001thanks for asking I got question good evening I'd like to call this meeting to order Mrs Richards roll call please president Schulz like the record show that all five board members are present thank you if you now join me in a moment of silence and Pledge of Allegiance I'd like to make a motion that we approve the agenda second all those in favor I motion carries 5 Z is Richard superintendent report yes welcome to another exciting EP episode of Higley adventures all right this evening we want to introduce you to mitsu Navaro mitsu attends Higley High School he is a senior this year and he's he was selected is one of three students in the United States to travel to China this month to compete with other foreign students on the Mastery of the Chinese
002language this is a huge accomplishment on a side note last year he also earned the Seal of B literacy in Mandarin and Spanish and I just learned he also speaks Japanese knees so we would like to wish him the best of luck and now I'd like to invite him up to say a few [Applause] words all thank you for having me here so like they said my name is Miss novaro uh first I'll just say a couple words in Chinese and then I'll translate for you guys so so I said hi my name is misso I'm currently a senior in high school like he said at Higley High School um I will be I'll be representing the United States and I'm very honored um to be competing for the Chinese Bridge Chinese proficiency World competition
003I will be competing against 110 different contestants from around a 100 different countries around the world and I would also like to take this take this time to thank the school district for being one of the one of the only districts in this area to have a mandarin program I think this program has really helped me a lot and has provided me countless opportunities like this one and I'm just very thankful for it so thank [Music] you he's already promised to send pictures and videos so that we can share in this experience so I know Miss pan Ley is very proud of him she's been bragging and I pulled him out of class today and I said hey say something to me couldn't understand any of it but he's here to help us out next
004we want to introduce Miss Mr [Applause] Fox good evening president Schultz members of the board cabinet uh my name is Mr Fox I'm the principal at williamsfield high school and I want to thank you in for inviting the williamsfield high school yearbook staff to speak briefly this evening uh Mr Adams sends his regrets for being unable to attend this evening as he is currently attending a professional development conference tonight we celebrate the williamsfield aerial yearbook in the awards the staff has earned our yearbook has won several accolades over the years and we thank you for your support tonight four yearbook staff members are going to share a few of the awards the staff has recently won first up is Olivia Ernest she is the editor-in chief for the second year in a row and has
005been a yearbook member since seventh grade yearbook is her life and she plans to continue it as a career and in fact let's get Alissa Brian Olivia and Isaiah up here too all at the same time so they don't have to walk back and forth so let's hear it for those guys real [Applause] quick thank you for having us here each year we compete in a national competition and at the a competition at the national level as well as the state level in order to be a Awards and further the development of our yearbook program um last year our book was voted best in the state at the uh Arizona inter inter Scholastic inter Scholastic press Association um annual conference we recently won Design Awards uh four of them for our yearbook um we're going
006to show you them this evening this the first award we won this summer uh was the best design over our cover and our uh end sheets um the end sheet design is shown right now um and we start designing our yearbook like right as soon as the last yearbook is submitted so we've been designing this year's yearbook since March and April of last year um I would now like to introduce uh Alyssa as our sports editor good evening as Olivia said I'm the sports editor I also held this position last year and I plan on attending ASU next year for sports broadcasting and journalism thank you for supporting our program so that students like me can get a head start in our career if you look up on the board we have our cheer spread
007which placed his best sports spread for our Varsity Cheer coverage I'm also proud to announce that I'll be designing most of the sports Pages this year now I'm honored to announce one of our designers Isaiah hello thanks for having me here I joined yug after taking photo one ever since then I've made some awesome friends in this U organization I designed spreads take photos and interview students to get the best coverage we can this is our this is one of our academic topics that planned the best academic spread this past summer this spread is about Fitness UniFi Sports and Sports Medicine which is another one of our CTE classes next i' like to introduce Brian [Applause] thank you Isaiah members of the board thank you for celebrating our designs with us this is one of
008our dividers which are spreads throughout the book almost like chapter separators the yearbook is made up of strong design journalistic writing and photography I'm not only the managing editor and and am slated to be the EIC once Olivia graduates but in the program I've learned so much about photography that I've been working as a photographer as a 16-year-old the CTE programs and yearbook is partic in particular has been a really positive thing in our school and we are really proud to be here with you tonight thank you for inviting us here this [Applause] evening okay a special shout out to these leaders in our school district we're very very proud of them and we're ready for this year's first points of Pride so this evening we're going to begin with sasman middle school I need
009the administrators from San to run on up here you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] have the microphone R okay I definitely promise the wireless M all right Mr Bruce pots good evening president Schultz board cabinet thank you for being here those in the audience and the millions around the world watching on YouTube uh we're here this is this is always an awesome experience we we appreciate the district does this the hard part though is is picking just four we have such a fantastic school from our uh classified staff our certified staff our volunteers and our amazing students so that that's the challenge of this we only get to pick four so um our first one will just kind of go in this order so uh Miss Fiona come on up so Fiona is our one of our
010amazing eighth grade students uh we had a chance to get to know Fiona last year's a seventh grader uh taking on a couple different leadership roles one of the biggest being uh a part of the our portra a graduate uh project that we took on for the district and uh worked as a team with that and presented it and and made a video so it was just an awesome experience and then this year she's taken on some different roles she's a key member of our National Junior Honor Society uh she's also on my principal Leadership Council and just does amazing things you see her on campus she's always smiling you walk into a classroom she's always engaged uh she upholds our motto respect and accountability every single day with a smile on her face and
011a positive attitude so thank you f h for all you do hey Mr pots would you have Fiona just say who's with her tonight yes I apologize and I let me back up this was in my head when I came up but I got outside I want to introduce this is our admin team we got Mr keing our assistant princial athletic director and Mrs mola ardino student so I do apologize they are amazing team so Fiona who who do you have here this evening to support you um I have my mom my brother and my dad very nice very nice and I think they come up now for photos or forget the process here everybody at the [Music] end you sit down good up here if you up here sorry sorry sorry and great outfit
012choice I know you chatted about what to wear today yeah so our our second is uh our volunteer the middle school we don't have as many volunteers as maybe sometimes the elementary school has but we do have a couple different volunteers a lot of that and within ptso but uh for this particular volunteer grandma grandma Odell come on [Applause] up so I I've known Grandma Debbie Odell for quite a few years now uh she is the the mom of Miss roner one of our amazing uh science teachers and I've I I got a chance to know her when I was a teacher I'd see her here and there around campus but as I've moved into administrative position got a chance to see her a lot more and so she does so many amazing things on
013our campus one of the we take a lot of pride in in the appearance of our campus one of the my favorite things that she does she does amazing bulletin boards all around campus with different themes uh she was a rockar the other day we uh we did a peanut butter and jelly drive and we were taking the peanut butter and jelly out thankfully it's the peanut butter spilled but we had peanut butter all over the parking lot that that Spilled Out as we filled up the car and uh she's just always in the classroom supporting students she does a great job so gradelle thank you all for all you do oh I who who is here supporting you make my name of my husband yeah um daughter Brooke granddaughter Aubrey Mrs roner AKA Breezy
014Breezy um Haley Payton Kellen I can't see you all Riley and my son-in-law Dane what a great family they're the best and I did forget something as as we selected her I found this after the fact they her and her husband uh had a New Year's resolution this year to do volunteering more often so once a month they do a different place to to do some volunteering so they've done Ronald McDonald House Feed My Starving Children and lots of different things so I found that after fact didn't play into the factor but that's another amazing reason she's an amazing volunteer so thank [Applause] you next up we have OG Olga Gutierrez come on up [Applause] Olga Olga is one of our two awesome security guards and and that's kind of a loose term because of
015all the amazing she things she does so she's been on our campus for a couple years now in a variety of roles uh and uh she wears a lot of different hats right and so the role of a security guard is super important for the safety of our campus but uh she also is kind of plant uh plant Foreman uh not supervisor but uh support staff uh she helps with lunch crew and custodial work and uh we have it we on board a new security guard this year she's kind of helped with the training with that but she does so much right and she has so much respect for the students to much have so much respect for her uh but she she they know that she means business right and so and her kids
016are here and I know they can attest to that who is the scarier of the siblings here of of the of the parents here so Olo we appreciate all you do for our campus and thank you very much and then give a round of applause and then you have a she has an entire row so if you can let everyone know who's here supporting you my husband my kids all five my nephew and my nieces and sister-in-law all uh all either former Spartans are current Spartan Spartans as well so all of her kids have gone through the Higley District thank you and last but not least we have our uh certified staff member Mr Wyatt come on [Applause] up so when I think of all the stuff Mr White does I have this Christmas ornament
017at home that we hang up every year and it's got Santa Claus and he's got like this giant scroll and it's got like a bunch of names and presents and stuff on it so that's kind of what I think of Mr Wyatt cuz if you if you ask Mr Wyatt what he does on our campus you unravel the giant Scroll of all the things he does right not only is the amazing teacher in the classroom every single time I walk in there he's up with students doing awesome engaging activities uh he does Winter Guard he helps with technology there's not a week goes by where he's like hey don't forget about this today I think he sent one yesterday like hey don't forget to switch your uh the new uh Synergy grading over so you
018see all your new grades uh he does he runs up what yeah DNA he does our uh our Marquee we have a new beautiful Marquee so he does all the graphics for that and the list goes on and on and on so Mr Wyatt thank you for all you do for our campus to make a ssome and a fantastic place and who is here to support you I have my mom my dad and my wife very nice Mr specifically put red flowers out for you so thank you for all your support gohost Spartans now we got pictures yeah okay [Applause] thank you I just good job all right next we have our amazing Higley High School points of Pride and Mr Phils is already coming up here with more than he can hold so all
019right to get a really good bag for that that would be awesome all right good evening board and cabinet uh everybody here watching and as Bruce mentioned all those people on YouTube that's awesome um higgle High I'm the proud principal at higgle High proud to recognize some of our uh points of Pride this evening we're going to start off with our student Donovan [Applause] Adu so Donovan is a he's a perfect example of what it means to be a student athlete as a student Donovan has a weighted GPA of 4.25 is ranked in the top 10% of an outstanding senior class Donovan has taken several honors and AP classes while also serving as a senior class president and volunteering in numerous clubs and groups around campus Donovan is equally successful on the football field where
020he's been a three T three-year starter and an all region in All State football selection last year he was one of the key Le team leaders that helped lead the knights the state championship and is on every preseason watch list as a defensive player of the year this year Donovan has numerous college football offers at top programs around the country the school that's lucky to get him will be getting a great player and an even better young man we're very proud to have him represent higgle [Applause] High yeah yeah uh I have uh my mom over there and then my little sister [Applause] all right next up is our volunteer Mr Brandon [Applause] Haney Brandon's the kind of guy that jumps in anywhere and helps out uh at the start of the homecoming football game
021our team experienced a technical issue with the televisions that were on the sideline to playback film for players and coaches during the game they were brand new hadn't been set up yet Brandon was on the spot he came out of the stands he worked feverishly to troubleshoot and get the systems up and running before the end of the first quarter Brandon was the higgle High instrumental Association booster president for two years part of which was during coid during that time he worked to increase the band's program presence online and on social media he was great at taking pictures and videos of the group and then editing them into hype videos that he would share with the membership Brandon continues to produce higgle hype videos that are posted on social media these videos are shared and
022sh shed Again by students and draw accolades from those who see them this practice has led to one of the coolest nicknames around Brandon is known as the hype Guy gigley high school is is grateful that Brandon is our hype guy thank you mister thank you so much and then Mr Haney who who did you bring with you this evening yeah I have my oldest son Ethan who works at the high school as a parah I have my daughter Ava she'll be coming to Higley next year and my wife Angie awesome all right you wait piure all right next our classified staff Miss Kimberly [Applause] bracket Kimberly bracket is the office manager at Higley High School Kim has consistently gone above and beyond in her service to our school students and staff she's willing to
023step forward and assist in any capacity wherever there is a need Kim's always there to answer any question from a student staff parents or even administrators Kim will tell you it's her job to make others look good Kim's a lifesaver day in and day out and she makes all of us look good Higley High School is beyond thankful to have her as part of our family and Kim who did you bring with you my husband Allan so Kim's husband's name is Allan and her boss's name is Allan so she lets both of us pretend like we're in charge thank you thank you all right and then our uh certified staff member Miss Cody [Applause] Vance Cody has time and time again shown that she is one of the ultimate team players on the Higley High
024School team Cody has served as the lead writer for our school's successful A+ School of exellence application last year this fall she served as a volunteer trainer for our staff for the newly adopted assessment tool offering office hours after school to assist staff in addition to serving as the English language arts department chair she's taken over the elll program on short notice due to a need on our campus taking the total number of classes she's teaching on campus to seven Higley High School is proud to recognize Cody Vance as our certified staff point of Pride job and then did you bring anybody with you I've just got online viewers Tonight YouTube world yeah excellent all [Applause] right all right if you guys want to join us for a photo you guys screwed in well done
025that's impressive all right next we have upcoming events we will have a school visit to Santan Elementary on October 20th I know that Mr marado and his team are ready to brag so I hope you all can make it our next board meeting will be 5:00 p.m. here at the district office on November 1st we look forward every year to the best buddies talent show it's at the hcpa on November 2nd at 6 p.m. and then board members we're hoping you can make it to the Gilbert Community of excellence awards on November 8th where we will celebrate staff members and klight Higley so that's it thank you very much Mrs Richards um that was an amazing um Report with lots of great things um we wish Mr Navaro good luck um and I agree the
026Chinese program is amazing and uh as always our yearbook team is awesome too so thank you very much uh we will now move on to request to speak oh I'm sorry and at this time if you would like to leave uh we thank thank you so much for coming okay request to speak 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 were due prior to the start of the meeting members of the board may not discuss comment or take action on matters raised that are not specifically ident identified on the agenda therefore pursuant to ARS 38-43 1.01 action taken as a result of public comment will
027be 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 the audience members practice proper public medium 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 will be asked to leave speakers please limit your remarks to 3 minutes thank you for your cooperation first up Mr Richard young hello I was asked to speak um by a parent in Higley concerning the changes in the U dress code uh you doubtless know that one of the principal things is the removal of the modesty Clause um prohibiting exposing the chest abdomen midrift genital area or buttocks that was taken out
028for some reason I'm not quite sure why I looked at the subsequent uh rules and uh nothing really quite equates to that I can tell looking at this board none of you knows what storms go through an adolescent boy in high school I remember they will love the removal of this clause and that is not a good thing it is not a good thing at all generating years ago when I was in school decades ago really uh we had something once a year called Satie Hawkins day we dressed up like Mountaineers from Tennessee Moonshiners ragged clothing and everything else it affected our decorum lasciviousness rascality the teachers hated it but it was a custom so we went along with it they had to go along with it this removal of this Clause moves almost every
029day a little bit closer to STI Hawkins day in your school district it is not a desirable change you want to encourage toorn and growing up not this type of wildness now that's what I was asked to cover but in looking at this I came across something else in prohibited clothing Clause number three any clothing uh that uses or depicts hate speech which insults or offends uh because of age race color yada yada yada uh gender identity or the rest of that that's that's all prohibited under this Clause I take it that this is something that you picked up from another District without judicial or legal review because it's a bear trap it's unconstitutional it's illegal you can't for Force this if a kid shows up with a button saying the coid vaccine is dangerous
030you can't do anything about it if he has a button that says global warning warming is bunk you can't prohibit that if he shows up saying there are only two genders even if it offends people you can't prohibit it the Constitution says you cannot that there have been many cases since Tinker in 1969 you not to have known but uh just recently in uh parents defending education lyar Community School uh went to the court of appeals and came to a decision August 2nd and the court entered an injunction against the school because of this very same thing one of the students declined declined to recognize more than two genders and they punished him and United States court of appeals said no no you cannot do that this is a bear trap it's a danger you
031need to have your lawyer review it Mr Roy Morales the writing uh good evening members of the board staff um thank you for inviting me tonight uh just three points of order tonight I wanted to uh express my concern over the recent vote last month regarding the uh black dress code that was voted to to two I think a lot of the uh members of their Community who felt that the prior dress code was just fine was ignored um I don't think that the 3-2 vote was representative of the community I think that the dress code prior should have just been left alone number two um the other decision by the board to a four to one vote to send staff to conferences where they emphasize diversity Equity inclusion with keynote speakers and the problem
032I have with that is that while we may have trust in our teachers to disseminate what to take home and what doesn't what not to take home doesn't exclude the fact that we're enabling these organizations to push this ideology to our teachers and other teachers Across the Nation by paying them money for the entrance fee for those teachers to attend it's like enabling an alcoholic by giving them money and so they can drink their boots we're not shopping with our dollars we're not shopping with our wallet in order for them to send a message to them that we should not be including Dei and in any of our uh conferences the only way we're going to stop that is stop sending money to them and stop sending teachers there and I question the legality of
033it because stairs on state law prohibits sending staff members into being indoctrinated by diversity Equity inclusion so and that is a segue to leads me to the next point of view on Equitable but math education um I believe you guys have Equitable math program here that prioritizes social justice ideological goals over the core principles of teaching basic math the uh this emphasis diverts the attention from the fundamental goals of helping students develop robust math skills now while the pursuit of Equitable math is well intentioned it can result in C of academic standards watering down or simplifying math content or introducing alternative methods for the sake of accessibility could hinder the student ability to excel in more advanced classes down the road Equitable math initiatives F fail to recognize the diversity of individual students needs and
