale program is operating in uh in the BL so they are okay yeah um when I first got on board yeah they were in a deficit um part of the reason we kept all the staff on during covid when we weren't having kids so it it was a intentional decision but we've worked our way out of that and then handing it over to Amy and their team they've continued that Trend um a part of these fees are to help continue to push this um preschool program forward and then to miss man Hook's point previously when I presented the AFR to help supplement the district um potentially with some of the revenues to help offset some District expenses or um put that money back into the program so thank you
148so I guess is there that we a reason why we wouldn't make it the same or I know with Queen Creek being at 805 right now what are they going to ask for if we're asking for 800 we don't know that but are you asking we're answering this are you asking why we just don't keep it even compared to everyone else mhm I don't I don't have an answer for that um okay I think for us it's individually it's an individual base it's for our district and I think that with what we want to do we're going to get there and I know I don't know the dollar amount but I know that we're still going to they're going to go higher than we are and or should go higher than we are and so
149we'll still be relatively low compared to others perfect I love this program I think it's a great program and all the different offerings that that we have and both my girls went through it lots of years ago or several years ago um so thank you very much president Anderson the 169 um specialed students so they don't pay a tuition so that so that is correct there are I don't know if sha could help this aspect as well but so there are students that are um gened students do pay the tuition our special education there are portions if not all that is covered so they do not pay that tuition and who covers that board member Van Hook we are required by law to provide special education free of charge to our preschool families so they
150are not charged a tuition for our families that choose to go into some of our other programs above and beyond the services that we offer in the preschool we are respons responsible to play that tuition as well so for example if I have a student that is going into a jna classroom to receive their services because that's the least restrictive we will pick up the portion of the tuition in which they're receiving their services once the family chooses to keep the student in there for a longer period of time the family is then responsible for the additional portion got thank you and then uh are we concerned at all that um enrollment from 12200 will go down due to the increase no actually our goal since both Marsha and I have been here is to
151increase enrollment so we have big ideas and big plans that we're hoping to implement okay yeah that that number that we have with what we're offering at our at our preschools is drastically different than surrounding programs um we're going to be still with that 800 $ increase and that 450 increase there are programs around us that are charging $1,300 a month and they don't have certified teachers teaching them academics as well and so what their program is offering and and what Marsha and Amy have planned is to continue to focus in on the the whole child um as every preschool does but really start identifying their teachers are asking for more academic components and what they have is just unbelievable we're going to be significantly lower than other other organizations surrounding us thank you I
152I have one one question you mentioned that San had um uh the Tas I know that kie used to have the Tas is that not happening anymore so that's in process we're hoping what what did it why did it go away my understanding is when covid happened um they had just went away and so we've actually been speaking with the counselor about potentially bringing that back in the future okay perfect it's an incredible opportunity for those yes absolutely it's a great program and and just to Echo what Mr Armstrong said we do offer so much more than surrounding preschools and the kids are able to excel I've seen it firsthand and how how well they can be ready for kindergart through your program so and all the amazing teachers um that are molding those little
153kids Minds so thank you I do before Amy and Marsha leave I would like to let them tell you quality first came down did their assessment and if you would like to share what you guys received for this for this sure um so both of our schools are going through the process we just finished at saan but our coie school um we learned last yesterday actually that we have rece received our three star rating um so for this year so we're really excited about that so it's a big [Applause] celebration that quality first is is not a easy task for our teachers or administrators it is very rigorous and very intentional per se and that's that's great so Kudos and those pres School teachers might be a little bit of overachievers so but they do
154an incredible job we're very proud all right and that concludes ecdc so thank you very much thank you all so much all right I'mma ask Miss Kim Ohan to come on up she's gonna highlight Community Education and some of the things that she has planned or that they've done this year and she has planned moving into next school year are you going to control the clicker okay no I'm not ready go back good evening president Anderson members of the board and cabinet members thank you for your continuous support and leadership in our district I'm Kimberly Ohanian your community assistant director and this presentation is to inform the board and community members on a short update on our programming so kids club is an all-inclusive a of school program dedicated providing a nurturing environment where children
