001good evening I'd like to make a motion that we move to Executive session Ed it all those in favor hi you will be back good evening we will now reconvene in General Session I'd like to call this meeting to order this is Richard's roll call yes president Schultz let the record show that all five board members are present this evening thank you like if you now join me in a moment of silence and Pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice fraud I'd like to make a motion that we approve to the agenda all those in favor aye motion carries five zero Mrs Richards president Schultz members of the board here's another segment of Higley Adventures this evening we want to recognize
002Kyle Arrow Smith rsro officer and I'm going to ask him to come to the podium up there along with four of his Cadets these these I don't want to call you kids because you're not kids anymore these young adults were selected by Officer Aerosmith and they graduated from the Gilbert Police Department youth leadership academy in addition they were invited back this summer to lead the camp so I'm going to let officer Aerosmith introduce his folks here or his Cadets and let them put this in their own words [Applause] thank you [Applause] okay thank you sir good evening uh uh Higley board members and guests uh here to join us today um I'm Angel Enriquez and over this summer we got the very fun very exciting experience to go back and Lead uh Gilbert Police Department
003youth leadership academy uh due to the collaboration of Officer Aerosmith and Colonel Vaughn standing right over there all of us were once Air Force Junior ROTC members and we've just learned so many valuable skills in both ROTC and Gilbert Police Department youth leadership academy that we got to go to and more to that so while we were while we were at the Gilbert Police Department youth leadership academy we've got to do some activities and take some field trips and the first field trip that we took was to Topgolf where we learned about uh sportsmanship where we competed against other groups that were at Topgolf with us and then the second field trip that we took was to an escape room where we got to learn teamwork and working together to solve one common goal and
004then we also went to Alta where we could learn to trust each other and have some fun climbing hi I'm Alex Shafer and I have the high honor of talking to you guys about the food we ate while we were there laughs beginning with this we ate from four separate places beginning with Chick-fil-A on Monday barrows Los Favoritos and Rudy's on the end and when I walked around the classrooms asking that's why they were so excited to come there they said that there are sros at their schools told them there'd be food so that's sweet and uh one more thing that we got to do over there another great um plus a positive during this Academy we got to meet so many different people that we didn't know from different schools Campo Verde Perry Gilbert
005High School Highlands there were so many different schools people we never knew before who we could relate like simple things like let's say we both took honors pre-calc and we both did not know what we were doing at all we met so many new friends who like we've still talked to about a month ago I was at Portillo's and I saw an old friend that from there uh it was a great time I still talked to plenty friends that I've learned from there and it was just a great time getting to eat food with these people go enjoy these nice activities with them while also getting to learn valuable Leadership Lessons that you'll actually use in life and you've met so many people there I believe it was like 20 ish people uh per week
006and there were two weeks there evening I'm Maddie Wilson including communication which also Works hand in hand with teamwork as well as our problem solving and my favorite public speaking um with all these skills we can actually take them back to our high school in our community and even in the workforce so also at school you can just use these skills every day in projects as well as our leadership I myself am a Cadet along with these two over here in Air Force Junior ROTC and we can use these to help guide our Cadets to success really quick I just want to give these young adults over here a shot out also there's seven high schools at Gilbert Police Service across Gilbert and it's Gilbert High School Highland Perry can I just say Higley and
007williamsfield we're the best represented schools in our program we had the most students and the most returning for ambassadors so that's all attributed to them [Applause] so officer Eric Smith and Colonel Vaughn you've done an outstanding job of helping these guys become amazing leaders not just for the school district but much more you were Gilbert leaders and we're very proud of you [Applause] all right there it goes this evening we want to highlight Higley High School's Prince Millman he is the National Junior Olympic All-American decathlete this is an amazing amazing accomplishment this summary stood on the podium at the University of Oregon as he received received his medal and is All American status he is the fifth best decathlete in the nation as a decathlete prince complete competed in numerous events now that competition is
008complete he's focused on academics but believe me he's already looking forward to beating some of those records so we wanted to acknowledge this and give a shout out not only to him but to Higley High School [Applause] I'd like Kimberly Ohanian to come to the podium for a minute this evening we want to thank our fantastic Community Education team the leader of this team is Kim and when we hired her several years ago I said you've got a big job you know coming in after covid that's not an easy thing to do and she hasn't done it alone but she is definitely the leader there are so many supportive staff members families and of course our students this evening we want to highlight students we have students that have a one-year celebration these students are
009employees of our district they align with our portrait of a graduate we love providing opportunities for our students to obtain initial work experience that that's important because it went from applying for the job interviewing for the job and the expectations of being an employee within a safe and supportive environment so Kim I'd like for you to introduce your individuals that are here this evening and if we'll wait and clap she's going to make them stand up and don't sit down and then we'll all clap and then we can hear your names thank you Mrs Richards President Sultan members of the board on this slide here could Evelyn please stand julisa she is not present today but we do still want to recognize her Berkeley Everly Rigdon and Bella foreign [Applause] could you please join them
