001good evening i'm going to call this meeting to order dr foley roll call please president kaler members of the board please let the records show that four members are present thank you so much uh right now we're gonna have a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance all right we're going to go to 2.0 i move that we approve the agenda as presented second any questions or concerns all those in favor aye motion carries 4-0 dr foley superintendent's report please president keller members of the board we begin tonight with our favorite part of the agenda the celebration of our superstars and we're going to start this evening with our gateway gators so i have the joy of inviting miss katie harris and ms andrea zabo up to come on up [Applause] thank you
002guys so much for having us this evening we've been looking forward to this all year so we can't wait that it's our turn and we are going to start first with our student miss ava if you want to come on up sweet girl [Applause] so mrs harris gets the pleasure of reading something about you and you have so many support in the audience your teacher even came because she is so proud of you and everything that you do so i'm going to share with you miss ava is a role model for all students she works hard every day at everything she does not only does she strive to do well academically but she also constantly makes sure others are doing well she is the student that everyone can count on she is helpful caring determined
003hardworking and most importantly she is kind we are lucky to have such an amazing student in class and on our campus whenever someone needs help with a problem ava always offers to help without hesitation students in class strive to be like ava she makes all of the teachers and students around her smile she never does things for recognition she does them because she genuinely wants to help others and make them smile we could not think of another student more deserving of this award you are the true definition of a no excuses student ava congratulations we're going to take a picture good job okay miss ava do you want to come back real quick oh miss ava i forgot to ask you who did you bring with you tonight do you want to tell everybody who's
004here with you uh my mom my stepmom my dad my brother amy and thank you guys we so appreciate you guys coming all right mrs andrea zabo is going to recognize the next person so i have the honor of recognizing mrs shauna facetta mrs facetta is one of the reasons gateway point is so special because of shauna facetta our school is amazing she is known by mrs f to our community and is loved by all this is because she takes time to get to know each of the students she serves mrs f has built partnerships with members of our local community to help provide resources for our students in need because of this they always have new backpacks school supplies shoes and everything they need to start the year mrs f fills food bags and
005sends them home with students every friday this year she organized presidents for the holidays for more than 35 students on our campus mrs f also works hard to support our teachers by teaching social emotional lessons supporting students with challenging behaviors in the classroom every morning mrs f is in the courtyard greeting students helping to make sure their day is set up for success during lunches she hosts social groups provides peer mediation our campus shines bright because of her we could not duplicate mrs f because she is unique and we are proud to call her a gator [Applause] hmm would you like to say who joined you tonight oh who who joined me oh i am very fortunate that both my daughters are here with me one came all the way down from asu mckenzie who
006is a graduate from higley high school and caitlin who is my senior at higley high school as well so thank you girls all right next we have our teacher points of pride so miss megan rivera come on down [Applause] so miss megan is wonderful staff member and leader on our special education staff she teaches first by example by modeling professionalism and leadership in every way for all teachers on campus and all students she is so innovative in her instructional approach she is also humble and approachable and most of all she encourages students to think read and question they discuss all aspects of learning when they're with her she creates learning environments that carefully match each student's individual need she always goes the extra mile to create new tools to help her students be successful she
007encourages students and co-workers alike to be the best that they can she utilizes feedback from fellow teachers and students to improve the quality of teaching occurring here at gateway she brings both her general education knowledge and background plus her special education knowledge to every task that she's on this knowledge and use of skills makes her priceless priceless we are lucky to have such a caring and veteran teacher on our team thank you [Applause] thank you i just wanted to say thank you to my family who came my kids are here and then my team both fed and general education showed up and i really appreciate that thank you [Applause] so you're totally fine all right and last but not least is our volunteer which is a parent and unfortunately she's not feeling well so she
008couldn't come tonight but i still would like to recognize her so miss azita martin is one of our first grade parents and a graduate student at asu together with her fellow classmates they decided to give back to gateway and create a garden space to educate our youth about the importance of sustainable agriculture and healthy food consumption over the last several months azita has been writing grants and working with local organizations to make this vision come alive on december 4th over 40 community members came to show their support and build our new school garden if you've not had the chance to see it please come by and tour we know we have a school garden club now going on on fridays to help our students feel empowered by providing them with the knowledge that when they
009go home they can choose to eat healthy food or start gardens of their own we wanted to tell her thank you for all that she's done for our community and we're excited to see where this garden grows so welcome and thank you mrs eda for thank you again guys we look forward to this every year and thank you so much for our amazing gators we love you guys mr john dolan i'm going to hand you the stage now sir thank you you're welcome well um governing board dr foley this is richards mr lawson has i just want to thank you this is pretty neat experience for me because uh you gave me the opportunity to kind of open a new school and um now we get to recognize some of the people that are part
010of it so thank you guys for that opportunity i'm going to start with my students so nathan why don't you come on up here bud [Applause] who'd you bring with you my mom okay so nathan is the first student that uh signed up for hva met with you and your mom online if you remember and as things kept going what makes nathan worthy of a point of pride is he reached out to me and talked about you know i mentioned to him when we were meeting about a gaming club so he kept on me hey mr dolan what do you think about that can we do that and i said look i'm going to be honest with you i don't know very much about gaming i don't have a have any of that stuff so
011he kind of walked me through what we could do and i said well why don't you kind of be in charge of that he's like yeah no i don't want to do that but what's happened is on tuesdays when kids meet it's nathan who's there and he's kind of running and making sure kids are doing the right thing um he and his family even kind of got a what's it called a server got a server to do this so kids get this opportunity to get together and do something online because of this guy um so i thank you i know that uh his teacher's here he's um kind of doing well online so nathan thank you for everything you do i appreciate it [Applause] i'm not very good at it [Applause] hey kevin why don't
012you come on up here [Applause] who you got who'd you bring so i'm bringing my my my two sisters and my mom and dad okay thank you guys for coming so i got a chance to talk to kevin's mom yesterday not for the first time but we talked for a good while about kevin and his experiences online his teachers mrs webber who's here as well and um he's doing really really well but he's up here for a couple of reasons so let me get my notes kevin some terms that come up when i was talking to your teacher studious funny a leader kevin started a spanish club online he runs the club and he even created presentations for his fellow classmates so he's teaching his fellow classmates spanish but it's also an opportunity for them
013to get together and do some things so that's probably the biggest reason but the other reason is i mean you can see how is he kind of up here just his his attitude and just the way he approaches things whenever i talk to mrs webber she talked about how wonderful you are in class so i appreciate it and congratulations buddy [Applause] do you go buddy [Applause] so this the online school we have has two types of uh classrooms there's the k-6 model which the teachers are in person with me and the students meet them live and then there's the 712 model where the kids are asynchronous and they can meet their teacher by setting up meets et cetera so i have a teacher from each and i'm going to share karen files why don't you
014come up here first [Applause] is there anybody here with you my silent partner at home is managing my four children so karen is teaching 12th grade english and so when i thought about this um why i chose karen is just because of how much she cares it's very difficult i think to be an online teacher and connect with your kids but she's done that though i've asked teachers to create what i call a week at a glance so the weekly glance is a video that just tells the kids it's a minute to two minutes long hey this is what i need you to do hers are six minutes eight minutes no but because she's not only explaining she's hey don't forget to do this try this she's making connections with her students uh there was
015one student who was an a student who didn't come into ticker finals and she reached out to me and said hey you know i've tried i've done this just i mean just a person who overall cares about kids i thought absolutely deserves to be up here in a point of pride so karen thank you so much for caring so much [Applause] thank you i had a donut for her but i left it i can tell that story in a second on her page is um just dancing donuts and i talked to angie and apparently she really likes donuts so i'll have to mail it to you or something uh mrs weber come on up here [Applause] okay i don't have to look up my notes yet but in starting this venture um i was given
016the chance to interview teachers for k-6 now you gotta understand i've never had 30 years of education i've never stepped inside of a k-6 classroom except my daughter when it came to parent-teacher conferences and so um i had to defer to dr borzitch when it came to hey what kind of questions what are we looking for et cetera and i went through the resumes just kind of that's what i do beforehand anyway and i found sarah's because she had florida virtual experience which is the curriculum we use the same data i was looking through them she sent me an email that just said hey you know i'm interested as the process goes through we find out some other things and um my daughter i'm not my daughter my wife is now teaching her daughter in
