001good evening i'm going to call this meeting to order dr foley roll call please president keller members of the board please let the records show that board members are present mrs reese is unable to join us this evening yes thank you very much we are going to have a moment of silence and i'd like for the higley family to keep the family of rodney young in their thoughts and prayers right now and then that will be followed by the pledge of allegiance we love a full house welcome everyone um i move that we approve the agenda second all those any questions all those in favor aye aye motion carries 4-0 we're going to move on to one of our favorite parts of our meetings and that's the superintendent's report president kaler members of the board
002we're going to start with one of our very favorite things we have lots of celebrations but tonight we're going to start with points of pride and we're going to invite the administration from bridges mr bickle and mr berg to come up and help us celebrate our bobcat points of pride yeah thank you dr foley okay president kaler vice president anderson members of the board cabinet dr foley thank you for this opportunity i would like to invite up aaron fonsbeck for our first point of pride [Applause] mrs fonzbeck is a second grade teacher on our campus and she is one of the most incredible human beings one can encounter and we are lucky enough to have her at bridges mrs fonsbeck's classroom is built upon a foundation of relationships as she strives to ensure every single
003student is loved and cared for every single year sitting atop the relational foundation is aaron's ability to deliver top-notch engaging and differentiated instruction day in and day out students in mrs fonsbeck's classroom grow immensely every single year and it's due to her ability to meet their individual needs as she does so in a manner that helps foster love for learning around campus mrs fonsbeck has forged lasting relationships friendships and has garnered the respect of her peers personally i know i can always count on aaron's words of encouragement and positivity making the tough days feel a little lighter and that's happened a lot lately so thank you aaron fonsbeck is stellar and beyond deserving of being the bridges elementary certified point of pride this school year thank you aaron so we have a gift for you
004and a certificate oh you got this okay you got him okay great i'm behind yes who would you like or who did you bring with you today i brought my husband travis and three of our five kids um elise burnley and kate [Applause] former bobcats too [Applause] next i would like to invite up michaela lewis [Applause] michaela lewis has had the pleasure of serving as the bridges elementary school pto president throughout throughout the last two years and if you weren't watching there's been some things going on so mckellar has helped pull our staff through these tumultuous two years despite the challenges presented recently she has demonstrated strong leadership fantastic communication skills flexibility and exemplary creativity resulting in our campus having one of the best pto school relationships and success i have ever seen our pto
005has been instrumental in helping us innovatively take strides to return to normal through community events fundraisers restaurant nights and teacher appreciation activities that have been thoughtfully planned and perfectly executed your attention to detail is immaculate mckellar's impact in all of these realms have been has been nothing short of extraordinary as she has kept the pto intact functioning and flourishing during this challenging time i and the bridge's staff look forward to hopefully working with mckellar for many more years congratulations michelle on being our point of pride [Applause] my whole family my husband and then i've got two at bridges one at saseman uh preschool and then i've got one at soseman middle school and one at higley high so all of us [Applause] congratulations you [Applause] [Music] miss donna hagen please come up [Applause] so i
006have the pleasure of introducing donna she is our admin clerk here at bridges i still remember during donna's interview for the administrative clerk position she shared us uh with us at her previous job that they called her mama donna well donna is continually demonstrating that this name perfectly suits her as she has adopted about 740 bridges students donna's innate ability to build relationships is on display each and every day as students and parents come into the office donna truly cares about all students and does whatever is needed for them over the past few years don is also becoming known as the horse whisperer the sub whisperer i'm sorry i believe that i'm sorry the sub whisper oh yeah yeah i messed that up um so using her friendly positive caring demeanor she works miracles almost
007every day to make sure we we have enough substitute teachers i appreciate all of your hard work and energy you put into making sure the teachers students and parents needs are met thank you for everything you do for the bridges community [Applause] thank you everyone i brought my husband over there who's taking pictures hi my daughter's home sick thank you so much [Music] [Applause] and our student point of pride winner is jacob richardson [Applause] jacob is an extremely hard-working student who is excelling in all areas of his studies jacob always has a positive outlook and a positive attitude towards school he advocates for himself to achieve his goals but also helps others to achieve their their goals he is caring kind responsible and a friend to everyone he always has a smile on his face
008he is a great example to his peers at school as he sets an example of excellence in behavior cooperation and is thoughtful in his interactions with others jacob makes every class he is in better we are honored to have students like jacob at bridges great job jacob [Applause] thank you to all my parents and everyone who supported me thus [Applause] thank far [Applause] okay thank you bridges now we're excited to have hta we're gonna have miss bacon and mrs day come on up so that we can celebrate hca [Applause] and i will help hold i'll help hold i'm happy to help president kaler members of the board good evening i'm karen bacon i'm the proud principal of higley traditional academy losing my voice but um yeah i'm here tonight we're here tonight to recognize four
009valuable members of our team um we could not do it without them our entire team is amazing these four people sort of deserve an exceptional recognition this evening so i would like to start with christine zimmerman [Applause] christine is our office manager and custodian and bus bus organizer and picture lady and dot dot dot right everything in the world um she's been our office manager at hta and she's the most deserving of this recognition and she is the glue that holds us together in the front office she's kind and patient very patient with me knowledgeable she makes exceptional effort to ensure that things run smoothly with our budget i am the best spender in the district um obtaining coverage for classrooms ensuring that staff members have what they need as far as supplies and other
010requests and she's such an important member of our team we're so grateful that she's at hta so you want to talk about who you brought with you tonight let's let everybody clap for you first so um i brought my husband and my two kids with me who both have already graduated from williamsfield so we're a higley family thank you okay [Music] [Applause] all right i'm gonna go ahead i'm amanda day the assistant principal at hta and i get the privilege of announcing our teacher for points of pride and it is miss nicole payne come on up [Applause] congratulations so in the short time that i've been at hta um miss payne has gone above and beyond for her students academically behaviorally any idea i throw at her she is like let's do it let's go
011and she just is so open-minded to everything that we put in front of her so i appreciate your hard work and your dedication and i want to share a little bit more about what miss payne's classroom looks like and how committed she is to her students so the students in nicole's classroom absolutely flourish she meets the needs of each one of her students with her differentiated teaching practices and her data proves it year after year she is masterful at building strong and positive relationships with her students their families and our team here on campus she can often be found writing personal notes to her students leaving gifts or inspirational yard signs in front of their yards for her students just because nicole is an amazing teacher and a beautiful person inside and out and we
012are super lucky to have you [Applause] oh sure so i brought my mom and my sister and my son [Applause] spencer cutest clothes [Applause] our next point of pride for hta is our pto president jen keys [Applause] jen and i have known each other for a really long time we used to teach together in another district not to be named but she is an amazing pto president because she's a teacher and she gets how schools operate and she supports us every every day she is our president that has served on our board for a number of years being an educator herself she knows the unique needs of a school and she's able to share her knowledge and expertise with our parents support community she's always looking for ways to enhance our school experience for our
013families embraces opportunities to serve students and staff thank you jennifer for all you do to help it make hta a very special place [Applause] and her student at my school is in sixth grade so i have to let her go next year who do you have no i have the hca staff here with me [Applause] all right now we have a special student that we want to recognize for points of pride so mr dylan abbott come on up here [Applause] all right so we are going to read about dylan and what a rock star he is in class do you want to tell them what grade you're in okay what grade are you in first grade so dylan's teacher mrs wubanev said that dylan is definitely among the most genuinely hardworking respectful and kind young
