HUSD Governing Board Meeting June 7, 2023 Live Stream

001foreign good morning I would like to call this meeting to order uh Miss Richard Mrs Richards can you please give roll call yes um thank you vice president Anderson let the record show that four board members are participating this morning in the meeting Miss Schultz is on the phone so president Schultz can you say hello good morning good morning thank you thank you we will now uh begin with a moment of Silent silence followed by the Pledge of Allegiance uh next I'd like uh to motion um to move into a public hearing for the proposed budget of fiscal year the agenda oh I need to prove the agenda first I apologize thank you I motion to approve the gender seconded questions or comments before we move forward all those in favor aye aye aye motion

002carries four to zero next I motion that we move into a public hearing for the proposed budget of the fiscal year 2024. seconded all those in favor aye aye motion carries four to zero Mr Tyler or you'll be leading this good morning vice president and understand members of the board um this morning I will be presenting the 2024 proposed budget for fiscal year 24. um first up uh just again we continue to practice the uh including the acronyms that are included in the presentation and having a slide for those viewing online or going back through and reviewing the presentation to reference first up you've seen this calendar many times we are back at the start of the calendar uh we're back in June looking at our proposed and adopted budgets as a reminder we went

003through a practice of this district is to go through and tentatively approve these budgets so we can issue contracts back in March and I'll go over in this presentation today what we tentatively prove versus what we're actually proposing today and then uh in the second meeting in June uh adopting so some of the highlights um in this 2024 proposed budget a lot of what was approved in legislation came to fruition one of the big wins I feel like for 24 was the exemption of AEL for again fiscal 24. so that was a one-year exemption uh that bill scr 1041s passed by the legislature for again a one-year exemption for fiscal 24. so we can go into this next year without having that fiscal cliff overhanging our heads and can make um utilize their budget to

004the fullest capacity for next fiscal year I do want to note that will be an issue again in fiscal 25 there was a one-year exemption um we were currently expecting to exceed that AEL limit by approximately uh 1.2 billion dollars and so that is not going to go away overnight over another fiscal year so we'll see that again in 25 and that will be an important issue that we'll have to monitor um as we go through that budget process the Higley specific logic implications as I mentioned in the tentative budget we knew that asrs was increasing the rates by 0.12 percent you know unfortunately both the employer and the district will realize those increases as we are a member of ARs and so are our employees and so the district matches every employee contribution so

005that increase of approximately 30 000 in whole will be seen on employees paychecks next year as well as an increase to The District budget we've talked about the mno to Capital transfer that has been reduced from the tender budget if you remember on the May revision we increased that transfer to cover Capital products that are incurring right now if you drove past Pecos or record you see the construction going on at Higgly High there's also construction at San Tan and so the summer is the ideal time in which we can get into sites without students and not affect the educational environment and make those enhancements or improvements where needed so that may revision that you approved for fiscal budget 23 the current year increase that transfer so we're moving that money back in the proposed

006budget like I mentioned um and again that transfer covers lease payments our Middle School lease payment well we did refinance that we still have that payment for the next 30 Years in addition it's going to cover some of our major Capital maintenance projects that are slated for next fiscal year in addition uh the Higley budget implications include the 24 approved compensation increases those were in summary two percent increase to the certified classified exempt in admins as well as supplemental schedules as well as increases to the sub rates and then the dollar hour per hour increase the classified hourly so that will all take effect July 1 and as we've issued contracts those are all reflected on those contracts so the other implications as as a whole looking at the K-12 budget Bill we knew the

007base level support was going to increase two percent at least that's that's what I assumed and that that's actually what came to fruition so what that means for the district that was about a 1.7 million dollar increase which I uh included in that tentatively approved budget what I didn't know and what we didn't assume was the results-based funding being shifted to the base level support So this move was an effort to kind of spread the money from my understanding across all districts resource-based funding if you don't know is given to schools who qualify based on um I don't know what tested is now I think AZ PSI easy Merit there's been a number of different names currently that yeah it keeps changing right so that that results with funding was awarded to qualifying schools based

008on percentage of students that met that there's a threshold um Higley being a very high achieving District had seven qualifying schools this last year and so um what this move does is it really it negatively affects High achieving districts unfortunately um that increase of 0.9 percent to the base is a net impact of 780 000. the issue is we've been um receiving funds of access of 1.1 1.3 million this year so that is actually a decrease in funding for Higley unified going into next year 520 000. so um that will be important point of emphasis in our conversations with meet and confer team um as higley's practice we've paid all that money out to all our staff being weighted on different very levels the qualifying schools being the highest weighted a schools B schools Etc

009so that is going to directly affect our employees and the amount of money they're receiving so um I know that'll be a top of conversation with me and confer and we'll look to have a proposal as we go into next year so moving down uh 20 million towards District additional assistance this is part of the the former Governor's plan to continue to allocate money to Capital knowing that it's underfunded so that 20 million uh to the whole of all school districts that estimated impact for Higley is 550 000. in addition I did not anticipate the governor including 300 million dollars of one-time state aid funding that that money is unrestricted but it is one time and so that uh 300 million towards all K-12 education equals about 3.49 million for Higley unified um what Higley

010continuing to see Capital needs one of the proposals is to allocate that to Capital as it's one-time money um I'll go into that in a little later detail in addition to this budget one thing that was not discussed on the tentative approval nor did we have numbers on us evaluation at that time was a potential to look forward towards loving adjacent ways funding so Higley unified district has has utilized adjacent ways and so does a number of different districts to uh for the specific purpose and statute which is to improve sidewalks roadways and public right-of-ways um that are used for bus and Fire Equipment this funding is basically levied by the five of you or four on the phone but five as the board on the adopted budget if you so wish to choose the

011uh proposal today would be 1.5 million and this would get us through the next three to five years of projects so to date just this year we've spent close to eight hundred thousand dollars in adjacent waste funding most of that being at Higley High and Santan improving the traffic flow modifications as you know traffic at Higley highs drop off parent drop-off in in pickup is is hectic and we've had accidents in a number of different instances over there and so we're making improvements to the better good of people who travel down Pecos and wrecker and so we're utilizing this funding um for its intended purpose and so we do have a number of other projects that we are slated to I guess move forward with if we have additional funding one being Williams Field that's

012the next one um as well as sauceman and Cooley have different bus um drop-off implications and so we want to continue to enhance these public right-of-ways and make them safer for all and that's why we're proposing a tax levy so what that would mean is a one-time Levy for fiscal 24 of 16 cents per 100 000 of assessed valuation um I didn't have a chance to get an average home value on here but our average home value in the Higley Unified School District boundaries is 350 000. so that would be just over about 45 cents close to 50 cents next year of an increase on the property taxes so you can see there to our history and our balance the last year the Higley Unified School District levied was in 2016 for three million dollars

013and our current balance is 1.1 million so going into our mnl budget numbers again I compared what we estimated what the board tentatively approved back in March versus what is actually being proposed you can see it's pretty close uh just 0.5 off um some of the the major changes again um was the reduction in mno to Capital so because we did that a little earlier than anticipated as well as the increase from the results-based funding into the base level support of the 0.9 percent other than that um not a lot change here you can see the net increase would be 600 000 from what we attentively proved to what we're proposing tonight this morning sorry um one big thing in the mno and and it's also in statute that was new a couple years ago

