001yes um thank you good evening I'm going to call this meeting to order Dr Foley roll call please president kaler members of the board the record show that all members are present thank you very much we're going to have a moment of silence followed by the Pledge of Allegiance 2.1 I move that we approved the agenda second questions or concerns about the agenda all those in favor aye aye motion carries five zero up next is Awards and recognitions in the superintendent's report Dr Foley president Kaylor members of the board we start tonight with one of our very favorite parts of our meeting which is celebrating our amazing students and those who love and support them and tonight we have the littlest Learners in the house and so if I could have Mrs Patty Gleason and
002I miss the Stacy at Lee come up here and we're going to start tonight by celebrating our little cougars and those who love and support them so when we call you up we're going to have you stay up here and then when we celebrate all four of you we're going to take a beautiful picture with you so ready to start thank you so much um and good evening president kaler oh there you are and members of the board so happy to be here and tonight we actually get to show you why we are so amazing in preschool so tonight we're going to start with our little cougars and let's have um Miss Cheryl Turner please come on up [Applause] and Cheryl is our a certified points of Pride and she was nominated by a couple
003of our staff members so we're very excited to be honoring her this evening so Cheryl is our choice for our CEC D.C point of Pride because of her love and dedication to her students teammates and school family her colleagues said it best honestly I do not think I have met another person with a heart as big as hers she is always willing to come alongside to help others in any way she can she saw that my class was studying apples and she brought plastic red and green apples so that my class could use them in our Farmers Market She's continually making batches of the most amazingly soft Play-Doh that you have ever ever worked with and um sharing it with anyone who asks she always has a kind word or a smile to offer to
004both students and teachers in a time when there is so much mean-spiritedness competitiveness selfishness Etc it is so refreshing to interact with someone like Cheryl she is the embodiment of my favorite quote in a world where you can be anything you want to be be kind Cheryl is so thoughtful and kind that it is this point to Pride that we should be recognizing kindness I love that lady and this was um Christy McCullough who wrote this for you and we have another one too so I nominate Cheryl Turner because she represents all that we stand for here at Cooley she's a team player always willing to help others she will jump in and help any student on the playground share fun ideas and props for various themes makes Play-doh for other classrooms and even helps
005create activities for kids club it's amazing you can always call that Cheryl to stop and chat with your children she always makes them feel special and valued in addition Cheryl always has been my greatest cheerleader since my first year here Cheryl was all has always validated anything happening and will offer a kind word with a smile she loves children and truly wants everyone to succeed and I believe that was Carrie Burnett who wrote that for you too but Cheryl is amazing in what she creates for her classrooms literally she has our best students so these are our highest needs students and her dramatic plays are incredible creating actual props that the children can use so when they're learning row row row your boat she actually creates a boat and they're in it and doing the
006row row row your boat so just one of the many things that she does but Cheryl Turner we honor you tonight thank you foreign all right so our next honoree point of Pride I will Amy chalgren please come forward [Applause] he's nervous okay Miss Amy you two were nominated by several people in our Center so we're really excited to be honoring you this evening um so Amy is our nomination for classified points of Pride because of her leadership role as our lead sped Pera and the way she cares for and loves her students she has stepped up in such an incredible way for this bad team she's become a terrific leader always offers to help and has such a positive and joyful attitude she is a whiz at scheduling Paras and is always trying to
007make the schedule changes that work for everyone Amy is extremely reliable and dependable she communicates well with staff and students and always has a positive attitude and a great sense of humor Amy is an asset to our classroom and to our school Community Amy chalgren thank you [Applause] okay and next we'd like to honor our volunteer Samantha wince will you please come on up so Samantha's just new to our school She's part of our PTO and she's part of our Hospitality committee and man does she have what it takes to be that person thank you so Samantha wince is our nomination for our volunteer uh point of Pride she's a volunteer with our PTO and she is our Hospitality coordinator at Coulee the job title fits her perfectly she is always smiling and her positive
008energy lights up the building she is willing to do whatever it takes to take care of our students and staff and has spent hours coordinating our restaurant nights fundraisers creating the Flyers and communicating to our staff and our families she is full of ideas and energy and to top it all off she has quite a sense of humor yeah she is she is she's the real deal genuine sweet and helpful Miss Samantha okay and then last but not least are Lucia Hernandez will you come up and will her teacher please uh Miss Carrie Burnett also come up [Applause] oh yeah all right Miss Lucia hi okay I nominate Lucia Hernandez as our Point surprise student because she is a ray of light in our room Lucia comes in each day with a smile and excited
009to learn she is friendly with all of the children she knows what the classroom expectations are and always works hard whenever we have a new student or someone needing help Lucia is willing to Jump Right In she is a natural-born leader in addition Lucia is compassionate if someone is sad She'll always offer a big hug and comfort she always makes us laugh with her stories and is excited to share all that she knows we are excited to see what is ahead for Lucia good job honey [Applause] all right here thank you I love how she spins [Music] I saw your yoga congratulations that's a good idea perfect thank you congratulations [Applause] [Music] okay and now we get to switch to the southern part of our district and we're going to do our points of Pride
010for our little Spartans and we're going to start off with Jennifer Ziegler will you please come up first [Applause] foreign [Music] all right um lovingly called Jay-Z at our Center um Jennifer is our nominee for certified points of Pride Jen is the team lead for our special education preschool department at Sassaman and she is also the chairman of our Sunshine committee and she personifies Sunshine she does she helps us celebrate everything all year long and she is always looking for ways to brighten our days and to lighten our load she goes above and beyond for her students and our staff she has jumped in to lend a helping hand multiple times when we have been short staffed and she is someone our teachers can go to if they need extra supplies or just extra help
011in the classroom you are always there for them Jen you really are she's a true team player her kindness and flexibility is noticed by all who work with her and again to your students again amazing lessons Hands-On lessons every time I come into the classroom they're all engaged and she has every child just eating out of the palm of her hand it's so her room is deaf created like Disney well it is like Disney so please congratulate Jennifer Ziegler and then Paula quickkowski is our classified points of pride and they're actually teammates so they work together yes and they they play together beautifully it's so good so um Paula quickowski is our nomination for classified point of Pride Paula is a para in one of our special education classrooms she loves what she does and
012excels at building deep connections with the children and parents you would never know Paula ever has a bad day because she's always smiling she goes above and beyond the job expectations even knowing what is needed and expected before the teacher does you'd say that yeah you're right here to say yes on the playground every child is her child as she plays with all the children she's generous and puts her whole heart into her job and her students she's a positive influence on our staff and especially on our Paras she is always willing to train them as well this school year she's helped our slps with state required assessments by finding a more efficient way to gather and input the data into the system which is always very helpful she's also a member of the sunshine
013committee making it Shine even more as part of this committee she makes homemade bundt cakes for all of our staff birthdays and they are the the most delicious Bundt Cakes in fact usually I get nothing bundt cakes for that but I figure she couldn't even have one because she makes better than that yeah she's really good so delicious I mean she lets them pick their favorite flavor and then makes them what they want so it's harder I know it's pretty amazing um every staff member in our Center will tell you she makes the best cakes in Arizona thank you for making every day special Papa thank you this okay and then our volunteer point of pride is one of our students from sauceman middle school will violet hoglam please come forward [Applause] we are very
014blessed to work with our middle school and um we're able to have our middle school students come and be Tas in our classroom and she exemplifies what it means to do that role in our classroom her teacher Lauren Garrett is here today who nominated her um Violet is one of our Middle School volunteers she comes into Mrs Garrett's classroom each day with a positive attitude and the students love her she takes Direction well and is willing to do whatever Mrs Garrett asks of her Violet talks to the students with respect and kindness and is a natural teacher and a great example for our students we are proud to recognize her today [Applause] a future Early Childhood teacher maybe yes all right so our last but not least Kai will you come up here Kai Santos
015and his teacher Miss Amy Kimball is going to share about Kai today so I teach the Spanish Kinder prep class and I've just been so impressed by Mr Kai this whole year so far um he is learning so much Spanish he knows a lot from home he's one of the first ones to raise his hand he could probably do the whole Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish for you and he's just been doing great another reason I nominated Kai is because he's always so kind and inclusive to all the friends in our class he's one of the first ones there if any he sees kids that needs help he's there to help them he's the first one to raise his hand to pick up the toys to um to help whatever we need help and I'm
016just so proud of him and his efforts to be a great student and a great friend to those in our class we're grateful to have you okay good job thank you good job okay good job thank you for all you do I appreciate you all these people thank you get that for you congratulations guys yes okay we're gonna take our picture [Applause] thank you [Music] for those of you we celebrated tonight at points of Pride you're welcome to stay but we also know you need dinner and schools tomorrow so if you'd like to leave at this time feel free to do so thank you for joining us this evening [Applause] come back okay we'll continue with our upcoming events um November is flying by and this week we've got a couple big events this Friday
017is super busy we will be doing a superintendent visit for those who are able to come at Gateway point and then we also have our annual fundraiser our our Monte Carlo night obviously next week is Thanksgiving and there's so much to be thankful for we'll be sending communication to our employees and to our families about how much we value and appreciate them and wish them a very happy holiday with their families and loved ones and then December we have another meeting and so the next the rest of this year is going to fly by so these are just a couple highlights of upcoming meetings and that concludes the superintendent's report this evening thank you Dr Foley Mrs Zimmerman no request to speak thank you all right we're moving on to consent I move that we