034abilities in certain instances efforts to promote diversity Equity inclusion practice can create division within the education Community the concern here that these initiatives can be seen as politically motivated therefore diverting attention from the overarching goal of enhancing math education therefore such diversions created by this agenda do not belong in this school or any other schools in the United States and I uh encourage anyone to look at the Insidious nature of diversity Equity inclusion by looking up Dr uh James Lindsay of discourse he gives a very detailed U um background where diversity Equity inclusion comes from and the Insidious nature of this Marxist sociology thank [Music] you next up Taylor Francis Madam president members of the board I stand before you as a parent of two husd students vly disappointed by your recent vote in September
03520th meeting first and foremost the dress code bestows upon students a sense of the cor and propriety it Fosters an environment were refined apparel aligns with intellectual Pursuits by adhering to prescribed attire guidelines students cultivate a heightened awareness of their parents in stealing with them within them a respect both for themselves as well as their peers Choice modest attire benefits the seriousness of the academic setting by creating conductive a conducive environment for academic expirations while simultaneously fostering a tradition of Excellence second a dress code engineer in genders a spirit of inclusivity by bolstering unity among students from from diverse backgrounds As We Lay Down appropriate clothing guidelines we Forge a shared standard which overcomes barriers of social divisions this Unity encourages Mutual admiration and appreciation nurturing a sense of belonging to all students within a
036structured dress coat students are liberated from the pressures of fashion trends and socioeconomic disparities allowing them to focus more intently on their educational Pursuits third address code imparts essential life skills crucial for professional success by adhering to prescribed a tire that reflect modesty students gain invaluable insights into the professional world into which they will eventually Venture they become acquainted with the notion that impressions are indelible and they learn the importance of dressing appropriately in various social and Vocational settings this early exposure hones their ability to navigate societal expectations thereby better preparing them for a future underlined by a formal occasions and professional encounters additionally we must acknowledge that the efficacy of a dress code lies not merely in the establishment of boundaries but in cultivating an atmosphere of self-expression contrary to popular misconceptions a dress
037code need not stifle individualism rather it offers a canvas or creativity within specified parameters by encouraging students to exhibit their Ingenuity through subtle embellishments or personalized accessories a dress code confers upon them a unique channel to articulate their identity while upholding Collective values the designation of a dress code within educational institutions holds immense importance it Boulders a sense of dignity promoting a distinctive Ambience conducive to edification it Fosters inclusivity dissolving social and cultural divisions and nurturing unification it equips students with valuable life skills Paving a path toward professional success and above all it grants a platform for f self-expression within a structured framework the implementation of a chosen dress code is the reflection of the enduring commitment of educational institutions to to cultivating well-rounded individuals who will continue who will contribute meaningfully to society I
038thank and L by president Anderson for her dozens of hours of sincere Research into this matter yet in the face of empirical evidence demonstration of pre-established excellence and academic substantiation three of you decided to reject such validations in favor of being trendy rather than follow the example of a vast majority of top school districts in the nation you felt it more important to copy local local districts who are by your own words inferior to the district which you claim to represent shame on you president Schultz shame on you miss Reese shame on you miss W with this 3-2 votee you have failed to execute the duty the only message you have conveyed is hly Unified why be better when you can just be like the rest next up Mindy brocker hi thank you very much
039for giving me a chance to speak um here I am again in my effort to normalize speaking positivity from parents to our public schools first I just have to mention because we just came back from break I love our year round calendar so thanks for that guys it is amazing and I have bragged to so many people these last couple weeks about how great it works for our families anyway this month I do want to thank governing board and and the administrative staff here um that keeps this entire machine running your job is hard one and once acquired it only gets more difficult sometimes there are members of the community that can cause disruption in meetings and harassment of our Administration and board members for that I am sorry I can tell that each of
040you those with whom I agree or disagree really do care about the work that you're doing here I request that as a team you continue to support our teachers and staff our students and our parents over these divisive politics full of conspiracy theories and endless buzzwords I do believe that just most parents want their kids to learn and to develop a love for learning so thanks for your hard work thank you for standing up and with your help hle Unified School District is one of the best districts in Arizona and honestly for that this parent could not be more proud thanks guys miss Kathleen Rich Richards excuse me good evening uh to our Administration and board thank you for the opportunity to speak this even evening um thank you for the great presentation this as
041a parent of Elementary ready to rise into Middle School seeing the Spartan Pride was really awesome and it's always a great thing to see us honor the teachers and the volunteers students that really stand out in our district um I wanted to come here today because I have actually a bit of a request as a parent and I wanted to do it this way instead of sending it anonymously over email uh not anonymously but anyway for the people on YouTube I suppose um I'm asking that the administration take a look at how much um the time and energy that is going into a lot of what from a parent perspective seem like questions that are really not necessary to send the administration on Journeys for these board meetings with questions that could easily I have
042Googled them to find some of the answers I have looked through the Higley website to find many of the answers or dug through presentations to find them myself and it concerns me especially with one of the things on the agenda this evening being that there is a request for more access for individual board members beyond the board president to have access to our legal councel what that will financially potentially look like for our district over the last several years I have been here um watching all of the elections here for our board many of you ran on the idea of financial transparency at varying degrees and it seems um out of character to potentially put our district in a position where we would be expending more money on something that is frankly unnecessary it's not
043a norm it's not something that is standard in other districts here in Arizona or Beyond and it begs the question of what is really the goal and or um uh request for that driving toward as a parent there's no transparency in it and it's really frustrating to see especially because there are a lot of other things that we could be concentrating on we see what awesome things are happening in our district and to see so much of getting hung up on things like buzzwords from Mr Morales about Dei guys you need to do a little bit more research it's not hard I don't know what you were taught in high school but it's not what you think it is and you need to stop using words that you think are so scary when in education
044they have been present for decades even you were part of those programs and social emotional learning that you keep trying to use as buzzword to scare family when it's really not appropriate and it is based in a lie so I hope that that is an acceptable request and thank you to all of you for the common sense vote on the dress code next we have Linda Payne good evening board members um first of all I I was quite happy to see all of the recognitions tonight that was really really good so thank you for doing that I am also here about a couple of things now one the first one is the dress code that happened last time in your meeting two times ago we really did have the votes to not have it passed
045and obviously our board president felt like it was important to table it and um until she could get the support which she did but there were all the people that got up and talked got up and talked and asked you to please don't allow it to pass you didn't listen to us you didn't listen to all of the emails that came in and it makes me sad that you don't want to listen to the parents and the constituents in this district for what they want you just kind of do what you want I guess because there wasn't one person that got up and was positive about it tonight there's been a couple but um there wasn't that night and I'm kind of sad because you just didn't want to listen to us the other thing
046that I wanted to talk about was um and I don't even know if it's possible but I've been going to several games that my children have been playing I mean my grandchildren been playing at and I've noticed that they everybody stands up and they have you know they do the and then they you know they play the music for the national anthem but nobody sings it anymore I don't even know if anybody knows it anymore it makes me kind of sad I didn't know if there was a possibility that you could have those words put up on the wall so that people could possibly start singing the National Anthem again so our kids could learn it this country is one of is the greatest country in the world and we need to stand by the
047Constitution and its precepts and the flag and the and the [Music] a pledge of allegiance and the the song The Star Spangled Banner is pretty critical and so I don't know if that would be a possibility to do that so that we could start letting our children learn the words from that great song and that's all I have to say oh my God I'm sorry I can't read this handwriting but I believe it says Nancy wilming good evening contemplate for a moment if as a kid you were told that you were not smart enough to handle the basic general education School curriculum solely because of your skin tone family finances or the neighborhood you live in when we invite Dei education practices into our school that is exactly what we are telling our students and
048those in our community think of the slap in the face that is every person for the past 60 plus years that has fought for equality and education the parameters of Dei promote racism and do not remove it Dei along with other similar teaching philosophies tells students from the get-go that unless they are a particular skin tone living in a particular financial status that they will never succeed in life when it comes to Dei and mathematics education You're simply telling our community that in your closed-minded opinions that you do not feel these people of a specific skin tone can handle genu education mathematics that because of their skin tone they will never be able to balance their own checkbooks that they cannot handle the rigor of a career and if field including engineering that uses mathematical
049computation at the last board meeting we had teachers hingley union members sitting in the audience laughing and gasping for air when a board member pointed out that we should never allow discrimination of any of our students based on the color of their skin we are constantly told to trust our teachers but how do we expect the community to trust them when you have such teachers sitting at a board meeting and acting in such unprofessional professional manner these teachers need to publicly apologize to the community I understand why union members would promote such a biased curriculum Union leadership needs these members to stay in power to keep pushing an agenda of pickpocketing those they claim to support on a monthly basis simply put Dei is designed to swell the lower ranks of the Union so that
050the small governing board at the top can continue to stuff their pockets on the sweat and labor of the members however as a society that is built on a foundation of individual exceptionalism these Union thugs lose their power because the individual not group think is able to succeed where the unions told them they could not simply put anyone looking to take a small take a stand against racist viewpoints must take a stand against Dei education programs and any organization that wishes to push a Dei agenda here in higgle unified unified if we truly believe our students are tomorrow's leaders not no matter what skin tone then we must not allow Dei to infiltrate our community we must take a stance and Stand Out by demonstrating that standards written to promote Excellence are not based on
051a person's skin tone but truly on the content of their minds and their ability to be personally responsible for their own decisions also keep in mind that such training and teaching is against state law thank you moving on to the consent agenda president Schultz can I just make a clarification that was mentioned in public comment yeah I'm the one who had requested that the item be tabled at the previous meeting prior to the board um approval so I just wanted that clarified for the record that I had requested the the dress would be taed um and to be brought back not you as president thank you I I was fine with it either way because we had to vote on tbling it anyway so it wasn't my decision or your decision it was a group
052decision moving on to the consent agenda I that we approve consent to G items 5.1 through 5.13 seconded all those in fav favor I I I consent all those opposed I I motion carries 5 to zero moving on to information items 6.1 Human Resources quarterly ESI report good evening president Schultz members of the board before you you have the no you don't not yet there we go thank you um we have the report for Educational Services Inc this is a quarterly report that we'll be bringing to the board this is information on our employees that are doing the return to work program as well as our certified and classified Subs any questions on this presid Mrs Anderson thank you I just wanted to clarify in my question um I asked about the rtw values um
053if if we're going to see them on future reports and the reason why I asked um I just want to clarify your answer to make sure I expressed my question um well is um the values of the 16,000 11,000 14,000 and 19,000 um those are totals for the year correct that is no that's not correct um okay Mrs Anderson the return to work um values include what we need to pay in uh benef well not benefits but taxes as well as the the uh cost of ESI so you'll see those as we pay for each individual that's on the return to work you'll see the amount and the amounts will look different keep in mind some of the employees didn't come back to work until July some came back July 1st and they're paid each
054are paid differently we do reduce the amount that an employee um is paid by 20% of their salary to cover the cost that we spend with ESI so you'll see those quarterly how much we have paid that that in particular individual on that purchase order okay that's exactly what I did is I looked at the vouchers and did the math it worked out perfectly when you divided it by four for the certified and five for the administrators I that oh that's it they're just breaking it down for us but that that makes more sense what you're saying thank you thank you president Schultz Miss Johnson what happens when I mean I know we've already increased that at one of the board meetings so where does additional if we have to increase it again where is
055the additional funds coming from well um president Schultz and member Van Hook uh what we've estimated for this year and what we've seen expended so far will it appears that we stay within the $2 million now if we needed to increase that um I'm going to ask that our CFO Mr Moore answer that part where the money would come from but we really have evaluated this based on last year and hope that we do not exceed that 2 million and remember we didn't bring the rescue Subs back either and we're seeing we're still our fill rates are well above 90% And at the November 15th meeting I will be bringing a presentation about ESI and what we are currently doing Mr Mr Mo president Schultz member hook um all of the ESI expenditures come from
056maintenance and operations budget so and again it is a board policy if we are anticipating exceeding that 2 million we'd bring that back to the board as an authorization to increase but like Miss Johnson stated we are I think uh budgeted well this year and I don't think we'll anticipate any additional expenses in ESI for fiscal year 24 and if we don't end up using full amount that'll just go and be part of the carryover that's correct okay thank you sorry this and and just to follow up with the 33 instances of coverage at kie um uh the response being that it possibly could be or it is because the absence is less than four hours but this was the only School that had sub coverage um at least at that magnitude maybe at all
057are they is it something unique to kolli are we having trouble fing I know that the if these were truly all half day I understand that but if they weren't are we having trouble finding coverage for our middle schools that's a lot president schulten vice president Anderson um kie is utilizing the uh internal capacity that they have we are not having any trouble filling any sub requests we are running right now about 95% of those requests there are absences that are do not need a substitute and the ones that are like less than 4 hours are being covered internally we see that usually with the middle schools and the high schools I I just that wasn't I don't think that was your question question was it I'm I think that I'm just I don't want
058to put my I don't want to put words in your mouth but are you asking why we have so many Subs at coie yeah yeah I don't think she's asking about the fill rate of Subs I think it's about why we have so many subs and I mean I for I know that we have some long-term Subs at coie due due to the fill ratees so that contributes to it if I'm correct it does you are correct president Schultz yes that does contribute I thought it was vice versa what you were asking but we're our fill rates are really good and we're covering whether you know it's four hours more four hours less and again I will show more evidence in the presentation in November about that does that help yeah I was just confirming
059if this mainly was a situation or if we just kind of got chunk um in this past set of um payments or is they going to you're going to see some more from other schools because it really was the only school that had this going on oh the status okay yeah so we'll uh address that further in status how's that thank you thank you any other questions concerns Mrs Rees just because we're on ESI real quick and we're having that presentation um Mr Moore can you for that presentation since ESI is also with Subs can you um indicate outside of ESI what we have budgeted for internal coverage um like we saw a lot of the internal coverage and theyve received teachers received supplementals for that um I'm not asking for that now but in
060the presentation as we're talking about Subs can we include some internal coverage what we have budgeted for that if we have it budgeted um since ESI is part of our sub coverage as well if we can just try and include our internal amount cost as well yeah president Schultz member re I can work with Miss Johnson on including that in the ESI presentation where we can take a deeper dive into some of those other um expenditures and and areas such as the ones you mentioned so thank you anything else moving on to 6.2 sorry thank you Mrs Johnson too moving on to 6.2 finan annual financial report Mr Moore all right good evening president Schultz members of the board just as I thought I was getting a break we're uh we have more reports Financial
061reports that are um I'm here to present um I was joking that I would get a break from presenting Financial reports but it's that did not go over well I will always be presenting Financial reports so okay um tonight I have have our annual financial report um so I often do joke too that we're always working in one year budgeting in one year and working in reconciling another year um at the same time trying to account for our current year so um this report looks back at fiscal year 2023 which is from July 1 2022 through June 30 2023 so um this report references all last year we're not looking at this current year or we're not looking at budget in the future so um diving into this report what is the AFR for those
062board members new to this report or those who have seen it before um the auditor general uh by Statute uh provides uh these reports to uh F to fill out um it is is gradually increased over my years working in in school Finance it used to be one report just that first bullet the 2023 AFR which summarized all our financials but um there's since been additional supplemental reports added to this um total um AFR package and those include the Food Service AFR classroom site fund narrative which covers our um classroom site fund funds um School level reporting the Cs the planing worksheet and results based funding so six various reports this summarizes all expenditures so we had over 78 million uh dollars in expenditures that includes not just m capital but all our tax credit
063any of our cash controlled funds and I'll highlight some of those tonight it also includes um 379,000 accounting transactions and so I can't while I get the honor of presenting this um really would like to take a chance to give kudos to my staff who we view every single one of those transactions and make sure that they are one following the the usfr the uniform system of financial records and two um that they're in line with our budget and uh what we've expected to spend so um kudos to the finance staff I don't get to thank them enough enough but um this is report is their uh summary of their uh good doing so jumping into the the the summary of the AFR um I do my best at anticipating what the classroom spending report
064would be um so every year the auditor general takes the AFR compiles it into a classroom spending report and it look a little bit like this they present a pie chart with various categories and so um our fiscal year 23 spending report looks a little bit um the same as it has in the past but uh again for those new uh to this report classroom spending um often also used interchangeably as instruction uh encompasses teachers teacher aids substitute teachers um General instruction supplies instructional AIDS things of those categories um higle unified all pretty much every year outperforms the state average so the state average for last fiscal year because report reports are just being submitted is 54% um what I'm anticipating uh after we submit this report is hly will be above 60% in instructional