155can Thrive physically socially and academically our program offers a wide array of activities designed to engage and Inspire children of all ages kids club is offered at the higgle elementary schools and our preschools our operating hours cater to the needs of our busy families with mornings starting at 6:30 a.m. the afternoons starting at dismissal and are available throughout the week until 6 p.m. whether it's before school after school or during an early release day kids club provides flexible scheduling and options to accommodate a variety of family schedules so shown here are some of our fun activities that we've done throughout this this year at several of our sites our amazing staff is there to welcome your child and the kids club family where they can learn play and grow in a supportive nurturing environment kids
156club the safety and the well-being of your child are our top priorities and our staff consists of caring um tentative adults who undergo through vetting process including background checks fingerprinting to ensure a secure environment for all participants to align with our strategic anchor to our highly effective person we have established a climate and culture that sustains excellence and retains high quality of employees all of our employees start at our training site for a week and each of our staff averages about 30 plus hours of professional and development training throughout the year we have 130 active employees and 42 of them are our high school students these student workers are super crucial to our kids club family additionally during school breaks kids club transforms into exciting experience for children ages 3 to 12 our intercession activities
157may include immersive field trips themed days and Hands-On stem learning stations and much more ensuring that children have a memorable and educational break from school a part of our inter sessions we create themed names for student groups so during this fall we had our bubblegum buddies cotton candy crew pop rockers just to name a few our fall intercession we went on a a field trip to Sierra Candy Factory for a behindth scenes tour and our candytopia themed was hosted at Coronado Elementary with almost 300 students per day in one of our themed rooms the cotton candy Corner this was a arts and crafts so just imagine that bright inviting arts and crafts room filled with candy candy creativity I did bring one of the examples that we did make which was one our marshmallow pops
158so all of the students made one of these and they're all handmade through clay and then we used beads on the top for their sprinkles these activities and events change each camp and we do not a repeat an activity all year round so over the summer we partnered with the Diamond Backs on ticket sales so thank you to our family in helping us raate raise $810 our winner is intercession is right around the corner starting on December 20th this will be hosted at Centennial Elementary in registration is now live our after school enrichment programs these are Lively and engaging spaces where students can explore new interest and enhance their skills beyond the regular curriculum since 2021 we've offered 123 enrichment classes with 6,0 6,050 enrollments some of these unique courses that we do have this
159year we got to introduce Braille Mandarin and sign language we also started our Kinder Kickstart which started this summer thank you to Melissa Garland assistant director of program compliance her and I did love doing this project giving our new Kinders a sneak peek in the day of the life of kindergarten this 4-day program showed new Kinders way to look for what to look forward to we had 70 little leaders and we were excited to watch them grow at Higley we do have that Braille course this year in other several Mandarin Builder clubs creative club yoga and much more we also do partner with outside vendors as well in these after school programming so thank you to elements music Science Matters bricks for kids chess Emporium Steven Hunter Skill Academy Sport ball TGA young rebrands dance
160sequence athletic athletes and training and challenge Island for your support these programs often include physical activities like dance class or Sports practice encouraging teamwork and fitness with a mix of our structural lessons and free exploration these programs aim to ignite curiosity build confidence and help students discover a passion with new supportive fund our Higley Youth Sports league is a Recreational Sports league for Kinder through sixth grade we offer soccer volleyball basketball flag football and cheer so so far this year in Higley Sports League we have 546 registrations in these programs when we do return from winter break we are adding volleyball for seventh and eighth graders so look for that registration link as well lastly we are excited to introduce our newly branded program where kids can dive into a world of fun creativity and
161friendship friendship here at the Higley hangout we are committed to providing a safe and engaging environment where a child can explore new interests build lasting friendships and enjoy memorable experience join us as we embark on this exciting new chapter together and start looking for our new logo starting January 6 so thank you president andon Anderson and members of the board all right as I said we're going to be coming to you with proposals rate increases um this is our kids club program in comparison to other districts our same neighboring districts uh as you can see we have a we have our registration rate which is the same or lower than others are daily AM and PM rate our early release day rate and our intercession rate for each of those districts um the ones with
162the asteris Queen Creek and GPS are looking at an increase for the upcoming year as well um now with our community education program this is our this is where we're asking you and again uh we're going to ask for the rate increase tonight and then come December we'll go ahead and have approval on that or you guys will vote on that but the am rate we're looking to go from 1150 to 1350 uh PM rate will go from 1650 to1 1850 and our Wednesday half day will go from 20 to 22 the intercession rates will go 45 to 50 that last column is what the employee rate for the upcoming school year would be and in terms of what the current rate or what the uh General general public rate is as well any questions