018approved consent agenda items 5.1 to 5.10 second questions comments concerns I noticed we had some donations again which is always awesome ESI towards our Chinese New Year celebration also desert Financial Credit Union and also Wilfred blackgodaddy.com and those were all from our business partner breakfast and so we thank them for coming to that and also supporting our district very much all those in favor I I motion carries five zero all right we are going to move on to our information items and we have several tonight starting with um 6.1 and the school letter grades for 21 20 22. excuse me we had some information last week we're going to dive a little bit deeper now thank you very much good evening President Taylor members of the board tonight I'm pleased to present to you our
019overall letter rates um employment scores for each of our schools additionally I'll be showing you some comparisons to our favorite charter schools and our East Valley school districts in their letter grants uh we have a lot to celebrate tonight and I should have a clicker sorry I'm a little nervous don't be scared we're really nice there we go oops oops there we go okay our Focus tonight is on strategic anchor one which is teaching and learning Student Success specifically we're focused on indicator 1.5 supporting a collaborative culture using data and research-based practices some of the highlights that you'll be seeing as we progress through our school's letter grades Bridges Elementary is one of only 20 K-8 schools within the state to have the maximum 30 points for proficiency uh Williams Field high school was the
020number 12th rated overall or number 12 overall in terms of the total percentage earned in the state for traditional high schools a hundred percent of our schools earned an A or B with eight of those uh eight of our 13 schools receiving an a while the remaining five received a b and you'll see that as we go through that that's rare for all of our schools to earn a or b most districts have but also see in the rated schools and then on AZ PSI the bonus points there we had five sites that received the full three bonus points for significantly exceeding the state average which is quite an accomplishment we're going to start with Bridges Elementary I'll be going through these alphabetically with our K-8 schools and then do our high schools at the
021end Bridges did not have the minimum in count of 10 azella fa students so they don't qualify for the full for the 10 points for El proficiency and growth so due to that their final score is determined by dividing their points by 90 rather than the 100 and then adding the bonus points onto this so looking at this Bridges earned 93.04 points which was an A and as I stated earlier Bridges earned the maximum points for proficiency but additionally their growth score was the highest for the district Centennial whoops did I skip it there we go Centennial is our next school they had the minimum in count for zelipe students so their final total is divided by 100 then the bonus is added onto that for Centennial they earned 89.01 points which was an a
022one of their celebrations along with their a is their Improvement of third grade minimally proficient on Ela which earned them five out of the maximum 10 points for the acceleration Readiness component they went from 32 percent minimally proficient in 21 to 28 and 22 which is a great accomplishment Chaparral earned 86.52 points which was an a one of the critical components for chaparral's success and a celebration was their El proficiency and growth for which they earned the maximum 10 points they had 22 of Zella based students which is the most for our district and reclassified seven of those students as English proficient which almost doubled the state average Cooley Middle School earned 79.59 points which was a b uh one of their celebrations was within the acceleration Readiness measure schools earned points for improving the
023percentage of students that are highly proficient on 8th grade math which is not an easy task and Cooley saw their percentage improved from 21 to 22 and earned uh the points for that Coronado our next school earned 81.43 points which was a b for one of celebrations for Coronado was was within their subgroup scores they had multiple subgroups that improved their passing proficiency from 21 to 22 and one of those improvements was in within special education where they saw their students improve their passing Proficiency in both Ela and math foreign Cortina earned 83.57 points which was a b uh a celebration for Cortina was decreasing as well for as well as our other site they had decreased the percentage of third grade students that were mentally proficient on Ela they went from 22 minimally proficient
024to 17 uh minimally proficient in 22. Gateway earned 83.41 points which was a b uh one of their biggest celebrations is their growth score which was the second highest score in the district for the KA category with 43.83 points it's a huge accomplishment Higley Traditional Academy earned 88.83 points which was an a for them a celebration was with their sixth grade ELA which had one of the highest growth scores in the district 78 of their sixth grade ELA students were in the average or high growth category all power ranch earned 84.82 points which was an a for them a celebration was with fourth grade ELA which had the highest growth score of all schools in the district playing a significant role in their growth points Santana earned 88.48 points which was an a for them
025a celebration was their proficiency score of 25.12 which was second only to bridges in the district and that was led by their third grade proficiency which was one of the highest in the district Sossaman earned 82.65 points which was a b uh their seventh grade ELA had one of the highest growth scores in the district compared to all other grade levels with 78 percent of the students in the average or high growth category as well now we're on to the two high schools Higley High School earned 95.93 points which is an a for both of our high schools there's a lot to be celebrated um one key for Higley High score was its CCRI score which was 17.2 and that placed it within the top third of the state's traditional high schools in terms of
026their CCRI scores Williams Field earned 98.33 points which was an A and in addition to their overall score placing them in the top 20 in the state Williams Field also maxed out the growth score earning over 20 points for their student growth from azm2 last year to aasa this year we have a number of charter schools that are around us that our students have transferred to or are within our boundaries as you can see we are highly competitive with these scores throughout all of our district schools and due to the fact that Charters can range throughout the state for example Legacy has schools throughout in in multiple cities around the state I chose to just give you the the actual schools that are within our boundaries or that we've seen students within our district move
027too um but again very competitive with all of those scores with our sites and finally I did a district comparison um while we don't have District letter grades this year we wanted to show you how we did in comparison to other East Valley districts we would have been in a if they had provided letter grades for this year for districts though um the chart here shows the percentage of schools within the districts that earned an A B C or D these include traditional K-8 Schools traditional 912 and non-traditional hybrid schools non-traditional hybrid schools include any school that does not fit with the traditional configuration of K8 or 912 so that would be 712 or a K-12 School uh in these cases they use both calculation methods then weight the scores based on the percentage of
028students in K8 versus 912 and then the 912 cut score is then used to determine their final letter grade some examples that you see in this chart would be Castile High School and Chandler is a non-traditional hybrid school as well as East Market Queen Creek HBA will be considered to be a non-traditional hybrid school next year because they have students in both the K-8 section as well as the 912. um as you see we have the highest percentage of our schools in the East Valley with an a uh at 62 percent our closest competitor there would be uh Scottsdale with 59 of their schools at an a um additionally as I said earlier we're the only District that didn't have a c or a d school um Chandler their C schools were paying middle school
029as well as three elementaries in their downtown area uh Gilbert had three of their junior highs and two of their elementary schools composed that c score uh Kyrene had a d at one of their elementary schools and then their C was their Digital Academy Mesa their DS were at two of their elementary schools and two of their junior highs Queen Creek had a c at both Queen Creek Elementary and creek creek Junior High and their D was their virtual school and then finally Scottsdale seas are at one of their elementary schools and one of their K-8 schools and their online learning school so we obviously have a lot to celebrate in the district our letter grades are very impressive and I've had the opportunity to sit down with all of our principals except for Mr
030Dolan that's tomorrow to talk about their letter grades and we really got to dive in deep and talk about what successes they have and what areas we can look at for improvement as we move forward so any questions any comments or questions oh go ahead just wanted to say hats off to all the staff parents students everyone involved that's phenomenal well done all right go ahead Mrs Schultz just fantastic well first you said that Benjamin Franklin or the charter schools comparison but we as high schools go we were substantially higher correct um I just wanted to point that out and um just on the district comparisons does it have anything to do like or there's just more schools and say Chandler is it is is this a accurate comparison or would Queen Creek be the
031next District that's our size right you know that's the reason why I gave you percentages okay was because yes Chandler has a lot Chandler Scottsdale Mesa they have many more schools than we do okay so sorry I wanted to be able to show that um percentage-wise of all of our schools we have a high percentage of our schools in the a um yes we that the number might be higher in Chandler with their number of A's but percentage-wise of all of our schools we've got the highest percentage of all of those East Valley Schools okay that's great and yeah hats off to the teachers and staff and everyone as Michelle or Mrs Anderson said thank you very much for this presentation thank you maybe I need to talk way back here um or move it
032away but again I'll repeat what I said last time is that they change the standards they changed the tests they changed the whole calculation every year it seems so it's really hard for any school to get to this a and so um well done to Higley and to everybody and anybody even with a B I say Well done because again there's no standard in Arizona at this point so that's just my personal opinion thank you all Mr Lawson Heiser is up next with our 2023-2024 course guide update good evening president Candler members of the board it's my pleasure tonight to present to you as an information item the proposed 2023-2024 course guides in our presentation today we're going to talk about the process and the people involved we're going to talk about changes to the
033guides I'm very very proud of the work that has been done uh not just this year but the past three years as we look through the course guides and uh you know our goal is to create something that is very useful for our families as well as our employees and so I'm excited to present them to you tonight foreign so first we I called them the team course guide and this is all the people that were involved in making the decision so as we saw what goes into the course guide I'd like to recognize especially Dr Chris treat and the members of our instructional coaches and their staff they had a really really important job about bridging communication between the two different schools both at the middle school and at the high school level and
034they helped Drive the discussions within their own departments about what we were going to do and this year we would put a heavy emphasis on communication between the schools about proposals prior to us meeting and the instructional coaches really LED that charge for us and so once again to Dr treat and the rest of the coaches thank you very much for all of your hard work as you helped prepare throughout this process additionally after you'll see members of the district office as well as the principal this is the principal of curriculum and the counselor at each one of the schools foreign so again our process goals once again to make the ease of use we wanted a parent to be able to read it sometimes within education we know our own terms we know everything