065spending and so um again that's a budget priority for the the governing board as well as the district and again it shows in our expenditures so the next big line item um is School Plant and so School Plant uh encompasses equipment repair Building Maintenance custodial Services grounds keeping security heating cooling lighting and things like in those nature um for higle unified that that represents 10.8% of our total expenditures and just for context the state average is roughly 11.3% so we're we're trending just slightly below the state average uh next category in percentage I guess big would be um the admin um so admin cost encompasses superintendant principles business managers um other staff who perform accounting payroll so pretty much my whole team um warehousing Human Resources uh administrative technology services and other related cost um
066and services to into the governing board and so those costs um for higle unified represent 9.8% of our total spending for context the state average is 10.2 so we we Trend typically below the state average on that um and I've stated this before but we typically run thin right we we uh have quality administrators um and we typically run very very lean in our administrative group um but it shows uh to the quality of administrat that we have to still maintain our job duties um next up student support student support encompasses our counselors uh speech pathologists nurses social workers and attendance services that represents 7% of our total spending uh student student support for the state average is 99.2% so we're trending just slightly below that uh speeding through a couple of these other categories
067instructional support um that encompasses Librarians teacher training curriculum Development Special Education directors media specialist uh that's for higle UniFi that was 4.9% and for the state average uh is 5.8% so we're trending below the state average in that category and the last two Transportation he unified is 4.6% again Transportation I think is pretty self-explanatory um and the state average we're right around the state average of 4.3% and lastly Food Service higly unified uh trending below the state average I think Food Service category is pretty self-explanatory um Higgly unified is at 3% whereas the state average is at 4.7 so going into a little more detail on this I provided a comparison report for the last four fiscal years as well as a percentage change from fiscal 22 to 23 um some of the the main
068highlights um you're going to see percentage change increase in this um when you take away any funding so you remember if you have a total PI right and and this in this instance Food Services declined other categories have to increase in spending um this is how the auditor general presents the report I believe there was a there was a board comment um asking to present the information as percentage difference from year to year um but the auditor general presents it in this fashion as percentage change because you're still talking about a total P of spending your 100% does not change um so you it would be misrepresentation if you said from for example the question was um student support 6.3 to 7 is actually 11% increase um but that would be a misrepresentation because it
069is not 11% increase when you're when the pi is just shifting expenditures so um I do want to touch on a couple categories where um we did see some increases above what we would expect um with some of the budget decisions that we made in last fiscal year so one of those is student support um it is up 7% over last fiscal year and the two reasons why um it's contracted sped has increased and um shaa Can can speak to that uh inability to hire um uh sped staff um has forced us to contract which contracted staff inherently cost more in addition our counselors at the elementary level um we were unable to fill those from Esser uh last year and remember this encompasses all spending um this year we we were able to fill
070those three Elementary counselors being funded for m 3 um those Elementary counselors fall into that category so when you add those salaries that's going to increase that category uh expenditures in in plant um we saw an increase of .9 um a lot of that we saw a lot of similar expenditures we saw in inflation and the cost that we were paying for the same supplies and services um I've mentioned this multiple times but the the cost in construction has increased drastically and what we saw we had a lot of the same expenditures but the cost that we were paying for those same items from just one year to the next increased drastically and then in Food Service the reason that took a big decline if you remember in fiscal 22 the federal government had um
071made uh national school lunch free to all students so um with our district being just in the neighborhood 20% free and reduce that's going to have a big swing when you add 80% of the student population to a free lunch so in 22 our students took advantage of that right and were able to utilize that free launch program in 23 that went away so that's why you see that big swing um back uh to normal levels and which we've realized in fiscal 20 and 21 so so any questions on this graph before I move forward I know there was some board comments okay so diving into the the big funds that we we always talk about and in a little bit of cash controlled funds um the the two main um categories that I always
072try to allude to are budget controlled funds versus cash controlled funds I'll first cover budget controlled funds um as a reminder budget controlled funds are formula generated by average daily member ship so um examples include maintenance and operations capital outlay and our federal and state grants so when you look at the actual AFR you may see discrepancies on why is your M budget different than your cash like why because our budget is what is is what we have to what we're obligated to stay to um our cash is controlled by our tax rate and every year annually we try to even those out um we've had some conversations about this but those can often times be at two different levels um we can have huge swings in people coming into our community and that will
073change our cash levels and then every year we adjust but um we have to stick to the budget that we adopted and the only time that number changes is when the board either accepts a budget proposed budget adopt a budget or a budget revision so um that is one discrepancy that I feel is different when school Finance um looking at M I presented the last five years of the M budget um as well as the M carry forward um our budget has steadily increased over the the five fiscal years um some of that is attained to student growth as well as um inflation Factor increases with the state budget um our budget balance carry forward is starting to level off the last two years it's been at 21% and um as outlined in our budget
074proposal and our adopted budget we are working on bringing that down um to uh a reasonable level which we identified anywhere between 10 and 15% um I feel like it's a healthy balance we've inherently grown our budget balance carry forward due to um supplemental grants such as Esser these huge influxes of funding into our budget have supplemented some of our operational expenditures um but those are all set to expire this year so um we do have a little fiscal cliff coming into 25 um which is where that budget bounce Carri for is set for looking at Capital I pred this slightly different uh just because I feel like Capital has a little more activity um I presented the same thing the last five fiscal years um but I presented four barographs um the first one
075if you look at the Blue State allocated capital budget so this is the formula generated capital budget if we were to see you no carry forward no transfer this is what we would get from the state and you can see in 2019 2020 21 uh that capital budget was was very low and that was poor to the recession area cuts um that we were still recovering from the state had a plan to start um basically bringing us back to 100% funding U but you can you can see the DraStic difference um from 19 to 23 what a what a recession area cut looks like and versus a fully funded capital budget uh it was drastic and so um when when you take away four million $5 million annually that's when we get into um looking
076at transferring um which I'll work down to that um the next line uh prior carry forward that works much the same as ml whatever you end the budget balance on you you tack onto the budget for the next fiscal year so um our total budget and this would true up if you added the numbers um you would take State allocated budget plus carry forward and that would be our capital budget for that year um um the one thing that Higley has done over the last five years because we have had a lack of capital and a number of capital needs we've gone to the m transfer and transferring operational dollars to the capital fund to account for some of our Capital needs um you can see that number fluctuate from year to year um but
077that those three numbers uh in whole are are total Capal budget but um our our need to transfer M um is still there um and I'll cover that in a later presentation but um I wanted to like showcase that out and break that out in this presentation and show um how we get our total capital budget um Capital expenditures have been relatively flat up until last year um obviously the big expense um as we've fully expended our bond um we've supplemented we've utilized our capital budget to fund the Higgly High building so um that's where that 18 million uh 600,000 comes in expenditures um and you're going to see that in the uh 25 budget um when we start looking at our capital budget be greatly reduced because our carry forward is going to be
078um pretty much exhausted so looking on the flip side um we have several cash controlled funds um that are in the AFR the financial report I'm going highlight four of the the bigger ones um those four cash controls funds are Food Service Civic Center Community Schools and indirect costs um there's also several site controlled cash funds so um do not get confused with the auxiliary operations tax credit and the Student Activities um all those revenues and expenditures are are again dered at the school um all we do as a finance department is account for those um but those are the school's funds um we do not touch those um nor nor do we have authority to um as those are student generated revenues and um they choose how they want to expend those um but
079the one discretionary cash funds of the four that excuse me that we do have available are Food Service Civic Center in community schools and indirect first food service um much like I mentioned earlier uh we saw a big influx in 22 uh due to Federal free and reduced um with all our students being free eligible free um Revenue uh went skying skyrocketing in 22 um and now in 23 we maintain that balance in 24 we do have a plan to start refreshing our food service equipment um and getting utilizing some of those funds to bring that balance down Civic Center has been relatively flat um rentals are we are seeing coming them coming back into the district since coid um a lot more activity other sites we have carnivals we have a number of activities
080coming in um and so you'll see revenues and expenditures coincidentally um increase Community Schools um again hit pretty hard by uh the coid U when we had to Clos our schools um in addition we lost a lot of parents held their students back um in terms of not putting them in the preschool um maybe when they're ready giving them an extra year we've worked really hard with Miss Gleason and Miss Oar and um Community Ed in preschool to rebuild this fund balance um we're just about uh where we need to be to feel like we're comfortable and reserves um and again this encompasses Community Schools encompasses both preschool and Community Ed and their annual expenditures are around $6 million so what we set as a goal uh was to have a Year's worth of fund
081balance so we're almost there um but we feel years with the fund balance would um help support that program if any instance were to come where uh some reason we had to cancel full fall camp and we already obligated salaries to maybe those students or preschool enrollment dropped to decline so it gives us that flexibility as well as security um to support those programs if there is any fluctuations in enrollment or something were to happen to those um camps so again those are those are operated separate from the operational budget um and all within that fund and then lastly indirect costs um indirect costs are utilized um you can see our balance there um are utilized to uh actually support all those um um like utilities um anything that we utilize for Personnel Services such
082as administering grants reconciling grants submitting completion reports um indirect costs are derived from our grant programs and we can um basically um write in the grant um a number of um an IND direct cost amount approved by ad uh to recoup um to basically administrative Grant or pay for the utilities or overhead to operate those grants Grant funds so um uh majority of my staff is funded from indirect costs because we help oversee we work with departments such as M Miss Millers and sped the Ida Grant um title um we work with these Grant administrators to help reconcile pay them submit the reimbursement request to ad um and so we are very Hands-On uh with these Grant programs and that's what the indir indirect cost uh allocations for to help support um basically those employees
083for doing those overhead um overhead jobs so um we're working on bringing that fund down um again we've had a number of additional Grant programs that we don't typically see Esser being the big one um and so we'll see that fund balance start to decline um and get into more stable levels over the next year and that's a quick summary of our annual financial report I'd be happy to answer any questions president Schultz Mr Moore so you're saying that if we were to utilize obviously our M has just ballooned over the years um and we've been able to carry year-over-year um a large sum and so you're saying that if those dollars would be depleted if we weren't to do an override I didn't mention anything about an override that well it's I I guess
084I'm getting ahead with the other presentation but so if if we were to use the m carryover and be able to transfer that to Capital instead of of um asking for more funding um I guess I can ask for the next uh presentation but um how would you mentioned that it would be depleted but with the amount that we have in our override being able to transfer between the funds um what would cause that to to be depleted considering AEL was lifted for next year um and I don't know I don't remember what that total amount was that came with that lift so I guess a couple things to adjust there um the the carry forward for one is is a one time it's that's that's a essentially a one-time balance that that is funds
085that um were not obligated in the budget and we're carried forward going forward so that currently we are sitting on 25 million um if we were to potentially not renew the overall IDE um which accounts for about $13 million of our M budget um that is just a supplemental add-on to the m budget um that would be depleted in about one year before we get to a point where I don't feel comfortable um not carrying over um a certain percentage in our budget where I mentioned the 10 to 15% so um I don't think the carry forward would be an appropriate use to to supplement an M override and then number two we we did um purposely increase our carry forward the last two years um with the um risk of the AAL um potentially
086coming um down in where we would have to reduce our budget um that AAL was about 20 million um of our budget so we were going to be able to basically U maintain all our staff not have to make any cuts um reduce our carry forward to pretty much zero um to basically um account for the um that would have implement or that was at risk in 22 and 21 um as you as you mentioned that has been excluded for 20 up up through 24 so um we are working on spending down some of that balance but again it's onetime balance it's not ongoing funding right um and I just forgot my other question I had I'll wait till till I remember M thank you Mr Moore and then moving on to 6.3 override update
087Mr Moore welcome back no jokes this time I'm just going to work through this presentation uh thank you president Schultz members of the board um annually uh we are required to present um if you do have a voter approved M override and or Bond um any any voter approved election we're we're annually required to present um our expenditures as well as look forward um to our next year budget so um we do have both um that bond this will be the last year that we present this Bond information as we fully expended that um in fiscal 23 so we do have no no more expenditures but I'll go into more detail and then we do have an M override that was passed in 2019 so first up the m&o override um that was passed in
0882019 that was a 15% increase on our RCL um anybody wants to learn more about that I can be happy to take a call but um it's a it's a weighted add-on as I mentioned earlier um uh to our ml um our M budget there's not a separate bucket that this goes into into it's it's a weighted add-on to our M budget um and that funds um this is what was in the voter pamphlet that funds increase in teacher compensation maintaining and improving Elementary specials such as Arts music PE and District Athletics um those are not funded by the state provides Staffing to maintain average class sizes supports gifted special education all day kindergarten um we've mentioned before kindergarten funded by the state is only funded half time by the state so we only get
089um half that funding um even though we offer full day kindergarten uh I feel like you you'd be losing out if you don't because another district will will offer that so um we F this supports at all day kindergarten and provides uh additional educational resources to the classroom so um this graph is a representation on approximately how that M override expenditures were utilized um again this is a weighted add-on so there's not a separate bucket where this goes into so um and looking at our expenditures this um for the ml override it was about 13.6 million um in additional M and majority of that is to support a teacher compensation increases uh which the board approved last year a 2% increase um maintaining our specials um and then maintaining our average class sizes so looking
090forward to 24 um that amount is slightly increased because our student Crown is growing again it's it's a formulated um amount of 15% of our RCL um the total estimated &o budget for 24 is 13.7 million um one thing we we are approaching is um the expiration of our our 2019 override so a little history so the I looked back at um the history of emo overrides in Higley and so Higley back in 2003 passed a 10% override um that was renewed in 2008 and then subsequentially failed in 2012 and 2013 um District then uh at the time made a few cuts um in 2014 um but then was able to pass the m&o override um they did modify it to a 15 15% in 2015 and then that was renewed in 2019 and so
091um here the the board is going to face um a decision I think in in this coming year uh to make a decision to to either go out and renew this um as we are approaching next year um we'll start the phase down so the current M override in 2019 it's a weird um formula but it's it's an authorization for seven years but you're only fully funded for five so um we this is our we are currently in year five um again I've mentioned that pres that provides about $1 13.7 million add-on to our m budget next uh fiscal year fiscal year 2025 um if we do not pass um a renewal on the 2024 November ballot uh we will start a reduction of 33% in year six so um as it stands currently that
092would be about $4.5 million of reduction in m and then in year seven there's an additional phase down it goes up to 67% of the total M override that would equate to about 9.1 million and then in year eight again if this was not renewed it would be a 13.7 million loss as it would be completely eliminated from our operational budget looking at our voter approved Bond it was originally approved in 2013 and then repurposed in um the expenditures in 23 are pretty simple um all used for construction remodel renovate and this was all for the higgle High um building addition so the 3 million that was expended uh in 2023 as well as the 48,000 in technology upgrades were all for the higle ey building Edition um as you know that that Total Building
093cost was closer the total building budget was 10 million um and so this supported some of it but and then pre previous presentation I showed where the other half of the expense came from which was our capital budget um zero cost expended for admin or transportation and again this um uh fully expended so this will be the last report regarding this Bond um here's a picture of what that funded uh as you know some of you were at the ribbon cutting uh it's a beautiful building um and I know that school is enjoying it and just looking forward I think we we Face a similar situation as with the m override I think um the board we have some potential future Bond considerations um the average age of ISU of buildings is getting older 18
094years um increasing stress on the maintenance budget um our maintenance director is at my door regularly um and we're working on making those repairs um and prioritizing those but uh with a limited capital budget we're doing the best we can we've tried to utilize the school facilities division um but we have already got received word that they are out of money for fiscal 24 um they were allocated 288 million um by the state and um again this is for every District in the state they're responsible for administrating um that grant program um so if you notice higgle high is partially painted uh the portion that was supposed to be funded from the state they have told us they are added funds uh is held currently held for consideration um potentially in Jan January or next
095fiscal year other projects that we had slated um chapparel was supposed to be um exterior weatherization imp painted HTA saucan um kolie was also supposed to have a roofing that is also on hold um they have indicated that we should patch uh as we wait till further having me a word about funding so um they have currently stated that they're only funding Life Safety right now and as they should right that is the the absolute priority if somebody is in um a natural disaster or there's immediate need um that is where the budget is being prioritized but any external projects have been on hold um we are utilizing we do we will get word in December um but Williams High School is slated for a 912 new construction funding um by the school facilities division
096so what that means is um the school facilities has they have a a building renewal grant program which is where we're funding repairs such as that and they also have a new New School uh construction budget so um we have worked uh to submit that our high school 912 enrollment is is growing and we're at a capacity um they have acknowledged that it was in the state budg budget this year that we were considered for 25 um but this year working with with Mr Lots the our our 912 increased drastically above what we were expecting um so we think in December with the new formula that will be slated for new construction starting 24 um but their new construction uh budget is uh limited on on how much they fund per square foot um they