010Ali Morgan Wyatt Carter Gabby and Jocelyn [Music] our one-year celebration now let's keep moving forward thank you all so much for the work you do every day and for coming this evening so we can recognize you great job [Applause] it's not limited to one year we also have kids that and they're not kids and I've got to quit calling them that I'm sorry these young adults that advance from student workers they are now serving as assistant team leads so miss Ohanian can you introduce these individuals Giselle Gianna Michael and Julissa three to five years is an accomplishment for any of us thank you for hanging in there taking care of our kids taking care of each other and our families the raving reviews come every day in fact Mr Walker could give a raving review
011but I won't make him he's always bragging about kicks Club so thank you guys so much [Music] [Applause] next we have Olivia self if you're in the audience we're going to want you to stand up for a long time she is a recent graduate from Williams Field high school she started as a student worker and now as a paraprofessional at our Coulee early childhood development center she is also the recipient of the first things first scholarship with a goal to become an early childhood educator congratulations Olivia [Applause] all right let the bragging continue we want to recognize these through three students congratulations to Cutter renatum William Robertson and Jennifer White these three individuals earned a perfect score on the ACT test that's really incredible less than one half of a percent of the students who
012take the ACT earn a perfect score well done for this outstanding accomplishment [Applause] hmm and last but not least we've got little Cooley brilliant beginners learning and I'm wondering Miss Ohanian are you going to work to hire these kids in a few years in the classroom they're learning about science and conducting experiments aligned to the book if you take a mouse to school so great things are happening across the district and thank you to Patty Gleason for running an amazing early childhood development center [Applause] thank you president Schultz we have upcoming events tomorrow evening here in the district office we have the dangers of Snapchat this is a repeat present I'm gonna wait and let them leave thank you guys for coming thank you for coming thank you okay tomorrow evening we have the dangers
013of Snapchat presentation here in the district office in this governing board room at 6 00 pm we held these sessions last year got very positive reviews and encourage families to attend Friday September 1st a week from this Friday we have a school visit at Bridges Elementary and they're geared up and ready to go on September 4th we will celebrate Labor Day and there will not be school so nobody cry right now it'll be okay and then on September 14th we have our business partners breakfast here in the governing board room thank you Mrs Richards that was my favorite Higley Adventures yet that was a lot of amazing accomplishments and Community leadership so thank you very much um and the Snapchat um discussion tomorrow is a great event for parents I highly encourage parents to attend
014that event all right okay all right 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 are due prior to the start of our meeting members of the board may not discuss comment or take action on matters raised that are not specifically identified on the agenda therefore pursuant to ARS 38-431-0.01 H action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for further consideration and decision at a later date also we ask that audience members practice proper public medium meeting decorum refraining from either negative or positive responses including
015clapping 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 three minutes thank you for your cooperation and first up is Mindy Mrs Mindy brocker thank you so so much for the opportunity to speak today there's just two quick things I wanted to talk about real quick first I love my public school I wanted to call out a quick but heartfelt thank you to all of our teachers and admins who put in the extra effort on top of giving my children a top-notch education to do all the fun enrichment and Extras I have one kid who was jumping out of his skin excited at the idea of an elementary drama club one who is really too
016darn cool for school but would murder me if he missed the opportunity to go to Washington DC with his class and another who was absolutely 100 percent all in at the idea of learning physics at Disneyland so this is an amazing opportunity that my kids get because those teachers are going well above and beyond to make it happen so thank you next I did want to talk about the dress code update actually I'm really impressed at the difference between the first and the second read through whoever wrote it managed to capture what was important prioritizing the minimization of classroom disruption but also giving us parents freedom to parent this last meeting people went on and on about female attire as a woman in my 40s I dealt with so many ridiculous rules that were aimed
017squarely at us telling us over and over again that we're responsible for the thoughts and actions of men and boys wear a slip wear a pantyhose don't like your shorts be too short don't let your cleavage show don't breastfeed your kids be professional be pretty wear makeup don't wear too much makeup don't forget to smile and on and on we are always told to protect the eyes of our young men and I was told over and over to protect the eyes young men to be honest I'm over it absolutely I'm parenting boys that are fully capable of respecting women they can recognize that no matter what a woman is wearing they have their own responsibility to be good and respectful young men and students and to be frank I won't even ask their opinion about
018what girls in their schools are wearing because it doesn't matter their opinion does not matter I have to be really clear with that the opinion of boy students does not matter when it comes to what our girls wear to school so with this policy that's been crafted I think you have found a really good middle ground allowing me as a parent to take responsibility for my child's attire while still allowing the teachers the ability to minimize classroom disruption so I ask that you approve it to let us all move past this craziness of worrying about midriffs and spaghetti straps thank you sorry the microphone wasn't working for a second um Mr Adam brocker ah good evening uh so yeah so I'm parent of uh three kids in our district been here for about 10 years