035like that however we wanted to make this a working document for parents and families and and to use it as planning one thing we changed this year was communication what happens is the proposals are submitted and then we review those proposals as an ed services department and then together with the schools this year we added something where both schools had to acknowledge and see the proposals prior to our meetings what that did is that spread a lot of communication from department members to have their opinions put in so I felt like we included more people in this process so that the teachers of the subjects that were proposed had the ability to give their input and then was presented that's what the instructional coaches helped organize for us and that communication went really well and
036led to some outstanding discussion about what we wanted to put and change within the course guide within our meetings and finally we want to continue to focus on what opportunities are we providing our kids you can see the results when you look at letter grades of all the different opportunities we have and the success of our kids it's not by accident there's a plan there to prepare our kids for Limitless opportunities in the future and through the course guide process we're able to look at all what we do at the schools and see what they're provided we did put a little note on on there in the previous years I feel like I've put a lot of information and this has been a lot of things to do and you've seen in status that we
037had over 50 proposals that we went through this year and that you saw a step-by-step change in what happened I honestly this year was a lot less than it has been in previous years because I think the work that we have done has been very important and so when we got together to examine the documents there was already a lot of consensus that what we were doing was already working but let's tweak it a little bit and see what kind of different offerings we could have there was a picture on that slide I don't know where it went for those who are counting so let me talk about the timeline because the this process does not happen overnight and one of our goals this year was we wanted to start it earlier to give time
038for people to give input and for us to have discussion so our first meeting believe it or not was on August 9th was that three weeks into the school year we're already planning for the next year and that meeting started out with the ed services department and the instructional coaches so that everybody was on board about what we were asking teachers and sites to do we reviewed our forms we reviewed our process so that if any questions came we were all on the same page we rolled this out to the sites on August 15th sent it to the administrators who then distributed it among their Department chairs on their campus in order for us to get proposals we added something the issue where we did a course guide review so as in IT services department
039we all sat down excuse me we went Page by Page and said what in there do we need to fix what is not working and out of this discussion you will see that we changed significantly some things that happened within our general information section to make what we feel like this this guy be more user friendly that was driven off the discussion and they're like hey can we find some way to have parents perhaps plan a little bit or just have an organization sheet for them to look at and then let's move our um our Pathways up so that they don't have to search and find let's try to compartmentalize it and make it easier for them to read foreign the recommendations came on September 12th where the sites were due to us and then
040the instructional coaches review those and they review those to make sure we have appropriate curriculum in place they review them to make sure that they fit in the scope and sequences of what we need to do within our programs and they prepared it for our first review our Ed Services review on September 22nd where we went through each of the 50 different proposals and the reason we did that before our first course guide meeting is if anything was missing we wanted to figure out what was missing so we had all the information when we were making a decision within the course guide teams at our meetings we had two meetings that were held October 13th and then two weeks later on October 27th and what we did at those meetings the high school people were
041involved and then we had a middle school meeting as well where we went through each proposal and that's where we had the discussion where one Department might have said hey I really want to have something put in place and another person had the opportunity to say we agree or we disagree let's talk this out by having communication required ahead of time we already had positions and stances from the two different schools to allow us to have that communication and and from my aspect and I want to give you know credit to the team um it was great conversation and and we were able to come to consensus on the decisions that we were making we came back two weeks later because sometimes we still needed more information and we and we did that so after
042the 27th we had our proposals I shared with you in status uh what the different changes in everything was so this timeline once again when we look at these proposals and these course guides that are listed the significant amount of time effort and energy that has gone in to where we are at tonight something new this year is we have four different course guides that that uh have been present presented and provided for you we have the traditional High School course guide once again we focused on the end user how can I make it more readable with general information changes in a four-year planning guide this year and I really need to give credit to Shawna Miller who's in the back there and her team Kristen Nash and Chris Robinson because neighboring schools had had
043issues with special education courses not being approved by the governing board and they came and said David I want to get ahead of this we have these courses already in place for our students students can't sign up for them they're placed in them through the IEP process but we need to have course descriptions in place so that if our kids left we could say what they were in and and especially if we ever get to the point where the NCAA is looking at some of our courses we would have those descriptions so they developed this uh special education course guide it's going to be an internal document because people can't just sign up for it and so when they go through the registration process once again these decisions are made through the IEP process however
044now we have descriptions and you're able to see the courses that we have already been done and are doing on our campuses now we have the Middle School course guide where there really is minor changes for both of the schools and we're continuing to look at consistency for both of those schools together and then we have our hva course guide and with hva as it continues to grow we learned Sometimes some of the decision we made didn't work and so we have some changes like we have to figure out is what we've uh offered last year is that appropriate to offer this year and that's what we looked at with the hva course guide so let's talk about the high school course guide so the first thing that you noticed when you looked at the
045draft was we ordered reordered the general information once again we tried to make it thematic where they understood what was happening and where it was going and we had a four-year planning guide and the planning guide is a simple sheet where they can say hey as a freshman here here's what you can take and if you take anything in the summer in hva so you can kind of plan your courses and get an idea starting as a freshman what it would look like if you want to plan out all four years and I think that's an important thing to do as parents is a lot of times we look at those guides and things and we think one year at a time we try to put everything on one page so that they can fill
046them out and so when they have discussions with their counselors about registration and and what programs they wanted to be into we added this four-year planning guide we also like I said our Pathways used to be at the very end so you go through all of our book get all the way to the end and then it showed you hey what's the general progression these are guidelines these are not f2s but they're General guidelines if I take this class what's the next class and going there we move those right up by the planning guide so that it's once again easy reference hey so if I'm in algebra one as a freshman now I'm going to Geometry algebra two uh pre-calc or whatever any other choices they can see that very easily looking at those progressions
047one thing that that we worked really hard with our CTE program as you know CTE programs have different levels of completers and we ask for kids to be in either one or two years to be completers or in some of our programs three years and a lot of them offer options for both the third and possibly a concurrent fourth year option well in a previous course guides they were just simply listed as a list of classes this year we have a little small chart for each one of the individual programs so if someone's going into graphic design they would say oh here is the pathway that I would do for graphic design if someone's going into early childhood education it would be the courses that would be appropriate because we think it's important for parents
048and for students to be able to understand that a CTE course is not necessarily just a one or two year there's more options above that including the internships and so we put those together and package them I need to give a credit to uh to Craig Pearson our assistant director of CTE for working on that process and to be honest with you the amount of CTE programs that we provide in our district is phenomenal there is so much that has gone into that and I know that we are as I've mentioned in status before we're looking at adding another one to Higley High even hasn't voted on that yet they're going to vote it on their next board meeting so more than likely I'll be coming back to you to say hey here's what evid
049has approved we would like for to share with you what we would like to add at Higley High we don't have that information yet one of the big changes though that we did have was the removal of the courses that were called the blend courses this was a program that was started actually I don't know how long ago it started it was preemie it's quite a few years ago maybe some of you were on the board when when those things came seven years ago where there were courses where uh students who um were in the honors track or the e-last track coming from the middle schools had opportunity to go on a blend which was a combined English and social studies course where part of it was taught in person part of it was taught
050virtually before we had an online school what we've seen in the growth through our schools is that the number of students that were interested that has declined including the staff that wanted to teach it and where it was put in and honestly it wasn't cost effective for us to continue this program on because we have other different ways that we can still allow students to accelerate and we can meet their needs at their time at the time that they have without having this combo course and so there was unanimous decision amongst most high schools that said we feel like it would be important we can still provide the same Opera opportunities for our kids without offering this blend course and what went along for it which leads us to our second one this added AP
051Capstone seminar as an English 10 credit AP Capstone seminar is traditionally an elective credit that now has evolved it's really preparing students to be prepared for college rut level writing courses so if you think about it on our campus we have AP 11 and ap12 our college level writing courses Capstone seminar is to prepare them for those courses uh the AP pushes really and has put out and said we think that this is an appropriate 10th grade English course to help prepare them to be successful for ap11 and for ap12 and this is some new things that uh the College Board has put in place and we think it's important for us to allow our students that opportunity so where does this make a difference so if I'm a honor student or I'm interested in
052AP and I'm going for that 10th grade credit I will have the opportunity to earn either an honors English 10 or an AP Capstone seminar they would count for the same thing with ap Capstone seminar it is the first course in a two-year AP Capstone diploma process so that would start them along that path currently we have those courses they're elective what we're asking this year is that we change it to obey allowed to be an English 10 credit instead so let's go back to the blend now typically those kids came out and they went into honors English 10 as a freshman well now they're also going to have honors English 10 or that additional possibility of an AP credit as a ninth grader for the AP and Capstone seminar class so it is adding