014was the average teacher salary so we have to publicly advertise this not only is it prevalent on the front page of the budget forms we also have to post this on our website our home page um when going through the budget forms and the calculation this one kind of like uh shot out to me because of the percentage increase showing zero so I wanted to really highlight this um and kind of explain what is going on here because the board did disapprove a two percent increase so what this calculation does and again this is a calculation that Arizona General gives us we just plug in the numbers based on our information so it takes your average teacher salary for the budget year so fiscal 24 that was going to be 65 802 going into next

015year Compares it to your prior year fiscal 23 which was for Higley unified 65 717 and it basically shows your increase from prior to current year and that increases zero percent but 85 dollars but that equates to zero percent when you round it a couple reasons why one when digging into this this detail Higley from fiscal 23 to 24 has lost basically a ton of experienced teachers we've decreased overall experience by over one year um I don't think this is just an indication of what's happening at Higley I think this is Nationwide um teachers are leaving the profession and experienced teachers are leaving the profession and so Higley is not immune to this um and we can see it clearly here in the information presented because um well the calculation does not include supplemental play

016it does include the two percent we increase to the base and so um the numbers you kind of don't lie here and you can it's a clear indication of what's Happening nationally but that explains the increased percentage showing zero when you lose a lot of experienced teachers those are typically our higher paid teachers um and you saw our starting grade while we've made progress um we're still in the 56 000 range for a starting teacher with no experience so when you take those into consideration that's why you see the percentage increase in zero so we can't change the formula but I can I can certainly explain what is going on there to to better understand um that calculation moving to Capital this is where you're going to see the biggest increase from the what we

017tentatively approved and what we are proposing the main reason why is that one-time state aid money being proposed allocated to the capital budget in addition we did estimate a budget bounce carry forward so from this current year into next of four million dollars um what we're realizing is that uh with lead times and construction projects um taking their time a lot of that money is not being expensed while it's obligated and we'll still utilize it next year that carry forward is not being expensed in this fiscal year so it'll be expensed next year but that does change the budget amount we do need to carry over or basically estimate that carryover so we don't lose that funding so you'll see that that change plus the one-time state aid being proposed used for capital is the

018difference of 6.2 million which is a 30 increase from the proposed or from the tentatively proof capital budget to the proposed um just a little bit more information on the additional Capital dollars um looking at um our needs across the district the main emphasis would be utilizing a majority of that funding on Safety and Security um that's still being a high need within the district um having additional dollars to allocate towards Safety and Security would be huge in allowing us to to move forward a lot of our initiatives in addition moving forward some of our major maintenance projects that were on our five-year Capital plan we can move forward some of those and and utilize this one-time funding to kind of take that cat five year Capital plan and kind of move it forward one

019year with some of those projects not every project but the highest need projects and move those forward with that um this is again June 7th the proposed budget um if there's any comments recommendations we'll make any adjustments needed and bring that back at the adopted Budget on June 28th once that budget's adopted um we hope to have no revisions um in December but we may need to revise the budget to adjust for enrollment one of the things with the current budget practice at the state is we have to estimate enrollment for next year we are currently funded so um a lot of times what districts do and what we've practiced is to not increase ADM to leave it flat of what we budgeted last year that it's just the safest way if we increase grade

020we can revise up and if we decrease then we can revise down vice versa and that would be done on December and then again we'd come back again in May and revise to our actual 100-day numbers so with that if there's any questions I'll be happy to answer at this time we there is allowance for public common if anything wants to come forward and speak or ask questions related of course related to this come on sorry thank you okay yeah so the the 45 tax increase was my estimate on an average home value in within Higley Unified School District this is a one-time Levy um to Levy 1.5 million dollars so um if whatever your home value is again it's not the Zillow home value but if you look at your tax documentation you take

021a hundred thousand dollars and if it's 400 000 and 16 cents times four would get that per year no this is a one-time Levy okay oh one time okay I I just did uh some math in my head so I'm getting a little confused here because uh 1.5 million divided by we'll say 50 cents not 40 cents would be equal to 3 million that would suggest that there's 3 million homes in the district and that's why I'm getting confused there again I was using an example on an average home value of the District home values range vary across our district so it would be a hundred thousand dollars per assessed valuation 16 cents per 100 000 it's the numbers still aren't the numbers still aren't jiving in my in my head because even uh I

022I mean I know there's some you know 10 million dollar homes here but even then you know that still isn't enough to make it up so I'm so the numbers just aren't you know they're just not coming together to because so that would be okay so 10 million dollars that would be uh we'll we'll say five five dollars per home so you take on uh 1.5 divided by that that would suggest that there's three hundred thousand ten million dollar homes in the district so the numbers just isn't adding up in my head maybe uh I'd be happy to set a meeting with you and explain that yeah yeah maybe that would be something good we could talk on the phone and then we could um we could figure it out um and and please stop

023me if this is uh not the correct time to mention this on one thing that I would really like to see is to have some sort of Community Committee that involves community members and teachers and staff members and administrators to go over and develop this budget together because when I look at this it's like I feel you're not trying to Blind sign me to to pull any tricks on me I know that I know what kind of person you are nobody's trying to play any tricks on me but when I see this budget it comes at me as a shock but if we had some sort of mechanism where the community where we could have a committee with community members in that committee reviewing the budget and helping with developing that budget then I think

024that things might work out better so that way things are in alignment with uh with what the community the Community Values and that is uh one thing that has been on my mind but with that I think I've I've said my uh my piece we also need to be careful that you know that I I'll just throw in this last part that we need to really really look at things with a fine piece very carefully because you know we might wind up spending money on things that really aren't necessary you know so uh so and that would prevent us from making those mistakes but thank you very much for listening to me yeah vice president Anderson Mr Moore um the Levy um what is it that can you can you discuss the need that created

025this and I mean we're this is this is another way of taxing the community um and I mean history you know people in the area you know don't like bonds don't like overrides don't like to be taxed um so I'm I want to understand what need created this and um are there any other sources of funding budget transfers or anything else that could be used instead of an extra levy on the community yeah Miss Van Hook um so this the need stems from improving um public right-of-ways as I stated so um much like what we're doing at Higley High in San Tan the need to improve traffic flow to come off of the public streets in the town Neighbors in the area who don't have kids are affected by our schools and so this funding

026source as Allowed by Statute and then you know if the board continues to wants to pursue that allows for us to to utilize These funds for those purposes improving those public right-of-ways and um you know benefiting our greater constituents within our Higley Unified School District certainly we can go and reduce budgets within our capital budget or or our mno budget um if the board does not choose to pursue a levy but this is one Avenue of funding in which is allowed in statute where it allows us to the board to Levy for funds for this specific purpose so I would be remiss if I didn't provide the board with this information as an additional way to fund some of these projects and give you guys all the information necessary to make a an educated decision

027on this budget I'm constantly looking for as a defined in our strategic plan additional Revenue sources to support our needs so this is one of those vice president Anderson um and board member Van Hook something else too that at least the way I look at things when it comes to budget the idea of on Higley Road especially if you travel from Higley and it's either before school or after school the amount of money we can save in gas alone from not having to do stop and go traffic would equate to that in the course of a year so if I'm paying 50 cents the amount of money I can save by not having to have traffic issues on Higley traffic issues on record and Pecos for some of these things is beneficial for all aspects