014men that she has ever had the pleasure of teaching in her career dylan loves to learn and it shows in everything that he does when she begins a new topic dylan lights up with a huge smile and she can see the light bulbs going on almost immediately his hand shoots up his eyes begin to twinkle and the most thoughtful ideas take flight in our classroom his thoughts ignite ideas and before long we have prepared a whole unit of study in class congratulations dylan for being hta's student points of pride all right so dylan is going to share with you who he brought tonight okay okay um i'm with my parents my sister and my grandma [Applause] all right we're gonna take a picture [Applause] thank you points of pride this is our favorite part of
015the night but here's what we also say to families we know you have a busy night and lots going on so you are more than welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting however we also know you have busy days and school is still happening tomorrow so if you'd like to leave at this time please feel free to do so and thank you for joining us tonight and we'll join the rest we'll be beginning again in just a little bit [Music] hmm um president kaler members of the board as we look to the upcoming month we are happy to share that next week we begin our spring break on the second week of our spring break we're also thrilled to share that we are hosting the gilbert state of the town address that will
016be at hcpa and i know several of you will be joining me there we're delighted to host this um and april is the next month coming up is super busy we have a board retreat where your administrative team is really excited to share with you the update on the progress that has been happening district-wide on several key initiatives and there will be lots of updates to share we also have our board meeting and as we begin um to in the end of april during the week of teacher appreciation we'll be celebrating our teacher of the year so lots coming up these are just a few highlights um but that concludes the superintendent's report with upcoming events thank you dr foley we're going to move on to board comments mrs wilson or mrs schultz michelle you
017want to go first okay hear me now okay i had the opportunity um along with uh president kaler um to attend the chinese new year celebration a little delayed this year and it was amazing to see all those kids back on the stage and see the dragon not one but three times and we had town council members uh who attended which was awesome um as well as admin and it was a great event and i'm so happy it's back and i also miss richards love the um activities and the food trucks that happened beforehand this year and then i also was able to attend uh the cheer for the elementary uh kids cheer and um that was amazing it was overflowing at williams field with parents from every single school the cheer program has grown
018so much my daughter's in sixth grade and when she was in kindergarten it was small and now there's at least 20 30 kids on each one of the teams and so it's amazing to see everyone and the best buddies carnival which miss wilson and president taylor and i were able to attend on this past friday at higley and that was an amazing event it was a little bit windy and so some of the tents had to go but it was a wonderful event to be able to see that president kaler i was able to go to gateway point their family fun night last wednesday and that was an absolute fabulous event with so many parents and so many kids there if they filled their little courtyard full sorry i don't know what's going on with
019my mic i just want to thank gateway for all the hard work and the teachers and everyone who stopped out because it was fantastic thank you yes springtime there's a lot of events we could go to a different event every single night of the week so any chance we can get out there and see the fruition of all of your hard work we are grateful we are going to go on to request to speak and we have several speakers tonight so let's get started we value input from our constituents this time has been set aside for anyone from the audience who wishes to address the board please remember this is not an appropriate venue to evaluate discuss or criticize district personnel policy keb provides a process for complaints about personnel speakers should be aware that
020false statements about individuals may result in civil liability members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda therefore pursuant to ars 38-431.01h action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for further consideration and decision at a later date and please make sure you limit your remarks to just three minutes we're going to start tonight with cason platt [Music] you may come forward cason hi um i just was made aware of this meeting and i just wanted to talk about my teacher mr prazo andrew perazo and i wanted to let know that this has deeply affected higley's student board and i've never been to one of these i don't know if
021i'm really supposed to talk about what but i just would like everybody to know that he has impacted his community deeply in the way he cares about his students and the way that he's made sure that we are taken care of in everything and all that we need and i've never seen any teacher advocate for mental health the way this man has and i have never felt so hurt in the way like he speaks to me and the way that he speaks to all of his students he makes sure that we are cared about and that he gives us slack for what we need in our day-to-day lives and i have never in all 12 years i'm a senior and i've never felt like any any teacher has ever wanted to understand me and he
022he does and he greets me with a smile every single day and i have i i want him to make sure that we he knows that whether he comes back to higley or other action is taken but we care about perazzo we want him to stick around and that's that's my statement thank you next up we have kaden crosby good afternoon um i'm also speaking on the same topic i just want to give a little insight on who perazzo is and how great of a man he is a great family man so hello i'm a senior at higley high school and i'm up here today to get background on andrew perazzo all these students that are with me today are here with me in support of this wonderful teacher but he did not feel like
023a teacher to us in my 12 years of school not one teacher has impacted me the way pirazzo has and i know past classmates and many others could say the same now kids dread school and is a known fact and it'll always be one but a teacher like perazzo breaks a barrier between just being a teacher and being a friend he's a mentor and someone people look forward to seeing every day my least favorite class in school was english it's always been i've never been an english guy okay i've always been a math math nerd okay and i just never found it fun it was one of those classes i wish i did not have to take but mr prazov changed my narrative on english somehow it turned into the only class i looked forward
024to i remember when i got my schedule and i got andrew perazo i was more than excited i heard nothing but good things about him past classmates made him seem like the most amazing person they have ever met from having him from from having him for this school year they were not lying he's a family man involved in his church and lets us know he loves us loves us as students no one is perfect and these words and all the other students may not change the outcome but all we ask is that you please put our thoughts into consideration thank you for letting me speak today and appreciate your time thank you [Applause] young men and women i know it's not easy to come to a board meeting to speak so we thank you for
025your input we're going to move on we have mr charles warner did you want to go last mr warner did you want to go last oh i'm okay okay well then i printed off my notes and left them on my desk hi president kaler governing board members superintendent uh fowler and cabinet members my name is charles warner i teach high school at uh i teach math at williamsfield high school that's my 21st year in the district we've had five superintendents five hr directors i've worked under eight principles god only knows how many assistants um in three different schools and i've been on meet and confer for about the past 10 off and on for 10 plus years [Music] through that time i've seen that the the the district grow and really heal from some times
026of like posturing and politicking and that kind of thing to a real sense of community and sense of cooperation and i appreciate that i know that hea one of our main goals is to attract and retain the best teachers admin and support staff anywhere and i want to work next to the very best teachers at my school every day and i i really believe that the the issue you're considering an item eight three is showing that how much you care about the teachers and the staff and and admin and um will do a lot for making this more of a destination place and district and recruiting than it is a uh like a stepping stone to higher places so again thank you for the opportunity of being here and for all you do and service
027to our community thank you mr warner next up we have lori pasqual did i say that right i hope pascal good evening and thank you for allowing me to share my story with you my name is lori pasqual and this is my 22nd year of teaching my first 13 years was in virginia and back then there were salary steps yay to a yearly bonus then came the salary freezes the rifts maybe a one and two percent raise here and there and then i relocated to arizona almost 10 years ago and yes all of these years i've been at the same school here in higley despite knowing that i would take a significant pay cut i accepted the job in higley because well i believed in what was coming for the district and yes i do