017classes but that's not why she got hired i just put here i interviewed mrs webber because she had the experience with florida virtual i was looking for things that are more important to me and to me it's about creating relationships with kids and it's about your connection with your your colleagues as well if you can do those kind of things we can work on other stuff um so i hired her because of what other people said about her so she doesn't know this but um her the principle of dog zero i know very well and you gave me a list of all these people that were um kind of uh i guess recommendations and that's great but i'm going to call people that i know that know you so this is what they said about
018you that you were dynamic and you engaged kids her ability to get kids was incredible and so here's what i say about you after 20 plus weeks your patience with students and families is second to none and the most important thing your ability to make connections and support your team is terrific so i so glad that you're part of this venture with me congratulations [Applause] ladies and gentlemen that concludes our points of pride while you are welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting we also know that lots of you have to get ready for school tomorrow so now is a perfect time if you'd like to leave you are more than welcome to do but you're also welcome to stay president killer members of the lord i will continue with the superintendence report
019listed above are some upcoming dates for as you know next week we have the east valley boards consortium dinner and then we also have lots of things in february tis the season where lots of events are happening and thank you very much that concludes the superintendent's report thank you dr foley we're going to move on to board comments does anybody have any comments mrs wilson president kaler i just monday night i was able to visit higley high school for their freshman night and they just did a fantastic job their cafeteria was full um also tonight is williamsville night so if any parents are watching this remember you probably need to get over there i would have loved to be there but i'm sitting here instead uh cooley they had a sixth grade they had the
020sixth graders come over and visit for two days and i got to experience that and they did their student council did a fantastic job um just making those sixth graders understand the campus see everything they did tours they did a pep assembly they were fantastic i also got to visit a couple schools on the 100th day of school that we have passed now and i just want to congratulate all of our educators on making that milestone because that's a big one for us and to be able to celebrate that especially in a triumphant year as this one i'm going to celebrate that win that we have and also we got to see the spelling bee a few of us were actually able to visit the spelling bee as well yes thank you mrs wilson the
021spelling bee was quite amazing watching those kids think every word out but also i love the pictures of the hundredth day of school because these little ones dress like old people and they do it so well they're so cute any other comments mrs anderson i just wanted to make a comment um how interesting it was to see the online school come and a month you know we have a new school online and amidst a really down time with the pandemic to see new paths being made an online spanish club like that's awesome and to open up those avenues for communication from learning from students i just wanted to just comment how great that was to hear about that thank you nothing okay no it's okay we're going to move on to request to speak so
022i'm going to read this first we value input from our constituents the 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 false 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 38-431.01 action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for further consideration and decision at a later date please limit your remarks to just three minutes and first we're going to start with
023i have marty bender good evening i appreciate the opportunity to address the district and our community my name is marty bender i'm a 19-year resident and a parent of a higley high graduate i want to talk a little bit about the bond proposal tonight and i want to make sure that the district knows that they need to be very judicious when it comes to evaluating bonds and putting them out there to borrow money as it obligates the community to future payments sometimes very large payments i'm happy to see that the district is making progress this year when it comes to community involvement in the bond program it gives us assurance that you're interested in our input and looking to seek what we have to say when it comes to the decisions you make regarding our
024financial future so thank you last year my research into the 95 million dollar bond proposal and freedom of information act requests with the district showed that the only community involvement really was through a political action committee this year's approach is much better and again i appreciate that the district needs to also make progress with regards to messaging transparency you cite the demographic survey a lot and in the survey it talks about you're going to need more space and more classroom but you don't talk about things that the survey also talks about like declining birth rates and a shrinking percentage of eligible students in the district that actually attend district schools you tell us that the bond will only increase our tax rates a small amount i think it was 14 cents one year but what
025you don't tell us is that it's going to increase or extend excuse me our repayment period for eight years through and you don't tell us that it's going to cost us 2 million a year in interest just to pay for the interest on these new bonds the last bond plan was heavily flawed and that's why i was a vocal opponent in both social media and local media trying to get the word out to vote no i felt that the plan had too much undefined spending increased our debt by 117 during a pandemic and was asking us to borrow to pay off a lease that has a relatively small cost in proportion to our overall budget and that i felt that was questionable our current capital needs could have been largely addressed back in 2019. instead
026of asking for a capital override then to provide extra money to this budget you chose to prioritize the m o budget now we have a giant overage in the m o budget and we are told the roofs on schools are going to start leaking because we have no money in the capital budget if the district is to again propose a bond i'd like to see it borrow just enough to take care of the safety and technology improvements that you asked for and improve and extend the classroom availability so for the next few years when possible i would like to see you integrate a capital override to help pay for some of these capital needs in the second half of the of the decade right now i'd like to see us keep our powder dry for
027the future to see how the next few years pay out with the pandemic and the financial situation in the world before we make one mistake to try to fix another just because we can borrow a hundred million dollars doesn't mean we should thank you for your time thank you mr bender next i have michael simcox hope i said that correctly i'm sorry sorry about that okay my name is michael simcox i've been an employee for the school district for eight years i am on your agenda to be uh terminated from my job i do have a couple statements i'd like to make when you do go to make your decision on this final judgment i would like to ask you to take in consideration that like i said eight years with the district i've only
028had certain flaws which were two and right now everything is being jeopardized due to a fact that i was injured on the job um they said in the report to you guys that i consistently ask for help which is not correct i do ask for help when time is litigated to other casts that are at not my hand that need to be fixed or need to be taken care of promptly along with the absences that are going to be on there as well 15 of those were due to covid uh i was really sick and i was not able to fix that um also other issues uh with that with the five tardinesses that i have were out of my control due to car accidents as well blocking the road not being able to get
029to my job on time which i take at full uh consideration that i love my job i do my job to the best of my ability and also i would like it to be known that i was not shown any video of what they're discriminating on here that states that there's no proof of my injury to my left shoulder i have documentations from doctors i have a cd that i'm getting printed off friday and i'm seeing an ortho surgeon friday for my shoulder they're saying that there is no injury in a video i have not seen this video so i don't know if they're doctors and they can make a statement off that but in my final statement like i said i've been with the district for eight years i've never had a complaint from
030any other principal any other issues with anybody else i do my job to the best of my ability i do what i can i try to help the community i try to help people the students i even help teachers i even help other employees who need help so if you can take that in consideration i would really appreciate it and thank you board and anybody else i appreciate it thank you for your time next up i have emily anderson i'm sorry i have something if i can give it to you first just a note sheet oh you want to give us a piece of paper you can give it to mrs reach i had a speech with me but it got left on the table so i'm gonna wing it um okay so what i
031just gave you is a sheet about some music education facts my name is emily anderson i am a proud parent of these two right here in the front row um we moved last year from california because of the covid situation and they're unlivable restrictions in california and i've been incredibly happy with this district and thrilled that we moved to power ranch um what i wanted to speak on today was actually two things i'll start with the business the first would be um situations with substitutes um predominantly there's i know there's always a shortage but there's a even stronger shortage in like every district right now and there's one thing i can point that to i went to taco bell recently and this is 15 an hour starting pay subs don't make that i have 53
032000 in loan debt to cal state long beach and i'm going to work a job that's not even 15 an hour that's kind of insulting i would love nothing more and i've been highly debating on applying to sub again because i was doing that for four years previously in huntington beach in california where they did in the recent a few years ago bump up pay to 150 a day but do i want somebody making like not even 100 take home in fact chandler was recently barely a hundred dollars before taxes teaching my kids not really that's not quality in my opinion you're not going to get you're going to get someone that's which i've ran into people in the past subbing just because they can do it with a degree and a little else um
033so that's kind of my stick on that but on the positive side i wanted to come and reach out to you and speak on music education recently last week there was the band bash with all the junior highs and the high school which i have my daughter ready to play her flute if you would so inclined to listen um and i just wanted to come and speak on behalf of the incredible benefits of music music ed which is what i just gave you from you know the connections to the left brain right brain cognitive benefits um discipline rates go down the graduation rates go sky high to like 90.2 percent from schools that have graduation rates there were programs in first grade with first graders that showed increase in comprehension and reading i mean the