028and for those of us who I recognize and understand it's another 50 cents or whatever your home value could be so mine could be above that or less than I hear what you're saying and I agree with you the idea that when we just do tax and you just do tax especially with respect to education a lot of individuals in our community do not see the benefit of these taxes if they don't have kids this is something that is an easy way to see some of the changes at the very least so when it comes time for us to look at do we do this Levy are we going to approve it we have a better opportunity of at least expressing to the community these are the ways in which not only are we making

029people safer day in and day out but you have less traffic I don't know if you drive in there during that time frame it's awful and dangerous because I mean I taught high school kids they do not care about your life or theirs apparently when they drive sometimes so it's beneficial vice president Anderson Mr Moore um I just lost my train of thought oh um is there a way that the city can assist with this and without um seeing a financial impact to the community such as attacks yeah we work very closely with the town of Gilbert on on various grants and improvements um we did apply for about 1.5 million dollars or actually closer to in different grants that would um basically help supplement some of this funding so we're continuing to pursue that

030we were not awarded any of those in that first round um but we have that's very loud we have relationships with um the town of Gilbert and we do try to find other sources of funding um ultimately how long do you wait um our enrollment at the high schools continues to grow and so just looking in the near future this is the the opportunity or an option to address that going into next year vice president Anderson Mr Moore is it possible to kind of push the city to determine like Hey we're considering this this tax um and before we do that um can we have these conversations and see um how you can support us um before we our board votes on this and just kind of push them to determine whether they can help

031us or not we can certainly push again but those grants that I mentioned were conversations that we've had all last fiscal year so we're kind of getting to the point where we need to if we want to make adjustments we need to make some basically recommendations and move forward that what doesn't mean we're going to stop the conversation with the town if you know indeed they'd change their tone to Pace they're telling over the next couple weeks I I highly doubt that but these conversations are not just new we're not just loving this this is not a new conversation this is an ongoing conversation we've had with the town over the course of the last couple years this is um yeah this is not a new idea that I'm bringing um just today this has

032been in the works for a while Mr Moore can we receive more information on these grants because it would be nice to know if they're uh just making their decisions or awarding the money based off of traffic studies or accident studies um and I don't know if they'll be willing to share is it only for school districts or it's for businesses and neighborhoods as well or to my understanding there's municipalities there's other other um industries that are able to apply for these grants so I can get you more information on those it would be good to have some be able to advocate through our staffing to them to just stress our our need it's not just we want to look better or feel better we absolutely for safety purposes need need these changes and then

033I'd also like to follow up with when would the construction begin if this goes forward yeah so currently we don't have enough funding to proceed with that we have started the initial preliminary like civil engineering in terms of analyzing where we can go what are our options the town of Gilbert has already been involved those conversations they won't add a new light where we want by the pool but um uh so those conversations are on ongoing um and you know some of that work has already started um The Next Step would be to basically you know have funding to support some of these costs and and move forward with that so um yeah Mr Schultz did you have a question I did for Mr Moore Mr Moore correct me if I'm wrong but I believe

034it was at least a month maybe several months ago where you put this presentation together with us where we talked all about the Grant and about how you were trying to work with the town and the safety issues and so this is something that that you presented to us and we we saw the community safety aspect of it and and what the town was willing to do for us correct I can't recall if that was a board presentation it might have been in line with the transportation department he made mentioned it or the maintenance and in addition to when we were talking about the Chase building um people as well as well are there any comments from the public or or board members okay thank you for your input and for the questions um I

035would now like to move that we reconvene in uh Open Session seconded all those in favor hi hi motion carries four to zero okay I would now like to move that we approve the consent agenda items 4.1 through 4.27 second any questions or comments before we move forward all those in favor aye Mrs Schultz would you like to vote on this I did hi sorry I motion carries four to zero okay we're now moving on to our information items our first information item is the science oh my my apologies Mrs Johnson as we had the conversation prior to the meeting yes sorry I'm not on I'd like to introduce our new assistant principal at williamsfield high school this is Miss Heather Wallace she will be joining us soon thank you [Applause] thank you and welcome

036to Higley Mrs Wallace oh okay now we will begin our information items item 5.1 uh science adoption process good morning again bye black president and or send members of the board I want to introduce Wendy Garretson she's our purchasing manager and she's going to help with this presentation so this morning we get to share with you our conceptual physics adoption process and our final recommendation our steering committee was comprised of myself Sherry Richards Dr Chris treat our director of professional development Wendy Garretson purchasing manager and of course our district science instructional coach Kimberly Morton as many of you are aware in 2018 new science standards were introduced this created a need for us to be very thoughtful in a aligning resources to adequately teach these standards involved in these standards was a change in the

037way we actually teach science it went from learning Concepts and vocabulary to actually doing the science so our kids really need to understand science and engineering processes practices like how do you make a model analyze a graph or data or perform an investigation to answer a problem in addition those cross-cutting Concepts actually tell or inform our kids on how to think so they use things like cause and effect looking deeply at patterns or proportion and scale so when I look at those standards I go wow they're actually an improvement however they're tougher to teach and I know we have some teachers in this room so they will respect that when we started this process we reached out to our Middle School teachers and asked them do you want to participate and I'm excited to tell

038you we had three teachers step up and I want to acknowledge Justin Staley from Cooley Middle School Haley ronner from Sossaman middle school and Taylor Vickers Taylor actually taught this course in California it's not teaching it now that wanted to be informed so that if in the future she has that opportunity so I applaud that it took a lot of time and they were very committed through this process we always have goals to make sure our America our materials are aligned to our state standards and our instructional Maps we wanted to make sure not only did we have Educators evaluate resources that we got feedback from the community as well this is our timeline to start it all the way back in January with our requests for proposals then it moved in to phase one

039evaluations phase two teacher evaluations public display which has been up since March 1st and is still out there this morning phase three publisher presentations which the teachers were invited as well as the public we had an adoption update for you guys at a board meeting on May 10th we hosted a discussion meeting where teachers from across the district came some parents a board member and other members of the community and then on May 22nd we reviewed the feedback looked at strengths and weaknesses and discussed the comments we had received and finally we're here today with the final recommendation so when you think about an adoption in the RFP process there are rules and education principles that we have to follow so procurement rules and requirements are adopted by the State Board of Education and they

040dictate the process for adoption and procurement good morning vice president Anderson members of the board in the request for proposal evaluation criteria process we have curriculum and we have cost all interested offers understand their proposal will be evaluated in accordance with the criteria outlined within the request for proposal process can you hear her okay good enough I've never been told that ah so in phase one we have the initial analysis and procurement review we have non-responsive or we have unacceptable the non-responsive means that it does not meet the basic procurement requirements unacceptable the meaning behind that is it does not meet the basic curriculum criteria back in January we had four vendors submit bids for our solicitation the steering committee members evaluated the submission from vendors to determine which submissions adhered to our scope of

041work within the request for proposal process of the vendors that submitted the bids to vendors sufficiently met the request for proposal criteria and were cost effective and they moved forward into phase two I gotta turn back up we moved into phase two where our teachers as the resident experts evaluated the resources we designed a course in canvas which proved to be very beneficial teachers could go through the resources score them on their own time and we weren't pulling them away from instructing their kids which I think was really powerful too because I know sometimes I get in a room and I start listening to what other people are saying and I might be swayed but they were able to focus and evaluate and then come back together um phase three the public display we've already