019um I also want to applaud the current draft that we discussed of the dress code in the last meeting uh I do greatly appreciate the willingness of the board to address a and try to create a gender-neutral dress code that's greatly appreciated I just wanted to respond to some of the public commentary that we heard last time um just um what was stated previously it was very clear that our young women would be bearing the brunt of any sort of um restrictive dress code um as such I do currently support the the current dress code draft I I do believe it it offers finds a good middle ground uh I do want to speak to a couple of specific points um sort of previous previously mentioned I don't think it's reasonable to put blame on
020our young women for the thoughts of our young men this does not prepare our young men for the workplace to allow um their performance to be excused and blamed on the attire of our young women um the second point I do want to stress um just as sort of a Counterpoint there was a lot of discussion about the professional attire of our young women and not a single thing was really mentioned about the attire of our young men and boys I can say as the parent of a couple of teenage boys that they're not uh not really concerned about professional Tire more just how comfortable can I be so um I do think overall our kids would be better served by a professional development class if that's something that we want to put forward rather
021than create the creation of a punitive dress code so yeah in general I just want to say that I do appreciate the work that the board has done on this dress code issue and that I do appreciate the the they're trying to seek a middle ground um one thing I do want to reframe is a data point that Mrs Anderson put forward um did put forward a number of different pieces of data and I do really appreciate that um one point of information that I found interesting was that three of the top schools have a minimal dress code and that's three of the best so I just want to put that as put stress on that to say that we should focus more on finding a uh a better more inclusive dress code thank you
022thank you Mrs Jessica d'ambrosio good evening governing board good evening cabinet um as a school teacher for nearly two decades I know what goes into teaching but also what goes into after school events that the school puts on to create Community for our community I wanted to celebrate Williams Field high school they had an event on Friday August 11th and it was for the teams to be known so the dance team the cheer team the football team the band it was the most extraordinary night as a new high school football mom to walk into an event where all the football players are lined up applauding the parents how many times have these parents sat through countless years of extracurricular activities cheering on kids it was such a cool warm exciting inviting experience that I just
023thought it deserved to be recognized it was the dedication of coaches certified classified staff members an incredible booster club filled with volunteers past students and teachers and I just really wanted to recognize them they did an incredible job and the sense of community as a teacher who's been in this district for a very long time walking into a high school and seeing my third graders being those girls out there dancing with some amazing moves I was so impressed and so excited I was taking pictures and being like oh I wish I had his mom's number but um it was just really neat I think that the dedication of these teachers and administrators really show and we create a incredible Community here in Higley so huge shout out to Higley Unified School District in Williamsville high
024school thank you moving on to consent agenda items 6.1 through 6.1 zero I make a motion to approve the consent agenda items all those in favor aye motion carries five to zero at this time Mrs Johnson we'd have like to introduce someone yes uh presidential members of the board I would like uh Miss Mary Davis to stand up she is our new director of professional development she comes to us from Washington DC with many years of experience and we are thrilled to have her here at Higley welcome Mrs Davis [Applause] thank you welcome Mrs Davis we're very excited to have you moving on to information items 7.1 husd by the numbers good evening president Schultz members of the board um members of the community uh it's my pleasure to carry on the theme for tonight
025which is focusing on students for me I get to look at our students by the numbers so what does the data say about our community and our students and so looking forward to sharing that with you tonight first we're looking at enrollment Trends in the district our 100th day student count so most of what you're going to see is based on last year's data we usually 100th days when we send up all of our information to the state for any kind of assessment that kind of thing so you can see the overall enrollment in 2022 was 13 585 of that 10 305 of our students were within our boundaries attending the school for which their boundary another 1575 students attempt were within our boundaries but they were attending a school outside of where they were
026boundaried and then we had 1705 students attending our schools from outside of our boundaries student demographics uh 62 of our students are white but that means about 38 of our students are non-white Translating that into the classroom when you walk into one of our classes four in ten of our kids are non-white students and I think that's important for our teachers and our staff to to really understand student programs and needs these are four different programs that we as a district support students identified for these programs usually have unique needs that require additional support from teachers site and District instead of giving you percentages I thought it was important to give you the actual numbers of those students to really clarify how many kids that is in each of those programs so you have special
027education our English Learners gate is our gifted and talented program and then our free and reduced launch of students now moving into the actual assessment data that we have this is our aesa Ela scores for our third through eighth grade aasa is a state achievement test it's giving in the spring and as you're looking at this we improved in Proficiency in all but our fifth and seventh grades however in both of those grades the state also saw a decline in proficiency so we pretty much mirrored the state in terms of our performance but you can see consistently our schools outperform the state average foreign this next chart is our cohort proficiency so what you see here is the colored bands are like kids moving from grade level to grade level again you can see our