053additional AP options for what we are doing we had to rename one of our courses foundational college math to quantitative reasoning because the NCAA Clearinghouse does not approve courses with the name foundational in them so we Rachel Latham our math coach worked with other districts to see what they call it is an appropriate level class we want to make sure that any athlete that is in that class has the opportunity then for scholarships and so by renaming it quantitative reasoning uh it will be approved by the NCAA Clearinghouse and finally last year we just in terms of some logistical things we offered an astronomy and oceanography each semester on courses and we move them into the science they're still elective courses but we're housing them with science instead of the general elective courses so that
054people understand there are some science course elective offerings same way if we look at our psychology courses are listed into the social studies Department right and so they're just electives within those departments and that's the appropriate place to put them so on the whole when you think about what we've done in the past in terms of our high school course guide not a lot of changes that really happen but I'm really excited about the fact that we can add this AP Capstone seminar as an English credit which will allow kids to earn more AP courses and prepare them for that ap11 and ap12 courses before I jump any further with the high school stuff is there any questions on that okay so once again for our special education course guide I just wanted to reiterate
055once more this will be an internal document and and once again Shauna Kristen and Chris thank you very much for all of your efforts and energies on this to help so that we have definitions that you can see the courses that they're taking and how this is done and so we'll be able to use this internal document when we register our students through the IEP process foreign our Middle School course guide really had probably had the least amount of changes of any of ones that we've had one of the questions that came up was we have a fundamentals of biology eight and where do the kids go after fundamentals of biology what we wanted to let people know is they will be prepared to take AP Bio as a ninth grader and so that is
056that is something it's their choice they can go in honors bio or they can go into AP Bio as a ninth grader but we wanted to include that within the description so that parents know that that is that is a track and a path that allowed them to be prepared for that with our immersive Spanish program coming now from the the DLI program from Santan you got to remember DLI programs once we get to the sixth grade right is that immersion aspect of it when we move it to the middle school we call it immersive not immersion because they're not spending it's one class it's not the entire half of the day that's being taught in that language next year we'll have immersive Spanish seven and then the next year after that would be our
057first class of immersive Spanish eight but we have wanted to add them both to the book right now for our middle schools foreign hva so last year I came to you and said hey we found some courses we thought that would be really neat to be able to add as electives and I'll be honest with you there wasn't a lot of interest in them and at the same time they weren't meeting our needs for what we needed for our online students and so as you saw in status we're asking to remove those courses because we did not use them and we will we are kind of streamlining our process within hva and the offerings of what's Happening we did add honors earth science we already had on level earth science but there is the opportunity
058to change up and to make sure that we have an honor earth science as well within the hva and so really when you look at the course content for hva for the 712 aspect of it not a lot of changes I I will say this one popular course that continues to be is the sign language through online and I know we talked about that last year and the numbers within that has continued this year as well that's where I'm hitting the same button every time okay so we going through the course guides so questions please yes do we have immersive seventh and eighth grade Mandarin at Coulee yes we do right now right now okay yeah we didn't have that before at Sossaman it was just seventh grade no at sauceman we're going to add
059immersive uh Spanish seven we have called it Spanish one and Spanish two but we're changing it to immersive to help me you did that because that class is just down moving to Sossaman yeah sixth grade is just now moving yes coming up correct okay very good but you'll still have Spanish one and two for kids that haven't taken we will yeah and it's really 1A and one B yes one a and one B those are still there that's not changing it's just with the kids that are coming up from the DLI program um a lot of times they're very Advanced and so we wanted to change that curriculum to meet them meet their needs which is why we called it the immersive Spanish uh seven and immersive Spanish Aid really quick can somebody test into
060that program or do they have to come I mean can they test into that class or do they have to come from the DLI program no they can test into it and so if we have speakers we have the ability to give those tests to see where they're at and that's what we would want to do to put them in an appropriately placed class instead of having them sit through something right okay any other questions but thank you for doing the planning guide it I think it will be helpful to parents to see what the progression is and and try and help their student figure out what classes they want to take um I don't I don't know how detailed it would be but if we can indicate what may be dual enrollment I think
061that we have a lot of kids who take a lot of dual enrollment classes who don't understand that they can get their Associate's degrees and I I'm not gonna lie it took a lot of work on my part as a parent to figure out between Chandler Gilbert and our schools on how to do that but short of one class and I know that they've been working on trying to get the one class but short of one class our high school students that are taking primarily the the AP or the honors classes that are dual enrollment can earn their Associates degrees and it's not pressuring them too they're already taking the classes right so I don't know if if somewhere not with this one but looking forward how can we let them know that this dual
062enrollment class dual enrollment class um so that they can kind of plan that out too because that is so I it's such an opportunity for these students and again it's not oh we're pushing them to to excel they're already taking these classes it's not pushing them any more than they're already doing and to pay for college credit at the community college is a lot cheaper than the the University and then I was fortunate I had it because of that I had one get through University in three years and that is a huge savings even with scholarships so um I know it's hard to think about as freshmen but um most of those classes will come from their sophomore and on up year but I think the planning guide is a good start so parents can
063can kind of see that progression and then hopefully we can at least get them looking at is it a dual enrollment class and start tallying up what those enrollment credits could be them so thank you for putting that out there and and thinking like a parent in that fashion since you've recently gone through that yes president kaler thank you for doing this I think that starting so early has helped remember the problems that we may have had I think that sometimes we forget if we wait a little longer in to January on the problems that we had in July and so I'm just really thankful that you got it started on it three weeks into school and I know that was probably a big undertaking and I just want to thank all the committee members
064again because it does take a lot of work to do these I read all the changes I think you did a fabulous job I read Miss Miller's her whole course guide it was fabulous and just thank you to the whole if you could extend my thank you to your whole team that would be great I will thank you I know this has been a conversation ever time we do course guide and I know math comes up every time that our eighth grade math class does not come towards their four years it does in some places it doesn't here I understand the reasonings um I still don't always agree with the reasonings um one of the things though is important is that those kiddos in seventh and eighth grade know where they're going to end up
065in 12th grade math when they sign up and that has to be a conversation that we must have in middle school because too many times the kids get in over their heads and then they're in 12th grade math class and it's it's too much so um if we're not going to have that eighth grade math class count towards their four years let's have those conversations in our math classes for sure at our Middle School levels otherwise it looks great we have um we are not voting on this tonight so I encourage all of our board members that haven't looked through everything to look through everything closely because it will be coming back in December for a final vote any other questions comments or concerns thank you Mr lautzenheiser thank you you can check that off
066your list for the year it's fun it's fun I don't know what's going on with my microphone but all right Mr Tyler Moore we're moving on to our Esser 3 updates good evening president Kayla members of the board away from my presentation to come up but uh I do have um assisting me in this sr3 update today uh our assistant director of federal programs and compliance Miss Melissa Garland um who will help elaborate on kind of our summer 23 summer school plans for 2023. but as a reminder uh this sr3 update is uh required by Ade and the part of the requirements to continue to receive this funding um if you don't recall sr3 was the elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund this was approved as part of the American Rescue plan back on
067March 2021 uh this will be our third update uh so when that was approved in March we brought the initial plan in November uh we then provided a plan in June of 22 and now this will be our third uh update for this uh funding source um this funding source the allowable uses include supporting the Lea's ability to continue to provide educational Resources address student social emotional mental health and academic needs supporting staff as a component of Recruitment and Retention and you'll see that throughout this plan and as you've seen before so I do want to note the Arizona Department of Education is the Federal grant administrator for this Federal fund um the the funds do not come directly to Higley unified and I know there's been several news reports on on how schools are
068spending this fund um and so with Ade administering this grant fund there's oftentimes a lack of timeliness between the time expenditure reported to Ade and they're they're classified on their website so if you do see reports out there that we have not spent any sr3 money that is not true is strictly a timing implication between Us in the Arizona Department of Education and how they're reporting up and I know Melissa has worked very hard with Ade to get our grants revised and approved and all our reimbursement requests have to go through them as well and so that does take time so I just wanted to footnote that because I have seen some articles that have shown me we've spent zero dollars so um diving into the the budget so this is our sr3 updated spending
069plan budget not a lot has changed here we've just moved a few dollars around um the majority of the changes have come the two buckets of learning loss initiative and support and retaining staff as we've expended some funds we've trued up some of these numbers but you'll still see 21 of the budget um through the accessory plan is in the learning loss initiative and as a as a requirement of this budget this fund we are required to spend at least 21 or 20 so we still meet that requirement and as we tie out these expenditures we do anticipate possibly increasing that percentage as some of our budget numbers fluctuate um I do want to remind you that the the total amount for sr3 was 7.8 Million we've approximately expended 78 of that budget so we
070are on the the tail end of this uh funding source um and as you'll see this plan A lot of it has already been allocated and we are just waiting to expend that so um diving into the learning less category um the blue I try to color code this uh to make it a little easier to follow so the blue indicates the the budget remaining um and the red indicates the expenditures have already been incurred and so um with the summer school in 2122 it was last uh last year we expended approximately two or two hundred thousand on their next slide Melissa will go into the details on our plans for this upcoming year and we do have budgeted for one more year 23 24. um within this funding source the additional counselors we added