042talked about begin on March 1st publisher presentations on the 30th and that community meeting on May 16th this is just another representation of the timeline as you can see there there were a lot of components involved in this to get the right resource for our kids these are the two vendors that were evaluated thoroughly and have been on display and finally the educator evaluation committee submitted the recommendations as you can see Savas by Pearson was their selection they believed that would be the best thing for their kids and it was aligned to the standards you can see comments on the right hand side that the teachers submitted that alignment piece to instructional maps and state standards is important anybody that's a teacher though knows you don't get a book and drive straight through it right

043we have to be thoughtful when we're planning and we align our lessons specifically to our maps and our standards so you can see too they were excited that the rigor was there this is an honors course in our kids they move pretty quickly so they were intrigued by this resource it has a robust online feature that can be integrated into the classroom and once again they said it meant the needs for the course so this morning this is the recommendation we bring to you for approval and we thank you for your patience and your support of the process and the timeline Mr Richard if I can make one comment on the action item later in the agenda I did transpose a number wrong the annual cost for the recommended curriculum for the five years is

04436 570. what what I did was multiply that times five that is not the five year cost the five year cost is the 36 570 so if Ms Sanderson can make a recommendation to amend that awarded prize when you get to that action item I just wanted to clarify that I did make a mistake and I apologize for that thank you Mr Moore that's a good that's good news right I just want to say thank you to the staff and everyone involved the community as well and board members and parents that showed up and and participated and gave uh input into the resource that's up for approval this morning thank you vice president Anderson um I also want to say thank you to everybody that was involved I'm I can't imagine all that it takes

045to do research and um you know quick getting curriculum into the district I did I looked online to see um you know reviews from students from teachers and I I don't know if these reviews are specifically for physics um but in general regarding Sabas um one review said on one side saw this uh well Savas has a rating of 1.35 stars from 212 reviews indicating that most customers are generally dissatisfied with their purchase Savas ranks 192nd amongst kids educational resource sites uh one review said I can't think of a time where I didn't go home and cry my teacher teaches the topic great but then Savas just makes it 10 times harder last night I spent two hours crying because I couldn't understand how it was even remotely similar to what he was teaching feeling

046very suicidal because of my grades dropping because of Savas zero to ten kill me please second review it resets my progress on the lesson all the time keeps saying it's not saving and operate slowly would rate lower if if it was possible um I just have a few more reviews sorry um genuinely the worst textbook Source imaginable I'm currently using this source as an online history textbook and I couldn't be more infuriated at how inconvenient the UI is first I have to open thousands of tabs to even access the textbook section and then when I hover over one of the keywords for my notes they're in Spanish it honestly seems like Savas is trying to punish users for wanting an ounce of convenience it's either I bring a two pound textbook from school to home

047or manually type in the text from the textbook because sabbas doesn't allow a copy and paste God forbid students copy down things for notes to Google translate one by one all I want to do is write my history notes quickly review number four I hate Savas Savas makes me want to rip my hair out I wish it would shut down and I think we could just do math books a nightmare for students and teachers the online textbook has absolutely no way to navigate by page number there is a search function that returns multiple pages that mention the page number including table of contents and index pages but no way to actually get to say page 57 directly instead students must navigate to a web 1.0 style Labyrinth of nested sections with unhelpful labels like text

048set people don't use this service by choice they use the service because Pearson's dumped it all dumped it on them rather than supporting their own product um so I I think it's important to to look at what people's experiences are and obviously I don't know how this impacts the physics curriculum or do kids and teachers well they use canvas or will they use the Savas website board member Van Hook they will probably use but they spent a lot of time looking at the online components sometimes they'll take pieces and put them in canvas okay so I think the option of having a printed textbook and having it online was very intriguing to them so I didn't hear any of those comments from these Educators that I appreciate you sharing them vice president oh sorry go

049ahead uh vice president Anderson and board member Van Hook um I can't speak obviously to science because it's not what I taught what I can say with respect to education and textbooks is you are never ever going to have any experience where any person opens a textbook and they're like my God this is amazing it's never going to happen there are there are so many issues there's it's hard from a teacher perspective especially in middle school I taught eighth grade first semester and I did it one time and so I I understand how hard it is to get kids involved how hard it is I also recognize because I taught during covid how difficult it is to figure out what is the best way that we can use a textbook in person online so you

050don't have to take it back and forth we don't have you know lockers all of these things they're they're real and they're valid and I think those concerns are valid I'm not saying that they aren't I I don't I guess what I don't understand is with respect to what our decision is today how do these comments impact or change where it is that we're trying to go if ultimately as teachers we are beholden to what our curriculum is that is State mandated this meets said curriculum the individuals who looked at it looked at it and went okay I'm 8th graders have to digest this so is it something that they can digest because there are some textbooks that are absolute garbage and then there are some textbooks we're like oh my god that actually you

051know you can understand what it's saying to you and so I think at the end of the day given the recommendations from the individuals who looked at it who teach the curriculum who understand what state changes have done who have gone through it because I from a teacher perspective you have to look at all these things is there are entire units that I'm missing what order does the book go with respect to the units and considering all three of them agree I'm not saying that our kids won't have problems and I'm not saying that there won't be frustrations from staff and students alike and parents and everything else because that's kind of the nature of learning a new process I just don't I guess I don't understand what it is that your concern is if

052it meets the curriculum standards it's what our teachers are asking for if you looked up complaints about canvas what we also use I am certain you're gonna get a lot more than 212 reviews that aren't going to be great because canvas also has its problems so I guess I'm just trying to understand what we're hoping to accomplish with that I did look up McGraw because that was the other option and I couldn't find similar complaints regarding the other option do they have an online program of Roswell so um I I just wanted to share the information that I did find between the two and you know obviously the majority of complaints was related to Savas um so that's all I have to share um as far as public reviews I hear you and I mean

053ultimately as a teacher I think we hear those things right I also not knowing what what subject because there are certain subjects where that is literally the statement of every student that comes out of there um those types of things the time frame of that might also matter when some of those reviews were done considering if it was at the start of them creating their online stuff because like when canvas started it was garbage and they have routinely made updates because they constantly get that feedback College Board same thing College board's improved in the last couple of years when it started was garbage and we use it as minimal as possible but as they start to hear some of these things so it's beneficial for us what we start with now and what their online

054may be may change but at the end of the day the content in the book won't and that's still what we need so I mean I appreciate it I just was trying to understand Miss Richards um and thank you both of you thank you for your proactiveness and looking up the information and thank you for the Insight Miss Wade a couple questions for you what support will Savas provide is and for how long what are we expecting from them and how let's hold them accountable as well if they're receiving such reviews so um vice president Anderson Miss Kimberly Morton is working directly with the company should you guys approve this to ensure that we have training as needed and I can get more specifics on that if you would like and include it in status

055this was kind of step one if you guys approved the recommendation that I know what you're saying because the professional development and support's important because if we do have issues with online are they going to take care of us and how quickly will they take care of us so let me find out specifics about the PD thank you so much and then I I think you've answered my second question but my question was what is the plan for the curriculum coach with this newly adopted material but that is the plan to work with the company and to provide communication and training for our staff is that is that beginning now has she already well well oh of course no it has not begun never mind oh okay can you reframe the question for me or