097will fund the necessary needs uh four walls carpet and uh that's about it so anything extra is on the district they don't do de they don't deem that educational space so our our one to one our technology anything that we utilize in our buildings that are above that four walls and a and um floors um are extra ex ra and so that that begs to consider how are we going to fund those extra needs as well we can we get this new construction funding but how are we going to make it match what is currently existing and keep those spaces Equitable so um all things to consider um but I do think the district should consider evaluating an option for a 2024 Bond um election going into next fiscal year so with that I'll be
098happy to end any questions Mr Moore I'm glad we have growth but it's sort of Bleak when we have nowhere to put them president Schultz Mr Moore as far as our our growth so we've had growth in the middle and high school but our elementary is way down because we've closed several classes plus our online class um so we've had growth in our expenses and the funding but in in whole our numbers are down when it comes to enrollment no we're actually up from last year in total enrollment um based on my I recently looked and it looked like we were almost 200 students down and even the information that I was provided from the time from 22 to um it on the paperwork that on the questions it showed that we were down students
099um we can provide an update and status this this week I'd love to see that um but if we if we weren't sorry I can't see um if we don't um do another override in four years um the bond would drop by half correct the the amount owed you're talking about oh out sending interest and payments right um I do not know that top of my head but I know we have less than 10 years left on our outstanding debt so I believe it would drop by half which would also mean that property taxes would drop by half for the community members um and my biggest concern is I want to make sure that we incorporate every possible Avenue to utilize the funds that we have um before we go to the community and ask
100for more funding um and I mean I I don't with you said so we have 26 million in m and 10 million in capital total between what is what is the carryover we have between the two between the two um I would say approximately 32 million so um and I know that we don't want to deplete that obviously but if we can see where we can save um to be able to I mean we all we all have a budget in our lives and we can't keep going to the bank and asking the bank to give us more money to be able to you know redo our bathrooms and redo our kitchens and and so I want to ensure that we utilize everything that we possibly can um within our budget um before we go
101to the community because even with with current inflation and everything else that's happening people are having a hard time putting food on their table um and living paycheck to paycheck so um I want to keep that in mind um and uh we're here to ensure that our community members aren't negatively impacted by this um we have senior citizens on fixed budgets um and you know every every time we increase increas their property taxes it impacts their income so um I want to be mindful of that thank you president Schultz if I could um something that I would like to at least uh put out there for us to consider because I actually was employed here in Higley uh for 2011 I student taught and then the start of 2012 and 2013 through 2015 before I
102moved away um some of the ways in which we save money or cut those costs what ends up happening is uh we cut things like paper we got six streams of paper for an entire semester um that was really hard as a teacher we would talk about when uh Staples had remarkable deals on paper and we would go as departments to go hoard them because we needed the paper um especially this was before Chromebooks so the paper was definitely vital um our classroom sizes I taught 45 and my lowest was 39 uh Spanish had 50 chemistry had 49 for a period of time um these are the things that happen and then we then have to deal with the community being upset about the unsafe environments that we are creating I literally didn't have enough
103desks in my classroom uh to be able to have all of these students sit we had people sitting on the floor we had people sitting on my desk in the back um just where they could find them and sadly it was nice when you had students who were absent because you were like oh well there's a desk go take it um these things are hard um I had students where I couldn't provide the the books that they needed for some of the stuff and supplemental and we had to do the best we can to find other resources and those types of things uh I know and respect and I think it's important to keep a budget and I also understand that we as individuals budget um but the very big difference here is that we
104have a legal obligation to provide for the community and with that we are also under a legal obligation to provide safety and unfortunately the things that get cut the most um do impact the students directly um and by extension then impact the community and so I hear you and I think it's important uh for those who might not be involved in it who might not see it every day or might not know what that experience is like to keep in mind that when these Cuts happen we definitely felt it and I I would argue that's part of the reason why in 2015 we passed it with a 5% increase because we were like we responded and tried to correct what was already done because those years were really really hard um as teachers for students
105and everything else because you have kids where like I know you are a person and you exist in my room but where you are at and your level of understanding and all of that is hard for me because I literally had in one semester 172 students that's hard it's hard um I can tell you that as we've passed the override and we're capable of doing these things it's it's beneficial so I I understand as a member of the community as an individual who is also you know living in a situation of paycheck to paycheck and trying to make our ends meet uh that it's hard and I understand that but there are consequences to some of these things sometimes and where it ends up hurting is is ultimately the [Music] students president Schultz um Mr
106Moore what what is our current ratio teacher to student might have to look to Mr Richard but I think it's 1 to 20 but you take districtwide um which is relatively low when you look at neighboring districts or I mean comparatively um or 1 to 20 1 to 21 is about or 1 to 25 it depends on the campus and the grade level and we try to monitor that carefully um based on the regulation we have in place that every Camp's a little different but we're in pretty good shape because I was relating to what um board member Amanda Wade said because I remember as a principal having 32 kindergarteners in the same classroom and you know try trying to navigate so I think we've done a pretty good job with our class right ratios
107you know is it perfect no is it better yes and then we do I've seen somewhere it was like 1 to 19 um there are some specialized programs sometimes that we have to take that into consideration um in order to staff it sometimes they're a little lower but we're always watching that and we spend spent a lot of time on that as cabinet last year trying to make sure we weren't overstaffed and that's hard too you know because we don't like to move people around or you know mess up what's been in place but I don't want to deal with Mr Moore if we're over staff and and can you include in the summary what it is we get from and I know it varies per child especially like you know with sped they get
108additional funding per student but on average what we get from the state what we get from federal um can just to just a basic average amount that we get from each would be nice to see per student yeah cuz I mean I hear that you know from from legislation we here you know anywhere from 13 to $15,000 per student is being given to to school districts um how does that equate to to us and I know it's based on obviously you know how many students are in in a seat so yeah I can provide an average but like Bas support amount is $4,700 for regular education student um and then again you mentioned there's multiple weights but we can we can do an average for you uh where some of those higher numbers come into
109account they're including overrides bonds um other elected well aside from aside from our property taxes so that I mean I'd love to see that number two um and and obviously everybody's property taxes are different where mine I think like 68% of my property taxes go to Higley um and it's based on square footage and all that but um I just would like to be able to see um so you're saying that about average of $4,700 from the state alone that's not the average that's the state um allocated per people base amount okay um again I'll have to go in and look at our information because there is weighted add-ons if students are special ad right um title elll so um but I don't have that number off top of my head so yeah no just
110in the in the weekly summary we can include that as well I'd love to see it thank you president Schultz just a quick question Mr Moore um I'm trying to follow along so um if we as Miss Van Hook was saying um if we took the fiscal year 23 budget that we had 120 million not including the carryover because that's one time that's gone if we don't have anything to carry over I can't count on that um and from what you have here for our override I mean is it reasonable to say then we're at 107 million if we're taking 13 million is is that so our budget would essentially taking these numbers I get futures a little bit different but taking these numbers our would then drop to 107 million um and if we
111want to continue our current expenses um we're dealing with a obviously a lower number right to fund full day kindergarten to fund any of the extras the um specials music PE all of that so keep if we kept our our expenditures the same we're just dealing with a a less amount and like you said then if we if we're faced with something you and I had a lot of conversation about carryover and making sure we have enough um and part of that is we're not immune to inflation either and um I know this was a conversation I think probably a year and a half ago we had because things were starting to increase including the cost of Workers Compensation Insurance um Regular health insurance utilities things like that that we don't have time to budget
112for the next year because if our utility rate changes it changes and we have to pay that and we don't anticipate when that's going to be so um so I know you and I have had those conversations um but I just wanted to start wrapping my head around some of these numbers um of the override coming out and like I said for me I can't really carry count the carryover because if if we're chipping away at that it's not year after year once it's gone it's gone um so I wouldn't count that as having a cushion because you can't get it back once it's gone unless you increase your income so thank you this is part of the reason why in the beginning of the year I asked so before I say that um Sr
113funds are gone they were supposed to be used by a certain date what was that September there's several variations of Esser there's Esser one two and three they all had different in dates um our last iteration of Sr is Sr 3 that has a um indate of this current year so 630 2024 um and that um Grant amount is is north of 7 million um that will come off our budget um and again we have several positions funded from that so that will be a budget conversation um with M Johnson and cabinet members um whether we have the budget capacity to bring those back in um we also have prop 123 coming off the budget um that is gone in 25 that is $900,000 add-on by the so there's several fiscal cliffs coming in this
114next fiscal year um but yeah to your point Esser we've completely for Higley speaking for Higley we've completely expended all the way through Sr 2 we are just on that last iteration Sr 3 which expires at June 3224 okay um and so what I was trying to say is in the beginning of the year I uh questioned as far as be hiring counselors because we were supposed to use the s funds for the for the counselors and so will the amount that's left cover the counselors that were hired um and my concern was once that money is gone and now that money falls on the district having to pay those salaries and we discussed at that time that um I don't want to see any any cuts being made to kids programs because ultimately you
115know kids should be able to have music and and all the classes that they enjoy um which was why I was concerned about bringing on staff that couldn't in long term be able to be supported on our budget um once those Sr dollars were gone um so I guess I I would also like to know what that amount is um that and and I know we've discussed it before but um if you can remind me and you don't have to do it now um but what that would cost us in the long run once those dollars are used up so there's currently no counselors being funded in the operational budget it's all being funded from Esser still um and if you recall sr3 had several stipulations that which required Community input and that was an
116overwhelming um category in which the community supported staff supported that they wanted counselors in school so we proceeded with um hiring those counselors again um that annual allocation um uh for our assistant director of counseling as well as three Elementary counselors who share the load with our nine elementaries is roughly 400,000 including benefits so um again that is a conversation like I mentioned that we'll have to have going into next year's budget as they're completely funded from the um Esser Grant this this fiscal year thank you president Schultz um this is always going to be a tough topic correct um this is why we've got packs and we see signs on the side of the road and um having discussions about it and it's not unique to our district in any way every district has
117their own um support and issues with um asking for more money from the community where we are different from other districts is that we um as people are against these because of misspending we are a district where we actually had that um where and you can see in the numbers failed 2012 and 2013 and people were speaking up um I can all I can attest to what Miss Wade was saying with cuts to the classroom I've I've been working in the district since I believe 2004 in Human Resources I did that for nine years um and here when uh superintendent luch was here that was um a hot mess in a way right when I was coming in transitioned over to H Birdwell and in that short time when I started coming to the office
118and I've stated this before and I worked in Human Resources we had seven employees all the districts were giving cuts um but we had cuts and our staff of seven went to a staff of three in human resources and it was awful um but also kind of within a little sweep of time where that wasn't the only the only cuts that were occurring there were Cuts with specials there were Cuts in the classrooms there were cut with supplies in came some directors and Friends of superintendent and and so it created we the boogeyman was real whenever hit the district right um so I just I have seen some very positive behavior um as we've approached bonds and overrides whenever we ask for transparency I've seen transparency um I you have traveled to different schools you
119have outlined what it's going to be spent on you have told us what it's going to be spent on um sitting here um I thought being a board member would be different it's turned out to be kind of um a rough emotional ride but it's it's coming down to a lot of just trusting in who is leading our school district and making decisions um so I ask you to continue being um open and honest and and and when we ask for more information please don't take it personally I say that to the the crowd and I say that to staff it's just trying to get better understanding and try to get more information out there it's we can we can hold our head high when we say with confidence and with proof that this is
120what the money is going to go towards this is why it needs to go this way um and then also I like the question about the class sizes in an update um or if we can some information because it does fluctuate um a lot of the times um some schools get a little more attention than others definitely um younger classes tend to and we those high schools are it gets pretty bad so um as we ask these um I apologize for the extra work that it may cause but it would be helpful as we move forward in this process and as we make more decisions in our votes so thank you Schultz M we're happy to provide more information and um I don't want to tee this up but I would be I don't want
121to put this decision on the board I I don't as my opinion too I mean I'm trying to do the best I can it's in my role um but I think if you if the board um would allow i' bring back in December a recommendation to potentially have a Citizens committee to make a recommendation um that was some of the feedback I've gone through two iterations of bond um and I've worked to improve um our transparency and our um ability to get all stakeholders feedback and so um one idea that I potentially had was to bring I actually um ask the board you know in a later date to potentially authorize the citizens committee where that we would take in community members uh Miss man hook and and other stakeholders that um parents Etc to
122to present a holistic recommendation to the board on on these um override elections as well as potentially a bond I think that would Encompass some of the feedback that we've gotten over the last couple years um and maybe um take a little bit of stress off the board um if they have a a holistic committee that has representation um of our community um so just if I can bring that back in December and how that potentially will look um but just to to put that out there um I feel like again being in this district for now three years I feel like that would be the um prudent approach uh to approaching this subject um for for the election for next uh calendar year president charz Mr Moore so one of the um frustrations I
123had in 22 was um there wasn't the there wasn't full transparency because it was put out there that one of the things that the district wanted to do was open another Elementary School and uh a board member at the time said that's not true and she was saying that's not true on social media um when a Community member was saying it's literally in the paperwork it is true um and then within a month of this year beginning um we received an email that several Elementary classes were being closed um so I could only imagine that if the bond did pass and we went through with building this Elementary School when in fact we were shutting down Elementary classes um so when we speak transparency everything should be transparent and and um the community deserves to
124know exactly what's going to be be happening and why um and then also for um community members being part of it other than parents how are we going to notify community members that this meeting is going to be held um for those that aren't don't have children in the district to be able to get an email and let them know that this meeting is happening so that they can partake just as regular community members like I mentioned I just I put that idea out there I can give me a little time to present some information on how we can uh include all stakeholders um but I can come back in December and provide a Rec absolutely I didn't expect it to happen now but yeah I just I want to be able to ensure that
125um everybody can be able to participate not just parents and then I do want to I can't president Schultz member V hook if if that Bond were to pass there are several layers it's not just the passage of the bond the board then has to sell the bonds um and the board has full authority to not sell bonds um whatever would have passed the board did not have to use all those money so um it is is very hard to predict the future um but we do our best um but the process of the election that that's what we have to deal with in Arizona so um we do our best to anticipate what the um upcoming needs are um but the board has full authority to modify that sell those bonds not sell those
126bonds um so there's several layers um Beyond just the election in the pamphlet so um just wanted to put that out there thank you and just as a point of clarification regarding the elementary school um when we were requesting that Bond it was looking several years out and it was looking in our Northern boundary which is growing immensely like Gateway is our furthest North school and so anyway not to get into all of it it it wasn't that we were building one it was if we need to build one in the next several years that we would have that funding so I just want to clarify it wasn't that yes we are building no we're not it was both true I the transparency was there it was saying if we need another Elementary School in
127our Northern boundary because that's where we're growing like crazy and have very little uh School presence um is we need to have the funds to be able to do that and at the same time no we didn't have any plans in the works at the moment to be building so it was both there it's all perspective we there was no specific plan to be building right now in the north but it was if we need to we need to have those funds because that was looking several years out so it was it was both there yeah and that would I would be concerned with that too as a taxpayer if I'm being charge you know if I'm having to pay taxes now on a bond that for something that might not happen for 2 three
128years from where Mr Moore was saying we wouldn't sell those bonds until we were ready to do that so there would be no impact on the taxpayer if we it was just that we would have the ability to do it um more in a timely quick manner got so our taxpayers wouldn't be charged for it if we never sold them if it never happened yeah uh president Schultz and Mr Moore I appreciate all that you're doing here today A a couple things that I would like one is uh when we talk about should we decide on this community and or Endeavor uh something that I think would be beneficial um is some capacity to explain to our community why we have to do bonds and M overrides and why the state structures things in the
129way that they do I think that is one of the conversations that I have the most frequently in which people have no idea um why we're structured in the way that we are um and how and I understand the frustration and I understand why it feels especially if you are a taxpayer who's not involved in the schools at all even though you're still directly impacted by the school's presence um why it feels like taxing just to tax but that's literally the way we structure it for example our state has one of the lower ends of what we pay as a baseline for per pupil the 4700 for example um and that's hard and they structure it in a way in which the community will will get those needs um as far as Gateway that's my