071three counselors to the service elementary students if you remember we had a difficult time hiring individuals and so that budget has come down slightly just because we were unable to fill those positions when we originally issued this budget so those positions are filled now all three Elementary counselors while they're not complete counselors right now they're toast says and working on their certifications we do have resources available now for those elementary schools to service those students and as you know we do have a district lead counselor Miss Dean and Morgan she has been fabulous so far very excited to have her and so that remaining blue indicates the budget that will take us out to 2024 to maintain those Physicians and then at that point we'll look to bring those into the operational budget or our
072maintenance and operational budget during that 23-24 budget conversation 95 phonics core classroom program uh this was purchased and is being utilized it is a research-based phonics program that meets the requirements for the move on when reading requirement for the State of Arizona also supports the reading loss initiative uh resulting from the pandemic so with that I'll let Melissa talk a little bit about summer school you quickly about our summer school plan I would like to start by recapping what we did this past summer it was our second summer school that we funded using Esser money we had three Elementary sites and collectively they served just over 400 students um we also used um we intended to use Esser funds to do our credit recovery which is a big part of the learning loss but you
073may be aware that the governor put out the AZ on track grants this past year so we elected to use that funding for our some high school credit recovery program which was very successful we had 200 students in the first session 210 in the second and all but just if you earned the credits that they were trying to recover during that time uh we also serviced math boost the math boost program for middle school students at Higley High School as well that was not a credit recovery program however it did fit the learning loss because it was students that had been identified by their Elementary sites as well as their seventh grade teachers in need of some math math support throughout the summer for our elementary sites we used a combination of Esser funding at
074two sites and then our Title One funding at the third site because we had those funds available as well to service those students our plan moving forward is to look at hosting two Elementary sites rather than three the reason for that is we found that when students were registered our attendance at the beginning wasn't what it could have been in certain sections and so we feel like if we were to condense them into two sites maybe one at the northern part of the district one at the southern part using that feeder system that we could collectively service the same number of students because based on what happened in the summer of 20 the 20 2021 school year it's all about the same number of students so we're we we're really looking at doing that we
075are going to continue to explore other funding for our high school I have received communication that the aze on track grants will be available again but we don't know yet what the scope of that will be however the sr3 budget still has enough to cover summer school for Credit Recovery in the high school at the same capacity that we did this year and there's also enough to continue with the math boost which we would like to do and we are looking at including an English language arts boost if the interest is there what we may encounter is that if students need both the language arts and the math it's deciding which one they should enroll in and whether or not parents are wanting that support during the month of June during those times we'll also
076provide transportation as well just as we've done in the past and also any support Personnel that we need to provide the appropriate services for all of the students thank you moving on to uh the the support and retain highly qualified employees category um you'll see this one's all but spent um the one-time retention stipend was paid out um this out this excuse me November um you'll see that actual expense and that was a fifteen hundred dollar retention stipend to all employees who returned this fiscal year um if you see very positive feedback for that and very appreciative um uh for that for that retention stipend uh the remaining budget here uh there's a little bit of budget left for PD for and it says teachers and staff but this is mainly for our counselors the
077three counselors that we have at the elementary in our in our lead counselor uh to provide them with educational resources to continue to provide um uh PD or excuse me services to our students and be on the Forefront of of what is going on uh in instructional practices we still are keeping our transportation incentive stipend out there Mr Crosby is still looking for bus drivers so um there is a referral and recruitment bonus um This was um if a new hire if a person is referred uh the new hire will get a thousand dollars and that's uh divvied up between uh 500 if they start and then six months into the job they would get the remaining 500. uh and then the employee who made the referral would also receive uh incentive stipend for a
078500 so uh coveted leave we've talked about this before but in 22 that that grossly um blew up our budget um we underestimated the impact of that um but thankfully we had this funding source to cover that leave as you know for fiscal 23 uh we are the district is not no longer providing coveted leave so individuals who do come down with covid Will would our continuing to use General leave for that purpose ABM contracted cleaning um this was expensed in the first initial year of covid this allowed us to provide additional level of Sanitation to those classrooms that were at the time being tracked and we were able to hire two to three contracted cleaners to come in and spray down the classroom and disinfect operational sport costs these are costs for maintaining and
079operating the grant these are indirect costs that are transferred from the grant to the indirect fund moving on to the category of a school facilities repair basically this is HVAC we've experienced a number of different variations in terms of budget and what we budgeted and what we actually expended largely in response to supply chain issues we've are no we're not I guess immune to the supply chain issues that are happening and so we've made several adjustments in here so I've left the original Budget on the left and the blue and then the actual cost and the red I won't dive into too much detail but you can see some variations across the board some big ones include the Higley High that was a central Chiller that cost was grossly went up from the time we
080budgeted to the time we actually expended that and then Santana Elementary we actually moved forward a project they have a central cooling system as well um and so we chose to replace that that was a greater need at the time so you'll see this budget is 92 percent expended again showing this this is this funding source is sunsetting lastly the category of Technology um not much has changed here we do have one instructional software tool that it has identified along with the instructional coaches as a greater need and so they've added that to this it's called nearpod I can't speak to it too much but I know it is used as support for instructional software um it may be misanderson can speak to it more but I know that has been popular and they are
081looking at renewing that for year three some of these other purchases will are just waiting for quotes to be expended out so again this budget 69 expended um and this will be on the on the tail end uh and then lastly we'll continue to post these updating spending plans on our website um our next update will be in June of 2023. we have already updated our safe return to in-person learning plan that is also on our website um and then we'll continue to plan future oversight meetings um we didn't have any in-person meetings but we did inform our committee those who are still employed with the district and um were on the original committee um again there was no major changes to the plan and so we'll continue to move forward with expending the Esser
082funds as budgeted so if there's any questions I'll be happy to answer questions or comments so it looks like you're still going to be talking about covid in June of 2023. so um as sad as that makes me I've been grateful for this generosity that was given to us when we needed it most and so it has been used for the greater good and I've been very grateful for Esser one two and three and there will not be an s or four at this time so everybody knows all right thank you very much Mr Tyler Moore next up we are going to have a middle school lease update this has been a conversation that we have had many a time over the years concerning our Middle School leases how we could do something different better
083bring it back to us refinance we've used many words in many meetings about our lease so thank you for this update and working so hard on this Mr Tyler Moore and I look forward to hearing all about it yes thank you president Kayla members of the board um we do I'm anxiously I guess proud to or proud uh eager to present this update here um yeah we've talked about it uh probably ever since I was hired This was um set on my desk this is and this is an issue uh that was my intro to uh Higley unified um uh immediately I mean this this has been a huge budget item it's in every single budget conversation that we have and so um you know initially if you recall we tried to we proposed a
084payout of one of the schools in the 2021 Bond um that that failed to pass and so um we also surveyed our community in in stakeholders as well as our teachers um and then we found there's just a general misconception on this on this lease and and what it does and how it impacts us financially it was clear though that it was not to be put in the 22 bond which we did not do um so that put us back to the drawing board and so um I'm here tonight with Mr Jim gill from Gus Rosenfeld our bond counsel and Mr Mike lavelli from Stiefel a Public Finance who have been working on this with me for the last year looking at various plans and various options for this and so tonight we do have
085a plan that we'd like to present to you I'll try to do my best to explain it in layman's terms but I will ask for their assistance on some of the conversations that we've had to get to this point but first I want to just kind of remind the board to kind of give a little overview uh what the Middle School leases are so these were approved in 2012 uh there's a lease agreement at the election um that original lease had total total estimated payments by the district uh for the entirety of the lease this is a 40-year lease of approximately 178 million uh for those two middle schools so that that takes into consideration principal interest um and various fees and agreements as part of that original lease agreement um that agreement that uh
086was done with the Industrial Development Authority of the City of Phoenix the Arizona education facility revenue bonds jmf Higley and again that was done in 2012. so I'm gonna do my best to give an analogy I'm a visual person so an analogy of what we are kind of proposing so it's essentially a refinancing we're looking to refinance this lease I've provided uh on the screen here a visual about two schools so we own Cooley and Sossaman Middle School actually we don't own those we we're leasing those um we have jmf Higley and that I realize how that is presented um not intentional but uh and then we also have the Phoenix idea the bank in which our lease payments are made too and so currently we make a payment to jmf Higley gmf Higley um
087takes that payment and makes the payment to the Phoenix Ida um that payment is is then you know jmf Higley does manage various fees and agreements um with some of our funds and they pay the principal and interest to the Phoenix Ida bank so what we're proposing is to eliminate jmf Higley and just pay the bank uh principal and interest and so I know that's a very high level and and probably not the best reference but essentially what we're looking at doing is refinancing um our lease agreement uh with that I would like to invite Mr Jim Gill up to talk a little bit uh about the terms in this agreement and talking to you about some of the legal conversations that we've had thanks Tyler uh Jim Gill with Gus Rosenfeld uh good to