028cohorts in from going from third to fourth grade had an improvement in proficiency as well as from fifth to sixth grade and then you can see 2020 that was the year that covet happened and we shut down and we didn't have State Testing here we have math again outperform the state pretty consistently across the board again increase in proficiency for all of our grade levels except for sixth grade again we mirrored what happened at the state level in terms of the that those increases and decreases and here you have the cohort for math the three starred years in eighth grade at that time we were administering AZ Merit and our eighth graders had a basically were taking different tests in eighth grade uh they could be taking the eighth grade math test they could have
029been taking the algebra test they could have been taking the geometry test because it was end of course assessments at that time there was a change in 2021 to azm2 and at that time they did away with the end of course assessments and they were grade level assessments so all of our eighth graders took the same test so what you see in the eighth grade the 17 18 19 those are the results of the test that the students took and then once we got to 21 it's all the 8th graders taking the same test ACT Aspire is given to all of our ninth graders this test will be used for the first time this spring or for next year for a through F to measure growth as ninth graders to 11th graders how well they
030did it in ACT Aspire uh last year so 22 to this year as a 11th graders with act that'll be a component of the a3f scores for next year when I come in front of you with that um what the Readiness percentage in ACT Aspire says is this is the likelihood that a child would be at the Benchmark level on the act when they take the act as 11th graders so basically what you're seeing here is that 62 percent of our kids are predicted to be at Benchmark and I'll show you what those scores are on the next slide but these are good numbers looking forward to these kids as 11th graders thank you here you have our act average scores for cohort 2024 a cohort is all students and entered our high schools as
031ninth graders at the same time due to credits you may have some students that are classified as a junior that may not have come in as a ninth grader with all of the other Juniors so when we test for State Testing purposes they identify only the cohort is the one that's taking that test at that time so this group is our cohort 2024 probably 99 of these kids are truly 11th graders there's probably a very small percentage that aren't the number that you see that is the average score on each of the subtests with the act the dotted line those are the subject areas that there is a benchmark score for so in math The Benchmark score is a 22 and what that represents is that those students that score there have it approximately a
03250 chance of a b or better or a 75 chance of earning AC or better on the corresponding College course their freshman year in college so we're very close in most of those subject areas including English where we're above that that Benchmark level truly a testament to our students and our staff and as we saw we had three kids that got perfect scores this year so that's pretty impressive the state for a through F takes the ACT scores and reclassifies them into our proficiency levels similar to what you see in aasa um what they to come up with this they looked at what the state identifies as College and Career ready so the cut scores for proficiency are lower than those benchmark scores that act puts out because not all of our kids are going
033to go to college and the idea is are they career ready as well as College ready these are internal scores students never see what they get in terms of this but it's used by US and as well as the state to identify a through F and where's the the proficiency level and growth level of students are and the ELA is a combination of reading English and the writing score next up we have azside this is a state Science assessment that's given in fifth grade eighth grade and again cohort 2024. um this is based on our state science standards the ACT science uh is not necessarily aligned quite to our state standards so that our cohort 2024 actually takes this test this counts for our accountability for a through F whereas act science doesn't count for
034anything with a through F it's good for our kids going out to college here again consistently above the state the state did improve as we did from last year last year was the first year when we administered azsi we do anticipate seeing these scores improve over the next few years with the adoption and implementation of DNA our new assessment platform comes with an item bank that is much more closely aligned to the state test as well as to our state standards more rigorous and and we truly believe that once students start engaging with that our staff will be able to start looking at that and adjust their instruction accordingly graduation and Dropout rates uh we had a 96 graduation rate in 2022 that puts us as the highest graduation rate of any District in Maricopa
035County this is according to the Arizona auditor general only three other districts Hayden winkelmann Duncan and Thatcher had higher rates and all of those were considered to be immediate small and medium-sized districts whereas we are considered to be a large District so this is an impressive feat by by both of our high schools with that graduation rate we get full points on a through f for sitting at 90 percent so maintaining a 96 huge dropout rate what that is looking at is students are identify identified as Dropout they began at one of our schools left one of our schools and we don't know where they went so a one percent dropout rate is huge and again Testament to the front office at our high schools for tracking down kids that leave and identifying where they've
036gone and that that then goes into our student information system gets sent up to the state that allows them to track those students and identify the dropout rate foreign CTE so here we're looking at as well as our portrait of a graduate and that College and Career Readiness so looking at our Career and Technical education program uh last year we had 465 industry credentials earned by our students in CTE there were 2557 seats in CTE courses that were filled by students I say seats because we could have a child that might take three or four CTE courses they're filling three or four of those seats and then most of those kids take a skills assessment at the end of the year we had a 90.5 percent passing rate as a district on those skills assessment