028love my job since 2018 things have really changed in such a positive way i feel that the perceptions of a teacher's job and the value of a good teacher has really changed for the better there has been such an increase of support from our wonderful parents our administrators the school board our pto and all of the teachers who continue to be there for each other one year in in and out each and every year through the good and the bad i just wanted to say thank you for all of your continued support to keep such great teachers that are here with us and as they can be almost like a second family so thank you [Applause] thank you so much next up i have jessica d'ambrosio hi everyone madam president born cabinet my name is
029jessica dambrozio i've been a teacher for 17 years i started my first three in scottsdale but i've been at higley traditional academy for the last 14 years i absolutely love everything that higley is i've watched it grow we bought in 2008 in higley park from chandler and made our way over here as the community developed and now i live across from what is now going to be epicenter so i'm super jazzed about that i have two sons one is a freshman at williamsfield the other is a seventh grader at cooley and i just have to say that i love higley i love everything about where i live where i work who i work for and who i work with so i wanted to say thank you to each and every one of you tonight for
030just putting such an investment of your time your energy your thoughts your prayers for teachers for students for administration i wouldn't have known it 17 years ago but some of my very best friends are the people that i get to work out or work with day in and day out and it's not just because they're cool or they're fun to laugh with it's because we all have this shared investment in these little people that may or may not remember us you know in 20 years i hope they do but um i just wanted to say thank you um i know what goes into teaching and what keeps teachers teaching and it's supportive administration who you know really my administrator could do my job hands down i could never do her job what she has miss
031bacon has had for the last two years through unnerving times with nervous parents had to gracefully respond to i'm just really impressed with her with melissa garland who was our assistant principal before for years and now amanda day so there's a there's a unity between each and every one of us and we we work off of each other so i know there's some really big agenda items today and i'm just asking that you continue to support us and help retain really good teachers and amazing administrators so thank you for all you do and thank you for your time thank you [Applause] mrs lisa lewandowski good evening president kaler members of the board dr foley cabinet my name is lisa lewandowski and i am a math teacher at higley high school i have been for a
032little more than 19 years and a proud member of aga for about that same amount of time i am really proud to serve on the meet and confer team and we have such an outstanding team this year i'm really proud of them the level of collaboration is just amazing we go in every time we meet with this shared goal that higley is the best place for students to learn the best place for teachers to work and i think we've done a lot of good work this year and i'm just really proud to be a part of that i want to thank you for all your hard work i know that what you do and what you probably have to put up with can be very difficult sometimes and so i just want to thank you
033for that i want to thank you for considering agenda item 8.2 and specifically the raise that's in there i think it would just go even further to make this really a district that wants to attract and keep the best teachers and we have some outstanding teachers i'm very proud to work with them and i'm just proud to be a member of this district and i just want to thank you for your consideration on that and your hard work thank you thank you [Applause] heather balch hello good evening governing board president mrs kaler um board members cabinet dr foley thank you all for having me here my name is heather balsh i'm a speech language pathologist and i've been in our district for 19 years i have one graduate from higley high and a 10th grader
034over there as well i wanted to share with you how fortunate i feel to work in our district higley unified school district is unique in how well the higley education association which i am a very proud member of works with our district administration our hea members focus on improving the work environment for our certified educators as well as our support staff the relationship between the members of our meet and confer team has been extremely beneficial this year for all of our employees we have worked diligently to make positive changes for all for the future for this year and for the years to come and i thank you for cultivating such a positive relationship between our education association and our administration here in the district tonight the board has the opportunity to vote to approve a
035seven percent raise for teachers that is like yay we've got to just scream um and it's for all employees which is huge in the past certain groups have have not received equitable raises and that kind of leaves you feeling a little bit crummy and i was one of those at one point but this raise would just create equity across all of our employees which is just huge and says a lot for our district this is extremely important to people who work outside the traditional classroom like me but have a similar impact on our education of our students uh thank you in advance for voting yes and on behalf of everyone who works with our students our community and our higley education association thank you all thank you [Applause] tina quinones good evening president kaler board
036members dr foley and cabinet members my name is tina quinones i'm a sixth grade math teacher at chaparral elementary and i've worked for our district for about 20 years i'm here to speak about the agenda item 8.3 which specifically mentions the seven percent raises for all our staff we have a great meet and confer team that is committed and works very hard to do what's best for our district and for all its staff members and which includes our students also the seven percent um array shows all other districts um as well as our own staff and our own community that higley unified school district values their teachers values their support for support professionals staff and of course our administrators who without great leaders we can't have great schools so it's been a rough couple of
037years and all our staff all of our staff support our support supporting professionals our admin and all our teachers have been here daily supporting each other doing what's best again for schools for our districts for our students and for each other other districts and their staff are seeing what higley is doing they've been seeing it for the past few years since redford and where june and i were on aea calls and we're in this little higley district don't say a whole lot of it's nice when they're asking what is happening at higley and when we're being talked about in a very positive way people are asking what higley is doing for their teachers for their support staff for administration and i think that's that says a lot please vote yes for the seven percent raise
038for all our staff for our teachers our supporting professionals and for administration thank you thank you [Applause] next up we have jill skulrud good evening president koehler vice president anderson board members dr foley cabinet members thank you for having me here i am jill skalrood i am a teacher at this wonderful district while i was teaching here we ended up moving to yuma and when we moved back we looked to come back not just to work in hindi but to live in higley because higley is very important to us two of our children have graduated from higley our kids were involved i i teach orchestra at i'm a traveling teacher so i'm actually at three of our schools and i'm also a member of the meet and confer team and i'm also here to speak
039about agenda item 8.2 which specifically mentions the seven percent raise to all staff our mean comfort team as you've already heard has worked very hard this year and i'm so thankful for the opportunity we have had to come up with such a plan that will benefit all staff this will make us even more competitive in recruiting and retaining quality teachers administrators paraprofessionals office staff bus drivers lunch people everyone that make up our amazing schools i know for myself the seven percent raise would mean not having to work a second job as i currently do and i'll be leaving to go to in just a few minutes we would become one of the most attractive districts as we recognize how important every one is please vote yes for our seven percent raise show your support in
040a very tangible way to all our staff especially after all the additional workload since returning to in-person schools in september 2020 you know as you know we have been back long before most other schools in our state and our nation and this raise speaks loudly that higley unified school district is the place to be go team higley thank you thank you [Applause] and june blaine good evening president kaler board members dr foley cabinet members my name is june blaine i've been employed in the higley district for almost two decades and i'm here tonight to encourage you to vote yes on the proposed salary increase this evening i would also like to publicly thank the meet and confer team for the continuous work that is done to improve working conditions benefits and compensation for staff i
041feel the meet and confer team has always had an end goal of making all district employees feel valued by voting yes on the proposed salary increase you are sending a clear message that we are valued thank you for your time and consideration [Applause] thank you all for speaking tonight and um yeah we're gonna keep moving on any other comments i move that we approve consent agenda item 6.1 to 6.12 second any questions or comments concerning consent let's go um in the consent agenda there is uh um an overnight travel for um uh deca in here that goes against ergo's is a making an exception to a policy that the board put in place to allow more school days um but there are exceptions to this policy depending on what's happening and what's going on that