088be back here again uh I'm sure you recall we've had a couple of Prior discussions about this 2012 financing so I just wanted to go through there's a fair amount of detail as Tyler mentioned and intricacies involved with that financing way more involved than any kind of bond issue that the district or any District would do normally so I just wanted to kind of take you through some defined terms from that 2012 uh financing so that you have a sense of exactly who the parties are and what documents we're talking about because we do have a couple of underlying issues that we're uh trying to uh get resolved with the uh with the borrower uh still um but I think I think we're in good shape but uh um I just kind of want to
089lay everything out for you with respect to those issues so first just to start Tyler mentioned the borrower jmf Higley that's the limited liability company that stands between you and the Phoenix Ida they are 501c3 and they are technically the owners of two of your middle middle schools the Ida Tyler mentioned the Phoenix Ida you normally wouldn't ever have to bother with them but again due to this unique structure that was presented to the prior Administration that's kind of where you are with Ida bonds so the bonds themselves nearly 70 million dollars of bonds that are callable uh in in in the normal term of 10 years so in this case December 1st 2022 you can call the bonds either in whole or in part uh but the key here is that we need the
090consent of the borrower and the Ida um normally you would imagine that you would need the Ida's consent to throw a bunch of money out of them and for them to call their bonds but but the wrinkle here is that we need the borrower's consent as well in this case jmf Higley the foundation so we've been working on that with them for a number of months I guess over a year now and we do have them on board uh they were I would say reluctant at first uh but I think we're there now um as part of those 2012 uh financing we've got facilities use agreements uh two of them each dated 40 years one for each Middle School the facilities use agreement well let me just back up we've also got ground leases that
091I don't mention on here because they're not up in the air in any way but the way it worked was on the district leased you own the real estate that the two schools are on that's the good news you lease that those two Parcels through two separate ground leases to the 501c3 um and then the 501c3 leased the two schools once they were completed to you in the form of these two facilities use agreements so you can kind of think of the facilities use agreements as lease agreements that's what entitles you to be in the school using them uh We've also got a trust indenture something you would never have in a normal school bond issue but that's the agreement between the uh the Ida and and the trustee UMB Bank in this case they
092and UMB kind of takes care of the debt if you will they are the representative of the bondholders so there are financial institutions and possibly uh mom mom and pops out there who own your bonds well I'm sorry the Phoenix Ida bonds and uh if the district chooses to move forward we'll call them away from them and use District proceeds we'll get to that I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit to call those away um but that's where the trustee comes in they get very much involved in that process of redeeming bonds early under that trust and denture we have a capital repairs fee that's required to be paid and you guys have been very diligent you've made those payments you're paying 175 000 per School annually we've got over a million dollars in
093that capital or Paris fund that is built up over time uh as you've probably heard we've had a hard time getting that out because as part of the original financing uh it was upfront agreed to uh what repairs would be made uh on a set schedule which of course never made any sense but uh Tyler's been lucky to get some of it out but again still sitting on a million dollars um which brings me to the capital repairs fund itself which is the actual fund under the trust agreement held by UMB we struggle with this one a little bit because there's a provision on the trust agreement um and as I think I've mentioned to you in the past that says if we pay the bonds off the balance in this case over a million
094dollars accrues to the benefit of the borrower slash foundation and not to you which of course is as silly as it sounds but there's another provision section 5.14 of the trust indenture that says never mind uh you guys actually do get the money so fortunately the borrower Foundation has agreed to to read it the way we're reading it on Section 5.14 so you you the district will ultimately get the benefit of the million dollars um that should never have been an issue but and I kind of attribute it to a drafting error uh 10 years ago but that's the way the documents read another one of the primary documents to which you were a party 10 years ago was were two option agreements uh the option agreements were exhibits to the facilities use agreements so
095one for each site uh Unfortunately they they allow you to exercise options to purchase the sites but only or the improvements but only within a 30-day window June 1st to June 30. so that that's not very helpful when we're talking about redeeming bonds as early as January February March whenever the whenever interest rates cooperate so we have I believe uh gotten the foundation slash borrower to agree to amend that provision so that you know they'll be flexible in terms of allowing the district to exercise the options when it makes sense and when we can redeem bonds so uh Tyler can go to the next slide so if you do choose at a later meeting to go forward um with this we will formally notify the Ida uh the borrower and UMB and their respective Council
096and all those parties that I've just mentioned have all been involved in conversations of your intention to pre-pay and fold the outstanding bonds um and if you do choose to uh to do such a resolution again at a later meeting you're not locked into it in any way you don't have to issue certificates of participation in this case to redeem those bonds you you can adopt a resolution and wait for the markets to see when interest rates make sense and we'll get to that discussion um but but what I'm trying to express to you is that you are not you are not required to do anything with that with that resolution it is not binding on you it is simply an authorizing resolution where if we fit in certain parameters right in the middle here
097we say if we could put together a financing not to exceed 30 years in an amount not to exceed 61 million 730 000 at a bond yield not to exceed 5.75 so if we can fit in those parameters then you've given District staff uh the authority to move forward with the with the refinancing but again I'll it's all contingent upon the market if you decide to go forward with a resolution in this on December 14th or later uh well then UMB will then provide a contingent notice to the existing bondholders that the district has taken such such action intends at some point to redeem bonds again we're required to give that notice but it can be contingent upon the district uh issuing those those cops certificates of participation uh at that point once we issue
098certificates participation the um the existing bonds get paid off the underlying real estate the two primary the two middle schools get get released and then but then encumbered again for your new lease financing but let me stress uh this lease financing that you could do to take out these bonds is very straightforward we've done it a number of times for other school districts in the valley and it's really what the district should have done 10 years ago rather than do this you know Ida financing so this is tried and true and we believe there's a market for the for your certificates of participation so basically Elise Elise financing so we'd just be taking the remaining 30 years of your original 40-year financing do you have any questions about what I've covered rather quickly president Kaylor
099he says or something that have you seen are currently the current lease that we have now have you seen this throughout the state or the country at all this the the 10 year old financing at your party to yeah the 2012 that we've now that was very unusual you were kind of the test case unfortunately um the group that got it through the prior Administration tried to do it in other jurisdictions other school districts in the valley and we kind of were able to warn the others off um so we're the only one as far as I know you're the you're the only one who actually did it um I wasn't a party to it um we were your bond Council prior to that but we were let go um as part of this tenure
100as part of this prior financing since we didn't and this one must do it many many boards ago I just want to point that out to all the people maybe watching that this was many boards ago and um two superintendents ago thank you sure all right so I'd like to invite Mr Mike Lavelle yet to talk a little bit about how this would look um if based on the current market and uh what we have outstanding so thank you madam president members of the board Mike Lavallee with stifle uh I too uh was working with the district back then but not involved in this transaction um and as Mr Gill mentioned I'm glad he mentioned it right at the tail end of his presentation the district has the ability to do lease purchasing you do
101lease purchasing for copy machines and you know buses sometimes and you can do at least purchase structure to finance buildings in our state and the district could have done it on its own through the use of a publicly offered lease I.E a certificate of participation which is what we're talking about here but again instead they routed it through this sort of non-profit through the idea structure it's more akin to a charter school financing that's I guess the closest thing I I'd say it's akin to again we don't see it in the public school space at all other than this than this District um so this evening uh we just wanted to show sort of the before picture and the potential after picture the before picture is the darker blue bars uh the principle that would
102be refinanced um is that first call on there the first dark roughly 61 million and change it could be replaced with less principle and how could that be well uh you in refinancing the entire um two leases the entire amount that it will release some Reserve funds okay there are these Reserve funds because these are education revenue bonds through the Ida a reserve fund was required when we do certificates of participation as the district you do not need to do reserve a reserve fund and so there is a reserve fund outstanding sitting money sitting into account um it is investing you know being invested but it's available to in case the district does not make a payment on this then they would use that to make the payment but that would be freed up and
103that reduces and so we will use that to contribute to the New Deal and lower the principal the amount that you're borrowing okay so that's that and a couple other special funds we're releasing some some monies and that's why the principal is less than the original amount being refinanced the interest column uh the dark the replacing the old with the new right now unfortunately because of where the market is interest rates have shot up since January 1 of 2022 the lowest point almost in history to today they have shot up so this picture looks a little different than when we talked in the last year or two or three where rates were so the interest cost on the new transaction is likely going to be higher than the interest cost alone on the old transaction
104however we have this last column which is the fees the fee component roughly 16 million dollars remaining and so there's annual payments in addition to The Debt Service being paid as Mr Moore mentioned or showed in his diagram two dollar signs going to jmf Higley one dollar sign going to the Ida the other dollar sign is going to fees another accounts um and so we would that's an annual amount too so those amounts would be removed entirely and replaced with no annual fees through the cop issue so essentially replacing 16 million dollars of fees that were are programmed in over the next 30 Years and so with that the amount of remaining payments um which includes the various fees and restrictive fund deposits so your Capital repairs fund that you're you know that deposit you're
105making that Mr Gill mentioned that amounts to over the next 30 years of about 124 million in in change you'd be replacing that right now and again it's based on our estimated rates uh numbers that we ran about a week and a half ago uh and that'd be about 114 million so you would have roughly about 10 million dollars over the life the 30-year life of freed up general fund budget capacity cash flow capacity and that last paragraph about 365 000 a year uh of of improvement to your general fund and an additional amount likely uh because we're freeing up the capital repairs fund of a million dollars that we hope can be spent right away or at the district discretion for Capital and so roughly 10 to 11 million dollars freed up again depending