034list as you can see goes on and on um i have another one here in fact um or whatever i'm running out of time but anyways um yeah so mr juaros is who my daughter has the benefit of having um and we'll be going to saseman where she will have mrs juaros and if you missed the band bash i you sorely missed out i do have a video on it and it was pretty phenomenal my daughter this is her first year in band and though as many times as i harp on her about practicing she has come i am beyond blown away how much she has learned um and so i just wanted to come and speak at you because i know music and arts is the first thing ever cut and i implore you
035to please think about that before any um cuts are ever made in the future if you'd like to hear her play a bit and she is prepared to do so thank you so much and have a great night thank you i'm sorry we have to get on to our next speaker but thank you so much and i know not sad thank you our next yes thank you our next speaker is john mason i am john mason i'm new to the district and and i'd like to start out by saying that i believe that the teachers and administrators are good decent people they're they're pillars of society and nevertheless good decent people make mistakes and and that is what i would like to address here today and i i don't want to point out any particular
036individual but i do think that there is a a problem overall that should be considered there is a problem of teacher facilitated academic dishonesty it is so common in the valley that even teachers at another district have complained to me many students in the valley seem to think that it is normal i sent an email to the administration detailing concerns about suspicious activities at the district they responded to my concerns with many statements that were not true one concern was teacher facilitated academic dishonesty in other words a teacher enabled students to cheat if the district truly investigated the teaching then they would know what happened it was obvious rather than properly investigate what happened the district responded as follows and i quote at no time are students allowed to encourage or sit or assisted on
037in cheating on any exam unquote this statement by the district is not even remotely plausible now sadly i must say the next thing how can higley believe that they are better than any other district in the valley given their embarrassing history of fraud we've all watched the news we know what's happened in the past is it a coincidence that i was stonewalled when i invested when i investigated suspicious activity at higley i don't think so now the next part pains me even more because we do know that teachers do not make enough money we do know that students do not have enough resources and and we do know that it that is very unfortunate to see the how teachers are are overloaded with bureaucratic requirements and administrators are always trying to follow the law and
038they're doing their best they can even when there's inconsistencies but i personally will not support any bond override until the district administration behaves more transparently thank you very much for your time thank you mr mason and that's all for our speakers tonight thank you very much for coming we're going to move on to our consent agenda items i move that we approve consent agenda items 6.1 through 6.8 second any questions comments or concerns all those in favor aye aye motion carries 4-0 sorry you can make a comment i just want to say um that the one of the things we improved was the arizona family surprise squad and the three thousand dollars for the higley high school um washington dc trip and how cool that is that channel three was able to come out and
039surprise those kids with that so yes yes i saw that on the news and then also um um amaz entertainment sorry yeah i think 12 150 for the district art festival so thank you about that yes we always want to thank our gifts and donations so thank you for pointing that out no motion carried 4-0 no problem all right information items next up we're excited to have our world language overview and foreign language immersion program update and i'm going to call on mrs sherry richards i believe president kaler members of the board cabinet and community we've been waiting for this evening for a long time so you're going to hear some exciting news today about our premier language program of choice that goes k-12 meaning that we're going to go into detail and share a
040little bit of our journey so before we get started i'm going to acknowledge people on the team and have them wave or stand up and wave all right so let's start with dr chris treat he is our assistant director of professional development next i want to introduce mr jeff armstrong principal of coronado you've got to stand nobody can see you all right we also have assistant principal mr brian griggs from coronado we also have mr ray mercado principal at san tan and his assistant principal at san tan lindsey reeves and i really want to give them a big hand for all of their work [Applause] all right so as we begin our story here we want you to know that in 2014 and rebecca rebecca i didn't mean to skip you is going to make
041a big deal out of you rebecca rodriguez is our dli world language coach i have a big to-do for her in a little bit but there's no way i can skip her she's the one holding us together and giving us direction all right so as we begin our program in 2014 at coronado we opened our doors for kindergarten and first grade students so that very first year we had kids learning mandarin in kinder and first grade these students are currently 7th and 8th graders going to cooley middle school if they followed the feeder pattern the following year in 2015 we opened doors at san tan elementary for our spanish dli program those kids are currently in fifth grade looking forward to going into sixth grade next year and then on to saw someone so it's
042important to understand the district has been involved and excited we've worked hard with miss martin's to ensure we have highly qualified teachers that are proficient in those target languages also to ensure we have appropriate resources in mandarin and spanish so the good news is there's more resources than there were in 2014 so that's the good news all right research tells us there are lots of benefits to acquiring a second language when dr foley joined the team again in june of 2019 on her very first day back in the job we met with this wonderful team to start planning what do we need to do to ensure our kids get language at the level that will benefit them all the way through school and all the way into the workforce so we worked carefully to create
043a systematic plan for professional development and support at that time we worked with miss veronica beyonce sandoval a language consultant she came in we all had input what's our mission what's our vision what do we want to make sure we communicate are the proven benefits because these are lifelong skills so it's not only important for our kids to be proficient orally proficient meaning they can speak it receptively they understand it express expressively they communicate but we also have goals that they can read and write which means you think in the other language as well so it's been very apparent to us that our kids have increased cognitive skills in a broader global awareness so we're super excited about this program and their journey that will only continue all right when we work together we know
044that a vision and a mission state statement define the purpose and unite us it keeps us focused on our goals and moving in the same direction and those look like that might have been easy to come up with but i if i asked the people on the other side of the room how long we spent on this we spent a long time so i feel like it's part of who we are so on this slide you're going to see the top of the slide talks about pre-k in elementary this is our dli dual language immersion programs and the bottom half of the slide deals with secondary world language courses so our dual language immersion program is a 50 50 model that means 50 of the day is in the target language of spanish or mandarin
045and the other 50 percent of the day is in english so that's important for our kids to be immersed in the language and not going back and forth in between english and their target language once they get to middle school and high school it looks more traditional their language course is the course during their day so you can tell we start with kids when they're really young because research tells you the best time to learn a language is when you're in preschool or even before so these kids at cooley have the opportunity to start in our mandarin program and if you haven't been there to see that you need to go see it last year dr foley and i went to visit and they sang to us in mandarin and it was probably one of
046the best experiences i've had because they they learn it they don't struggle they just get it also at sauceman early childhood center they're learning spanish and those classes fill up quickly it's sometimes hard to get in these programs feed into our elementary schools mandarin goes into coronado k-6 and spanish feeds into san tan right now it's k-5 next year they're adding sixth grade all right the exciting thing is we don't stop we don't stop when we get done with elementary school in middle school at both middle schools we offer spanish and mandarin courses however our kids that have been in dli have the opportunity to go into an immersive class that means they can take mandarin one and mandarin two and middle school and move into mandarin 3 at the high school level that will
047happen with spanish after this next school year we also at high school we add french so at the high school level we offer spanish mandarin and french and as we highlighted hva this evening great things are going on there i loved hearing about the spanish club because it aligns to what we're talking about this evening so we have french mandarin spanish and american sign language so we had kids this year take asl american sign language one those kids will have the opportunity to take american sign language too and we had kids in spanish this year which will have that extended opportunity as well mrs richards yes we actually had the experience to go to higley high i believe it was two fridays ago and we actually saw this in action with kiddos reading um and
048writing mandarin and it was absolutely fantastic they were able to tell us what they read about they knew and i don't remember what i think it was a mandarin 3-4 class combined and it was absolutely fantastic and i have seen the preschool as well so to see that move through from those little guys you know learning the mandarin and they are just very smart kiddos over there and it's just been fantastic so thank you it was an amazing experience and i think i wish i knew mandarin and i have a son that's in taiwan who just had a baby and i'm having trouble saying the baby's name in mandarin because of the tones and how the language is a difficult language but our kids are excelling as you're gonna see all right this has been
049a big deal for us as we've gone through professional development and how important it is to stay in that target language the bubble represents what happens when you break that target language and i learned something when we went to state level leadership training when i go in a classroom and they're speaking mandarin and i go up in english and say tell me about what are you doing what are you learning it it busts the bubble because they have to switch their little brains not that they can't do it but i didn't realize what i was doing by trying to show interest you know what i'm saying so i worked in a dli school in texas and we called that code switching no code switching do not go in and speak english and distract the kids