042the board can make so that's what we're voting on now so despite it being a policy for a couple days we are voting to make it an exception any other comments or questions all those in favor aye aye is that all motion carries 4-0 all right we have a couple information items first we're going to start with mr tyler moore show again here he is 7.1 uh good evening president kaler and members of the board i have a very brief presentation as our second review of our capital outlay budget this extends just a little bit on the first review that we did back on february 9th and i just have a few updates so again some of the highlights of the 2023 capital budget include no anticipated additional covert relief funding uh we talked about
043this we fully exhausted any cover to release funding that we've had and the existing covered relief funding with sr3 has been already budgeted for and so we don't anticipate any new covered relief funding affecting either our mno budget or our capital budget going into next fiscal year second we are realizing an increase of average daily membership and as you know that is how our budget is state budget is funded by average daily membership we saw an increase of approximately 2.2 percent that not only affects our m o budget but it affects our capital budget as well so we should see a slight increase in our capital budget on third district additional assistance also known as capital has been fully restored by the governor for the second year in a row as noted when we started
044to look at the aggregate exponential limit this was one of the issues that was pushing that state limit above its exceeded threshold but again this is just fully restored back to the 2008 2009 recession error cuts um so we just now have um been fully restored back to those um 2809 levels number five there we're reversing the plans to reduce the mno to capital transfer this refers to the lease payment in which we proposed in the 2021 bond but we are now since that bond was unsuccessful we are now reverting back to how the district has previously paid for those leases which is a transfer from our mno budget to capital and that's to the tune of approximately 4.4 million and the last one we are emphasizing a reduced capital carry forward so we're allocating
045our capital budget to nintendo cap intended capital needs and i'll go over that on the next slide here so as presented on a february 9th meeting this is our entire capital budget for fiscal year 2023. we've already covered those details in in great detail so i will just allude to some of the highlights that we presented the biggest budget items are um about middle of the page and major projects you'll see approximately 10 million allocated for the that's the higley high school classroom edition um that is currently in the design phase and we have now had three community meetings we still have one more community meeting that's on march 30th from 6 to 7 p.m if you move your way down the list from the first column you'll see a total expenditure budget of 20.9
046million that does include both the building lease payment and the carry forward going into next year and again we do anticipate bringing this budget down next year we anticipate a capital budget of roughly 12 million dollars you'll see in there on towards the bottom our district annual capital budget is approximately 6 million so at 12 million that's about double what our annual budget is so still a conservative number that will address most of our district needs but as we bring that budget down we will greatly reduce our capital capacity in order to address large capital needs which is why we're proposing again on the agenda tonight uh a 2022 bond proposal so the main highlight i have from the first review is a small increase in instructional aids which is the second bullet there we
047increased that by ten thousand dollars due in part to um needing to identify a designated funding source for elementary fine arts curriculum this is specifically for sheet music and various instructional aids that at the elementary level did not have a designated funding source so schools were relying on their capital or their budgets and we felt like that was really a district expense so we have made that adjustment we've allocated 10 000 to start to address that curriculum need and again we anticipate carrying that forward for future years so mr moore would this um make our curriculum the same across every school distr every school in our district now the music curriculum would this be um sorry i'll rephrase it would this help every elementary as they go into the middle school have the same knowledge
048base moving up i would one of the things is that obviously these these materials and resources have been being funded out of different things and this allocation as you know this this last past year was one of the very first times that we have been so explicit in how we're utilizing these budgets and you'll know that we have done uh an allocation for music with the work that was done with the whole music team for instruments district-wide and and and again we're looking at at the elementary level there were some resources and things that also needed to be addressed and our feeling is we have fixed one area needed to address another this will allow us to have that budget for that purpose for consistency across and so that they're not utilizing other funds for
049this it again brings this whole package into being more comprehensive and thoughtful in those capital needs for all those items thank you i apologize miss wilson that's beyond my expertise i'm sorry i'm sorry i didn't mean to like put that on you it definitely should have went to dr foley so with that um this is the the remaining timeline for our budget calendar we are on the the march 9th date there so we do have later in the agenda an action item for tentative approval of the 2023 mno budget i just presented the second review of the capital budget um april 20th we'll bring back the capital budget for tentative approval and again that allows us to get out um and put pos in place and um orders for those long lead items where we
050can get on sites um during summer where we're not affecting campuses and in student education so and then in june we do the the formal um you know public hearing uh and proposed an adopted version of the budgets that you've already seen today both today and previously so with that if there's any questions any questions from my board nothing on our april 20th when you bring back the capital budget are we going to have kind of um a summary for the major summer or like a i guess this is like for um what we're doing for the summer on our campuses like the the breakdown of the projects that we need to address first in the summer i know like one year it was the parking lots we were gonna dress parking lots so maybe
051if we just have kind of some of those top um pictures of what we're gonna be working on that would be awesome yeah so we can highlight those at that april 20th meeting okay that'd be great anything else okay moving on to 7.2 and miss martens has an update for us good evening president klar vice president anderson members of the board as well as my colleagues and our various higley communities i'm here tonight to give you an informational high level update on our benefits and tonight i do have with me two representatives from kairos who are here today mr john ashton as well as miss jennifer sherman to help answer any questions if applicable so starting off mr moore had brought up at one of our last board meetings in regards to some changes that
052we were looking to do and that significantly being the fact that we're moving to kairos to help do our benefits particularly our medical as well as our ancillary products so kairos is a pooling group that represents public benefits entities and public benefits so not only school districts but municipalities fire counties one of the large reasons that mr moore had brought this up before as well as i is that it strengthens numbers increase in buying power in terms of where we can go and what we can do as we look to move to self-funded model which we'll talk a little bit more about that and why it benefits us here in a little bit so in regards to kairos one of the many things that they're able to offer and give us as being our planned
053administrator in addition to financial transparency but just the support the clinical advocacy vendor oversight wellness compliance and administrative support which for our district is something that's going to be well utilized because we have a small benefits department so any support that we can have to help provide those claims information as well as calling individuals and calling our vendors is going to be optimal for us in addition to our open enrollment processes to be able to answer questions to know information details about our plans and what we can offer our employees in the bigger picture i'm not going to go through all of that but just in general kairos provides services that above and beyond that what you just get from a district carrier sometimes when you're just going in a fully insured model so that's
054something that we're looking forward to in addition to the wide variety of packages that we can look into with them for a majority of our ancillary coverages we are going to look to move in that direction but there are some that unfortunately kairos does not offer or at least not to mirror the products that we currently have so we are investigating at keeping parts of those with us with principal who we moved to last fiscal year or this fiscal year going into this fiscal year so the benefits of self-funded so we are just high-level we're currently fully insured the district moved to a fully insured model back in 2016 so the year before i got here in regards to fully insured you have one premium that you pay and you pay it directly in our