056you you answered the question Howard curriculum coach would be involved okay thank you thank you vice president Anderson another um thing that I wanted to bring up about uh Savas is um the my concern is a lot of a lot of these educational companies um are choosing to take political stances um and it's really unfortunate instead of them concentrating on education which is their purpose and we've seen on social media I'm sure we've all seen what's been posted on social media um is the fact that both McGraw and Savas support what is called culturally responsive learning initiatives which ultimately is CRT now I know I know that the book was available the books were available for the community to see and in all fairness um that was posted on the website and not necessarily commute

057the community didn't get an email saying hey there's this textbook these textbooks are available come and take a look at them we didn't find out that they they'd been available since March until the last meeting I think um so but at the same time even when I came like the books are huge like there's not enough time for me to be able to sit here and go through the entire book to see the context of it um and and to fully be able to understand what's in there there's just not enough time for a quick visit um so it it does greatly concern me that um where these these companies are choosing to go and uh you know and the community is concerned about that as well they bring their kids to our district to

058to learn a subject and not you know bringing politics into it and when we are paying companies um that are taking political stance um I just community wants to ensure that their tax dollars are being spent on companies that aren't pushing political ideologies on our children so that's all vice presidential board member Van Hook um I think it's difficult to find any company anywhere that is not going to be involved in politics some way politics is life whether or not we expand the road to accommodate traffic is ultimately political right like the idea that what our expectations are of companies are to not exist and engage in the community is is I don't think a fair assessment when making decisions on what we should be doing and what is best for our students I recognize

059that you might have different political feels with respect to how we address the fact that we are a diverse culture we are a diverse community and the needs of those individuals who represent a wide array of demographics deserve to be seen and heard and recognized and I recognize and hear that you differ in how some of those things can come about but that shouldn't be present when you're looking at whether or not a textbook that is generated is beneficial or not like I hear you but when it comes time to make these decisions we are never going to find a company that is going to meet all everyone's desires up here up for the five of us on the board or people in the community with respect to what their politics are because we all

060have differences we all have different views different perspectives different day-to-day lives we should look at what is the product you have in front of us is this a product that could meet whatever needs and then we hope that it will be successful yes but whether or not they support cultural development is irrelevant to a conceptual physics book if that book meets our needs right like I I feel like if we're sitting here spending so much time trying to understand if the Merit of the company meets my specific needs is an unfair situation for us to be in when we're making decisions for a community that has varying needs varying beliefs instead let's look at what is in front of us with that book does it meet curriculum yes is this something that the teachers think

061that they could successfully teach with yes are we meeting the standards that we need to do is it something that they think is successful for what they need for the year these are the things that we should be focusing on because we're never going to agree on politics for a good portion of stuff this textbook shouldn't be political what that company does is their choice as a private company are choosing to purchase their textbook is because that textbook meets our needs if we are living our lives only going to places that meet our needs we're going to be in a severely difficult situation and have the potential of an inferior product out of spite so I I hear you and I understand I'm not trying to say that your beliefs on that don't matter and

062that's part of the reason why you're on this board to represent those beliefs how does that matter for what we're choosing on this textbook that's what I'm trying to get at because the organizations beliefs impact what they're putting out the product that they're providing that we're purchasing and so if if their company has called you know any type of you know I mean change the words however you want ultimately it all comes down to to CRT so are they inputting any type of that information into our into the the product is the problem and if I mean we're using tax dollars to buy this so the the whole point is don't bring your politics into our textbooks and unfortunately it's happening and yes it's gonna I mean my purpose is let's keep politics out of

063our schools but when we support companies that are bringing it into our schools with their product that's that's where the problem is I I guess I guess what I'm struggling with at the present is you are asking humans to remove their bias from a situation and that is not possible because we are all biased every single one of us and every single action that we do right right now you're talking about CRT which I struggle with the use of that because it gets thrown around with no explanation of how a conceptual physics textbook is apparently expressing CRT by acknowledging cultural differences and at the end of the day we're talking about physics nothing about physics has any business talking about anything other than physics right so again I recognize I'm I you sit there and

064you say that it should be but you've also expressed that you didn't look at the textbook and I don't mean this in a disrespectful fashion because I would argue your ability to make this recommendation is the same of mine I have no way of looking at that textbook and going yeah that's what we need you know why because I don't teach it I never taught it at all instead I look at the individuals who did this and I say I respect your education I respect your experience and I respect your position and you say this is what works for you I'm going to believe it because until somebody comes to me and says this textbook is teaching all kinds of things I I can't live my life trying to make decisions when every single Corner

065you're saying you don't trust something before it has even happened right like we will never get anywhere because a good portion of individuals in education because the way things are going are looking at diversity Equity inclusion because there are diversity of Learners inclusion is important to ensure all students get to learn with equity and choice and options and that is the nature of education at the present moment in time because we have a community to serve so when it comes down to it you either support the recommendation of the teachers who are involved we had months of time to do this again they have expressed why it is beneficial to them you have had opportunities and I recognize that you are unhappy with the manner with which it was done I think we also need

066to keep in mind that just because an email doesn't go out every single time we make a specific statement doesn't mean that the information is not available to those who truly care for it and we also have to play a fine line between do we give way too many emails that everybody ignores and so the important information ever gets heard because we dealt with that during covet how often were we like dear God stop with the emails and then massive info information got missed I am asking I recognize where you're coming and I think your opinion is valued because there are people in this community that share it I am asking you how does that negate the recommendations in front of you I recognize your concerns with that company it does not mean that those

067concerns are present in this textbook and in this choice and how our teachers will operate and if your statement is well I don't trust teachers to do it then we go nowhere you have to extend that trust and then should these things happen then we absolutely get to address it but right now the point is how does this negate the suggestion in front of us Mrs Richards I'm not sure if you have any comments or input on this but I was wondering if you do if you could add to it remind us of our district Mission our district goals or to our strategic plans and our expectations of our staff in this District thank you vice president Anderson I do believe our process and the feedback we received from our teachers is important as we

068value them as the professional Educators here so I think it would be very similar to wetness Wade just expressed I'm not the science teacher either I can look for components and does it meet our budget with a steering committee but they're the experts and I I personally trust them and I believe cabinet trust them and I believe you all want to trust them too so you know at the end of the day we follow the process we um made sure that the teachers had time and they assured us that the standards the standards were driving their thought process along with how do you teach science now it's not like it used to be it's not the way it was when I taught it and I'm actually excited about that but it is it is more

069challenging to help kids understand science and engineering processes cross-cutting Concepts it's a big shift in a positive direction but I want our teachers to have what they need to be successful vice president Anderson um to clarify I did look at the books um and their there's a lot of things in the book that could go in certain directions when it comes to science there's you know you can turn things as far as climate change oil drilling um you know gas electricity so yes so a lot of things within science can be made political um and I trust that every child within our district has equal opportunity to learn what is being taught without pushing Dei on our children all of our all of our kids come to this District they all are given the same

070opportunities to be able to learn what is being taught but pushing political ideologies on them is where that that line needs to be drawn because they're coming here to learn a subject and not have to be put through Dei or any other political ideology um so I want to ensure that we as a district no matter what curriculum is being taught that our goal ultimately is to to stick to our core subjects and ensure that our children are succeeding in these in these subjects and that ideologies aren't being pushed on them because yes they are all different they all have different beliefs whether it's religious political or whatever different cultures but if we ensure that we're sticking to the main point of why they're here none of those other things matter and and none of