037our advanced placement program as a district last year we offered 28 different advanced placement courses we had 1466 seats filled by students in those courses and of the kids that took the AP test we had a 73 passing rate 73 passing rate of students earning a three or better generally a three or better is going to get you college credit uh depending on the college and depending on what they're looking for just for comparison the Morrison Institute in Helios and ASU decision Center did a study in 2018-19 looking at AP participation in the state compared to the nation in the U.S in 1819 the percentage of receiving a three or better was at 59.6 for Arizona it was at 59.4 so it's the most recent data I could come up with as a comparison but
038just looking at that our passing rate is sparse period to what you're seeing in the rest of okay and then last I want to show our foreign language information we had 60 seals of bi-literacy that were earned by seniors last year that's based on performance on the stamp and enrollment in our world languages programs that improved from 23 last year we also just got information as to the total number of seals of by literacy that were issued to the state our number of 60 represents five percent of the total seals given out in the state so huge shout out to Rebecca Rodriguez and our Royal language teachers for helping our kids get to that point and then again 536 of our kids were enrolled on our DLI program so again huge shout out to both
039of our sites as well as Rebecca Rodriguez on all of the work that she does finally kind of what's next in terms of our students and and what that they'll be doing we have our district benchmarks starting on September 5th uh for third through eighth grade in ela math and science uh we give those at the end of the first second and third quarters they are mimics of what the state test looks like gives us a lot of data about how our students are going to perform on those State tests and allow us to provide address gaps in our curriculum and that kind of thing moving forward a through F letter grades cut scores will be approved by the State Board in September they will then approve letter grades at the end of October November
0401st is a state deadline to release letter grades so we'll have a better idea of where our schools are based on what the data that we have once the cut scores are approved and then I'll be able to publicly talk about them after November 1st move on when reading just wanted to throw that out there that we are currently assessing all of our k-3 students in literacy and dyslexia in using a state approved test this is mandated by state law for us to do this it's administered at the beginning middle and end of the year so we've already got data coming in on where our kindergarten first second and third grades graders are that information then gets we let parents know those kids are at risk right now and the things that we're doing to
041address some of those deficiencies and then finally just to put it on the radar State Testing starts at the end of January the Zella reassessment for our Els English Learners and that's the proficiency test for them and then starting the end of March beginning of April we're straight into State Testing so questions Mr Berkshire these numbers are amazing they're so good and it's a testament to our teachers and our students and just um hearing miss d'ambrosia the ambrosio's excitement that she had for her students um I'm sure that all these teachers are are just as great as she is and cheering their students on during these testings so um I'm super excited to see these numbers questions comments from the board yes um president Schultz I love seeing the high rate of graduation but I
042do have a question as far as our math and um reading yes we're comparing to State and our numbers are higher but at 60 percent that if if you if that equates to a grade that's still a d um so how are how has our graduation rate so high when we're only at 60 percent in those areas is our is everything kind of watered down to push these kids through to to increase our graduation rates or the numbers don't match up the graduation rates is pretty much what I'm saying so it's 60 yes great we're doing great above State average but at 60 it's still considered a d the state test is a very rigorous test I think any teacher that has participated in the state item uh writing process and and the review process
043those items that kids are engaged in are extremely rigorous so obviously when you look at some of the metrics that some of the organizations in Arizona put out the goal is that our third graders are sitting at probably an 80 passing rate and that has been a long-term goal um but I would it is very hard to equate a standardized test that a child takes one time a year to a collection of evidence that goes into a student's grade there there are a lot of factors that could impact besides the rigor of the test that student performance on that one day that they take that test they could have had a cold and been snippling the entire time headache and just weren't able to to engage in the tests like we know they could they
044could have had uh gotten off the bus that morning tripped and fell lots of different things that could have happened to impact their score on that test so what the state test results really do is they give us a snapshot of where our kids are they allow us at the district level to to look at Trends and identify maybe we have some gaps in our curriculum and and an instruction that we can address and those are things that I've been in conversation with Mr loutsonheiser here miss Lindsay as well as Miss Davis and the the instructional coach team about at the district level we also meet with all of our principals to talk about their site level data lots of different points come into to that so it's hard to to say that a grade
045represents what a student gets on that test Berkshire when you come back and you share the official letter grade information at that time will you be able to show us how we compare to our surrounding districts so in terms of our ASA our state test performance that data hasn't been released publicly it should be released prior to letter grades coming out once letter grades are released that information usually is public for everybody so we should in November if I come back I should be able to talk about how we perform just in test score percentage compared to our surrounding districts as well as how our schools did in comparison to to our surrounding districts in terms of letter grades and for the the slide where it had the the failing at the bottom I think