055case we pay it directly to unitedhealthcare and a self-funding model something that's great for us which is at the very top is that potential savings that we can have so in terms of being self-insured we have the control to set our rates based on our loss experience and something that i've seen here in higley in my five years is that we've had a very good loss ratio we hover around the 80 mark so something that we've been missing in the fully insured is now we can take those potential savings and mr moore has mentioned this in previous conversations we could potentially look to save based on our experience and if it continues in the route that it's been going almost a million dollars and then as we build reserves and as we build our processes
056and that bank we can then take that benefit and put them onto our employees by hoping to save premium costs in the bigger picture so in terms of that autonomy that we have and the surplus there's really no reason why higgley should not go in this direction and this is something that we've talked about and wanted to look to do but we weren't in a place to go fully move that way but now i finally feel that we're in a place to be able to do that with the right support and a lot of what colleagues said today in terms of administration and the right administrators to help bring us there and move us to that direction pardon me so in terms of our our changes we are going to fully move um and as
057i mentioned earlier in that last slide the benefits of going self-insured being the biggest part of that is that potential savings um you know it is all about of our experience so there is a risk involved with that and that risk is we're going to be paying our money to cover our claims um on the previous side there's a comment on there in terms of stop loss without going into too much detail you can buy a stop loss claim and so say we set that at 250 or 300 000 which i think we're looking to do being our first year moving that direction if any claims come in above that we have that insurance to help us cover beyond that as we continue to build our reserves but it's also about educating and that's what
058we're going to spend a lot of time doing here between open enrollment and as we go effective july 1 educating our employees about being correctly insured and making sure they utilize their benefits the best way that they should be using their benefits so going back to the other slide some things that are plus with moving to kairos also is the fact that our provider is still going to be united healthcare that is not going to change as i move into some other slides and i talk about some of our plan designs we're going to look to work with them to mirror all of our plan designs from the primary medical component so that way it can be limited impact our employees one thing and it'll be noted on the other side that is going to
059change though is our rx coverages um that is going to be through maxor right now it's through optum so we are working with kairos to determine what coverages and formulary coverages are going to be and if there are anything that's going to stand out what's great with their support is they're going to work with us to contact those individual employees to talk about what form of drug are you on what can we do with our new rx changes and how can we help support you in that process and or if there are other alternatives that we can work with as we go that direction from a front of the house our employees aren't going to see very much difference in terms of providing the insurance card going to their providers sticking with united healthcare really
060the self-funded models behind the scenes in working with the finance department and managing that budget and as well as human resources and working with our vendors and particularly kairos and that support of that as we move forward so our current medical plans so we currently have our choice ppo our choice 500 ppo our choice 1400 high deductible with an hsa and we have our choice 5000. so these are what we're going to work with with kairos to continue to cover and mirror being self-funded we're able to go into this pool and work with our own plan still there are going to be some differences just because of the nature of the contracts that they have with united healthcare but they are bargaining very well with us right now to make sure that it's very limited
061impact as i mentioned before miss reach helped me pass out our current premium insurance rates that we have you'll notice that for the 22-23 school year we're not looking to make any changes and we've been noting that for quite a while now the district like last year absorbed coming into this year any premium increases and next year we're not looking at any premium increases for those medical components our ancillary slash voluntary products are very different those are 100 with the exception of our eap covered by the employee and those are going to look different we don't have all of those numbers currently we're still working on that with kairos but hopefully we'll be able to move in that direction and share that information with our employees as soon as we have it one note i
062do want to mention in addition to what i said earlier in regards to rrx being different with max more is the fact that we'll also have a third party administrator and that's going to be umr so currently our employees work with united healthcare and they directly do our claims and process them umr actually is owned by united healthcare but they'll be our tpa and so when employees call regarding their claims their eobs employee eobs employees something benefits i can't remember though okay explanation of benefits i'm trying to think of that right now in regards to that they'll be contacting umr for that and not directly uhc but they partner with them very well so our ancillary benefits right now our eap our employee assistance program is with holmen group so we will be moving to
063com psych and that's something that the district covers the district does have teledoc right now with united healthcare so we'll continue with that in regards to our ancillary benefits one thing that we'll be adding which will be great is delta dental so that will be in addition to what we currently have with our total dental administrators tda we'll be moving back to vsp right now we're with principal and imed health equity will be holding our health savings account as well as our fsas right now they're with optimum and then principal carries our basic life and our supplemental life and add and metlife will be covering that and again we don't have specific numbers right now but we will be sharing that as soon as we can one benefit that um the district will be able
064to go towards which our employees have been talking about ever since i've been here is that we are going to shift to from a january one to january december 31st in terms of our deductibles we'll be going from a july 1 to a june 30th so it'll align with our fiscal year that might provide some disruption initially in regards to some of the out of pockets but we're going to be working with kairos and working with united healthcare to determine who's met those out of pockets right now and what we can do to help support them in that transition so something that's exciting actually is this clinical care advocacy um and i just returned the board's aware i just returned from a conference it was the a-grip conference was the association of risk pools and
065governments and actually kairos and their program on clinical care absolutely won an award through their nursing program and supporting employees and making sure that they have nurses dedicated nurses available to help employees navigate through health care and benefits so that was exciting because it was kind of a creative thing that risk pools were doing and now we'll get to we're going to be able to take advantage of that as we move with kairos effective july 1. so that's something that's fun an innovative project that's being recognized nationwide that we'll now have available to us in this process too um but the primary thing similar like with hmos when you have somebody as a primary care advisor that's kind of making sure that you're doing what you need to do and you're looking at your holistic
066health that's why you always have to have referrals this clinical care advocacy is going to be operating in that capacity to where they'll be acting as like i said that liaison between the patient the doctor the insurer and assisting them with any information that they need in terms of prior authorization requests facilitating medication programs and coordinating um alternate site care and that's huge for us to have another resource because our benefits department had been assisting in that process before and we're just not staffed enough in that capacity to have this whole new resource for us will be big so in terms of our employee experience we hope and expect to see lots of big things in terms of making sure that we have dedicated service to our employees into where they're going to be able
067to access information better technology we're fortunate coming into this year what was the first time we actually had a platform in which employees go online and look at our insurance and also do open enrollment in that capacity so going to next year we're going to have that same level um with kairos they use thinly so we'll be taking on vimley and employees are going to be doing open enrollment through that capacity as well as being able to continuously look on vimly in regards to their products and their insurance so that's something that's wonderful we're staying within that it area as opposed to before when we did not have that option those telehealth services that clinical care advocacy and that increased focus on member health and engagement so we're going to be working with them to
068make sure that we have all the right technology all the right supports to help employees smooth as smooth as possible in this transition but also to make it a great experience as we move forward too and knowing with my relationship on the meet conferred team as well as the insurance committee i know they'll hold me accountable if i don't provide this i will hold kairos accountable if they don't help me provide this in that picture [Laughter] so one thing that we talked about in another session is that we know communication is going to be key so we'll make sure that we provide all sorts of different communication to our employees so they understand we're working with kairos to do videos webinars we're going to be doing road shows asking our administrators to visit their sites