130kids uh school I can tell you this year because we had to unfortunately move a Kinder their Kinder is at 25 um I understand and I re respect the difficulty that uh Administration and and our district have when we talk about what average classroom size is uh if memory serves in 2012 our average classroom size was 32 and that's great and I know that sounds a lot nicer than what reality was and part of that reason is because Equitable practices we have like resource classes sometimes uh and resource classes we'll have like six kids that gets included in the average and then it drives it down um so it sounds nice I just think it's important for when that Rapport comes out and people start hearing it and we look at these numbers to keep
131in mind that we are looking at all types of classrooms not just our general Ed because it's the General Ed that gets hit the hardest um and so literally as I had 45 students they were telling me to my face the average class size is 32 and that's just not true um like it is mathematically yes but when you're including numbers as low as five as a classroom that's a little bit disingenuous uh with how that is represented so I think these things are important to express from a a place of clear past pain uh and frustration I respect and understand that's why that is but I think it's important for those in the community who are not involved in that um or have any understanding of these types of things as to why they
132look the way that they do um yeah so thanks I'm just kid thank any other questions comments concerns I just want to say that we listen to Mr Moore talk about how we C pain of school right now and how we can't get a roof and other things and so for me investing in our community and our future and our schools it isn't a tough decision and I hear you Mrs Anderson on things that have happened in the past um might make people question but our leadership in our schools right now and what we're doing in our programs are amazing and I would hate to see any of those go away I would hate for our kids to not have music um for them to not have any of the specials to have even our
133mandrin program as we heard from the gentleman this evening doing amazing things and I know this would all happen without that so and with williamsfield you know it's great to have four walls and carpet and everything but we all want our kids to have what they have now and we want them to have the technology and it is unfortunate the way our state funds our schools and the different buckets and what we have to do and the Hoops we need to jump through and so the small amount it would cost community members to support these schools I hope that people see that and I know that explaining the bonds and how they work and I love the idea of a community uh committee that is great as well and I think that's everything Mrs Anderson
134um to tack on to that report for class sizes thank you for bringing up that point I think that's your eling about um can you break it down by class sizes for special um special needs or the weighted students separate from the regular class size then go bring us back together to the overall average or would that be all right vice president Anderson will do the best we can you know sure sometimes uh kids go in and out and it's hard to tell snap y yeah but sometimes our crosscat programs they need to be a low number of kids but then we have some resource kids that move in and out and it's pretty complicated but we're happy to share and then we're happy to explain thank you yeah okay and I just want to
135clarify I my comments weren't I love the things here in fact a lot of times in my classroom I would open up a your course catalog here to show teachers where I worked like little what igly ass suckers um boy I wish we had these but um anyway um so no I agree with you I just wanted to ask for Grace um from the community and from staff as questions get asked and it does get frustrating and it can be timec consuming but um I just want to handle this and and give people some some uh confidence and it wasn't a criticism at all no I didn't mean it that way I just meant you know we want the community to know that our leadership um Mr Moore is very thorough in what he explains
136to us all the time and so um and it is hard to understand funding in Arizona for sure so and school funding and how bonds work and everything but it is important um that we have schools that our kids want to attend and our parents want to send their kids to anything else thank you Mr Moore for listening and answering all of our questions now moving on to 6.4 Ray and Associates [Music] presentation oh thank you thank you for absolutely thank you right are you ready yes sorry thank you for your patience oh absolutely thank you president Schulz super Richards and uh governing board thank you for having us here this evening um and I get excited listening to these conversations I was a superintendent Texas for 18 years and was a finance manager back
137in the day so uh appreciate your questions and your thoughtfulness and you've got a phenomenal District so we're we're thrilled to work with you and alongside you and and so but we have a lot of questions to ask tonight and hopefully we can you know kind of get some answers uh and so that we can move forward again my name is David falus and I'm a managing director with Ray Associates uh I'm located in I think it's actually on the next slide I'm located in South Lake Texas I have a son here Arizona State so I'm really excited to be able to work with you and uh he may not be quite so excited because I was able to walk in his dorm today and we had to make his bed and uh oh I've
138got it don't I no you're right no yeah I'll do it I'll do it I forgot she handed it to me and I forgot so he wasn't excited uh but you know once his mom gets up here it'll be even better because Dad's not so good at that uh and then I'll introduce Dr Barbara Gordon Bara you want say hi everybody my name is Barb Goodwin thank you so much for having us here tonight we're looking forward to working with you and supporting you as you go through this most important process uh my background is in Human Resources I spent 37 years in Arizona education uh with the last 20 in administration various forms of administration uh and the biggest part of that was leading HR departments in Arizona in both k12 and and uh
139K8 districts I also want to um introduce Dr Jan vesley she was unable to be here because of her previous commitment many of you might recognize that name because she was the she is the retired superintendent from kirne and so she has a very deep knowledge of education on the east side and um she wishes uh that she could be here but she couldn't and she's going to be heavily involved in the process as well she's one of the team members so we're excited about that uh David myself and Jan will be working together boots on the ground and Kathy's supporting from the home office uh on the back end and we will all work together diligently through this process yes thank you and Barb May sit down because she's going to be taking notes
140and so just depends on how this all works but if if you need to ask her question we'll pull her back up um and then I always like to make sure you know I taught middle school for 12 years so if you need to interrupt me I'm really good at being interrupted and get right back on topic so if you've had a middle school or ever been a middle schooler you understand what I'm talking about so I was a middle school counselor so I had students like you y well I was that kid too so that's why I was the best middle school science teacher couple things that we need to discuss tonight this is a little bit of an overview we have couple of checklists we're going to be going through but we need
141to talk a little bit about travel for candidates uh for potentially first round interviews second round interviews that sort of thing we'll need to finalize a timeline for the superintendent search I do see it's on the agenda as an action item um which is fine if something comes up that means the board would need to take action you know if if something happens that uh that messes up that timeline so just kind of keep that in mind but that's on your agenda as an action item we'll talk a little bit about the 30 one qualities online survey it's something that R Associates does uh to provide you additional information or as much feedback as possible we'll talk a little bit about that uh I know Kathy is working with Christine Right On promotional flyer and
142so we'll have to discuss that just a little bit uh and then approval of online application we'll actually pull up the application to take make to get you to look at that I know uh Karen will probably have a lot more input on that than even I would based on kind of how the district typically does things and how the state requires but we'll talk about that a little bit and then there's some information that we'll need uh and then we'll talk a little bit about salary and benefits uh for the candidates as we start to recruit and then a couple items that we have and I we just want to make sure that these are correct thank you uh we have as far as the in-house uh that we'll be working with Karen Johnson
143ex executive director of HR will be communicating uh either myself will be your primary contact I'll give you a card my number and everything or Barb uh but the real go-getter is Kathy she's you know so if you need something need something printed up or sent out or handled Kathy is just as we've said she's that boots on the ground and kind of really make things happen so she's in the home office and then president Schulz will be working with you and communicating with you and working as best we can to answer questions that you have um unfortunately I'm available 18 19 hours a day so you know if you have issues that pop up don't take to you know to call or shoot me a text I know maybe it won't be 19 hours
144a day um we'll talk a little bit about uh as we as we start to move forward um typically uh you You' reimburse candidates for travel if they're coming in for first or second round interviews one of the things that we'd kind of like to ask and every district and every really state has been a little bit different about this is some people are still doing firstr interviews virtually uh if nothing else it saves a little bit of money can save a little bit on uh time timing makes timing a little bit different but but that's a that's just a question that I would ask you a lot of districts in Texas have stopped doing that because they really you know you get a better feel for somebody if they're in the room with you
145but that's a question and I don't know if that's an HR question or really a board question yeah so that's one of the things that we'd like you to consider tonight and give us the direction on that uh how you'd like to handle that because that will impact your reimbursement uh in Arizona nor what we do is that the candidates if you choose to cover their uh travel expenses which I believe you've said that already um that you will you the um they would send their receipts to Ray Associates Kathy and Kathy would build the district um so that it actually goes to R and Associates for the reimbursement um but we would need to know if you're going to if you intend to do your first round interviews virtually or in person are we
146answering these questions tonight we'd like to if possible all right if we're able to okay then I would like to begin with the first question is what is going to be the difference between the first and second round of interviews so there are three stages and we're going to take you through that um three stages of the uh vetting I'm sorry if you can speak into the mic so those listening online can hear you thank you absolutely uh there are three stages that we go through on the vetting process we'll meet with you for an extend amount of time where we do a presentation on the background research that we've done and then we move into the first round of interviews so when we give you the larger list uh let me just give you
147an example hypothetically let's say you have 35 applicants 35 candidates uh we go through them and do through the vetting process the initial vetting process and then we bring you those that we don't have any questions about that we feel like we can move forward with you confidently and that there wouldn't be any surprises during that time you decide who you'd like to move forward to the first round of interviews and sometimes those take place virtually the the most recent ones that I've done in Arizona have done them virtually for the first round and then from there you you minimize your finalist to go into the finalist round and then that generally is in person and typically that first round interview uh we generally recommend about six to start with you know as far as
148those first R interviews if there's a seventh that's really outstanding that we really can't kind of filter out or disagree on then you can bring them in typically on the second round uh you've gone through that first round with six or so and then you're probably going to bring back your two that are your favorite sometimes three depending so again depending on if they're in the area or if they're flying in from out of state you know those those reimbursements can vary those costs can vary so president schelz would you like to have any convers ation about that now with your team yes um I'm sorry it's kind of questions that I wasn't really prepared to answer right now um however we can discuss that and get input from our board on what they think
149I I like the idea of virtual if there's six I want to be mindful of what we're spending um the money and then you know two to three for second is would be my opinion I agree other opinions Mrs re oh oh sorry sorry president Schultz I I am inclined to do the virtual first as well um I agree with you that it is difficult to get uh a decent read on people sometimes um in comparison to in person is always preferred I just think given the nature of our circumstances to begin with in areas in which we can save um while still making the best decision is possible and still going through that and we are already choosing to do that with this process um that at least at this moment I'm in favor
150of the virtual Mrs Reese oh sorry I thought Mrs Rees and that's if they happen to be out of state correct if they're local well you would need you would need to be consistent in your process I think M Johnson would say so if if you do one virtual you need to do them all virtual if you did one in person you do do them all in person so everyone has a similar and fair interview process got it thank you MH I agree I think the first round for virtual um Zoom all of those are are much better now than I know previous positions that we had posted Nationwide we did phone interviews um for first rounds and only brought second rounds if they were out of town um only paid for that travel so
151now that we went through this pandemic and everything it it's much easier so I think we do get a better read than just a phone interview um to do those but I agree I think from a cost perspective that our first round should be virtual okay and I'm sorry will they be meeting with all of us together or individually the during the interviews uh ALS six of them would be coming in individually and interviewing with you and you would be able to either either by Zoom or in person either one of those interviews it'll be the board that they'll inter okay thank you yes I think we've decided for the first round Zoom okay so we'll consider doing the first round virtually and then second round will be in person and then one of the
152questions sometimes boards uh like for spouses or Partners to come with them for that second round interview because you kind of they're going to be representing your community living in your community um some people will bring a partner or spouse regardless of whether you're paying for that travel or not but that's just some another thing that you can think about is whether or not you uh would want to invite their partner or spouse to come with them the spouses would come to the interview itself not not necessarily to the interview but you might a lot of times we'll do like a meet and greet you know where they'll come in and say hello and then maybe the spouse will step out or okay you know go somewhere else and then you do the interview privately
153but that's totally up to you is I'm sorry to inter is that a decision we have to make at the present time considering the length of time it would take to get that narrow it down and I feel like that gives us a better opportunity to at least not make a decision in a moment without several opportunities to chat over the next couple of months before we get to that stage and we can decide that at a later time okay and I'm sorry would so would we be responsible for The spouse's travel if you invite if you wanted them to come then you don't have to that would be okay that's not a an expense that I would want to pay correct I wouldn't want to pay that either I would say they're welcome to
154come if they choose because if I agree if you're looking at relocating your family um whether it's just a spouse or children or whomever if you're looking to relocate as a family if my husband was looking at that I would want to see where they're looking um so I wouldn't I would I would right I wouldn't say they can't come but I I don't think that that I would be willing to pay for a spouse to attend I think it would be a great idea on their own making their own decision for that I wouldn't say they're not invited but I wouldn't invite them to cover the cost and I would say I would bring my spouse whether you paid or not and I probably would wouldn't expect you to uh but you know we
155would be interviewing you in the community just like you'll be interviewing you know them so I think that's fair does that cover all that it does and so now we're going to take you through the five stages and we'll give you a little bit more information so you'll understand the process and please ask any questions as we go along so as you can see stage one uh is just really kind of where we are now meeting with the board discussing the search process we'll talk a little bit about stakeholder involvement uh to level you want to do that that's typically a week or two weeks before we begin stage two uh stage two is down below there where we meet with uh stakeholders and then we provide the board with a report uh that's it's
156not uh a statistical analysis necessarily it's really more themes uh here's what your stakeholders are saying and we'll work with Administration the board can recommend if there are certain stakeholder groups uh that are unique to your community or that you feel like are very important whether it's the PTO your campus Administration you may have a ministerial Alliance that you know that's a that's a a very well thought of group in town you know but you can give us thoughts and ideas as we move forward with that and again some of that Kathy will communicate with you we'll kind of provide for you a little bit of here's the typical stakeholders we visit with but again you may know in your community here's some that are very important uh that we need to get feedback from
157then in stage three once we finish that stakeholder input that's where we work with you to develop the profile of what we're looking looking for the type of candidate you're looking for the type candidate that you think would be a great fit for the district and that's in that stage three where we be begin the recruitment where we post it online uh we'll work with the district to to have a flyer you know the profile out there typically we we open that up for about 30 days and again we'll work with HR if that's typical of what the district does if we need to add a week or take off two days because of holidays or something like that we can but that's kind of typically the window then in stage four obviously we hit
158the application deadline uh and that's where we begin to screen and vet those applicants it's your search so if you again as Barb said if you have 35 candidates and you want to see all 35 that's fine we'll give you our thoughts on these 12 meet the criteria you've set forth whether they need to have experience or not or have a doctorate or not you we'll screen those and provide what what we consider people that meet your profile that we've developed with stakeholder in with you uh and then stage five is when we begin to interview those top candidates uh and you will hopefully be able to narrow that down to where you have a a couple of uh of your finalists and then you would bring those back for generally you bring those back
159for a second interview and it can be a different type of setting or different type of questions that sort of thing and then you you would announce the finalist after that so that's kind of the stages or the phases all right so we're going to take you through um each of the stages a little more in depth so that you can have some discussion and give us some direction on some of those uh portions so today to we're checking off the first one because we're meeting with you and you're giving us your directions or your uh so that we can follow your will um we're going to be beginning to promote uh to gather information for your promotional material so you have a couple of choices here um we did provide you some flyers I
160don't know if those were shared Karen do you know or the flyers for uh they were sent in an email I think on the 22nd um let me just I just brought some from Like Paradise Valley and Roosevelt Morana so they they made they made their own I can share this and why you do that I'm going to just ask a quick question um so history of you guys finding um superintendent for Arizona districts would you say more often than not you found somebody local versus out of state or is it kind of mixture of it it really just depends on your applicant pool um right now I I know that you're aware that there were I think there are 34 vacancies in Arizona that and that's never happened before in Arizona uh many of
161those are filled with interims uh and also what we're seeing Across the Nation is that this isn't unusual it's everywhere um it's it's a tough job and um so I think that your pool of candidates will look a little bit different than maybe they have historically um so it really is just going to going to depend we actually advertise Nationwide we advertise heavily which is another Direction you're going to be giving us in a couple of minutes where you'd like to do your advertising nationally um but there's a lot of competition in house also so we just did a survey for an organization uh that I work with and um 1/4th of the superintendents are either in year 0 one or two so you can see the turnover uh has really increased and it's the
162same with principles and vice principles there about a quarter of our principles and vice principles that are brand new uh baby folks so um I think our pool is going to look a little bit different so what we're seeing sometimes is that people aren't coming up the traditional track maybe they haven't had a central office job they're trying to apply right from the principal ship because there aren't enough people to fill the positions just as with teachers we're also having that problem with administrators and that's Statewide and as and you guys just do n just within the US has there ever been a like possibility of bringing somebody from International we we have had International candidates yes most of them uh are work like for the Department of Defense or something like that those are