050so you'll see this little welcome to doi program and it's stating you're entering a room where we're speaking spanish so you'll see that preschool elementary all outside our dli classrooms so we're pretty proud of that so what you've been waiting for is to get a taste of what this looks like in action so thank you to our pr team for putting this together and for our amazing administrators teachers and kids [Music] m [Music] hi my name is lana logan i have been here learning mandarin for five years [Music] um [Music] learning mandarin here because i have a lot of friends and i enjoy learning mandarin and i also want to and i want to learn english and mandarin and a lot of other different languages too so i think it's kind of cool [Music] jackson
051my name is jackson winley i've been in the spanish program for six years that's foreign [Music] um [Music] i like the spanish program because i can speak a different language and when i go to countries that speak spanish i can communicate with them easier [Music] amazing right just amazing so now i am going to highlight the star miss rebecca rodriguez she was your higley 2021 teacher of the year it was rather difficult to convince principal tannenbaum that we needed her and she was going to impact so many children and so many teachers and he was gracious and he let us steal her but i can't there is no way i could sum up everything she's done in just a little over one semester it's been truly uh life-changing for us for somebody to support us
052she's got websites up she's doing professional development she's out there supporting teachers in ways that we have dreamed of so i am going to clap for you and highlight you in order for our district to become the premier language program of choice we have worked to gain insight and knowledge from the best resources available this year i have joined arizona's languages association or asla and i attended the asla fall conference and i will be attending the asla workshops in february these are giving us those insights about what's going on in arizona how we can best improve our practices here i also have joined actvol which is the american council on teaching foreign languages i attended the act full fall conference with several of our dli teachers to learn about the processes and best practices being
053used throughout the entire nation i have attended the monthly world language district meetings for all language district leaders in these meetings we discuss what is going on with the language learning and we work together to mitigate problems and make changes and inform one another what's going on in our state with the language programs this march i will be attending the language or sorry the dual language international convention at this convention i will have the opportunity to visit the dual language classroom in utah where dli is at the forefront of innovation i will learn from the global doi leaders about what works in dli and how we can continue to improve our amazing program we've also had the incredible opportunity to work with maria christina ladas she is a key expert in the dli world in
054arizona she has been on the actful board and is currently the asla board president she works with our district as a consultant we've worked with her in two capacities we worked with her as the dli leadership by going to their dli and leadership academy for days one and two this was a workshop where our district leadership learned how to best structure and organize our program we spent time working on our proficiency targets fidelity assurances and how to best support our teachers and our students through this workshop we've been able to partner with other districts and throughout the state and to develop our language program in alignment with what other districts are doing miss lavis has also come to coronado and santander to provide professional development to all of our dli teachers she demonstrates and models
055contemporary best practices while working with our teachers to bridge our target language and english teacher teams how to successfully teach in the target language and what we need to do to focus on proficiency language proficiency is defined as the independent use of language this means that our students are able to use what they're learning in the classroom setting to formulate new thoughts and ideas in their language that they're learning they communicate in ways that are not explicitly taught an example of this would be asking questions about a product at a store and not having a script or memorized questions and answers that they have in front of them while they're asking proficiency is focused on all facets of language reading writing listening speaking as well as cultural awareness we look at proficiency as a cone
056of language knowledge so you can see that in front of you when the student starts learning the language we start at the bottom of the cone they whether they learn at birth kindergarten or middle school they start at that novice level it's shown in blue this level builds the foundation of future language acquisition at the novice level level students can say only a few common words they can understand very familiar words and they can interact in only simple conversations about known topics students exit the novice level quickly once a student has mastered the most basic use of language they move into the intermediate level at the intermediate level students begin working within grammar rules and trying out unique sentences students at the intermediate level can understand basic streams of sentences and communicate about known topics
057they're progressing in reading and writing and speaking in their target language according to research most students will stay in the intermediate level in green on the cone for years and they improve and practice the target language even even though they're in it for years that they're not immersed so it takes longer the next proficiency level is advanced this is represented in orange on the cone at this level the students can understand complex and extended speech and can read and write extensively in the target language our ap students are beginning to demonstrate the advanced level as they prepare for college level proficiency the superior and distinguished levels of proficiency would be the university course level meaning they can report synthesize and understand the target language perfectly they are able to understand and work within the target
058language with ease the first the focus on proficiency is primarily because the mission of our language program is to teach students to become bilingual by literate and globally aware in another language so in order for us to meet that ability we have to focus on getting them from one level to the next also the actual standards have been adopted by arizona as our state standards so these standards are based on proficiency skills and levels within language acquisition and for us to be able to meet the state standards for language proficiency has to be our focus the arizona state world language standards are modeled after act-filled standards created to focus on language literacy real world applications and 21st century skills supporting this focus are the five c's communication cultures communities comparisons and connections within these five
059areas are 11 content standards that describe the knowledge and skills that our language students should acquire we have attached a video to this slide that further explains the standards this is a video that we use to inform our parents about the actual standards and how they are used to help their child reach proficiency in their target language this is also available on the website if you click on the language proficiency tab it is important to note that the standards are listed as proficiency markers and each district can set their proficiency targets for each language and level provided this enables us to accurately set goals and targets for all our language students no matter what age they enter our program this also allows us to monitor our students progress in the language and to direct our
060practices to best meet our students needs now we have the opportunity to hear from the principles of our elementary dual language immersion programs from coronado's mandarin dli we have principal jeff armstrong and from santan spanish dli we have principal ray mercado all right thank you we i'm going to talk a little bit about the proficiency targets that you see up on the board uh as you can see we set proficiency targets and this is just recent this all started roughly when dr foley came on board and we had started a lot of work and i'll never forget that first meeting the five of us are sitting in a room and here comes dr foley and she goes you guys ready to get to work we're like yep and it was it was work but the
061proficiency targets that you're seeing please note that these weren't just set based on how we feel these are guidance by other districts that we looked at throughout the state we looked at utah's proficiency targets we consulted with other consultants with ms lattis and from mesa public we had we took a lot of time to go ahead and dive into what where do we want our students as you heard from rebecca please know that the proficiency targets can be adjusted according to the needs of our students so just because we have it this year set at if you look at fourth grade in spanish it's a four mandarin it's a three which means it represents an intermediate low and novice high please know that those are adjustable and also take a look and if you have
062that question you're looking and you'll see that spanish and mandarin have two various proficiency targets please understand that that's due to the difficulty of the language put it in perspective students at coronado elementary in our dli program are learning a language in which a professor in china who is born and raised understands 200 000 characters that's someone who is speaking fluently every day that is distinguished on the if you go back to the cone that's a distinguished component we're asking our students to leave us in sixth grade at an intermediate low while santan is going to be asking them to leave at an intermediate mid and i also want to reiterate each individual student's comb is their own individual cone if you think back to where they're at everyone has to start somewhere okay and
063it's all through the hard work and through all of the efforts of the students and the teachers that are going to get them to where they need to be just because a student leaves a leaves third grade and may not be at the in the novice mid it doesn't mean that they're gonna they will never get beyond that it's just gonna take a little bit of additional time and that's where our rockstar teachers come into play um as we move on next slide please we're going to talk about proficiency and and uh i want to i want to brag a little bit about proficiency and performance i i i spoke at one of our family gatherings where we had families coming in and having a good old time learning about our program so proficiency versus
064performance put it into perspective mr marcotto and i we say this to all of our families it's okay if your kid doesn't perform on the spot and what i mean by that is this performance is when students are able to go ahead and speak to someone using contextual evidence context around them in school be able to elaborate and discuss with their classmates and the proficiency is what you saw in the video by one of our well two of our amazing students but one of our amazing students at coronado nothing to my job against the spanish program but our student at coronado please hear me that is true proficiency this is how that this is how it went i walked into her classroom and recorded her i pulled her out of the classroom and i said
065i want you to tell me your name how long you've been in the program and why do you like the program why do you want to learn language she had no script she had no frame of reference she was cold called to go ahead and describe and what you heard is that of someone who is definitely proficient in the partner language that she is learning and it was absolutely amazing so the concept that we use proficiency versus performance is this is we tell every parent when you're at home and you're there for thanksgiving and you're excited that your child is learning mandarin and you say jeff say something and they freeze that is perfectly okay that's the performance piece where they're oh my goodness what do we do the proficiency is when they say whatever