106on where the market is when we were able to lock in rates and secure and get that and get that find out what that overall interest cost is um going to the next let me just elaborate on that a little bit so that so that what that means is if we call our budget presentations right we earmark we've been earmarking 4.4 million 4.4 million basically right off the top of our budget for this payment so that would be reduced by approximately 365 000 based on current interest rates right now so you know that that can fund a number of teachers we can we can do a number of things with that which is why this deal even though interest rates are not in our favor right now it still makes sense because of the operational
107funds that we will um get back on an annual basis so um Mr Moore or either one so looking at like these big numbers like 178 million dollars was like this big so of and I get like the whole Charter funding like he's jmf Higley is that what did he make what is what is he made well the foundation itself or the foundation I I don't know if they've made they make a lot um annually on this uh but there's other fees you know so there's a developer for him is the fees that that he's able to pocket back they earn they earn a fee for managing the facilities and and you know there's facilities use agreements um this the the foundation itself does not make a lot from what I can understand s but
108there's also Annual fees for the management of the facility which is a separate entity uh there's uh fees for trustees there's the Ida fees okay going through the Ida they have a fee an annual fee it's a seven and a half basis points my recollection of the remaining Debt Service and so as you pay off debt it does go down but there's a fee annually on that there's accounting fees auditing fees and so all of that would be essentially removed yeah yeah and that 178 million that Mr Moore didn't mention in the beginning that's adding up principal interest over and all 30 years 40 Years of projected fees correct yes but in 10 years of jmf Higley having it there's had to have been some fees well yeah sure the 178 million is now down
109to 124 projected you know for the the next 30 Years right yeah you've already the district has already been paying you know for the last 10 years on this okay thank you president Keeler Mr Moore um the 365 000 does that include the administration fees and all the additional that would come off or correct that's net so that's the net if if you will general fund savings basically if you stack the three dark blue bars and then you stack the two light blue bars it's the difference between those two but then we break it down you know annually and it's roughly about 365 thousand dollars of if you will pure Savings of removing uh the fees of the old deal and you don't have fees on the new one Annual fees on a new one
110so by removing the fees by by removing some principal um that's the net savings um annually President Taylor yeah we like the present value dollars and so 30 year 10 million dollars of you know savings over 30 30 years amounts to roughly about a million bucks just under a million dollars on a present value basis in today's dollars if you will that's a financing term but we like to you know our in our world that's how we you know the the value of this is roughly about a million bucks now if we lock in rates a month from now or whenever rates in January or February if they are dipping lower than what we just ran a week and a half ago that number will go up your savings will be higher it'll be more
111than 365 000 a year and in fact if you are we ready to go to the next slide yeah um rates this this is a snapshot of where the municipal Market rates are about a week ago as of uh November 4th in the bottom left corner there bottom right pardon me um and as of today I believe rates have just dropped about 15 and 20 basis points so that 4.08 at the very top that's the 30-year rate is now about 20 basis points less so about a 3.9 let's call it 3.9 percent now this is the Triple A Market so these are issuers who are rated AAA not a lot of issues are rated AAA but everything prices off of this Benchmark so this is the general level of where rates are when they go
112up or down everything trades off of that so we would be applying for a rating for your district for the for this lease okay typically lease purchases are one notch lower than your general obligation Bond ratings your general obligation Bond rating uh is a double A minus I believe and so we're hoping and that you'll be in the a plus category on this lease and that's how we've structured in estimated rates at this point those rates would be higher than what you're seeing here because that's what a triple A borrower can get everybody else below that double a single a actually pays a little bit more and so we've priced it in at an A plus if you will and we hope that that's what we'll lock in in terms for rating president Kaylor can
113either of you because you have lots of experience in this as well had we done this on our own what would we have paid for these two middle schools oh boy I that's a that's a very difficult question to answer mainly because that um I think the original thought was to do a 25-year you know Ida deal and then when the overrides didn't pass I think they stretched it out to 40 years I'm not so sure that we would have recommended if we were hired to do you know a lease on on its own with the district we would have recommended going out 40 years I mean well so it's a very difficult way it's hard to do a comparison if you will what does it average cost to build oh so you're talking about
114the construction dollars yeah that I mean what was the the amount that the district borrowed was I believe 70 plus million you know that uh you know that you did fund a reserve fund you could subtract about three and a half million from there you did have a couple other things additional payments and fees and all that but you know what was the pure Construction contract I don't know it's probably North of 60 million yeah yeah and at the time in those dollars I'm not I don't know what middle schools cost back then but I'm yeah I'm not sure they were that much it would have been significantly less potentially yeah that's that's I'm not a construction expert but I mean this route cost us a lot more than it should it was all packaged
115to the developer who put this whole package together and helped the district hire the the contractor and put the foundation together and work with the Ida and made it look sort of Charter school-esque if you will okay thank you thanks Mike uh so looking looking at a timeline um as you know this is a we're bringing this as an information item um uh Mr Gill mentioned uh you know preparing a resolution for the governing board on December 14th that resolution is is flexible and that it would give us some time to either watch the market and make sure make the most fiduciary response you know I guess action uh in terms of exercising this cop steel and making sure that is still beneficiary benefiting the district and we're not making a deal that would financially
116put us in a worser situation so um it does provide a resolution uh approved on December 14th would provide us approximately six months of time in terms of executing this agreement it'd be within the fiscal year we would not extend past fiscal year 23 but that is the general financing timeline there's also several other things going on during this we would have credit rating calls we would be out in the market selling bonds so there's other dates on this schedule but this is a high level look and that is all I have so if there's any questions we'll be happy to president Keeler Mr Moore I just have one question or one right now um I just heard words like think and like we have them but we or we think we have them we're
117not sure so do we have anything in writing from jmf Higley at all saying that they'll do this or where are we with that I think we're we have verbal um and I know Mr Gill is working on executing in a a written documentation maybe you can speak to that yeah a good question uh Madam president members of the board uh yeah we do have email exchanges uh with uh the foundation and their Council where they've agreed to the to the term so to speak um both the uh release of the capital repairs fund to the district and uh building in flexibility for the option agreements but so what I was as Tyler mentioned what I was hoping to do was your the boards the district's formal Direction um to to both the foundation slash
118borrower and the Ida and the trustee we would build into that instruction uh Direction um those terms so that would be so they would accept the the change in terms we would have um either amendments or amended and restated option agreements for both my real estate partner will work on those and uh yeah we won't go forward unless we have that but you know we pretty well have it in hand just at least in as Tyler mentioned verbally over Zoom meetings and in person as well I believe as well as written emails so I'm comfortable with that president kaler Mr Moore I want to thank you for the hard work I this has been something I moved to Arizona in 2012 in the summer of 2012 and this was something that we've heard about since
119December of 2012 these leases and what happened here um since I joined the board four years ago this was something that has always been payment paying of the lease paying of the lease paying of the lease and I'm excited to see that we're working on something and not staying stagnant with our previous agreement so I thank you because I know this probably took a lot of work on all three members who spoke here today on their behalf because this was not a normal lease agreement so I thank you president uh Mr Moore I just the capitals repair fund that we're allowed to not use right okay right we're not allowed not allowed yes um it's only for it's only for it's only for specific things right it is what it was correct yeah in that
120original agreement um there was a 40-year schedule for Capital repairs and uh I don't know how you anticipate what you'll your buildings will need over 40 years so um we have submitted requests um they have been denied because they weren't a part of that 40-year Capital replacement plan which is why we haven't been able to touch that money and why it's accrued um it was a part of the original deal we we signed the deal and so Mr Gale has we've worked with jmf Higley to try to get requests out of that but you know they have stuck uh strong with that deal we get the roof huh did we get the recent roof repair yeah so that so the saucepan roofed the 600 000 that was part of the capital repairs um so their
12140-year maintenance schedule um that was one thing that was up this year uh which is why they granted that um granted we have done a number of other things on those buildings uh with our own internal budget um so it frustrates me that we still have to send off 350 000 to them to sit on the money but um they did approve the the roof um but the next thing on that list would be a couple years out and I think it was Windows which from our facilities director they are not in need of repair so it just shows the the Ridiculousness of that 40-year maintenance schedule so just so the public understands too that we've asked and not been able to use the money or right correct correct so it's not like they're paying
122for our maintenance fees or anything correct okay president kaler in addition to that we're also paying them to um what was it uh maintain well there's there's a management fee management which they don't have anyone managing our schools so um to put it in perspective it helped me so we have the debt but we don't have the asset because someone else owns our buildings and we're leasing them what you're asking to do is refinance them and then we will still have debt obviously but then we have the asset of them because they would be ours in the overall scheme of things yes a bank still holds them but right now they're I mean just like a mortgage I mean we own our homes but we pay a mortgage so technically a bank owns them until
123it's paid but you have the the asset of that we don't even have that asset because there's somebody in between us uh under the under the new agreement excuse me the district would own both the real property and the improvements you would then ground lease uh the real property and improvements to a trustee uh possibly UMB the current trustee but possibly another bank and then um they would lease to you for a 30-year period your buildings but it doesn't change the fact that you would you own them you own them they have an interest the bank does a leasehold interest for the 30 years to secure the financing for the benefit of the of the future of the cup holders that's the security but but you do own um there's no question that you own