046it was about 15 percent um what actions are being taken to be able to help those kids increase their grades not sure which one you're referring to um I'm sorry I don't have my iPad uh page 11. oh at the ACT cohorts proficiency let me go backwards can you pull the slide back up I think Ari tell me when to stop yeah yeah so oops sorry mentally proficient it's actually slide 10 I believe right no hers is 11. 11 sorry so I I can address minimally proficient in all the areas um sites get this data and they have it so one of the advantages to our new assessment platform is we're able to pull reports on current students that show how they performed on past tests so our current classroom teachers have that information with
047them right now as to which students were minimally proficient most of that aligns with our Universal screener data as well as to those kids that come in with skill gaps and are at risk so at the elementary level we have a robust mtss program where they're identifying those students at risk providing intervention for those students and really trying to to to fill those gaps in that those kids have middle school and high school they have that same they have similar programs it really is the more we know about what the student is coming in with in terms of their understanding their knowledge what those skill gaps are the better we can address those skill gaps and and help them out so again that's where programs like acadians which is our Universal screener for literacy comes
048in an important K3 we're piloting right now bass bridge at three of our elementary sites and with special education in seventh and 8th grade and what bass bridge is provides us with is both math and reading and really Targets in where those skill gaps are for kids we anticipate expanding that to eighth grade hopefully so that when at the beginning of the year we know that a child is struggling with phonemic awareness and here are the strategies that we can take to address that particular skill and fill those gaps in thank you you're welcome Schultz a question have y'all looked at done any data correlation between AP students and state and National test scores and how do you have that information or is that something can share later say that correlation between AP scores and
049like State and National scores like to see if there's a correlation between those as far as how they perform so the best I was able to provide was that information there college board has an interesting system set up that we got access to the AP scores but then our access expired and with the change in superintendent superintendent's the only one that can grant us access to that information so we're still working on getting that information so I'll be happy once Ms Richards gets the document that she has to sign that gives me my my access back to be able to provide you with that information it's very frustrating on our end I think he just called you illnesses any other questions uh no thank you very much these numbers look great and as you mentioned
050they are just a snapshot um even though in someone who's not a fan of State Testing it's still great to see these numbers thank you very much oh Mrs Wade sorry one more comment I also just wanted to say thank you for your explanation as to the pressures often on standardized tests I think any teacher who has experienced the difference between a regular test day that you give weekly of your AP usually those types of things the kids feel the weight of it um the the structure the procedures everything it there is a a weight of stress so already you have your high anxiety kids that don't test well to begin with in this environment it's often harder to get them to understand that it's just the same as any other test and all of
051these things and I think it's important for us to keep that in mind that when we look at these tests and why there's such a big difference is because the nature of standardized tests and we all of us in education who are not profiting off of these tests recognize that these tests are not a measure of intelligence or capabilities which is why our graduation rate tends to be what it is in comparison with these numbers so thank you thank you very much moving on to 7.2 Safety and Security update Miss nope good evening president Schultz members of the board Mr Moore we'll just pass this clicker around I have the pleasure of presenting at Safety and Security update for the district as well as co-presenting you know Mr James Walker director of student services and
052Mr Jim pasig the director of Information Technology we have a pretty um uh I guess inclusive team that that kind of constantly has this conversation um in regards to Safety and Security with what we're doing throughout our district um taking in feedback from our principals um this is a topic that is on top of our minds um and top of our budget conversations as well um so a little bit history Maybe there we go um so the history of safety security the increase attention to Safety and Security has has grown over the last decade there's been a number of high profile incidents of violence um increased social media usage times have changed in terms of this this topic in terms of school safety which is why I mentioned this it's pretty much on top of
053our minds when we're talking about any funding initiative or initiatives that we're doing throughout the district um Higley has had a history of making some Safety and Security improvements throughout the district um just to recap there's over the last 10 years our front office reconfigurations we're all done with the 2013 Bond those front office reconfigurations made all our school sites a single point of entry and that configuration again was done on the summer of 2014 traffic flow modifications are continuing being done this was a topic in our budget conversation several projects have been completed Higgly High Santan and then we have several in the works but traffic flow modifications are typically funded with the Jason ways funding they're intended to reduce congestion enhance emergency access and again improve the safety of our students and staff