163most of the applicants that I've seen that are international they're American citizens uh and they want to return to the states in some fashion um I would say maybe it's about 50% of those that I worked on in Arizona were um staffed with somebody in Arizona and other and about 50% they brought somebody in from the outside thank you and and you're a a banner School District in this part of the world and so you'll you'll get national attention you'll get people that will want to come to see your district and work with your staff and students so so you do advertise internationally as well mhm nationally we do but not international well actually we we we don't go out and advertis in an international so there's yeah so your website doesn't like the way
164that you advertise it doesn't go International to be able to get that interest so one of your one of your choices that we're going to be talking to in just a little bit about is Ed week and Ed week is an international publication um so there are choices that you have about where you want to advertise uh that might have a further reach okay and it'll be advertised on our website we get about 28,000 unique visitors a month and I would assume that if somebody's looking to come back to the country and they're in the education world that they're going to hit you know kind of those big National firms websites so so if we can just jump back to the promotional flyer for just a moment what the purpose of the promotional fly is
165is to share your story with those who potential candidates um because what they'll look for when they go on to apply is why would I want to come why would I want to throw my hat in the ring in in uh Higley and so we need to help you sell your story or find things that we want to share with potential candidates about higgle so we we have we can do it in one of two ways I don't know if you have an internal uh Pio it didn't look like you did I'm going to go ahead and interject for a moment president schz and board members of the board um we we Christine and I have started working with our internal marketing and PR people to create something that looks like kley acts like kley
166and we'll Show candidates what we do here and how we do it so we have started that um if uh we will bring that to the board um however we can as soon as we can so we'll we'll see that before it goes anywhere absolutely and then is this flyer digital I'm hoping so you have some choices right you want to go ahead and speak to that yes we'll um we'll have it digitally and that's how we'll present it to Ray and Associates so we'll actually embed that link if it's a video uh into the application process okay um then the other thing we needed to share with you as well on here is that we start advertising actually internally tomorrow about Higley um although it hasn't been officially opened we let our Associates across
167the United States know and they start doing Outreach immediately with folks that they know who are looking to become candidates for a superintendency so we'll start that tomorrow then in stage two uh you see on about the 13th we'll put out an online survey link uh and this will help us and beginning to develop the profile uh that survey Barb you want speak to the survey sure so it's the 31 qualities and um what Ray Associates has done is done a lot of research around leadership and what school districts are using in their in looking for in their top leaders Consolidated that into 31 questions we're going to ask that you push that out to your constituents you may choose to send it to all your staff members through a link you might send it
168to all your parents asking them to respond community members um some people like to include groups in the community but you're going to advertise it through your website you'll push that out it's a Survey Monkey they'll go in and they'll fill it out and they're asked to identify their top 10 qualities and characteristics they'd like to see in their new superintendent we will also ask that you as a board fill that out as well uh and then that's that information is all uh correlated and then that's what we bring back and present to you uh the team will also be calling each of you individually as board members and we'll have about a 45 minute conversation with you about what do you want candidates to know about Higley what what are some things that you're
169looking for in a superintendent things like that and that's all added in and then we'll bring that back to you as well and then that's how you decide okay what are the the qualities that we're actually looking for and that helps when David and I and Jan start doing the screening we'll use those qualities when we're screening the applicants to ensure that the qualities that you want are the qualties that are showing through in the candidates forums and there's be some aha moments with that 31 qualities because you'll you have ideas of what your top 10 qualities you would look for and a leader would be but it'll be interesting when you hear from your students and from your parents and from your you know classified staff and certified staff and and then you'll have
170to make some decisions there on what do we consider consider our top uh qualities that we're looking for that will include as as part of that profile in that flyer I apologize if you already clarified this on on that question do you have like a link so if I'm filling it out I get to identify which category I fall in does that make sense so like we'll have some that are parents on their student but like we'll know there be demographic yes and then we can not really cross tab it because it's not as statistical as that but but you'll be able to see how each of those groups rank those ideas okay and then the next area that we're going to ask you to give us some direction on will be the stakeholder and
171constituent meetings so you might decide that you would would like us to meet with five different groups of people and that they might be staff they might be Administration they might be Community leaders um and then we'll work with your staff to gather those people together uh and we have two ways to do it and you can make the choice it could be in person or it could be virtually um one of the things that we did want to tell you anecdotally is that Co has allowed us to become really proficient in doing things virtually and what we found found is that more people attend if it's virtual um because they don't have to find a babysitter for their kids and they can you know they don't have to take off work early so we
172wanted you to give us Direction on that this evening if you wouldn't mind because we've got to get started and get that rolling because those are coming up right in just a couple of weeks um if you would prefer in person or virtual or a hybrid I think a hybrid would work best for our community um to be able to do both and so do you have there are some people that are going to want to show up in person okay absolutely and so would do you want us to work directly with Karen on identifying those or what would be your direction on that I'm looking to see if Mrs Johnson would like to do that sure so we can work uh through human resources to create those environments for hybrid and also U we'll
173use all of our social media and our website I plan on having that survey put up on the front of the website the first page for the period of time that we someone can respond to that of course it would go to all parents it would go to students it would go to administr L employees um other things we could do is if you just want to name those kind of groups that you want us to put together um for these uh particular meeting meetings if the if the board would like to do that is do you want a community group do you want a student group do you want a employee group do you want obvious all of you will have your one-on-one interviews but these other folks will have these group kind of
174forums where we'll they'll do their work I think all of the above make sense okay for us to make sure we're getting all the input okay all right we'll figure out a way make that happen I mean not that we're going to I don't we can't we can't control who you know comes to it so it might be a little bit more of one group than the other okay thank you and how will questions be handled during the zoom so there'll be somebody monitoring it through the chat or right typically when we do a zoom Barb and I have done these together where one of us will ask the questions and try to moderate and pull information out of people and then we'll have somebody that's subscribing and we also ask them to put in
175the chat that we can download that chat and have that have that recorded as well and any questions that don't get answered will they have the opportunity for those answers to be provided after the fact yes and depending on the group uh you know I've worked with groups that uh that were that I met with virtually recently that didn't all get along and so I would provide my cell phone and email and you we might ask a question that you know we knew if one said one thing the other one was going to argue and we said just send us the feedback and we'll incorporate that into those into those surveys it'll be after you after we visit with you individually you'll get a sent it's basically the same eight questions yours will be tweaked
176a little bit because we'll ask you some specific questions about what you desire out of the next leader whereas your community will be more a little more General but but you'll get a feel for those questions before we before we get those points and are we going to limit the number of people we typically don't okay so you can have a zoom with like a 100 people on it and that would be I think in Round Rock we had 138 on a zoom and it was a pretty full chat you know busy and then so how will so they'll be able to have to somehow register so that you guys have their email address to follow up right so we work with Mrs Johnson to make sure that that happens uh she'll have a list
177of folks and then she can push out the link okay thank you and and again after you go through the questions yourself there'll be several of them that are really helping us build this profile of your District what are your strengths what are your weaknesses what are your greatest challenges so there's some things that we really don't need to provide feedback back to the group uh and and then it helps us generate themes that we share with you here's what people see as the biggest challenges here's what people think are our greatest strengths here's the type of leader we're looking for and then that'll help us when we filter those candidates um and then oh can I ask a quick question I'm so sorry absolutely okay um I actually have two questions I just want
178to clarify what what we just all discussed so there will be Zoom meetings with particular stakeholder groups if they ask questions um during the meeting you will answer during the meeting or are you only going to take questions and then answer them after the fact or both we're asking the questions and asking them for feedback typically if it's a smaller group and somebody has a specific question we'll try to answer it there if they want to answer it if there's a 100 the zoom that can be difficult we would ask him to to put that in the zoom uh and and for if I'm running that particular zoom and Barbara's there with me on the side she may say hey here's a question that's come up three times you need to answer that one and
179we try to get that information back to them but it really isn't a Q&A necessarily okay uh it's more us asking them for feedback that helps us develop a profile that helps you uh look for the best candidates okay and will they will this information be shared on on our website or so that other people can watch or view or actually we'll be reporting back to you uh we consolidate all the information that we gather from you from your stakeholders uh we bring it back put it in an understandable format and we bring it back and present it to you and so David's going to talk to you about um that last date on there so we'll we'll be looking for the promotional flyer or the video to be done by the 9th and then
180on the 15th we're going toing bring everything back to you for your approval um one more question I'm so sorry um I the booklets that we received to choose the company that was going to take care of this each of them had their own little nuances as far as how it's going to work as we go through these stages and steps are all of these inclusive in what we're playing are any of these add-ons to the amount that we have agreed upon these are all inclusive the only thing that would be an add-on is track travel you know for reimbursable type travel but all this is included we'll get to a laundry list here at the end of of potential places where you might want to advertise and the district has places where they typically
181advertise but that's the only kind of alart type items that we'll talk about tonight so you're find on the 15th oh and then on the 15th uh that that last bullet there board to finalize super profile for the promotions Flyer video and talk about the online application this one can be done virtually but that's kind of up to you we can we can be here uh or we can do it virtually I and we don't have to decide that one tonight uh that's another one that they do have to decide tonight oh they do have to that that date was selected because it's a board meeting okay so the board will be together and they can then finalize their decision on those items thank you awesome so so the question though um and Kathy wanted
182me to ask ask you this if you'd like to do it virtually it can be done virtually to save a little bit of money so that you don't have to pay where we are you're in a board meeting but we would be virtual again you know it's it's up to you whatever you guys are most comfortable with yeah it is that something that would be comfortable um managing with sound and everything else sorry I'm kinding of put him on spot we've done before with several presentations and well with with presentations but not so much it's a little bit of a a lot of dialogue I I mean for me I would find trying to finalize this virtually I would find that a little difficult just looking at a screen I mean having essentially we'd be
183having this conversation right yeah I think be a little awkward yes but we are paying for their we'd be saving money so well we right but we'd be saving money if we're not paying for them so we don't want to pay for candidates to come here but we don't want to save money with them how do you feel about Redeye flights sorry how do you feel about red eyye flights I've had a couple of them this week me and five o'clock are getting to be real good friends well that's fair now um president Schultz brought up a point where we could maybe move it the virtual piece into the conference room where it's a smaller venue maybe a little bit easier or would that still be difficult still has to be open meeting though right
184can we do our Retreats yeah well no we've done Retreats though in there is what I'm saying but we wouldn't be able to broadcast it either in there oh good point so how our meetings are are Live on YouTube or whatever uh that wouldn't be able to happen didn't we do that in there we've done our retreat no could I recommend that we bring um I know that um one of you are out of state and one of you are here locally could we have one on zoom and the other one here I like it how's that it's great oh hold on does that work yeah she has a conflict on that day oh that won't work then okay sorry I mean we can so you know we can do it VIR the book a
185flight tomorrow for that date is probably 350 from Dallas and then you know Hampton $ 150 I mean probably $600 I think for me context and just me personally I think it depends on when we get this information and how much time we really have to review it um like Mrs Schultz said and no offense to anyone I wasn't really prepar I I thought we were just going through it I wasn't really prepared to answer these questions I've looked at them and I I get they're not like major questions but it was like okay we're going to talk about this process I wasn't prepared to be able to answer questions on this um and we're making through it obviously so I I think that the if this is going to be more of of a
186virtual not that that matters but I think it matters a little bit the more time we have this information so that we can really go through it digest it and and read through it and reread through it um prior to that time I think then the virtual isn't necessarily so bad um because we'll be a lot more prepared than I think I can say than I am tonight so um and a lot of what you'll get here you're going to you're going to get the flyer that the district's been working on with kind of a blank on hey what are our top 10 qualities that we want to look for and then we'll be submitting a spreadsheet with those 31 qualities that that will'll we'll take it as an Aggregate and say these are kind
187of your top 10 here are two or three that are really close and so the board is really going to be kind of looking at those your top 10 may be completely flipped from everybody else's you never know and so that's kind of the decision that night is what what do we consider kind of our top 10 uh leadership qualities we're looking for that that we can then roll into the profile there'll also be a whole list of kind of short answer comments that you can take home I you know that that there's really no decisions about that other than to inform your thinking of what your constituents are saying but the decision that night will really be U Can we come to a decision on here are the top 10 qualities that we think
188we can all agree on you knowing that staff is here Community is here board is here but see we wouldn't have had an opportunity to talk about that as a board until that night that would be the first night correct like all of us would have the abil ility to talk with each other regarding that so um I know here the the date is November 9th um that the promotional flyer in the video draft is due I'm looking at that too Mrs Rees on the timeline for us that's that's less than a week and I know that it's kind of our board packet type time frame too but we also have a board meeting we also have to review the board packet depends on what's coming before us um so I don't know if there's
189if there's any way we can and our next meeting isn't until December so but if there's any way we can even push it till December if everyone's comfortable with that if it's not due till the 9th I mean looking at the sixth being your deadline for your survey obviously you have to have time to roll it up and put it all together and and all of of that well with the 31 qualities it literally is a spreadsheet that we s okay so it's pretty straightforward is what you're saying and I know it's only a day or two but I mean for me I would personally given your time frame I would I know it's only a day I would like that we have it to review for me no later than the eth and again
190I know that the draft is due on the 9th but I don't know when we would get that but as far as any information that we need to review and then we're going to have to make a decision on I I personally would like at least that a full week to review this um yeah just adding I mean I know it's you're saying it's a it's a quick list but between because we get our board packet on the 9th too and then we have to have that reviewed by Sunday night um so there's quite a bit of work for by time we get our packets um Mr I'm so sorry Mr Moore or or even miss Richard um what what are our November standard items like do we have big packets um for the close
191of the Year okay I just don't know how many things were actually standard you know a lot of things will hit at certain times um are we anticipating some large um course yeah we bring course guide on the the preliminary course guide information sessions on the 15th I know that's a big one for me Mr Moore do you have something on the 15th because other than that we could leave it open you know and move some things to we were going to do ESI on the 15th but we could move it to December potentially so so if we didn't stack up the agenda on November 15th that might be helpful are we doing our Retreat on First and and we can communicate with Kathy that you you prefer the information to come to you on
192you know on the eth to give you a full week sure Kathy's pretty proficient at that so not to speak for her but okay so did they say they wanted you he they want you and have you decided uh do you want me to be here on the 15th to review that information okay okay that we would have their summary of everything to us no later than the eth for us to review to finalize on the 15th thank you absolutely thank you so then and then the 15th would be virtual for for them not for us obviously so you w so is is that correct I think I'm fine with virtual it sounds like you're fine with virtual something you guys have done so we've done it both ways okay else yeah right and then
193that would allow us then to open to fly your position on the 16th November 16th so it would actually go out the next day and be open uh everywhere so that's the part where we need to talk to you about um advertising so let's see where is that really quick if we're delayed for any reason on the 16th can it be delayed another week instead of something going out on Thanksgiving like if the flyer Mo motional we if I just I'm saying if it doesn't go out on the 16th skip Thanksgiving week so um we recommend that your that your job is open for a minimum of 30 days sure um so that you get the full breadth of advertising and an opportunity for people to fill out the application um if you push it
194back then you'd probably need to push everything else back as well so that you can take advantage of that full 30 days sure I'm just saying that if it doesn't go out on the 16th but if it goes out on the 16th it's a mute point right so um Mrs Johnson are you feeling pretty confident that you can have the flyer to them by the eth yes I am and also just uh note the timeline allows for quite a bit of time for applicants including through both holidays um in November and December uh we'll close it out uh the 7th of January so it allows for plenty of time to for us to take in applicants that is why uh I wanted to make sure we had a good window for people to apply I
195know that the application process will be rigorous so I want to make sure they have plenty of time can just as a question can we even push that deadline to um to January 15th or 14th another week the deadline I I think just I I wouldn't recommend that we are compassing two holidays um and big large family holidays and travel holidays that going through in my thought process if someone sees it decides they want to post for it and I I understand if it's job you want you're going to do it I hear that I understand that but if I see it on December 20th December 21st I mean it's still two weeks away but if I'm with the holiday if I happen to be traveling there's obviously I was looking at some of this
196there's documents they need to provide they need like you said it's a rigorous process I don't want someone having to rush their holiday to try and get this done assuming they're in education um back East schools if we are looking nationally they're probably not even going back back to school until the 8th they may go back on the 3rd or fourth but assuming these people are working within education I don't I don't want someone not to apply I don't want someone to to rush through it even here locally I I'd rather give them a week of normal time after the holiday to be able to do that part of part of the concern is it it can go a little a little stale and your other concern is some of these people may also be