124both the improvements and the real property so like I said similar to a mortgage Banks holding it technically it's theirs until you pay it off but here as it stands now it's someone else yeah that's true so that at least we gain that that part of it as in addition to to saving some money and it also doesn't mean that in the future if we're back at historically low interest rates that it's not something that can't be refinanced in the future and again save additional money with lower interest rates true right you wouldn't be locked into a 30-year financing you would most likely have a 10-year option to prepay is that what we would expect okay so yeah you could look at it down the road okay um something you said and I'm trying to
125remember oh the the money that we would agree to get back that's going to primarily the focus will be for those schools as that money has been intended for so we would look at using that where we need them at those schools is that correct correct yeah and if you recall on the 22 boundary polls that we didn't put any Capital money in there because um the intention was at the time the lease or would be funding those Capital needs so the money that the current balance in there would be utilized at those two schools to fund some of the out there's some outdated maintenance needs there um yeah that would stay within those two schools which then frees up other money for other schools that to meet their needs correct yeah well and this
126was intended for those schools as well so we would honor that purpose correct but we're right now having to pay for stuff out of our regular budget because we can't it doesn't fit in their timeline so it would we'd be able to address other issues that need to be addressed at those schools with this money and therefore it frees up other money in our budget to take care of some other things within the district yep yeah and around Robin way yeah we could free up other operational Capital dollars to emphasize some of other Capital needs across the district thank you very much 11 million dollar savings over 30 years is a good deal at this point so um it's uh it's been a lot of work for you I know and we appreciate all the
127hard work you've put into this Tyler I know you um worked hard for us as well as our attorneys and we are grateful as well so I think this is coming back to you December 14th again coming back to us December 14th for a resolution about so I encourage you if you have any questions or concern board members please reach out to Mr Moore and get those sorted out before that meeting all right we are moving on we are going to our uh 2022 2023 this is 6.5 classroom site fund plan review uh we will be voting on this as well tonight but this has been a discussion prior with our prior HR director and making sure that this site fund monies was put into our base salary for our teachers and so this is
128just the um kind of the sum of that and again I believe this is Mr Moore yes yeah if I may president Kaylee remembers the board I'll just make a couple comments I might go into too much detail but you'll see the red line version here um a lot of the changes uh we're done with Miss Martins and the meeting conferred team um but so formally the classroom site fund was formerly prop 301 and if you remember in our budget conversations that proposition uh expired in 2021 but our legislator and our governor um Extended that and made that uh six cent sales tax into law and that now expires 2041. so we do have this funding all the way through 2041 but is now called the classroom site fund and so a lot of our
129language in here is aligning to that during that legislature that legislative action they did add the ability to extend beyond just classroom teachers so we did modify our language to include some educational professionals that do support our classrooms within our classroom site fund plan in addition the other big change was they moved to Danielson so the paper performance part in here is now reflective of our new evaluation system so but those are the high level changes if there's any questions I'll do my best to answer but you've seen this several times in several different different initiatives where we've tried to increase pay specifically to the base and that's represented in this plan here president kaler thank you for pushing this forward that we get to vote on it tonight so then our teachers and staff
130get this or our teachers get this before uh Christmas and before that big holiday so they have that money yeah and in consent you did approve the first the 1500 if you scroll back up to the first page um that was in consent you did approve that tonight so any other questions or concerns for Mr Moore okay I know our teachers are going to appreciate this moving on to 6.6 we have an amended amendment to policy KB which is our parental involvement in education and again this is going to be it's Mrs Richards sorry president Kaylor members of the board as you know the Arizona school boards Association provided updates on several policies through the policy advisory committee in August of 2022. this includes policy KB parental involvement in education where the purpose of the
131policy was clearly defined it states that the governing board adopts this policy to provoke the involvement of parents and guardians of children enrolled in the school district the governing board recognizes parents rights is codified in the parents Bill of Rights 1-601 1-602 and in Arizona's other codified codifications of parents rights as stated in title 15 of the Arizona revised statutes as a district we request the support of the governing board for the set data policy and bring it to the Forefront this evening a key aspect of this policy is an updated definition of parent within this specific context for the policy KB parental involvement in education parent means the natural or adoptive parent or legal guardian of a minor child and one thing we know in Piggly is we got the best parents in the
132world and they're very involved I want Dr treat to provide some additional insights to the process that was used in reviewing this policy and recommending updates thank you very much uh president kaler members of the board one of the important things to remember is these policy updates the language has influenced of course by state law and it's very important that we always remind ourselves that we don't do this work in a vacuum but we have Regional peer districts and it's important to see what our regional peer districts are doing and the way that they're handling this language and these opportunities to make changes as well so I've had an opportunity to go ahead and do some research with our neighbors around here and I can tell you that districts like Maricopa Tempe Union High School
133District Chandler Chandler Unified School District Kyrene Tippy Elementary have all accepted this language and they have recently just in the last two months made the same types of changes that we're proposing while the other districts the mesas and the Gilberts and the Scottsdale's and queen Creeks of the world are in the same process where we are right now so it's important to note that we are uh staying in step with what our regional peers are doing and also affirming our support for parent rights here in the Higley Unified School District thank you Dr treat and not only that we also look at asba we look at our attorneys we we run this through the whole gamut before it comes to our desk and so we very much appreciate the background that goes into a policy
134before it even makes it to us and we have plenty of time we are given our board packets over the weekend so that we're able to read everything ask any questions get clarification so by the time a policy reaches this moment which will be in a couple that we vote on it it's really gone through the ringer so I appreciate the work that we do on policy here in Higley and your right parents parental rights is a Hot Topic hot conversation out there and so thank you for getting this to us as soon as you could appreciate it thank you and with that we have one more policy tonight and this one is going to be 6.7 amendment to policy IMD School ceremonies and observances and this is from Mr Walker tonight thank you president
135Candler members of the board uh we're seeking board's approval tonight to amend policy IMD School ceremonies and observations based on asba recommendation that was rooted from HB 2707 which is also known as the moment of silence law that amends ARS 15-506 subsection A6 where it adds additional language that clarifies and specifies how long the moment of silence needs to be and then what the role and responsibility of the teacher in the classroom is your questions concerns no that's it thank you again again policies are going through our policy committee weekly and we appreciate the background that goes into them before they reach us so with that we are going to go and move on to some action items [Music] but we are going to do 7.1 first I move that the governing board approved the
136classroom site fund plan for the fiscal year 2022 2023. second I doubt there's any questions or concerns all those in favor aye aye motion carries five zero next up we have 7.2 thank you I move that the governing board waived the second reading of this policy and approve policy KB as presented second all those in favor aye motion carries five zero 7.3 I move that the governing board again waived the second reading of this policy and approve policy IMD second all those in favor aye I I motion carries five zero 7.4 we had a presentation at our last board meeting on our preschool rates being proposed updated here's a little picture of what's Happening is for everybody to remember thank you you can remove that thanks Nate so I moved that the governing board approved
137the 2023 2024 rates for preschool as attached second questions concerns or comments all those in favor aye aye all those not in favor all those the abstain I abstain from that boat motion carries four one four zero sorry one is Sting four zero Christine Mrs Zimmerman knew it to write All Right Moving On 7.5 I moved at the governing board approves the 2023-2024 rates for kids club as attached second questions comments all those in favor I I most all those abstain I abstain from that vote thank you motion carries four zero one of steam all right moving on we are going to ask the board is there anything that you would like to see on any future agenda items Dr Foley had to step out tonight for her son's performance um but I'm sure that
138Mrs Richards or anybody else could take information go ahead Mrs Anderson I'm not sure if this is the right spot for it but I was just curious as we receive information that has been brought forward within like a year or two and brought this previous board meeting if on the agendas that they could State the meeting date at which it had been brought forward I don't know if that's something and try not because I'm not clear I'm so sorry [Laughter] so sorry whenever we're given information items or information and it says well we previously this was brought forth previously at another board meeting I was wondering on the agenda if it could state that board meeting date so that we don't have to try digging our public doesn't have to try to go searching of
139when that occurred and I don't know if we want to put a limitation on that or if it's something that's agreed upon again I'm not sure if this is the right spot to request that but I was just making an update to our our agenda or our so normally if there's a sorry normally if we have an action item on a vote of something it's going to be the board meeting prior but that does not always happen so if it's not the board meeting prior exactly is that what you're asking for something that if it's yes because sometimes gosh I am so sorry information items address things that have occurred meetings ago so to answer your question I guess yes if it's not a previous meeting vice president Anderson and members of the board we
140can definitely make a note of that because it it makes sense to me if it was last month or whatever I'm not going to remember what date so thank you you're welcome okay anything else I'm afraid to talk all right is that better we're almost done so it doesn't really matter we're we're going to take a little uh 10 minute break and we are going to then have a work study our work studies was something that we did prior to covid where we would break out into a work study covet hit we kind of got into the habit of doing everything in our kind of general meeting but we are going back to our work studies it's a it's a nicer conversation on certain topics that we like to have this will not be live
141streamed but again the public is always welcome to attend our work studies if they so choose tonight we are going to be doing a suicide risk management so again a 10-minute recess and then we will be a journey from our meeting in our work study thank you and have a good night