054other safety improvements that the district has been working on over the last year include alarm enhancements and audits communication improvements with two-way radios and intercom systems and a visitor management system that gives us greater access to check in and check out individuals that are accessing our campus next I will turn it over to Mr Walker to talk about our next initiative which is security cameras members of the board tonight in regards to our safety and security update security cameras are our critical piece for surveillance in the school district for first and foremost for for building security uh it serves as crime deterrence as well as crime prevention it helps to investigate incidents and also creates the ability to prevent incidents from happening in the first place because it provides better supervision over campus operations it
055gives us as a district the ability to document it gives us also a tie-in for emergency response and as the the technology increases so does the Partnerships with law enforcement agencies and the ability to share for emergency responses and then overall just the the input for from law enforcement and assessments of our campuses is the implementation and the upkeep of security cameras provides an enhanced level of school safety across the board so I'll turn it over to Mr basic to talk a little bit about what we currently have because we do have security cameras in place but what solution that we're looking at as a forward-thinking a solution for this topic good evening so we currently have um multiple camera systems but the one that we're looking to replace is the vigilon camera system the
056vigilon cameras are low resolution they're 1080p cameras so visibility is sometimes challenging uh they require Network video recorders so so every site has an NVR a recorder as well as a server and they are really at their the end of their useful life um one of the expenses that we're being asked should we decide that we want it should we decide that we wanted to keep the vigil on cameras is all of the servers and all of the nvrs need to be updated and upgraded that's how old they are the approximate cost and admittedly there's some there's some adjustments that we could make by making certain campuses more robust and certain campuses less robust with regard to say recording times some of those things but generally speaking if we went with what I would call
057the Goldilocks solution the middle of the road solution to upgrade all of the vigilon equipment to the new servers and the new nbrs would cost us approximately six hundred and sixty thousand dollars and we would put all of that money into the system and we would not purchase a single new camera so we are suggesting that we go with a Enterprise level solution through the berkata corporation verkada has 4K cameras so there's a certain level of future proof uh there those cameras are four times the resolution of the existing cameras the Mercado cameras are all cloud-based so the images are captured on the camera itself it isn't the data is encrypted on the camera the data is encrypted in the cloud and the data is encrypted in transit from the camera to the cloud each
058camera can hold 30 days of storage and we have an unlimited amount of storage in the cloud so if we determine that we need to save footage for an investigation or for any purpose we can save it in the cloud the cameras the hardware has a 10-year warranty so should a camera fail or should a camera be damaged or fill in the blank for the next 10 years those get replaced we also get 10 years of software upgrades and improvements ricotta has been putting out patches on a regular basis quarterly if not more often and we also have as part of the vakata camera solution 24 7 365 monitoring of the exterior of our of our campus so um images can be can be used to trigger intervention by police or by other services the
059the other I'm sorry I'm sorry Tyler I apologize the last thing I just wanted to say is is the ricotta solution um is accessible on uh computers and also on apps and footage can be shared with law enforcement in in emergencies so versata is a is a suite of services um all of these things fall behind what they refer to as a single pane of glass which is their application called ricotta command all those types of sensors and services get their own tab within Mercado command and although we're going to start with cameras focusing on the exterior of our sites eventually moving to Interior cameras we do have the opportunity to add things like integration to our access control system air quality sensors and communication so so really as we progress with the Mercado solution
060and we continue to add things in and and uh we can continue to make the system more robust and more integrated district-wide foreign use in a variety of of uh sites and and organizations I did reach out to three different school districts who responded to uh in varying ways to my request for uh for a reference but generally speaking the the experience that they're having with their with their their installation mirrors what we would expect based on our assessment of the of the product people are are quite pleased with it and I would assume that Higley will be as well so this is what we're deeming phase one of our security camera planning cost um after again like I've alluded to we've made a lot of improvements across our district this is really I think
061the next point of emphasis with working with Mr Walker and Gilbert Police um that uh that Higley needs to address and so um the total phase one kind of plan and cost as presented um in a later board agenda item it's 156 total cameras and that includes software that's a again a 10-year warranty that also allows for software upgrades the primary focus of this first phase is the external cameras at our sites this does cover all School sites so we're not emphasizing one set of schools all School sites um would be this in this first Focus but what the emphasis on the external entrances of our campuses points of Entry Etc phase two would then be to look at internal cameras or and then look at points of entry points of interest where we feel
062there's High incidents in areas where are deemed security risk um the total cost of this phase one is 529 000. and again um we've mentioned this in the budget conversation there is a one-time state aid supplement that the governor um allocated for fiscal year 24 that 300 million dollars Statewide um I mentioned the budget presentation that the district is focusing on using that for Capital needs this is a perfect use for that one-time money to invest in our safety and security throughout our campuses and that concludes our presentation so if there's any questions I'd be happy to answer presidential Mr Moore did we get any other quotes or just one Mr PESA can speak to that we investigated um staying with the vigilon equipment and we also looked at Meraki equipment and based on the