197looking at other positions and so you the longer you leave that out there the the less likely they're to hang around and they may be great candidates and they may be you know so I I as a former educator in superintendent with six kiddos there was a time during Thanksgiving and Christmas I was happy to get to the study and do my own thing you even if we were at the beach and so I I I think your candidates I I I think they're going to be motivated to do this now if if if the board again it's your search so if the board desires to do that that we can I think we'd probably have to bump everything you know that every bump bumps kind of the end date um and again that end
198date may not be absolutely critical to you it's your search uh and so you can consider that oh can I I appreciate it uh a question that I have um this number may be made up because we're dealing with a lot of numbers and my brain doesn't like those you said we had 34 in the state of Arizona uh the thing I would like to question essentially is where our timeline is in with that because again we're going to want the better candidates rather than the people who' already made their decision so like I hear you ultimately I think my biggest concern is the sheer volume that we are dealing with at the present moment in time and I would rather in this case I'm supportive of early contracts whereas uh as a teacher I'm
199not necessarily always supportive of that but I think the idea behind that uh principle at least matters so like I hear you I think that's my biggest concern is where we would fall in line as far as a competitive standing with the 33 other uh in this state alone not just Nationwide current op so so just uh anecdotally it's you guys are in a good position if you stick with this timeline because I can tell you in Arizona I know that there are two other rfps for bigger districts out right now and I believe I heard um that there's another organization that's doing a couple of of searches starting their searches also so if you you're at the you're at the front end of the game right now if I may state that we added
200actually time onto their timeline just to make sure we covered a a bit a broad enough time span the normal is 30 days but I didn't feel with us posting in mid November a holiday immediately fing and then you know going in and cutting it off before the winter break was beneficial some people will take that winter break to actually apply if they haven't already but Dr Goodwin already stated the minute tomorrow her folks her recruiters are starting to look for people to be able to apply we're going to get the word out there that's their job to get the word out there that we have a position available and we're starting our recruitment process and I will say one of the first questions we'll get is what's her deadline what's her timeline and not
201not good or bad but that's the that's the first thing they'll look for and I I know I'm a couple of my buddies are superintendent in Texas and they're deciding which one to apply for based on which one closes sooner because they they don't want to have to try to put them off if they make an offer because this is their preferred job and so I I I think you're on a good timeline right now and I think you're at a good spot competitively speaking absolutely and then and we can come back to that but I wanted to take you forward to slide 19 uh Barbara mentioned some of the advertising options and you can see there's Arizona school boards Association you would ask the district post because typically through their memberships they get some
202free postings whereas otherwise would' have to pay for that Arizona School administrators Arizona Association of Latin administrators and superintendent those are all kind of the standard places that we would recommend posting in state as well as your your District site yeah so if we can just go back to that one slide for a minute um Mrs Johnson you you'll be responsible for advertising on those three sites for us because yes we will thank you so much and then here's where you can make your decision or give us some dire diretion rayan Associates provided with your B bid uh will be advertising on Ed week um which includes their base fee and it's for 30 days which is why we recommend you keep it open for 30 days so you get that full month of advertising
203so that comes with your bid but we would also like you to consider if you look up one at the aasa job bulletin and website that's a pretty extensive and comprehensive U marketing and I know that in my experience in Ariz a lot of the districts have chosen to do the job flash package because it's actually pushed out to 5,000 emails of people who are looking for superintendent positions um you can or can't do that but normally districts do choose to pay the extra money and advertise an aasa just because it's so uh widely read and then also if you look down below that um there are some smaller ones depending on if you would choose to do this or not you might want to look at nabsi or alas um but those have costs
204we will also advertise on the free ones National Association of school superintendents uh and then of course our website it will be AB uh advertised as well so if you want to just look at that top one and maybe decide if you'd like to give direction as to whether you'd like to take advantage of that one or not does the um Arizona Department of Education have a place where they would have be able to post open they do they do and that that um is available as well in free right do you um from your previous experience in posting these do you track um where these applicants have come from so what is the success rate for the districts that have used the aasa job bulletin like have you received we don't we do not
205track where they heard about the job we do not gather that information anecdotally as a former superintendent not speaking for anybody in this rooma was always up on kind of in the corner of my screen that job board and then our state associate St State Association boards asasa is a very again as she said it's a very wellth thought of organization a very heavily traffic site so that's just my thoughts on that one and if you just went with their um posting online without pushing out any emails they would be that $49 for the 30 days and Miss Anderson this was that alart list I mentioned these are these are the extras if you will so yes absolutely yes oh I'm sorry um ASA offers quite a bit of training for superintendent so um that
206is pretty popular so you're recommending the 599 job flash package that we should right that that's what that's the one that pushes it out to their I think so I think it's it's in between the other two and M might as well just I I would say it's a it's a good uh no it's and and posted and the 495 is included in our base fee so we'll do that one and then if we decide or we get that one and then we'll decide if we want to do the job package package do you agree with what specific so what we're deciding is do we want to add on this job flash package uh the reason I'm in favor of that I recognize it's nearly 200 uh extra is the idea that you may have
207somebody who's not actively searching and then they notice that something better comes along and that provides an opportunity so I I at the end of the day do think that still gives us better opportunity of candidates and that is my main goal in all of this and so I feel like like from my from my perspective let's say I'm comfortable and I am comfortable I'm not actively seeking but if something comes up and it's a better opportunity now I'm interested in something I might not previously have been in I just want I I just want to make sure it's an extra $600 not an extra $200 right so the $495 is included in our base fee we've already paid for that we've already agreed to that in our terms what they're asking for is do
208we want to pay an extra $600 I just want to make make sure that you that wasn't 200 what I'm saying the 200 is from the 409 my assumption is we were all in agreement that we should cl to this nationally regardless uh I'm I could be wrong in that assumption that we were all on board for that I'm just meaning to I just wanted to make sure that the numbers were yeah I apologize for the confusion uh yes okay yes we'll proceed with the job flash package the job Flash and will you look into possibly posting on the Arizona Department of Education thank you yes go through that so we've already decided okay here's the next okay I'll get it up there m mlon is there a special way we would word this whenever
209we come to approve the um agenda item with how we're approving everything is there anything specific specific way to word it so Madame President Miss Anderson you have an agenda item to approve the timeline that you're currently developing right so you can just approve the 10 line as discussed during the information item right no problem thank you Miss way you bring up a great point you really want somebody that's doing great stuff who's loved in their Community who's not really looking who sees that says wow that's an opportunity I mean that that that's the kind of person you're looking for yeah exactly exactly you know has a child right down the road that that come check their beds all right and then on stage four we've discussed some of these or we've made decisions on
210that but on on January 24th then um typically we would come to you in person and typically an executive session where we go over U that's where we start looking at those top candidates we finalize uh questions for that first round of interviews um and then go from there on that week of the 29th is what we have uh I guess have penciled in as our first round of interviews and we've already discussed that we would uh that we're okay with doing those virtually or preferred to do those virtually for that first round uh and then typically we would be available at the end of that meeting and we can do that virtually as well uh to kind of review and kind of help organize your thoughts we have a uh was it the force
211fit Matrix that we that we work through with you sometimes it's easier to be in the room with you because it's until you get going on it's a little confusing but it just helps organize your thoughts over who were kind of your favorites if you will and it's a difficult process to describe once you're in it and you're there you kind of go okay I see it uh but it's just a process that we use uh and immediately following that first round of interviews so that you can you can then determine who do we want to move forward with from there so just as an FYI and to prepare you for the 24th that is our lengthiest meeting there's a lot of hard work that you'll be go going through on the 24th and that
212will be an executive session Miss Johnson um can you perhaps create something for interviewing tips um what's legal what's not legal in interviews things like that because there maybe board members who've not ever had to do that type of process and there are certain things and certain ways you can ask things and not ask things even though we're going to go through and determine the interview questions I know that if it's not anything you do then you might not realize saying a certain word could be illegal or anything like that so whether it's a a interview tips type form whether it's a 30 minute Forum like hey here's an interview crash course something um having done our previous superintendent interviews um sometimes people haven't realized that there's certain things you just you can't say or
213you can't ask so and that you have to ask what's there board member ree I'd be happy to do that for this committee thank you that and that will be um uh Mrs ree that will be one of the thing the topics that we'll cover on the 24th as well uh legal issues around interviewing so thanks for bringing that up super important point and then uh stage five on this the slide that's there now on the week of February 5th is when we bring back those finalist candidates and again we uh I think we've agreed that that would be in person uh and then after you conduct that last round of interviews again we would uh be available to meet with you and and again as as mentioned there that can be virtual uh if
214if that's what we decide at that point it really is coming down to who you think is the best fit based on everything that you know uh then the next item quick so with the following meeting after uh because we have a meeting on February 7th it just says the week of yes it's the the week of February 5th if you decideed this right so if you were to do let's say you you met with them on 25 that Monday do you think that you'd be ready to have a conversation a few days later or would we need more time after that normally we um meet with you as a board immediately following the last interview while it's fresh on your mind you have a discussion and then you give us direction as to how
215you would like us to move forward uh and then and that's when you would be in cult consult with your legal counsel so that they become involved at that point in the negot negotiation portion so the week of 25 right so then we would have so I'm sorry so that's meeting with the consult consultant following the last interview that's us yeah so so that whatever day that is you do two or three interviews and then we would so would so that would have to be during a board meeting or individually I would recommend it not being during the board meeting I think I think what you're asking is like if if we're doing our interview on Monday Monday being able to finalize that and then being able to vote on it on 27 is I
216I think is what you're asking like will we be prepared for a vote on 27 or and then our next meeting is on the 21st of February so that's two weeks later I is that like would we be prepared to So based decis some districts have decided to do a couple in a couple of different ways normally it does take longer than just a couple of days to work through the process uh some boards have decided to call a meeting and then they come back in for that approval um with enough notification following your guidelines and by the time typically when that meeting happens how long typically after that does a person start it depends on their current status if they're under contract with the district then they would be contracted till the end of
217of you know whatever where whatever their end date is unless there was an agreement with their board I don't think that that's happened very often most people don't start until their contract ends correct me if I'm wrong part of what we're advertising would be a start date of when your contract that we have already agreed on is up right like that's that's the establish yeah so like all of that great I don't remember the date but yes my point is all of these things the expectation would be that that's what they are interviewing for and know ahead of time like that's the expectation okay we to go through this yeah no we don't need to kind of did we've kind of covered this slide as far as building the profile and how that works we
218can skip those 80 something Pages or words um if you want we can pull up an example of that 31 qualities or we can ask it to pull that up if you if you'd like to take care it literally is 31 leadership traits that you go through and select your top 10 or we can send that to you also trust okay fair enough uh and these are just again some sample schedules this is typically how we would schedule out those stakeholder meetings working with the district and if whether that's over one two or three days and you again we'll work through on scheduling those so um I think you've see we you know we believe firmly in your obviously it's your search your involvement your stakeholders involvement we like to hear from your kids and
219your community um and go through as much as we can can uh to get their feedback and input I know the district will work whether whether it's a promotional video flyer we've discussed those kinds of things we would like you to take a look at the Draft application so if we can click that link and pull that up sir and so this is kind of our standard application and I know you probably don't see a lot of school applications this probably more for you know caring to review or legal to review but this is our our kind of our our typical application unless there's something that you know you see that you would prefer or like differently I mean we can you know and the reason that we don't encourage changing to this to this
220uh portion is this meets all state and federal guidelines where you get your information really are the things that they're going to attach their resume their letters of reference reference or recommendation their certification information that's uh they have to do letter of interest there's a lot of information that comes through in there but this is just a standard application this you're kind of checking the boxes if you will the the other information you get will really tell you who they are tell you more about them what I love about this application is that you don't make them repeat what's already in their resume and and it does help them for those that are working over Christmas or the holidays that they're not spending an hour two hours just filling out an application agree is that's
221frustrating go I've already filled this out in another copy paste copy paste copy paste all right thank you so a couple of questions um does anybody have any specific concerns or questions about superintendent requirements from the state uh in Arizona you don't really have a requirement except for uh clearance on your fingerprint clearance card um you don't have to have a superintendent lure you don't have to have a degree um but you can choose to say that that you have a preference as a board so when you think about that that's also one of the questions in the 31 qualities they threw it in there do you would you prefer to have someone with a a seminal degree either an ed or a PhD you can answer yes or no on that what we want
222to know though is what are your basic requirements for entry levels so when we're doing the screening if you don't want us to look at anyone who doesn't already have that seminal degree in their hand then those folks would be screened out if you want to put it as preferred if you want to say that you must have um 5 years of central office experience those are all things that we need you to tell us because that builds our profile when we're doing the vetting process so those are some things that you're going to want to have conversations about so that you can give us really clear Direction so that we can make sure that folks that you don't want to spend your time looking at uh because maybe they're coming directly from the classroom
223we do have people that apply directly from the classroom Maybe maybe you don't want to consider that and if if you don't then you need to let us know that so in addition to the 31 options there'll be an area where we can like type stuff in or well actually we're going to ask you all to discuss that and let us know you don't have to do it tonight you can you can discuss it in another way maybe through I don't know however you choose to do that um but but please let us know so that we can start creating our uh we have a screening tool and we put in your um we put in your non-negotiables and that's also going to go in with Mrs Johnson's FL profile profile so I can put
224together some recommendations and send it out individually and you can send it back to me how's that and then also would you is do you think that the board would be willing this is another question Mrs Johnson that you might ask them is the board willing to offer a contract to a finalist who still needs to obtain a superintendent certificate uh sometimes that's a screening issue as well I just for the Public's knowledge we're struggling on some of this because we can't speak outside because of public open meeting law so that's right thank you for working through us through that with us to to be certified to be a superintendent that's just paperwork with the state but that entails um a doctorate no Masters what yeah the answer to that is no it's you have
225to have gone through a program and then you have to sit for a test there's a state test and once you pass that test and you met the requirements of the program then they will offer you a superintendent certificate with that designation on it I'd love to know what those were requirements are you have to go through an approved program uh through the state level which includes an internship uh and a certain number of coursework hours and then you must sit for a very rigorous test and you must pass the test at the approved level and then you can apply to have your superintendent certificate and you will also most likely have candidates from out of state who won't hold an Arizona teaching certificate or superintendent license they may have one in Oklahoma or New
226Jersey and so as again as we begin to develop that profile we'll just need to know what things are preferred what things are just we can't do without that sort of thing I we would suggest keeping a lot of those things open ended for out of state candidates in particular however most superintendent certificates from other states are reciprocal and they just have to transfer to Arizona and it's approved because they in other states they require many of the same testing rigorous coursework we don't need to do that to invoices we do have that yes so the last thing we need to talk about is is salary so the last thing we need to discuss is a little bit about kind of a salary band if you will and again I know you're probably not prepared
227to discuss this tonight so we share some information with you um Iona doesn't have the uh a robust repository I guess of superintendent salaries across the state and so we did a little bit of a national research based on schools that are kind of banded around your size that are that are similar to you uh there is Paradise Valley is one that you know we're familiar with and so we we've got those kind of what those salary components were there you know what your previous superintendent was making you kind of know you have an idea of what your salary is going to be but that'll be another part of that profile that we'll need to start pushing out is is we'll have to determine a salary band if you will kind of a minimum maximum
228so one of the things that we strongly suggest is that you uh decide on a range and then it's made it's created into moved into a statement like this the base salary will be in the range of whatever you decide plus a comprehensive benefits package the final salary for the successful candidate will be negotiated and determined based upon experience qualifications and board criteria that's a very broad statement it gives you a lot of room to negotiate it doesn't tie you into a high or low salary what we're finding is when you put a it's between this range and this range when someone goes to negotiate with you they want this range and and so if you just say in the range of then they have no idea how low you're going to go or how
229high you might go you you have that Latitude upon your negotiation time Miss Johnson can you check um I think asba puts out the superintendent salaries across the valley I think we've recently got that um that can help give us an idea across the valley and maybe include that in the little yes note you send us I can absolutely do that with the minimum and preferred qualifications and then also the salary ranges CU I think sorry as we're trying to do that and I agree like a range is good but you need to know in your own mind what equals what because if you if you just put a range and someone's negotiating um what what equals going in the higher part of that range what equals not going in that higher so you you've