069and so that way we can have a quick powerpoint and share the differences because as much as we communicate communicate through emails and other resources we always know we have individuals who struggle and or individuals who don't realize what impact this is in terms of change for them and like i said we're hoping it'll be minimal because we're seeing a lot of the same carriers in terms of that primary medical it's really going to be the ancillary that are going to be some changes but we're looking to mirror those same types of plan designs even though it's going to be a different vendor but we're always here to work with our employees in every capacity that we can and knowing that we have a whole other set of customer service to where employees can call
070kairos directly is an added benefit again an extension of our own benefits department that's only going to support us in the bigger picture and with that i'll entertain any questions president kaler mrs martens thank you for this presentation i'm excited to see it i wanted to i think the july 1st date is actually a pretty excellent thing for our employees who are getting ready to possibly change and come to higley to have that option um i know it might feel hurtful at the beginning this first year being that that out if you've already met your out-of-pocket max and i'm confident that our team will work with those people to make that as smooth and as easy as possible thank you any questions i too want to say thank you and for both kairos and your
071team uh benefits is important and they're always like you said there are some stragglers i've had a little time benefits here and then i worked in a hospital in human resources and um it's good to hear that you are trying to keep it the same and thinking of the employee it's not just hey it is what it is and we're just trying to save money so i appreciate you doing that for the staff have you had any feedback about the current plans of what works well and what doesn't work well as far as coverage any president kaler vice president anderson one of the biggest things that we've heard transitioning into this year was just having the availability to have access to their insurance information online and another benefit that we've heard uh one of the
072things that was a struggle my first few years here was that our previous short-term disability plan and the way that it covered our employees in terms of the elimination period how long as well as numbers being incorrect when they were doing payouts a large number of our demographics are women and women who are having families so short-term disability was being utilized quite intensely for that reason i will say that in conversations with kairos because we are doing weekly calls there is a difference in the short-term disability so in finance cabinet and regular cabinet my colleagues and i and dr foley have talked about there are some things that we might not look to change as a result if we aren't able to mirror them in a capacity to our benefit as well as the fact
073that kairos doesn't have the same critical illness and cancer insurance that we have currently and we have a number of employees just under 200 in each one of those plan designs so we're looking to keep those for them too but there's still continued dialogue to occur in the bigger picture and where we'll move to and as you said miss anderson looking to mirror as much as we can as possible so there's limited impact it is a struggle i consider myself a fairly good benefits person but i there's still a lot that i need to know and understand so i can only imagine our employees especially some of those employees where uh they might be overinsured but they do it out of fear of being underinsured so making sure that they are just paying up front
074versus paying later um so we want to help educate them too because although there's no premium increase this year i think ultimately mr moore and i are looking to do premium decreases knock on wood with good positive experiences and hopefully with the right education our employees can help us with that and mr schultz thank you um mrs martin um i have just one question so so uh various insurance companies offer preventative um things like through um mental and physical health and so is that one of the options is whether it might be gym or yeah so i'm going to look to ms sherman and mr ashton but i do know in our initial conversations there are some gym certainly preventative options just like other medical care in regards to doing your yearly visits we talked
075a little bit about and i'm losing the word off the top of my head but will you do the yearly come in and test the biometric screening yes biometric screening so yeah mr man if you want to comment on anything else we do have a full suite of preventive and wellness type opportunities of course with the affordable care act there's embedded wellness and preventive stuff in the health insurance but we also do come alongside and offer biometric screenings at no cost to the district so we'll be looking to schedule those in the near future there's a number of other solutions depending on what the need is we have an employee assistance program that might touch on the mental health piece that is available at no cost teledoc again is another thing that right now especially
076is available at no cost on all of our plans because of covid and the cares act legislation so we do have a number of resources but we are available we have a whole team available to answer any questions if they should come up um we would love to hear from you and provide more education so we can get the word out i just have one more sorry oh quick question you said teledoc was available now on your plans do you anticipate with because okova do you anticipate that changing in the future yeah so it's kind of a multi-pronged answer so teledoc is available through the health insurance plans on all of them but on for example the high deductible health plan you do have to pay a co-pay for it and that's an irs regulation
077but because of the karzak legislation that's been waived so at some point depending on the plan you might have a copay you might not it depends on the plan okay sure oh i was just gonna be silly and just say hey if you can negotiate some discounts or some free massages for these teachers that would be fantastic i know some people will work on it i think that can fall under chiropractic care somehow so um i have seen that and i know some chiropractors so hit me up you can be creative yeah board member anderson absolutely we'll also work with mr moore to build a robust wellness budget and so then we can offer these services i just want to say i'm thankful for such a healthy community overall higley's been a very healthy community
078so i'm thankful for teachers that you know eat well exercise and take care of themselves so um that's part of this whole plan is that we are a healthy community like you said most of our medical is pregnancy so um we're we're pretty good around here so it's good we have some teachers been around i've been around in here too i worked at human resources and the subcoordinators i don't know if you guys participate remember the wellness committee that we had way back when and we played volleyball and we had steps and we try to have like weekly or monthly prizes so whenever you say it's a healthy community like we i didn't expect the turnout in the people that participated and it was a lot of fun it'd be neat if we could start
079that up again you're going to bring in so we can actually be close together kind of i think there was a nail to scale it higley high all the part the district or is it the whole district that we did nail the scale every year so there's some great things that we do in higley to stay healthy so very good we appreciate your time i just have one more questions for um um you talked about the ancillary and not having the the information yet for that do you if people are hearing staffs hearing this is it something that they should worry about as far as the cost or you're you're working that out um [Music] president kayla our board member schultz uh we in through our kind of initial comparisons with kairos some of our
080ancillary products we're looking at they're they are a tad bit higher but they also come with better benefits some are very comparable and some of them are less so we're seeing a mix among the three so in terms of concerns i would say no overall but we just do want to we want to acknowledge that they'll be different um and make sure that that's clear that there's a differentiation between that and our primary medical thank you very much thank you will that will those be brought back to us those will you like give us some sort of information even if it's just through um superintendent report just so we know what to expect there president kayla board member wilson we certainly can provide it in the superintendent's report um in terms of specifics if that's
081what you would like but as we're continuing to work with kairos and getting all the information building the system for that implementation date uh we'll be communicating all of it through our open enrollment process um as well as like i said educating our employees even prior to that so that way they're making sure that they're choosing the right plan that's best for them as they move forward but we'll certainly provide all of that to you guys in advance too thank you i know that in the past the school board was was available we were available to go on certain plans too is that still the same with this so i can't speak president kayla i can't speak to during my time before my time but during my time the school board has not been part