063assessment with the team we we recommended that we move forward with ricotta okay and can the footage be foiled at all in case let's say there's an incident um Can the community request a copy of that recording I am not a lawyer so I'm not comfortable answering that question um I'm not certain James members of the board I'm not a lawyer either but I can take a little stab at it there are some protections through FERPA based on what's captured so there are limitations but at times it could be requested depending on what the request is in regards to okay thank you um in an update or in our superintendent report can we receive visual comparison of what it looks like now as far as your quality of Imaging compared to what either what you're
064expecting or once you get things installed the difference the true upgrade and what we're going to receive sure we'll be able to provide that thank you um do we uh I think we don't quite know um where internally these cameras will go correct I know you said eventually we'll we'll start from the outside and then work its way inside the schools um do we have an idea as to like as far as like near locker rooms and bathrooms the initial plan is to remove the um a vigil on cameras and then replace the uh the vigilon camera with a vertada camera in the same location and then we will engage with the vercata engineers to help us determine um the best location for some other cameras but um that'll that'll be sort of a give
065and take process working with with its uh site leadership as well as berkata um engineer and and I go ahead yeah I can also add to that um that that's a strategic plan uh that we're not not the Strategic plan but a strategic plan that we do have to incorporate law enforcement input uh the engineers from the company as well as the site Administration for areas of high need thank you and uh one more question will those cameras have facial recognition capabilities the the new ricotta cameras have um have heuristics or AI that will allow us to search for certain things like students or people with red shirts on or people with backpacks that sort of uh um Enterprise level uh sorting and searching is possible with the picata cameras any other questions comments one
066more sorry and will this information be shared with the third party company at all or will it be on our cloud it's our data it'll be encrypted in all three locations on the camera in transit and in the cloud and it's it's our data it's not a third-party data thank you anything else thank you very much it's a very important topic [Music] moving on to action item 8.1 I move that we approve policy g b e b b staff contact with students second read second questions comments concerned this is um a tweak that we had from before so I don't think there's anything else I do have a quick question um let's see at the end where it says use of physical Force against students um I did recently see an article it's an old
067article um where a I think seven-year-old um there was physical Force used within our district and the the child was locked in a closet now do I mean I'm just concerned as far as like use of physical Force because when I read this article like to be honest like as a parent it was very con concerning to me um that that much force was used against a seven-year-old but how does how does um what are the limitations of this I guess is what I'm trying to understand so board member Ben hook I'm going to ask Miller to OK about CPI AC in the appropriate procedures that are used thank you in our district we currently have um three individuals that are certified Crisis Prevention intervention trainers and their role is to train identified staff in
068the use of what we call CPI Through The Crisis Prevention intervention Institute the majority of that training is de-escalation techniques that do not include any type of physical contact but in the event that we have a student that is a danger to sell for others that we have to intervene staff that intervene are trained in the use of the CPI techniques so that they're done in a manner to keep the staff as well as the student safe but it's only used as a last resort and is the parent notified at every single time they are they're notified in writing and they're also given a copy of the incident once the investigation is done thank you all those in favor aye motion carries five zero eight point two I I move that we approved the authorization
069of expenditure ricotta camera replacement second questions comments concerns I know we just heard the presentation I didn't know if you I know you wanted to see a visual I don't know if that impacts the vote or oh it won't at all okay sure all those in favor I I motion carries five zero I move that take act or I'd like to make a motion that we take action on selecting a firm to conduct a superintendent search second questions comments concerns all those in favor I know I don't do we need to name the sorry yes thank you just we just need to clarify based on what was determined and decided within executive session we're giving direction to our HR Director to follow those instructions yes on after I read it I apologize it's uh uh
070thank you I move that we authorize Mrs Johnson to to hire Rey and Associates to conduct our superintendent search second hope I was in favor I apologize for that very clumsy vote on my part is five to six motion carries five to zero items for future agenda add um possible uh executive session um whether it's to the next board meeting or possibly prior um to discuss the turnover rate at Power Ranch and possible Personnel issues okay thank you we'll discuss that with District foreign anything else I mean to add some humor out just to see a budget item for more boardroom Clickers yeah could we get a budget item for more Clickers or or maybe uh Mrs Anderson suggested a ball that we could just toss across we thought we had something tonight it's just
071hesitating because when I cook it it vibrates and so yeah we have Mr it in the room thank you Mr paseks for helping us out and we'll have it we'll have it under control [Laughter] thank you Mrs Anderson eye move that we adjourn this meeting second all those in favor aye thank you and have a nice evening like when you click it it goes and then it transitions but we need more than one like even if we had one for this side one for that side and one right there we would be good and I know you've said you can't switch