071the students would be impacted in any of those fashion um so that's my point in bringing this up thank you Mrs Schultz do you have any comments or anything you want to include in this I'm okay thank you um I I trust our teachers I'm not a physics teacher um the curriculum I've looked at it um online reviews I understand um but as a business owner I also understand online view reviews come out of anger sometimes and frustration as Miss Wade mentioned and um that's all we're going to say about that thank you Mr Schultz okay um that concludes 5.1 for our information items I'd like to move on to 5.2 for the asba policy Services information vice president members of the board I have the the pleasure of presenting this the board asks for

072uh us to provide a review of the ASP policy Services if they can call it there we go um and so uh that is what I attempted to do here in addition looking at what it would take to change policy Services um as that was a an area where the board wanted to review so first I thought it would be important to identify what is asba and so Arizona school boards Association is a non-profit nonpartisan organization that provides training leadership in essential School services to governing boards Statewide so more than 240 governing board s are members of asba It's governed by a board of directors comprised of school board members members have access to ASB manuals ASB model policy manual and policy advisory and so um what the ASB also does is keep us updated

073on compliance issues anything changing in legislation they provide guidance on recommendations for how we should adopt or revise our current policies to meet that new legislation um and they also assist with policy development if we were looking at changing we have several policies that are not copyrighted by ASB and that are higley's policies and they provide us with guidance and interpretation When developing those policies on policy service options this was not even a slide last year there was no options the trust just this year created a new K-12 model policy program they are also rooted in state law and federal law the trust policy Services include much of the same an online platform uh assistance in districts transitioning to the model uh policy of the trust model policy again updates on policies based on legislation

074recommendations for changes to policies they have and also policy education opportunities for governing boards and administrators that is still being uh kind of rolled out I know that's not currently available but I know there's in the works for that um in addition to a future comprehensive model policy reviews um again the trust is still working on uh offering similar professional development that asba currently provides as they look to grow their their policy service option to date only two districts have switched over to the trust one being Queen Creek and the other being Dysart and whole so um those decisions by those districts to move over and hold pretty aggressive in in terms in our eyes but I'll go over into what that would look like for Higley the pros and cons of kind of retaining

075asba versus kind of moving away I kind of listed bullet points here again asba provides you know the manuals the policy manual any legislative updates they provide recommendations to policy change and they also help work us through that policy adoption with the governing board now the conjugate of the agreement right that was the the main concern um what the ASP ba policy service um that agreement is a four-year um agreement um the termination policy is 50 of the remaining balance so I listed out you know the potential after one year the balance that would be due after two years and after three years so what would it cost to convert policy Services um again these are mostly estimates with the exception of asba policy Services which the costs that we know we know is a

0765100 5136 annual fee we know that it's a 48 month agreement for a total cost of twenty thousand five hundred forty four dollars that that is known um what we're estimating to convert to the trust model policy in the month of June to be ready for next fiscal year before this agreement has to be converted uh is the following so the trust does have a setup fee again I'll be at 255 dollars a one-time set of fee they have an annual fee of 240 dollars much cheaper than the asba so that is a pro um currently we are utilizing the one thousand dollar comprehensive review we are paying for that right now as we've indicated as a district that we are interested in transitioning to this policy and so we are paying for that comprehensive

077view in this current fiscal year as we review our policies and bring them to you we utilize both resources right now asba's model policy Services as well as the trust policy services to create basically a recommendation that reflects the most comprehensive information that we have we try to utilize both services to create bring a recommendation that has what we feel the most legal and up-to-date policy that our district can adopt in addition asba by subscribing to their policy service they provide a discount to board docs that was one of the conversations so that discount is that twenty two hundred and fifty dollars so if we were to remove asba and want to keep board docs as our platform for governing board meetings Etc there would be an additional 2250 that we would be um as

078annual cost yeah yeah the the board docs annual subscription is is ten thousand dollars five hundred right now with asba so that is a separate we're talking you know policy services but they do provide a discount the main cost would be um the cost to review all 396 policies it is not included with regulations and Exhibits and so I know there are some comments um and questions regarding what does this include doesn't Prepaid Legal Services cover this and yes and no Prepaid Legal Services is uh deductible that we do pay on the trust property Casualty Insurance it's a line item as you'll see later today on the action item that we pay for prepaid legal services so that is based on use the more we use them the higher our premium would be that is

079continuing to go up as we've had a number of instances where we've needed legal advice this fiscal year we would not recommend just adopting the trust model policy as is as you saw in the dress code policy that was verbatim from the trust model policy and I think it needs some work to fit our needs so adopting 396 policies blanketly without reviewing those I I don't think it's in the best interest of our district um and it really it would be a disservice I think to the governing board to not have a chance to review those policies um in conclusion because those are we do not have blanket asba copyrighted policies we have a lot of District um owned policies that we've adopted and modified to fit higley's needs so that 50 to 75 000

080would be the cost basically to have a designated basically cabinet members everybody that has policy um we're talking fiscal policy we're talking procurement there's a lot of educational policy HR practice to dedicate our time with legal counsel to review those policies bring recommendations and convert this within the next 30 days or less than 30 days so that is how I came up with that total estimated cost I again very estimated but um I I went through the exercise as the board asked and tried to um outline that that estimated cost to convert blanket over before next year vice president I'm sorry go ahead essentially the last slide here is just the recommendation to to bring new ASB policy while the district continues to transition policy Services um uh to the to the trust policy model

081policy um that is Our intention as a district to move that way um but again the recommendation is to take our time and review these policies thoroughly and bring them to the governing board in in sections rather than all at once and make sure that we have vetted and um ensure that these policies meet our governing boards needs as well as our District's needs so thank you for that so let's say all the one-time setup fees everything's done what is the ultimate price annually for for trust once everything's set up and then going forward so it'd be that 240 annual fee so 200 versus 5100 for asthma um gosh sorry I don't have my glasses I can't see um going through my notes give me a minute please so the thousand dollar for comprehensive review

082um these are policies that as was reviewed that we currently utilize and even the 50 to 70 thousand dollars so if we think that these policies are legal enough for us to currently use them and as was reviewed them why would we pay another company to review 396 policies when they're already in use so miss Van Hook I think the confusion is asba has reviewed the policies that we currently haven't adopted um moving to the trust model policy ASP it doesn't review those that's a whole nother policy service so those are different attorneys they don't talk to each other those are two different policy services that are currently being offered um the the review the estimated cost to review those as as stated in the example where we brought the dress code policy that was

083verbatim from the K-12 trust model policy ASAP didn't review that we brought that language as an information item for discussion and you can see it needed some work so if you want to adopt every single one of the trust policies and you know the result you know kind of I want to say disagree but like there's some discussion that that policy didn't fit our need as is I think that's taken a pretty big risk that we're assuming all those other policies meet our District's need without reviewing them so majority of these policies is taking state law and they they pretty much turn around and put it in their own words and then they they copyright it um so all the policies are based on state law um other than obviously the ones that we've created

084as a board that that isn't copywritten by asba so I'd love to know how many copywritten ones we have versus how many that are just our policy um but when I mean these organizations are held to you know making sure that it's state law that that's going into policy so I I just don't know I mean is there an option to say we anything related to state law that we would just adopt those and not pay 50 to 75 000 for review there is that option but that is not the recommendation of the district [Music] and I I do want to add in you mentioned that um asba as a non-profit and non-partisan um I and the only reason why I'm saying this is because that was in there um but asthma is completely partisan