230got to understand what your range is and and what quantifies where you're going to go in that range and and the last thing you obviously want is to get down to the very end and the person say Oh I thought you were going to pay this and you thought you you we just want to be very clear and transparent here's the range here's why we've decided on this um and again HR knows this but that's that'll be critical for your applicants and when you finalize your flyer that salary range will actually need to be a part of that flyer uh and the sooner that you can get that inform information to Kathy um Mrs Johnson that would be helpful because as she pushes it out she'll go ahead and say it's going to be in
231the range of this if you if you all decide on a specific yeah and I would like to see um comparable to for instance with the auditor general the the schools that they say were comparable to based on size I would love to be able to have that comparison versus you know other states where the cost of living is totally different um and I think that the closest would be what the auditor general provides as far as comparisons and I would keep and I know HR knows this I'd keep your ban fairly tight I wouldn't do a $50,000 ban you know probably a $220,000 it's a pretty good range or decent range and that's it that's it I think we have you have everything you need you guys made a lot of thank you very
232much thank you any other questions okay appreciate it I look forward I look forward to working with both of you thank you and welcome to his absolutely we're excited thank you okay we're moving on to action item 7.1 I move that we ratify payroll and expense vouchers 1025 and one27 seconded questions comments [Music] concerns president Schultz um for 7.1 that's the one we're on yes um one of the expenses I uh saw in there was Pebble go um one of my concerns is the fact that uh the there's um potential access for kids to be able to access um things that are not within standards and that could be inappropriate um with with our state laws that state that we we can't have um any sexual education um there's 15- 711 that says um sex
233side can't be taught prior to fifth grade and then we have 15-12 that says that confirms that even after fifth grade parental consent is required but with Pebble go um there's um potential exposure for elementary students to sexual education and I don't know how the um how we handle that if there's the ability to um turn off other options that aren't assigned um I know that within the app um there's options for ebooks um and the ebooks have the kids have access to the ebooks 24/7 um and I don't know if we are able to block inappropriate content there as well um or if we do that currently I you know i' I'd like to know um but there's definitely a lot of things that can be accessed through the site um that are not
234within Arizona standards um there's also uh there's a healthy habits curriculum that talks about um you know how important masking and physical distancing is and um just things that some parents might not find appropriate so I'd like to know if we have the ability to block those things um and if not do you know pretty much do parents know and I my main reason for asking is to ensure that parents know that this is accessible through PebbleGo which is on all the kids I don't what grades is that for so board board member Van Hook I've asked Dr Lindsay to look into who's using this and how they're using it so I'm going to let her speak to this thank you hi there um president Schultz um board member Van Hook um this particular voucher
235was for one of the elementary schools to purchase as um a supplemental resource um and currently it's being used in a limited fashion for students to um use to obtain additional research um but it's teacher directed it's not students having free reign to explore um used with elementary students um for research purposes um and we've done a lot lot of training with our staff around our higgle professional practices for responsible use of instructional resources which basically is a checklist to ensure that resources that we're using are aligned to standards and have a legitimate educational purpose and that we're being responsible with how we're using our resources so um we've provided this information to our site Administration and to all of our teachers as part of our onboarding the scho school year and um we'll continue
236to monitor that um in addition our parents um in through newsletters um teachers are providing updates about things that the kids are going to be working on in learning and there's always an opt out opportunity if somebody's not comfortable with something right so do we currently have the ability or do we already block some of this content that's not within standards even if even if the teachers aren't assigning it my concern is kids can still go dig around in the app um is that ability blocked my understanding um board member Ben Hook is that the teachers control the license it's not an individual student account so the teachers are pushing out resources for the kids to um you know if they're studying you know something on land form or this particular um school they're using
237it for first graders and they're looking at you know various videos and articles that take content and are explaining it to them in an age appropriate way okay so the children don't have the option to dig around in the app to find something even though I CU I watched the video on on capstone's website and they specifically state that their um their ebooks are open 247 to any student that has the app and my understanding is that the way that we're using it is that it's teacher facilitated and teacher directed so students aren't just exploring on the PebbleGo app they're assigned various um content to obtain you know information from either an article or a video okay all right um and and just so parents do know uh they do this is just another thing
238that parents have the option to opt out and an alternative assignment can be given to that student if they choose to opt out of this application yes okay thank you um the other one is uh learning a toz Raz plus um if under their website um learning a to you know hyen z.com um they talk about um under the um their website under what we do section it talks about social emotion learning inclusivity and critical uh race theory in the classroom um it says promoting seal inclusivity um right there at the top um and so again um is I'm not sure how this application is used um so I'd love it if you can provide that of course um president Schultz member ban hook um with this particular voucher it's for one of our elementary
239schools that receives Federal funding and we provide intervention services for struggling readers and this resource is used um for their online decodables um to support with reading instruction and is there any way that um through that instruction that they could be potentially um taught something that's not within standards again I would uh refer back to our professional um responsibility agreement that we have with our teachers where they're vetting the resources that they're using to be assured that it's age appropriate aligned to standards and it's meeting the needs of the students aligned to like for this purpose it's for supporting reading instruction specifically you know early literacy skills with decoding and things like that and that's how this resource um is being used with this particular voucher okay so there's no again opportunity excuse me I
240have a right to ask questions don't be rude to me please thank you I appreciate it um so even with the um even though the teacher doesn't assign it there's still no opportunity for the child to dig through the website to find anything and there's a way that the teacher can monitor what the child's doing on that iPad yes okay thank you unbelievable all in favor I I any opposed wasn't done sorry I do have another um item that was on there um go guardian and I understand that that item um was Auto renewed this year um but it won't be utilized in um this from my understanding this is what was used to monitor what kids do on their iPads I believe it was used with Higley Virtual Academy that's some point last year
241that's what we were told but then we were told they didn't mean for it to Auto renew and it did so then we got credit for it and we pulled the credit card statement and the credits there but it showed up on the voucher initially so and is this is because that's going away is there something else that's replacing it I don't believe it was needed this year um based on the technology we have so okay um the last one is the Kaplan um disciplin Deca and I understand that this is a social emotional assessment um but is this just for I AP and 504 students or is this for all students sorry wrong button president Schultz member Van Hook this um is used actually in our preschools so in Arizona we have Early Childhood
242learning standards that include social emotional development it's part of ad's you know standards for early childhood and so with this particular this is an assessment um my understanding is that parents are um given the opportunity to um complete the assessment for their child based on what they're seeing with their children's social emotional development and then the teacher also takes um completes the assessment after they've had an opportunity to get to know the students and from there um the assessment combines both the parents um feedback and the teachers feedback to come up with strategies to help support the develop so social emotional development of the student and is there any time where um the teacher assesses the students without the parent knowing no the the parents are notified about the assessment at the beginning of the
243school year and parents have the opportunity to complete the assessment and and if they do not wish to complete the assessment then then they don't need to do that um my understanding from um our directors Miss Gleason and Miss Utley that parents are are really like this assessment because it helps bridge the gap between home and school because this is the kids's first opportunity to be in a learning environment and it's a partnership as we know and that helps to determine what the needs of the kids are um but if again if a parent did not want their student to be assessed in that way they would have the opportunity to opt out of that as well okay and then how is this different than mtss what from the preschool perspective we don't start the
244mtss process right away I mean it's a lot of that is you know just the development of the child from an early learning standpoint and this assessment's only used in preschool so mtss really starts um our process for identifying if there's gaps from an academic perspective or a behavioral standpoint really starts an elementary um would you like to add anything to that sh okay and then is is there like a specific requirement for the teacher um or not requirement but like certification or any type of training that the teacher has to have to make such assessments um well this U president sh's member Ben hook um this particular assessments aligned to our strategies within conscious discipline which is what the preschool uses to support the social um emotional development and all of the teachers are
245trained on that and we also do um parent sessions here at the district I'm I'm sure you've seen that you know we promote that I think we have another one coming up for parents to come and they learn strategies to help support their kids at home and so it it's all aligned within the conscious discipline got it thank you so much for no all in favor I I opposed the only reason why I'm are you would vote no is because of um the pebble go I I really don't like what the the application is about but that's that's the only reason but so no I'm no motion carries 4 to one moving on to 7.2 approval of overnight and outer I move that we approve overnight and outof state staff travel seconded questions comments um
246yes so both uh we had a convers I had a conversation with um sorry uh superintendent Sherry um and part of it was the the fact that um there's a state law that says um um any type of race training uh any training based on race um is against the the law in state of Arizona um and these two um travel also have um Dei within the training so um and I there was an agreement created that the teachers would have to sign um saying you know that they won't attend these trainings um but I'm curious to know legally um under that law are we are we still allowed to use taxpayer money to go to such training even if they sign um saying they won't attend that specific session so board member Van Hook
247I um this agreement was created in conjunction with legal because we want to make sure that our teachers and directors and everybody are aware of Arizona revised Statute 94 so um in terms of the agreement it's just so that our teachers are informed we trust them explicitly to attend the right sessions but like with this National math conference there's 638 sessions and so there are plenty of sessions for them to select from that will improve their instructional practice and support our kids and there's a clause on this and this is getting shared in status um with everybody this week but if let's say they accidentally sit in a session that wasn't described exactly the right way they're they'll just walk out okay because none of our teachers want to violate Arizona law and so I
248uh I believe the same is true with every conference and we're very fortunate that our teachers and our directors are given the opportunity to grow grow and learn and come back and Implement what they've learned but I believe that because we consulted with legal I'm 100% confident Mrs Richards where did this agreement come from we developed it in conjunction with Leal no I I I understand that but why did we um because there was a concern brought forward that because there were sessions potentially available um based on the math conference maybe the Ceramics conference that we could be in violation of the law so I reached out to legal and said help me navigate this uh and we work together to come up with the plan so it's just an information sheet with the statute
249on it like hey be aware and then it actually works out good because man if I get to a conference and I have 638 things to pick from I'm going to be happy that I looked ahead of time and in reality um our our teachers that are going to the math conference are co-teachers so we've got like a resource teacher with a gened teacher they're super excited they were really receptive to this and just fabulous about looking for things that support C- teing plus improve their instruction for those high school kids so it came because I received a question from a board member so yeah and and um the the statute um states that um at I think December 1st a a report has to be submitted to um the uh Governor to the president
250of Senate um and several others correct yeah and auditor general but that we we were in compliance for the year so that's all president president Schultz um I think it it Bears expressing just because there's a lot of information that's not necessarily accurate um with respect to Dei in education um I mean those of you who are still in it I mean I I got my master's degree in second darad in 2011 so it's been quite some time since I've had to take these courses but with respect to education diversity equity and inclusion is a a vital part of Education because we have varying Learners we have varying needs and varying requirements and so for teachers in order to be able to serve their Community their specific classroom they need to be aware of the
251fact that they have to differentiate instruction that they have students who are dealing with different things at different times um we talk about inclusivity we have resource uh classes but not all of our IEP kids get to be in resource classes or have that extra stuff some of my IEP kids change their IP and that I have to make sure that I am capable of updating these things um we have received several emails that talk about Equity as if it is equality these are literally two different things equality States everybody has the right to an education we have that it's called public Ed should you choose to do it it is here it is available for you we legally have to provide it Equity is different Equity is ensuring that individuals come to the table
252with the same capabilities with the same Tools in order to achieve and shine Equity does not mean equality of outcome literally you can go and look at our grades in the diversity within scores and within grades and teachers keep data on it because we have to at the end of a test if I look at these scores and I see some kids did well and some kids didn't I have to look at why is that was there an error in my teaching this is literally part of our practice so I understand that there is a large narrative that talks about Dei as if it is some great big monster that is designed to create honestly I'm not even certain what your concern is with words like diversity equity and inclusion but what I can tell
253you with respect to education and what it is for and I understand that again there are videos that suggest and express and say otherwise as an individual whose literal degree educational experience is in teaching and in education diversity equity and inclusion is what makes sure that teachers are serving the needs of their each individual students it makes sure that teachers are being accountable and held responsible to the individual needs of their students because at the end of the day if we do not do that children get left behind we know this for fact we have done everything we could over the last several decades to put and compile data to show the importance of making sure that we do this because again not every student comes to the table with the same toolbox it is
254not trying to promote CRT it is not trying to create some massive divisive demon it is literally designed to ensure that we are giving every single student the opportunity to shine in Equitable practices equality is not the same thing and for for those who are believing the idea or the concept that Equity means equality of outcome I have years of grades to show you that I did not have equality of outcome regardless of circumstance because that's not how this works and I I think it's important as we progress and we continue to move on with these things and have repetitive conversations there is a narrative that exists that is not in practice and just because it sounds scary and just because it feels aggravating doesn't make it certain and I I I struggle when we
255have to sit here and we listen to teachers we had all of our teacher of the years talk about the importance and what makes teachers great and all of these other things that's Dei practices literally that's what it takes in order to be a great teacher you have to understand you have a diversity of students not necessarily color creed religion even though that is literally fact in learning capabilities and because that's all us teachers are after is how do I get you from point A to point B and what do I need to help you get there that's equity and we're able to te have have our Educators teach children just like we discussed at the last board meeting equally and equitably but what is being pushed within the education system and not just the
256education system this is taking over so many aspects the military I mean there as as somebody who was in the military I mean talk talk about diverse I mean so the fact that as a speaker that spoke tonight the things that are being pushed into the education system under the guise of Dei isn't what you're explaining I would I would expect our teachers to be uh you know equally and equitably being able to attend you know attend to each student's needs and and they're doing that right I get it not everybody not every student's going to understand the same thing equally so and then there's kids with IEPs that the whole purpose of an individualized education program so that their needs are met based on their accommodations I get that but what is being pushed
257under the guise of Dei to be you know to provide equity and you know be Equitable and equal to children so that they're learning equally isn't what you're explaining so it's not just me making this up and this boogie word I'm aware of what is happening and these are the type of practices that are impacting the education every aspect the military all these employment it makes certain you know all these people okay let's treat them equally but then it also pushes a whole another group of people out that's what I'm trying to say and there is a state law that says we can't be you know doing things that are judging people based on their race or their sex and all the protected class so um the law has to be followed with all due
258respect M president I'm I'm a bit concerned that you all are a little bit off topic for what the agenda item says because it talks about the approval of overnight and outof State field trips and we've kind of drifted into a discussion about the diversity equity and inclusion concerns and I'm a little concerned about that so I I thank you all those in favor I I all those opposed oh nay I motion carries 4 to one moving on to 7.3 approval of annual financial report I move that we approve the annual financial report second all those in favor I I motion carries 5 to zero I move that we approve the Ray and Associates timeline as discussed for the superintendent search seconded all those in favor I I I I motion carries 5 to zero
259moving on to 7.5 I move that we approve Beed oh no no no what am I doing I move that we approve I know bdg School attorney second read second president Schultz wait this is can I yeah can I jump in um so we have a board member that um has proposed language here right so we're not approving the new one we're approving if we're going to continue talking about this is that right yes enough we have Jenifer here to help assist with this discuss I knew I was saying it wrong and I didn't want to get the wrong vote for it so I'm sorry about that but it's 9 o' it is it is late uh Madame President members of the governing board um and cabinet um a board member has proposed alternative language
260to your existing governing board policy bdg you have both your existing policy in it and proposed alternative language um and so that's available for you to approve this evening you may also given the length of the hour and and uh if you want you can table this item and move forward at a later date so whatever you desire but the purpose of tonight's agenda item is to discuss and potentially approve changes to the governing Port policy regarding the hiring of a school attorney so we're going we're voting on what if we want to approve these changes just to correct you're discussing and voting on whether you want to make changes to the policy and uh board member Van Hook has proposed an alternative policy okay questions comments concerns I'd like to make a motion to
261table this for to discuss next time since it is so late all those in favor I I I president Schultz can I ask a question then since the next meeting is November 1st the quote um board retreat ret and I don't know what Miss mullen's availability is and then the next one we just kind of minimize so we can you guys can work on Ray Ray and Associates and course guide so it may push it till that's fine it doesn't have to be the next one okay just want to make December would be fine thank you future agenda items anything anyone I move that we adjourn the meeting seconded all those in favor I motion carries 5 to zero thank you good night