066they can and lay down make fun of mom and dad whoever it is you'll hear a little bit of reference later on in that but that is true proficiency is when they're able to articulate and speak in the target language without anything and how we measure proficiency is going to i'll elaborate on but mr macaulay wants to point something out in this slide so the proficiency just like any classroom teachers do it masterfully in daily curriculum daily interactions with students inside and outside the classroom just like on the general side on the dli side both in the mandarin program and our program at san tan we have the i can statements that are reflected of the standards so in spanish what you'll see in the classroom is your i can we want kids to be
067part of the journey of learning as well so when kids come in they know what the learning target is for the day so for this classroom yo puedo identification completed so i can i not all of us i can i have the responsibility as the student as a learner to identify a complete and an incomplete sentence so when i have forced four uh children and various grade levels mrs anderson i think you have one of my kids and so um i apologize for them uh so i can tell you that one of my frustrating things that i deal with at my household is i'll ask my kids what did you learn for the day oh nothing you're at school for eight hours what do you mean no nothing so creating an opportunity in a learning
068environment that is simple for students whether in kindergarten or fifth grade they can recite an i can statement and so that i can statement is tied to the academic standard that us as educators know and we are trying to obviously get to a proficiency level there so it starts as a student comes into class they can see this board that has the i can statement for these areas of learning and so we measure that through exit tickets in the classroom we measure that with interactions with the teacher whether in a whole group setting or a small group setting kids at san tan part of being a leader in me school they have their wigs wildly important goals and so they have these written in their leadership binders and so they're able to take the learning
069that's happening in class and then take it home to have these conversations so everyone's in the journey of learning together for language proficiency as well as other assessments that are happening with the curriculum common format assessments that teachers are doing together as teams or as a program and the stamp assessment that we'll talk about as well so we are consistently measuring proficiency in multiple ways whether it's informal or formal in the classroom in both sides proficiency it's ultimately where we want to go and i just want to share a quick email i received from a community member kids don't go to my school but i had two students that were at the gilbert regional park and this individual walked up and heard them speaking mandarin she speaks mandarin and she engaged in a conversation with
070my students and saw that they had a coronado shirts on and she sent me an email saying how impressed she was with our students and being able to have a conversation out in public with an individual learning it so when we talk about proficiency that's proficiency so we'll talk about how we measure it and that is on the next slide the stamp assessment as you see the stamp assessment is it stands for standards-based measurement of proficiency and what this is this is a nationally recognized assessment that measures language proficiency overall and it's aligned directly to the act full proficiency guidelines and it is a computer it's a computer adaptive assessment so it assesses students on reading speaking listening and writing and it measures where they're at and goes ahead and provides them the opportunity to
071show what they know on that the great thing about it is this year well last year we were able to have the the opportunity to assess all third through sixth grade and i'll show you that coming up but this year it's going to be awesome because every student third and up is going to be assessed using the stamp assessment and we're going to be able to have a really strong baseline data on how students are performing at both the li campuses as well as our world language courses that are happening in the middle school and the high school and it really is going to provide schools teachers administration and district personnel the opportunity to see how well our programs are are performing and make the adjustments needed and provide teachers with that pd so we're
072super excited about that next slide please i think you all know that i have no problem bragging about about my campus um and i'm gonna brag a little bit before before we even start all of this what you guys see up here uh please know that this is this is really due to the hard work of our students our teachers and the parents trying their best to help kids learn mandarin at home okay what you see is just a culmination of the strong dedication by teachers working extra hours putting in time to find resources putting in time to translate materials they are working to ensure that students meet the proficiency targets that are needed so what you're looking at is the stamp results from our from last school year you can read third and across
073you see grade level going vertically subject going across what we look at is that composite score so the proficiency targets that you saw earlier are based on the composite score and something i want to highlight in this is really pretty awesome so my current sixth graders were fifth grade last year and so if you take a look at that fifth grade line which some people in the room have students in my sixth grade but they're like i said fifth grade last year when they were in third grade when the last time they took the assessment follow with me if you look at the reading score when they're in third graders out of 1.2 and we're currently at a 2.25 and reading huge jumps writing was at a 2.7 and our students are at our 4.44
074lane the listening component they were at a 2.1 when they're in third grade and i just want to highlight they're at a 4.07 and overall speaking they're at a 3.04 and they're at a 4.57 so when we talk about what our students are learning and how they're performing and and the hard work our teachers are going through and sitting on dual lingo and just mandarin matrix for hours this is this is a representation of the hard work of our students because we're asking them to learn a class 4 language and let me remind you that a professor in china who speaks and was born and raised in those 200 000 characters remember mandarin is stroke and tonal based that is how they learn that it's there it's very limited yes we have opinion but that
075is introduced periodically this is this is a true testament to to the students and i can't wait to see how how our fifth graders perform this upcoming school year um or this this school year in the assessment later on and really our our teachers i will tell you when you talk about a group of teachers who are learning how to teach in in a different country and with students they come to me we have monthly meetings and they sit down and i will tell you they're okay mr armstrong this is where we're at they're pulling assessment data yct vocabulary assessments i mean they're doing whatever they can to keep continue measuring where those students are so we're very excited and we're very proud of our of our teachers and our and our students within our
076program next side please some celebrations again i can brag all day for four points thanks mr mercado gotta remind him uh as you can see there's there's four four points i will highlight here but we're going to talk quickly parent university that's a pilot program this school year and i will tell you li xi zhao our fourth grade mandarin teacher and i we sat down and towards the end of last year beginning audition we said something that i've heard since i've come on campus is parents going hey we need help we're trying to help our kid we don't we don't know what we're doing so not that they know what they're doing in regards to the language but we sat down and we said let's develop a parent university and so miss zhao has graciously
077graciously given up two nights out of her month to go ahead and teach our parents language culture competency she has dual lingo they have assignments they have to complete we have 28 people who are showing up last night was absolutely awesome and there's a couple of people that can attest to it they learned how to make dumplings last night she showed them the region of china and the different foods that come from i mean yes it's not we can't teach them a second language we can't we're not we're not professors but i will tell you that the little bit is going to help and what was really what's been really awesome is the very first night we asked what what is why are you here why do you want this you know what's going on
078and i can guarantee you i'm not gonna don't quote me on the number but a high amount of people were saying we're tired of our kids being able to talk in a language when we don't know what they're saying and we can't help them or they're talking about us and that's that's concerning so it was really awesome to go ahead and hear that and the parents who are involved i've been with them for three meetings now and it it it's just amazing they walk in they're excited they're learning they they do retrieval practices it's basically being in school for an hour at the end of the evening so kudos to the parents who are involved but bigger kudos to miss lee ji zhao who has graciously done that parent school night that's different from our
079parent university night parent school night we open it up to everyone pre-covered we had them quarterly and then this year we were able to restart restart that so we're we have them we have two sessions this year we just had one so we went over the abcs of learning a language um we went over tones we went over strokes they ate food our teachers went out and purchased food thanks to our pto who supported us they went out and bought snacks and allowed parents to try traditional snacks from china and get involved with that and that was absolutely awesome so it's great we offer that we will be offering a quarterly we had to get through our covid our cova component right now we're going through it but we are we're going to be offering
080more of those so that parents get involved as well and annually our chinese new year celebration that's held at the school as well as at the district level and i believe that everyone you guys should have your invitations i'm gonna tell you you should go you can hear myself talking even more if that if you guys really wanna know you're gonna see a lot of great performances by our kiddos that chinese new year celebration is amazing and our pto they really support our teachers in fact they're going to be starting this friday afternoon we have parent volunteers who are coming in to decorate our hallway back to have to go ahead and start the chinese new year celebration off right next week so that's absolutely awesome and our yearly mid-autumn moon festival is absolutely amazing
081and a huge shout out to miss brookhun who's my pto president this year she was she was a little worried but they were able to bring it together and it was one of the best best events that we start i mean it was amazing we had families sitting outside under the moon we had activities going it it was awesome i couldn't go because i had a previous engagement but great job there and there's a couple of other things that aren't on there that i want to highlight we still are very much involved with our sister school and she says just recently my assistant principal brian griggs was able to participate in the international consortium for language schools from across the world so 14 countries were involved 31 professors and principals were in this event and