163or comments questions or comments president Anderson what is the current rate the employee rate the current employee rate yes the current employee rate is 75% off of our general rate sorry um on slide 17 I think that's what we're on so compared to what so 1080 here for the am only um so what is the current rate and it's changing to 1080 the current the the rate change to next year will be 1080 yes okay and so and the current rate is what I'm sorry is 75% off of our current rate which is is going to be off of our current so off of 11:50 it's uh in the morning president Anders remember sorry uh the current employee discount 75% we are proposing to go to 20% discount and then the math is obviously up
164there but um out of uh uh and talking with our Auditors and reviewing some of our IRS guidelines um we are out of compliance with IRS in terms of um offering employee uh discounts if we offer a program to the public um we cannot offer a discount greater than 20% or else that becomes taxable um and so we are adjusting that to align and get back into compliance with IRS um but that 75% discount was inherited uh we are taking the opportunity now to um move that rate back to to 20% Which is in compliance with IRS um and so that's the difference it was previously 75 now the proposal is to 20% Which is um legally U allowable and then anything greater that will become taxable but we want to stick um with the
165allowable 20% and that is the recommendation in this proposal ta and that would be taxable to the employee no anything over 20% would be taxable so we are out of compliance currently in the place um that's why the recommendations to move it to 20% got it okay thank you Mr I just have a followup question or Mr Armstrong either way are are we sending something to our employees to tell them the reason why the DraStic change yes as soon as we go through with the approval then yes we will be sending information up okay thank you thank you I'm guessing you had you said 546 registered for sports were 520 of them cheer just about yes I know that's our largest program so thank you thank you fantastic thank you okay we are now moving
166on to our action items beginning with 7.1 this is the second read and approval of policy B notification of board meetings are there any questions or comments I motion that the governing board approved the changes to policy bed notification of board meetings second that was Mrs Wade for second all those in favor I I I motion carries 4 to Zer 7.2 the second read and approval of baa evaluation of school board or the board self- evaluation are there any questions or comments before moving forward I motion that the governing board approved the changes to policy baa evaluation of school board board self evaluation second as Mrs Wade for the second all those in favor I I I motion carries 4 to zero 7.3 this is the second read and approval of jld D guidance and
167count policy jld guidance and counseling are there any questions or comments before moving forward I motion that the governing board approve the changes to policy J LD guidance and counseling second Mrs Schultz for the second all those in favor I I motion carries 4 to zero 7.4 this is the um ratify payroll and expense voucher 1045 is there any questions or comments regarding I motion that the governing board ratify payroll expense vouchers 1045 second Mrs Wade seconded that all those in favor I I I motion carries four to zero 7.5 ratify payroll and expense voucher 1047 questions or comments president Anderson uh this uh book purchase was for a woman as no man um and um it's a story of how a woman can break tabos and break um free patriotical misogynistic families break free
168from um and read uh there was a couple reviews um online uh that I'd like to read one person says um the author said that she thought it would be interesting to take this very real story and frame frame it within fiction however what we got instead was over 300 pages of repetitive language onedimensional characters um and a contribution to the anti-arab and inevitably Muslim narrative this novel is heavily reliant on stereotypes and generalizations to help paint a picture of Oppression abuse and patriarchy within the Arab culture I understand and respect that part of the story are factual experiences of the author however when she uh what she did with this novel was paint an entire culture and people with the same misogynistic brush there was almost a feeling of resentment that se seeped through
169the pages as this story went on the second one said I think this book is about how women are oppressed question mark maybe question mark it's mentioned only 20 times on every page so it's a little unclear I hope the sarcasm there is as transparent as this book's message bad heavy-handed writing um reads like what a beginner creative writer uh writing student produces say here is my theme um it announces here is my message my characters take a back seat to my social commentary not sure how this has such a high rating on good reads or anywhere for that matter bad bad bad um I just I I don't understand why this is again a book that we're offering to our CH our students um that there was a portion in the book um that
170also talked about kind of um how she you know to to kind of go against her parents and what they're saying and what their religion is um and it's I I find it um it's it's for me I it's awful that like these kids are given a book to that tells them you know you can defy your parents and and you can defy your your you know whatever your religion that your parents are are raising you as considering their minors that's a decision that you know kids can make as they get older um but again I I find it to be a terrible book that's all president Anderson uh Miss Richards would this book require a parental permission slip board member Wade yes it does okay thank you okay I motion that the governing board
171ratify payroll and expense voucher 1047 a second Mrs Wade seconded all those in favor I I all those oppose motion carries three to one all right future 8.1 future agenda items anybody have any requests okay moving on to the adjournment I motion to adjourn this meeting second this is Wade again for the second all those in favor I I I motion you want to hang out motion carries four to zero thank you pleas