082of that um i know there was some confusion at one point but it's not a classification coverage that is in it um i know that dr foley had raised that question with me last year too uh we at one point had retirees in the program but we no longer have that because we only had one individual take advantage of that and that was a number of years ago now at this point so i'm not familiar with prior to 2017 but during the time that i've been here it's not been an employee coverage group no interesting well thank you for clarifying that i think we're all good here though president kaler members of the board i want to take a second to thank our our team both our our hr and benefits team also working very
083closely with finance one of the themes you've heard in our presentations is we have been so thoughtful and intentional about examining what we've done how we've done it and how we continue to do it better and and one of the things that's really important is ensuring that we have the same caliber and quality of resources for insurance for our employees while not being at the whim of if we if we are not self-funded and the company we were with were to raise the rates we would have no other choice but to to to pass it along we would not want to give a raise and then turn around and have to raise our insurance for the same insurance company so this is one of the smart ways that we can ensure the quality the caliber
084the option the choices and financially be in control of it so that we worse we're more stable and more financially there that doesn't happen without strong leadership and teams who understand how to do this and make sure that we do this well mum martens is being um she is being kind when she says she's just understanding this mom is an expert in insurance the reason she is on it was at that conference is because they asked her because of her knowledge she's being recognized by our colleagues in this state as an expert in this area and we're fortunate to have her in this capacity to advise our team as we do as we work to do things better and differently having mr moore and his team help us make sure financially we're doing these right
085also makes us able to move forward with sound decisions so we thank this team in the work they've done this has been a lot of work to bring into here but we feel good about this being one more piece that we're putting in place to ensure how we do what we do better well thank you so much you're so humble miss martens thank you appreciate you appreciate everybody that worked on this to present tonight all right we have some exciting action items coming let's move on to 8.1 imove that we consider discuss amend if desired and if deemed advisable to adopt a resolution ordering and calling a special bond election to be held in and for the district and authorizing the chief financial officer to comply with certain sections of the internal revenue code second
086questions comments concerns mrs schultz you're looking at me would you like to say something ah i'm okay i will wait till after that's okay okay mrs anderson okay um i just wanted to address a couple things um going through the the feedback from the survey there are some some information was the concerns with some information were expressed of course you know we've all read through it and i think you addressed it in the powerpoint whenever you gave it to us the main highlights but i just wanted to speak to it um you know the one i really want to hit are for the people that are on the fence due to previous administration um they're they're worried about you know if it was mishandled before then how can i trust it's going to be handled
087well now well i just want to say it on record i just want it to be you know said out loud that you know there are at least two board members current um that fought against a lot of the previous administrators are superintendent's choices and um you know one was threatened and i myself being the other one you know our reputation was destroyed and it was very hurtful and and bad times but i just want to say to those to these community members that are not certain that you know we've got people serving right now that that were aware of it and were against it and have a lot of faith in the administrators that we have right now seeing a complete change in the choices that they've made the information that they convey sometimes
088overwhelming not sometimes all the time overwhelming but it's it's very transparent and makes it more comfortable um so i just want to touch on that that you know you've got a team of people right now that are that are have more confidence in the in the administration um i also wanted to make sure that everybody was aware that the bond doesn't cover employee salaries you know so thankfully we have something on the agenda today covering that but the bond is not for that um so whenever the expression express expressed concern about that we're talking about taking care of the buildings and getting resources in the classrooms and things like that um uh i just you know i'm not real being a teacher and to teach right now and in our district we give laptops to
089every uh student and i'm not really for it i really wasn't for it whenever we did it when i worked at cooley um i see why we have it but that was one of the concerns that was mentioned you know do we really need to give all the students laptops well they need the technology there's a lot of things that are online now maybe down the road we look at it again but as a teacher i appreciate that students have that technology and we are handling it a lot better now than we have before also can you speak mr moore again just because i think a lot more people are listening now than maybe previous meetings where you've already stated information we do have current bonds and overrides out there correct we're that our community
090is paying on and they can look at their county tax record to see right i brought mine in today but so you can see how much we are currently paying for things that are out there how much longer do we have on them and in how much so how much longer will the community be paying on them yeah president kaley remember anderson we yeah the the debt that um is incurred from from general obligation bonds we did pass a bond in 2013. um that debt by statute can be leveraged out for 20 years we do that on purpose to one not put such a tax burden on residents um and putting that in a five-year payment period or ten year payment period and then two um we we utilize the assessed valuation of our district
091that we are continuing to grow we've scheduled debt out to longer periods of time and then to incur lower tax lower tax implications in terms of to the resident to the property owners commercial business all those who live and own within our 24 square miles do right now currently pay on our general obligation bonds off top my head i don't not know when that tails off but we have about 90 million in outstanding debt but that is just a sliver of what we have and what we have grown to need and so i mean i can allude to that a little more on our website with some of our bond information where you can go and see the tax impact of this proposal and what our current tax impact is so um and there will
092be no tax increase they'll just see an additional amount on their tax our american book county tax forms correct that would be paying attention there'd be no tax rate increase right you will continue to pay on the same rate um we are able to because of our assessed valuation the the property values in within our district are continuing to grow the tax rate will not be increased with this proposal that is presented tonight we did that purposely because of the feedback um that we did there was residents in our community that have felt the impact of inflation um and everything that is going on in the world and so um we were conscious of that and we purposely reduced this proposal to take that and consider into consideration president kaler i was able to watch
093the friends of asba presentation on bonds and overrides that they put on and i do think it's awesome for our community if that's possible for that i don't know dr foley if you know if the community can watch that at all but it was interesting to hear why the business partners are excited to help public schools they want to make our public schools stronger they want arizona to be the place that their people want to come and live and they understand the implications of good schools and how good schools will bring people from different parts of the country to arizona and it was just a really good eye-opening thing to hear these business partners be so excited to help public schools because we don't always hear that a lot of times it's always put off
094you know from our governor sometimes and it was good to hear these business partners so excited that our schools are growing and that we're getting people especially construction partners because they are having a hard time getting people attracted to arizona based on our schools and our 49th funded so to me this was a very it was very enlightening and i just want to mention that thank the friends of aspa for putting that on and i'm excited to see where it goes i also read every single one of the comments from the survey i thank our community for sharing their feedback and giving us some insight on what we could change this time thank you president kayla one of the things i want to just touch on board member anderson said this wasn't for salaries and
095you know we're voting on that tonight but the bond is essentially for students and for our students and education and in higley and wanting to move forward and wanting to have the finances to be able to do the best for students and for our community um so that we can have successful workforce in the future so we need these things and it's not that they're just wants or anything like that or they're they're things that we need and um i want to make sure that when we do if we decide tonight to to call for the bond that we are communicating with the community that i think we weren't able to do previously and that we're you know we're on social media and that we're out there you know that we're we're dispelling any of