082they asked us to go ahead and participate in that and that is absolutely huge and one of the big things that i also want to highlight is gilbert says gilbert has sisters gilbert sisters city schools and what they're going to do is they are opening up a little section over here at the gilbert regional park it's it's by greg tilke he's part of he's the president he works for the chamber he's done a lot with the town of gilbert and he came by and toured our campus and has asked that when the ceremony begins to open that he's asked our campus to be able to perform at that ceremony as well so it's been it's been really awesome and then there's just there's so much i need to stop talking so that mr marcotte has
083some time but just know that i i the hard work of everyone the hard work of teachers the hard work of students you know you guys mentioned something miss wilson you mentioned something and you said it was amazing to see the high school students going at it and i'm just going to say just wait a couple years because when our students go from coronado to cooley and they get to that high school when they walk in it's not it's going to be eight times better just because of the foundation they already are going to have and the amount of work that they've already put in it's going to be awesome so just huge highlights and celebrations i guess you can thank you for some time here to share um as you see our program started
084after the mandarin program so we have one data point uh these students are my current fifth grade student so this was the cohort what you see in both assessments is a national norm of stamp assessment and the apple assessment that's also out there students testing at the end of third grade ish if not fourth grade so that's a national norm for this kind of assessment because if you remember the visual of the the um basically the uh cone that the expectation is that students k3 if not going into fourth grade are at the novice level so that's why you see data from coronado and at san tan starting at third obviously coming out of kovid we decided not to test the kiddos at that point and third but we tested them in may for that
085original cohort of students i was extremely impressed with these scores here i really expected that these students at the time in fourth grade in may that they would be scoring at about a three the expectation was stamp was at a four a level four four fourth grade so um i was really expecting threes across the board i would have been content with threes if not some twos one hundred percent appropriate due to covid and some loss of learning i saw these results and immediately i got goosebumps i got goosebumps right now because when you look at the the opportunity to assess these kids in an experience that they've never had before in a language that's not their home language for them to get these scores were absolutely just eye-opening to what can be done with
086the brain with these little ones and so i want to share with you because the data right here doesn't dive deep and i think that you all know as educators and supporting education we dive deep into data so when you look at this cohort there were 28 students that took the assessment three of them 28 three of them scored a three solid perfect i'm happy four or six of them scored um a four ten scored a five and nine scored a six that is huge in reading a second language and remember they're still in in fourth grade still learning academic language in their own language of english so that was absolutely amazing to see that data in listening five kids scored a three seven scored a four ten scored a five and six a six
087that was a huge celebration for language acquisition for these kiddos and so i wanted to share that with you and dive in deeper into that stamp result so i can tell you as we spoke about proficiency and we spoke about performance kids are performing kids are becoming proficient based on the actual standards and so it's really fun really exciting to see santan celebrations i didn't put bullet points because i have a million of them that's so hang tight we'll be here until tomorrow morning so is there like a friendly loving rival here i see i'm i'm beginning to see it very clearly all night president kaler this is this is the norm with these two and it's a good thing because they team well together and that's why we all love working with them one
088family encounter saying hey i had five i had five so i won't share those right now but if you want to talk we'll talk but family engagement we are supporting our families throughout the year we always invite families into the classrooms just like at coronado when we started the program there were a lot of family complaints that the spanish teachers did not want the families in the spanish side so we had to clarify that and so we dug dig we dug into those comments talked to a lot of families the challenge with that comment was the traditional way of supporting the classroom as a parent is you're reading in a small group you're assessing you're doing those things that require you to speak the language and so majority of our parents do not speak spanish
089so we had to explain to them that can you read this book in spanish can you go over these spelling words in spanish and the answer was no no no so we talked about ways they can support the spanish classroom and so um that when we have new families we constantly talk to them about come in and sit listen if you need to sit and listen for a full day listen for a full day but you got to come and experience um the language in the classroom so we are constantly inviting families uh to come and sit and listen parent-teacher conferences are very engaging with both teachers so these poor teachers are speaking to all families both teachers so they have 50 parent teacher conferences that they are doing when we have our parent teacher
090conferences so they want to make sure that both teachers are in that setting to support um the the learning that's happening uh so families are well aware volunteering as i said in the classroom so we don't at this point have uh which i absolutely love a parent university something of that nature so i will definitely talk to jeff and his team about that because it is something that for the most part there's some basic knowledge that our families know most of it's not good but they know um so there's some key words that they're able to for the most part understand i will tell you that i do require weekly newsletters from both teachers to the families and so they're able to see the learning and the activities that are happening on a weekly basis
091on the english side and the spanish side so that's another way that they can engage as far as the student engagement piece throughout the year the teachers are planning together to support soldering plcs they're planning instruction obviously as well as activities like hispanic heritage month so for the month between september 15th and october 15 they had multiple activities throughout the grade levels for presentation so students would go between each grade level there's one hallway where i have my k through four and then i have my fifth grade on the other side of campus not too far away but there was a lot of presentations that month from each grade level in each classroom pre-covered really excited and then when covet hit us really hard we had a folklorico club and so we had about 25
092students that were literally twice a week practicing on the stage and it was a beautiful thing and they were ready to present and then covet hit so we had to take a step back and the presenter or the person that was in charge of the studio also got sick and so she had to step away but that's something that we want to bring back because it was it was definitely something that was a rich experience um december celebrations so we celebrated in once again the program with all of the latin american countries in regards to what they do to celebrate in the month of december so once again students were roaming between grade levels um in we found herberger theater that had a spanish play so we were able to take the kids at that
093time i believe it was k3 to watch and listen and chateau's kitchen was the play and so they were able to go experience that uh so that was really fun um leader in me spanish as you know we're a leader in me lighthouse school and we're able to utilize all of that language that business model and and academic model in spanish as well so what you'll see in the classrooms are the habits in spanish on the spanish side and then on the english side english and so were able to have that as a visual display and then something i need to celebrate between both programs we um we have to celebrate at the end of the year and it was i don't know what it was called but celebration of learning basically we got so
094big at coronado celebrating the awesome things that were happening and at santen that 2019-20 we were planning on presenting and having a huge celebration at hcpa and so we had walked the facility planned it and unfortunately coveted so we had to put that on pause but we have outgrown our gyms to have our year-end celebration so i'm excited for that to come back at some point because there's a lot to celebrate between both schools and so a lot of celebrations and we can continue to brag about the amazing things that are happening at both campuses but i just want to say thank you to you all i want to say thank you to dr foley sherry dr treat rebecca this is hard that's why you don't see a lot of districts choosing to bring dli
095programs to their their districts this is a choice and i believe that we have the numbers to show that parents want language acquisition and so i believe in about 15 years of experience running a dli school that we are set up perfectly regionally to support our areas and so i'm proud of the work that that's happened at coronado and at san tan and so i can tell you that these folks have really supported day one when they took their roles that made a tremendous difference in supporting the program i had the opportunity to start the program after but i was part of the decision on starting coronado first and then santan second and i can tell you that dr dr foley and and the support from the district has been amazing and that's why we're
096excited to celebrate the things that are happening in our program right now thank you dr pete thank you yes president kaler members of the board i want to continue the celebrations that we're talking a little bit about here not just what's happening at the dli elementary levels but also what's happening across uh our secondary schools as well in what you might consider to be a more traditional world language type of class and mr mercado used the word program uh you know as rebecca rodriguez and i talk about the best ways to support our schools whether dli or the secondary schools with their language classes we talk about wanting to have not just classes not just levels not just something that happens in one place or another but an overall concept a program of what world
097language instruction can be and all of these different components fit into that and so some of the things that you see happening at the secondary level we as you heard earlier we add in american sign language at hva right now we add in french as a language that we're able to study as well as spanish and mandarin and when we get into those secondary schools you uh see that 48 students accepted the challenge of taking an apa exam in a world language class last year it's a tremendous number and and to be commended because that's that's no small feat you see eight different students earn seals of bi-literacy and i'll talk a little bit about that more but it's that distinction that goes on that student's diploma that says that they went above and beyond