085and they are an arm to the Arizona Education Association so um I just would like to clarify that um and you mentioned that there are 240 governing boards that utilize asba um that's about one-third of Arizona districts and not everyone within every district is a member even for us we're not individual members of asba the district obviously has a relationship with them so us individually wouldn't be able to access a lot of their things because we're not individual members um so it's although only two districts fully use trust and and not asthma but again 240 out of I think there's like 666 school districts in Arizona um can I clarify that's not membership I'm talking about governing boards as a whole uh being a part of the asba policy service that's not membership governing like

086districts districts yes so that that's what I'm saying so like that's about one-third of Arizona districts that there's about 240 districts in the state there's not 600 districts there yeah if you could if you count like all the charters and everything I think it's like 606 well Chargers are not unified but like in total but anyway um I just I don't know as far as like the having to review all those policies when it's based on state law um I don't know I think in the long run there's a huge savings to be able to switch over vice president Anderson can we whoever controls the click or Bob can we get to the the side by side with the trust the cost comparison yeah thank you um because when I'm I'm just trying to make

087sure I understand what it is that I'm looking at um and I recognize what board member van Hook's trying to express the idea that maybe not all 396 policies will need to be reviewed but I as a board member I considering I'm now beholden to these policies I absolutely would like to make sure that we review things before we I mean that's part of what's we're doing anyways already so I agree with you it might not be the entire amount or honestly anywhere near that necessarily let's say we cut it in half let's say it's 25 000 so we only choose some of those policies from my understanding this is what it would cost over the course of the Year essentially or multiple years if it takes an extended period of time to look at

088whatever policies we're looking at I hear you with the concern of what is it we're actually getting from asba what is the cost and all of that from my understanding at the present moment in time it looks to me that for the next four years with the asba even if we include the four years of annual thousand dollars towards the trust model we are looking at twenty four thousand five hundred and forty four over the next four years still seems cheaper to me right now to stick with that process and then over the course of the four years in a slower fashion start to look at some of these policies so it's not all coming in at once kind of deal so I I what it looks like to me and you can correct me

089if I'm misunderstanding the information in front of us I don't see how it's not financially the best option right now to go with the asba policy I get that it's four years and we're stuck to that that is still cheaper than jumping ship at the present moment in time considering there are unknown factors that we don't know with potential cost Associated and at least this is in front of us and on the low end of what his estimates are we're still saving a lot of money is that am I misunderstanding what's in front of me as far as the side by side no no this uh this way that was the intention of the slide and that was the um you interpreted exactly how we did and I don't want to diminish the cost we're

090talking about here but you know this is we have 120 million dollar budget that was just proposed later this this morning um earlier this morning and we're talking you know twenty thousand dollars but the you know the financial impact in the the changeover to make it basically from July 1 we have to you know agree to this policy service July 1. um that fiscally I think would make more sense to transition over the course of the next year rather than flip the switch in the next less than 30 days uh vice president and Mr Moore where it says or does but our desire is to thoroughly review all asthma policy and husd policies against the trust model with an attorney and says soon what is soon um considering our doctor you know we superintendent just

091resigned um and who's been the leader of our policy kind of committee and group um you know I would probably say that Soon Is Now extended you know probably over the course maybe two years now or depending how soon um you know the district makes a decision to move forward with um you know search Etc um yeah I think that kind of hinders this subject in particular um and may put it lower on the priority list so you know 12 months maybe maybe 24 months to make this process and have it thoroughly reviewed brought to the governing board in sections um and feel comfortable going forward with a complete a transition over the model policy foreign and have we at all looked at you know the policies just maybe a couple policies that they each

092have just to see what the similarities are the differences are all the policies that you've been reviewing over the course of this fiscal year have been in conjunction reviewed in conjunction with the K-12 the model policy services with the trust that's what we're paying that thousand dollars currently and so some of our policies that are not copywritten have been we've been utilizing making recommendations with language from the model policy um so we've already been comparing these um Apples to Apples and and taking The Good The Bad and what fits our district if it's not completely copyrighted from asba so we're already doing that process um again it's just it's time consensive and that complete 50 to 75 000 is is not being utilized right now as we as District cabinet members and various leaders in

093our district are reviewing these policies we were using District time to um to review these policies so the reason that estimate is in there is because we would need a lot more help to rapidly review all these policies within the next you know 30 days so that is the main reason that cost is included in there thank you foreign to clarify if and when we go over to the trust model the policy model the ones that are copyrighted we have copyrighted versus non-copyrighted we can't just transfer over the ones we've recently approved non-copyrighted they don't need to be reviewed we've already been through that process correct okay correct yeah okay and out of the 300 and I look over it with Miss Zimmerman but out of the 300 plus that we have do you have

094an idea of how many of those are would be uh okay I apologize for hitting you without a last question but um that's something I can look into myself but that would help to also understand the cost implication but it's good to know that we just want to do a whole blanket of all of our policies we've like you said we've already been in the process of going through some of them to your point vice president Anderson that also if we assume that we are going to follow through with the asba policy and we know that we have four years of this if we can look at how many we've done in the last year we can kind of then get an idea of how to progress over the next four years if we are

095in the process of transitioning because then we can realistically say okay we had tackled this many policies in a year or whatever because they do have to be reviewed by us they do have to be approved by us and at least this way we are not trying to waste time essentially or have to do things multiple times just to do it multiple times I appreciate the side by side I believe the main reason uh the conversation came up at the last board meeting is we were unaware and we obviously didn't even know we were not aware of how recent it was to have an option and I didn't even know until I was researching our policies and just looking at neighboring districts to see and I thought my God I didn't you know happen upon

096Queen Creek so it I appreciate it not knowing that there are options in what it will look like if the and based off your statement in the slide that it's possible that it might be something to pursue um so I appreciate the the amount of time it took to research this information and provide it to us this afternoon morning all right uh let's move on to our action items um 6.1 I moved to approve or that the governing board approved RFP number 24-01-29 the adoption of the Middle School honors science textbook curriculum at the amended amount of thirty six thousand five hundred and seventy dollars from Savas learning seconded any uh comments questions all those in favor aye aye aye and no vote okay motion carries uh how do I say a post okay motion

097carries three to one thank you oh okay and then I will say thank you I apologize all those in favor we had the three eyes all those that oppose uh nay thank you motion carries three to one thank you for that and if I can explain my vote um just based on the information that I shared um and I I'm not um again I want to thank everybody for all their hard work um that came um you know to work on all this but based on the information that I shared I don't um like having to spend taxpayer dollars on organizations that are very one-sided politically instead of concentrating on education which is their purpose thank you okay moving on to action item 6.2 I move that the governing board approve the contract renewal with

098asba for policy Services excuse me policy services for fiscal year 2024 to fiscal year 2027. seconded all those in favor aye aye aye all those I oh I apologize all right motion carries four to zero and if if I may just make a point um so I I vote I with the hopes that over the next of a couple years that we can um be able to transition completely and save a lot of money for the district when you compare the annual cost thank you Mrs Schultz I'm sorry I just want to say that I agree with Miss Van Hook in that I voted I initially when we heard this and the cost last week I was leaning um towards leaving asba but I'm hoping with the four years and the fact that we can't