096the rumors and things like that or the half information you know some people get half information and they run with it throughout the community um and that doesn't do anyone any just good injustice and so i just want to make sure that you know we're able to do that we're able to meet people where they are and be able to communicate with them so that they know that this bond is for our students and thank you oh were you wanting to speak president i'm so sorry okay and thank you for thank you for bringing that up um that touches on a couple of things i have the results up here and if i'm reading this correctly it shows that total votes were only 12 100 right so that's out of how many yeah so if
097this passes and we're gonna spend the money to do this and people are going to volunteer to commit to it then we definitely need to to reach more people and do a little bit better and i think that's already been brought up before and i'm not going to tell you that's not my thing but i do want to one additional comment that really stood out actually a lot of comments hit the fact of tell us what you're spending the money on and i know this has been discussed before i love that idea i've seen district websites where they'll or even maybe it's the school's websites where they will they'll say we spent this much today and i know we've already talked about this as other board meetings but i i can't support that enough of
098giving the community that feel that we've listened and this is what we're spending our money on we're not wasting it we're not wasting anybody's time either um and then there was another wonderful idea um a lady from texas i remember her her recommendation that they have like an ambassador group where they brought the parents in and and they were able to you know work with administration and it wasn't just like oh hey let's let's get input it was her big the work she kept repeating over and over was the relationship it built between the community the parents the administration um i don't know if that's possible i thought it was a wonderful idea i know i said this before many times in the past i've been a part of so many committees that were wonderful
099ideas and fizzled out um and it's meeting schedules and it's it's time but if that's something that we could consider us assuming that this passes or not i don't know it is just something to consider president keller members of the board one of the interesting things about one of the reasons we've been talking about this earlier is we talked about how important it would be for calling for this election earlier so that it provides time one of the things that having it obviously there are constraints legal constraints about what a district can do once you call for an election we then follow the code which we work with political action committees one of the things that we've learned an awful lot of this process when we revised our proposal from our survey information is we
100also are looking at when you start earlier it provides more time to bring pac members on it also provides us an insight on how we might want to work with our communities within the confines of what districts are legally able to do we're talking about working with pto groups getting others involved other mechanisms that we have discussed include expanding the opportunity what's interesting is when you look at our results you see that that um we you know narrowly didn't pass this was 50 50 you also didn't have very many people who turned out for this election this coming year is a little bit different while it's not a presidential election there will be greater traction in it because you're looking at you're looking at the governor you're looking at senators you're looking at an election
101that's going to bring people out having the time allows us to work with those network groups to get people involved in the appropriate proper ways that we can legally do that and have a time but it also allows more time for other action committees who may have concerns about it to address it one of the feedback you'll see in the website that we showed with you was visually how is the money being spent we brought it down to an infographic for each one and we have categories per spending in each one that becomes part of our information that we share when we go to these so our road shows are going to evolve and look a little bit differently we're looking at creating videos and snapshots so again time the element of time on our
102side also helps and the specificity of additional work that has been done between the time we initially called for our previous to now has been extensive so a lot of work has been done a lot has been learned we have more feedback and perspective than we ever had before and our team has adapted accordingly so there's a lot of work to be done hence one of the reasons why we're saying we're looking at this sooner rather than later as we did in the previous selection and to clarify it now the transparency piece wasn't the before it was the after okay okay thank you i'm so sorry i agree with many of the sentiments that have been spoken up here tonight and i personally will always support wherever i live wherever i go every bond and
103every override for every public education and until our state starts to see the value that sits in this room with me today and values what we do in education we are going to be facing bonds and overrides in the state of arizona and i can't say it enough and i've said it before but shame on them 49th in arizona in the culture and this country that we live in and this i mean the housing that we the way we live here in south gilbert arizona um i understand we have outliers and we have different populations in the state of arizona but we should not be 49th period so i will always say yes i concur everything he said and with that said all those in favor aye aye motion carries four zero moving on to
104our tentative 8.2 i move that the governing board approves the tentative 2022-2023 mno budget to allow for the issuance of contracts to all employees for the 2022-2023 school year wait a second any comments questions i just one thing i know that this is voting just on the tentative budget 8.3 is what many of uh people spoke about tonight i just want to clarify that yes absolutely all those in favor aye aye motion carries four zero okay we're going to move on to 8.3 are you making the motion or would you like to no i am i was just making sure i'm sorry but i'm saying i didn't want to i moved that the governing board approves the issuance of contracts and work agreements with the percent increase listed on the table to the base salary
105or base hourly rate for the 2022-2023 school year second whoa sorry i got it i already had my mic on and for all those that are not seeing what we see this is for a seven percent raise across the board to every employee tonight we are just voting for a certain part of our staff this is coming back again for our classified but for tonight you can list all the certified returning teachers certified returning preschool teachers school counselors district office instructional coaches tosas educational professionals psychologists speech language pathologist therapist social worker occupational therapist our classified exempt and non-exempt staff community ed classified exempt and non-exempt and our administrators president kaler yes i read every single name that was provided and i just want to thank every single person who is on the list except for
106bob zucker because he got put on last but he must have been on an extra sheet so mr zucker as well i thank every one of you um it was an extensive list and reading those names i've met many of you and i just want to thank every one of you because you make higley higley [Laughter] i just want to echo uh boardman where wilson said thank you um very much and thank you for everyone that came and spoke tonight and let us hear um everything you had to say and your passion for teaching as well just thank you teachers it's been a heck of a couple years and teaching alone is very difficult without everything else you had to deal with thank you for the your patience with us as we made decisions that
107you may or may not have agreed with earlier on and thank you for staying and teaching these children um and being a huge part of their their life and their future thank you okay i echo the sentiments anytime that we can give our teachers a raise we are blessed by you so thank you for coming out tonight thank you for sharing our hearts thank you for the longevity of so many of you 20 years i these numbers are awesome to hear up here but also we're grateful for all the new teachers that will be coming on board as well and we hope that they make higley a very long-term place to work as well so with that said all those in favor aye aye motion carries for zero [Music] you guys make us want to
108cry up here thank you we like the thank yous we really do it warms our heart to hear from you all truly president keller members of the board please know that we will do what we have historically done and the classified work agreements will be coming to you in april with the exact same recommendation for you to approve at that time yes absolutely and our final recommendation for the night is a move that is recommended the governing board approves the fiscal year 2021 audit reports as presented any questions mr moore thank you for providing this wonderful reading material for us we appreciate all that you do and you keep us very well informed thank you any other questions or comments all those in favor aye aye motion carries 4-0 anything for our future board meetings
109that my board would like to see presentations on i think we're good we have a lot coming up i think our through summer we are booked so thank you so much and i'm very excited to see um the strategic planning update coming up uh dr foley have had some conversations about that and there's been a lot of hard work by a lot of people so we're excited to see that in-house strategic plan with that i move that we adjourn second all those in favor hi motion carries 4-0 have a wonderful evening and a fabulous spring break [Music] thank you [Music] you