098in world language study when we think about our higley students whether they're world language students or not we think about our vision as what do we hope for for those students when they graduate what is what is that that student capable of when they walk across that stage when they get that diploma and i'm excited that this program that we're talking about this world language idea it aligns perfectly with this concept that we have this portrait of a graduate if you will when i look at the elements that are up there and i see things like an innovative learner well that just brings me back to some of the things our world language leaders learn with that mental flexibility as they develop that cognitive kind of strength that happens when you take on the challenge
099of another language when i see things like socially responsible citizens i know that our language programs align to this as well because we're not just studying language we're studying culture we're developing empathy through these processes and when i see things about like college and career ready that we have and hope for all of our higley graduates well when we start talking about limitless possibilities it's hard to imagine what what is more limitless than the ability to communicate with literally billions of people around the world who might not otherwise be able to do so so it's very exciting to see that while we have a vision of all higley graduates this world language vision that we have in mind aligns perfectly with that and helps kind of feed into that concept i mentioned earlier about the
100seals of bi-literacy we know the arizona department of education in a few areas allows the opportunity for students who want to strengthen their study deepen their knowledge in a subject area to go that extra mile to be recognized with a distinction on that diploma something that carries forward with them into the job market into the world and beyond and we happen to have that seal of bi-literacy here in higley unified school district as i mentioned eight students last year were able to get that seal but i have to tell you one of the challenges we always face with anything like this is how do you promote these sorts of ideas these opportunities for students because let's face it there are so many different opportunities for young people when they get particularly into secondary education it's
101easy to get lost in the middle of their day with all the types of things that young people want to achieve and so one of the things that we've done and really credit to rebecca rodriguez for creating this you're seeing here a poster which is in all of our schools it's in all of our world language classes it's in all of the dli classrooms and if you take a look on here not only does it spell out exactly what those requirements are so even if you're a young student you can begin thinking about this as an aspirational goal for yourself but it talks a little bit about why a seal of bi-literacy might matter why is it worthy of that that work that little bit of extra to get that distinction and if you'll notice
102that qr code there at the bottom that that's a handy tool so that a student can instantly in the moment now on their personal device have an ability to refer back to that particular program and get further information about that i have to tell you having been a high school teacher myself it's difficult sometimes to support students with all the different choices that they have and for even the person who is teaching them to keep up with the changes and programs because this is offered by the arizona department of education so we try to align to it but we want to make sure we're current having this type of information here that makes it possible for both the teacher and the student to know exactly what it is they need to do to be able
103to pursue something like this mr treat i'm sorry to interrupt um is this ever sent out to our parents in an email form because this would be fantastic for our parents to see like either in our weekly email or and i i'm opening it up to anyone who wants to answer either in the weekly email or directed directly to those kiddos who are in those ap honors classes now president kaler board member wilson i think that's a wonderful idea it was just developed recently so that is something that i think we ought to do for sure because again we go through this idea of promotion of possibilities and that's that that's that concept that's behind this and in fact i've asked all of our instructional coaches in all the areas that have their various seals
104that go along with their different academic disciplines to follow suit so that teachers in maybe history social studies or in some of the areas business finance and so on they can also not just promote but educate and point students into the right direction with this so i love the idea i think if our parents know about it sometimes they give a nice nudge to their student that the student may not think about doing and the parent might say this is really good and give some explanation so i just think it'd be nice if the parents also knew i couldn't agree more and that's that's a fantastic idea and we'll be certain to do that thank you one of the things that we want to highlight here if you've had a moment to hear a little
105bit about the work that happened in the dli and the world languages one of the things i want to take a moment to highlight and to share is you know the last two and a half years we had world language programs we had dli programs but you've heard from you had an entire team dedicated to defining it refining it and aligning it to the new standards proficiency targets professional development resources systems that take that take long times to put in place and your team this amazing dedicated team of administrators and their teachers and our curriculum did this in two years two and a half years in the middle of a pandemic which is one of the things when you look at we have grown exponentially because higley could say they had a program we now
106can say we have a model program and we're looking at one of the things that model programs have is and it takes vision of the leadership is it's not just the immediate but it's the long term so where does this go and how do we get there and how do we make sure that pathways and opportunities are there for students and and it looks it means looking beyond your own borders even in your own state are what are those uh dynamic model programs that exist out there affiliation with world language uh where languages either in the immersion model or in our classes is essential we're going to talk here in a minute about pathways forward you know one of the things we know is that immersion programs are immersion programs exist in a model in
107the elementary grades at the secondary remember you're dealing with you're dealing with two things you're dealing with you're dealing with highly qualified and you're dealing with level of proficiency remember at the secondary level as we're building their proficiency to continue that language and develop it the content expertise teachers have in that is that world language and making sure that teachers are performing and at that very level that's a challenge you will not find a a secondary immersion model in the fact that you're not going to find someone who's proficient in that level of language and highly qualified in all the content areas plus students now also have to begin to expand into other options you'll notice that's one of the things we have is multiple options so courses and offerings for students are huge one
108of the things that this team has been dedicated to is beginning to not only build our pathway build it stronger build it better but think ahead and you're going to begin to hear in just a little bit about this team is is leading in world languages now as we talk about what's potential what are we working on on the next front because um there's a need and and and our leadership is is trying to be part of leading that rather than lagging behind and ensure we have pathways and opportunities for our students at all grade levels so kind of keeping that in mind we're going to transition into uh the work of where are we going right yeah thank you dr foley that that's that's 100 correct that we are really doing everything we can
109to see that pre-k through 12 vision here to help make certain that well we just don't kind of end something prematurely and this is what this slide kind of demonstrates for you when we start thinking about those dli kids in particular but really any student that is able to achieve at high levels what happens is they start to kind of top out early we have some students that are able to sit for that ap exam in ninth grade and some that are able to get there in 11th grade but there's this idea that we don't want to let their language exploration their growth stop there if you think about it learning a language is a perishable skill it's something that must be practiced over and over you must be always moving forward to continue to
110grow and develop it's not something where you can say i have it and then i put it away and i pull it out every once in a while it has to be utilized and so what we want to make certain is that with our students who are excelling at these levels and when you hear the success stories from coronado and from san tan here comes a wave of students who are excelling at high levels combining that with our current high school kids we want to make sure that we carry them on through and don't just leave them off in ninth grade and so what we're doing right now is we're exploring some different options as to how we can bridge to this upper kind of levels of learning we start talking about higher education beyond
11112th grade and so there are different models in different parts of the country that we're looking at we're in conversations with institutions of higher learning to see what are some ways that we can help maybe bridge the experience of a k-12 student in that with some university coursework just as you might find with dual language or excuse me dual credit courses where they can earn college credit while as a high school student well similar sorts of partnerships are things we're exploring right now with colleges and universities to see if we can't get students further down the road toward potentially a minor in their language by spending through the majority of the study that they're able to do with us right here in higley and so that next slide kind of shows the role that that
112bridge program can play again this is a model that we see in other states and something that we're exploring also with regional peer districts to try to figure out what's a way that we can make this work how can we get through the logistical hurdles to see that we have students that are able to carry on their study all the way through 12th grade and beyond to bridge them to the future in the next two slides i have our pathway plan that we have under construction we are hopeful to put this plan into action in the near future with help from other districts in the valley and moving forward with what we learned from utah and delaware this is our working plan for a bridge pathway for the mandarin program students can start at the
113pre-k level at coulee ecdc we have our kindergarten through sixth grade mandarin dual enrollment at coronado elementary way there where they can enter the program in kinder or first grade this feeds into our immersive classes for seventh and eighth grade at cooley middle school these classes are taught at a higher proficiency level than the 1a and 1b courses offered for our beginning mandarin students this immersive class is taught entirely in mandarin middle school beginning mandarin students will take level 1a and then 1b at either middle school they move into high school and have courses offered through their senior year next year it is expected that our 8th grade immersive mandarin students will feed into our honors mandarin level 3 class at williamsfield high school we will look at the 8th grade results from the stamp