099just do a year or two um is difficult but hopefully we can move towards saving the district money and move towards the trust in the future as well thank you Mrs Schultz okay moving on to item 6.3 I move that the governing board approved the proposed expenditure budget for fiscal year 2023-2024 as presented seconded all those in favor aye all those that opposed I just I have a question I don't can I ask a question um so by voting either way um does that mean that we would be voting yes or no on the levy regardless we we have to have a proposed budget approved if the board we do have some time in which the proposed budget there's a drop dead date so I think I guess I would recommend that the board make

100you some notion that the board of like a pursue the tax levy on the adopted um and this vote if not I will remove it or yes or no and if there's an indication a majority that the board would like to pursue this I'll include it on the adopted presentation in June on June 28th if not then I will remove that um from the adopted budget I just think that that requires a separate vote because that's a that's a tax that we're putting on the community I mean it would similar to like a a bond or override that would require a separate vote um and I I don't know if I feel comfortable voting for the entire budget with that item on there well then I would just recommend then that the board vote either

101know just keep in mind we will have to have a special session to bring the budget back proposed but you're back with that change off so if you do not um want that under the vote no if uh if you do then vote yes that's my recommendation thank you for asking that question um assumption yes it was all included and it's good to know that it was I didn't think that through um Miss uh Mr Moore how will that information be publicized outside of just a posting on our website will that be something sent out to our community and informing them of the tax increase if it does pass this afternoon yeah so there's several rules that require us to to post that information so one it's already being posted in the generally circulated publication

102so the Arizona Republic meets that standard this will also be sent to the the two local papers within Gilbert as well as it's posted on our website so we meet the publication requirements set aside by the Arizona Department uh the Arizona General so that's where you can find that information and then my contact list information is listed on there as well so if there's any questions I can certainly be reached on the since this is an increase of tax to our community can I make the recommendation that it is sent out in some sort of news letter information or email I understand that there are some people that that don't appreciate a lot of over communication but I am and I think there are others that that do especially in this manner that would appreciate

103that information to go out there if it does pass this afternoon thank you all right I'm going to restate the motion um in lieu of the information that was given so thank you for your input all right item 6.3 I move that the governing board approved the proposed expenditure budget for fiscal year 2023-2024 as presented I still second that all right all those in favor aye was that an eye Miss Schultz did you understand that Ms Zimmerman can you state it once more please miss Schultz hi thank you I all those that oppose nay motion carries three to one moving on to item 6.4 I moved the governing board approve the fiscal year 2022 audit reports as presented second all those in favor I motion carries four to zero item 6.5 I move that the

104governing board approved the purchase of the firewall and the firewall and services in the amount of 665.82 cents from high tech start huh sorry a second all those all those in favor aye aye aye aye motion carries four to zero may I ask a question about that do you have any information on um this expense or would that require I.T yeah Mr Van Hook we did invite it here today perfect Mr Jim pasik and Robert trope um now um I had submitted um some questions in um maybe I did maybe I didn't um but what is the uh reason for this is for the firewall correct um yes yes ma'am it is the firewall and I know typically um a lot of companies like to replace them after five years but is there a reason

105for the replacement is there um I mean are we out of space or you know is there some things that it's just not capable of handling anymore what's the purpose so um thank you for the question the the purpose of the replacement is that it is in fact end of life so it is time to to replace it but furthermore we want to take the opportunity at this juncture since we are going to replace we hope to replace it um to change the configuration of our infrastructure to add some durability and redundancy to our internet and so what that will allow is is we we currently have a plan it's still in in flux but the current plan is to uh engage with a second internet provider so we'll have two internet providers uh splitting

106the district basically along our High School feeder teams one provider for the Williams Field team one provider for the Higley High team we'll have enough capacity in each of those in each of those pipes that if we were to experience an internet issue with within a few hours we would be able to cut over from one provider to the other and so changing the firewall to the new configuration at this time with it being end of life will allow us to go through that process um this fall and into the spring we intend to make those changes if at all feasible before testing in the spring and and our current one doesn't have that capability it does not okay thank you so much you're very welcome thank you for that information great question item 6.6

107moving on I moved the governing board approved the memorandum of under memorandum of understanding between the homeless youth connection and Higley Unified School District seconded any questions or comments I do have a question who do I ask for this yeah great Melissa Garland she's here to assist you thank you so when I read this contract one concern that I had on there is it says that parental consent is required to participate in the program parental or Guardian but then after that um it's not required for them to provide resources to the student or be able to um send this you know any type of resources or recommendations to the child that parental consent is not required after that and I'm um I'm wondering if that is somehow impacts like our parental rights law that's in

108place board member Van Hook that contract when it um states that parental consent is needed for a child to participate that creates that working relationship between hyc and the district so for example when we identify a teen who is homeless and they sometimes they're unaccompanied we do get parental consent too for us to allow hyc to provide those Services it's not once they build that working relationship the youth coach that is assigned to that student is in contact with that parent throughout the process the purpose of this program is to supplement what we what we have to provide through the mckinney-vento ACT they are able to help these students not only finish High School successfully but help them into adulthood as well and so they're just there to help guide them and provide things that

109we as a district cannot through the mckinney-vento ACT thank you and is there when when they come on campus and meet with students is there typically somebody from the district that's also there or is it just their their representative with the child typically tip it's the counselor who is in charge of that caseload so in our district we have a contact person that myself and the homeless liaison Allison Clark that we communicate with and at the high schools it's one counselor who is um who kind of takes that lead so they're the ones that help set up those meetings and I know you've probably noticed in the mou that it states that they understand it's important for students to be in the class as much as possible they really try their hardest to make sure

110those quick meetings happen sometimes they could be before school or after school but it's always in conjunction with when it works for the student and some and the parent at times will attend I've attended some as well we just want to make sure that we're all working collectively to help that student the best we can and I just want to make sure that like the whole um parental or Guardian contact isn't um missed because obviously the homelessness would cause like lack of Internet um email access and things like that um so I just want to ensure that absolutely obviously we would we would you know assume that they're following within the Arizona you know parental Bill of Rights and and making sure that that parent is included or Guardian um if you know there's somebody

111that's in charge of this child whether homeless or not um and I want to ensure that that's being included in there absolutely it always is we would never we would never um introduce that partnership into the um the situation with the student without the parent or guarding no knowing what we were doing and they they agree and sometimes they decline if they decline that's fine it's up to them thank you and and do we um is it possible to get a number of like how many students within the district typically it's less than 10 that we refer to them in a school year so it's not very many but it's really important and it's a very good service that we can partner with I agree thank you so much thank you thank you um we

112have had this seconded so I will move on to all those in favor aye aye motion carries four to zero moving on to 6.7 I move that the governing board authorized the expenditure of one million 35 [Music] . adult and I can't read that number 542 dollars for property Casualty Insurance to the trust for the fiscal year of 2023-2024. seconded any questions or comments I can't think all those in favor aye I motion carries four to zero all right moving on to Future agenda items um the agenda item for the governing board to have a running record for potential items to be placed on a future agenda there will be no discussion on the sub substance merits or issues relating to the proposed agenda item are there any items or anything we'd like to add

113in this area okay then moving on to the before we end I do want to thank Mrs Richards I want to thank her for being the lead administrator during this transitionary period and did very well this afternoon we appreciate you thank you all right I move that we adjourn I don't think that's okay thank you I appreciate that though I move that we adjourn all those in favor aye aye motion carries four to zero thank you thank you everyone tomorrow is now exiting