114test to verify that students have reached the proficiency level to take that honors level three class if not they will be placed in the best class for their proficiency level then they will continue on with mandarin mandarin four and then the ap course this is where our courses would end for them if we don't bridge the gap i am working with other districts in conversation with local universities to grant the capabilities to then add an upper level mandarin course that they offer called third year chinese or chinese 301 302 as of right now this course is not offered at our high schools anywhere but at our high schools i just want to be clear it's not available yet so next slide this is our working plan for a bridge pathway for the spanish program students
115can start at the pre-k level at soseman ecdc we have our kindergarten through fifth grade spanish dual enrollment at san tan and next year our fifth graders will move into sixth grade where we will then have all of our grade levels with the spanish dual language this will then feed into our spanish immersive classes for seventh and eighth grade at soseman middle school these classes will be taught at the higher proficiency level than one or one a and they are offered that are offered for our spanish students that are beginning spanish in middle school the immersive classes will be taught entirely in spanish students who have never spoken spanish have the opportunity to start with spanish 1a or 1 in 7th grade and then they move into 1b or 2 at either middle school it
116is expected that our immersive spanish classes will then feed into our ap spanish class at higley high school students will take the stamp test in eighth grade again to verify that they have reached the best proficiency level to take that ap course if not they'll be placed in the best spanish class for their proficiency level this would be the last available class for our most spanish students if we don't offer anything beyond the ap course we do have the literature ap course but this is not ideal because this would duplicate their spanish college credits and we would rather have something better for those students so again i'm working with other districts in the valley to con in conversations with the local university to give us three upper level spanish courses spanish conversation and composition or
117spanish 314 for 10th grade introduction to spanish lit or spanish 325 in 11th grade and then the advanced conversation and composition course or spanish 412 in their senior year as of right now again these courses are not offered in arizona um a student would need to score well on their ap test in order to meet the prerequisites to enter the next level for chinese or spanish because that's the prerequisite for these courses at the university level these specific courses are on the bridge plan because they are required courses toward a minor in the language at the arizona universities if our students finished either the spanish or the mandarin bridge pathway they would be on course for a short sorry one course short of a minor in that language and well on their way to a
118major in it another exciting development this year has been the production of our dli website it's found on the husd webpage under departments and then you can also reach it through the link on this slide the goal of the website is to inform the community using current research and information on what we're doing in dual language what it is where it's located and how they can become involved thank you so much for your time attention and most especially for your support of our amazing language programs uh thank you so much for this very comprehensive um work study that i think we just endured um that's not the right word endured it's this is just that it came out endured it was all jeff's fault mr armstrong right um no all these things are exciting for
119our district and so thankful that we do have a world language coach i know that these were this was um a request by several um teachers throughout the years that we would have this position in the district office and what a difference it's made thank you to the principles that you invest your time energy into all these extracurricular activities that go along with this immersion program because i know there's many so thank you for that um i don't have any specific questions at the moment so i'm going to pass it over i know mrs schultz has some and mrs wilson have some so we'll start with mrs schultz i told mrs keller i have two pages of questions but i really don't i'll just so i will save all of my i am a parent
120of a dli two students so but i'll save all my personal questions for coronado next week but um one of the things i wanted to ask is what are we doing to promote the program to help grow the program right now i know that there's lots of parents that aren't we look at the numbers i know their mandarin is lower right now i know that kindergarten has a wait list with one student next year but what are we doing to promote that to the community i mean specifically it's i'm just going to be truthful being in the business being in this this business it really is the the marketing specifically is what is the program producing and what is the district doing overall and how are what are the goals moving forward that are going
121to continue to bring students into the campus you are right that spanish does have a waiting list and at san tan and we are we are working on doing that our our program is is being articulated by parents that are already in the program that feel that it it's doing their child a due diligence in terms of making sure that they're meeting the requirements and the needs of the of the dual language and i will tell you that out of all the marketing in the past we did flyers and we put things on websites that's all great but it really is that word of mouth and whether or not it's meeting that need of the parent that's going to be able to continue to articulate that so it's one of those showa show i believe
122show that we are doing it and show what's going on that's going to continue to bring it in i will say that out of it to really highlight the marketing component and i believe it's the same at san tan when we talk about inbounds and out of bound enrollment we have 72 students who are out of district open enrollments and that at each school is absolutely huge in terms of that and within the district i have 90 plus who are open enrollment in district as well so that's those are numbers yes we can always improve and we're always going to continue to try to grow but it's one of those you need to show in my eyes and i really do think that both programs are speaking for themselves and i'll say in years past
123we've also done a great job of posting on social media but as well as that on buses we've also had advertisement on buses as well so i think the biggest component though is the word of mouth our families do share um i have and i'm sure coronado as well i have every year several when i say several at least five parents that are seeking out dli programs for their currently third three-year-old for the future and i can tell you that's something that um i get emails just random emails hey i'm looking for kindergarten and i have a three-year-old awesome and and i'm able to promote the preschool program and so um that's something that you don't see nationally is that pre-k through that 12 experience and so really excited about that opportunity here but over
124the years we've done it several ways um but as well capacity to to host the program um and in the limited space like for me it would it would be very difficult to add a third section in kindergarten when in the past i've had the numbers but the capacity to have it is is a struggle for the space the teacher the resources it really throws a kink having three sections versus two sections in kindergarten it does not flow well for the program when it comes to the management of it but traditionally because majority of the kids are on open enrollment in the program we don't provide and it's we don't provide transportation for families and so various reasons families will choose to keep their kid at their home school because and so um we're able
125to go through that wait list most of the time throughout the year and so i can say that overall though the district has done a good job of promoting it on social media and other places as well uh president caleb schultz one of the things so promotional things obviously help but reputation helps and one of the things higley didn't have a presence at the state level as being a model program in the involvement like we have had in the last year year and a half i mean truly it is word of mouth and when you are working with a state representative who's known as the state when people go to and say where are the best programs i don't know that our name would have come up until our reputation again if you build it
126they will come i think the work that we're talking about you you can see some pride tonight in the work of the individuals truly the amount of work that's been done from building the curriculum to aligning the proficiencies to doing the professional development to taking what we were doing to another level systemically has been a massive process and we have brought in people to help us get there and i think we are now we are now going oh do you know what they're doing in higley which is really cool when i go to superintendent meetings with superintendents across the state who don't know about the east valley go oh i heard about your program i just beam with pride because it means what we're doing is making a difference so i think promotional is more
127promotion obviously happens but word of mouth and quality program matters and i think we're getting we're getting better awesome dr foley oh sorry you go how is this going to add to that and that we have more kids in the mandarin preschool program dli than we've ever had which typically or a lot of those kids will funnel into our elementaries we also promote these programs during kindergarten roundup and i have a funny story that happened today a parent called ed services and said how do i get my kid into the dli program do i just need to hold them back in preschool a year so they have an open slot and i thought well we've never had a call like that before that i think our pr department is great and social media seems seems
128to be the way to go so and i'm going to say also i think it goes into just like we're doing with if if mr telkien can get that sister cities those are the events that we were never never mentioned of and for him to come and walk on campus and say hey i want you to go ahead and have your students perform that's absolutely huge and so those are the types of things that people will start seeing when they're wearing their coronado gear and when they're wearing their santan gear and people are talking that's going to be the component that really is going to start grasping and hearing those conversations i think that's going to be the number one marketing course i have more thank you okay um so i we didn't see any
129numbers on stamp tests for seventh and eighth graders i know spanish isn't there yet but mandarin isn't there yet are those numbers there and how are we tracking those kids to make sure they're on track and supporting them i'm appreciative that there's kindergarten through six then you're here and this team but it doesn't seem to be involvement from the upper level grades in this program board member schultz i think we briefly mentioned that we're going to stamp test every student in a language course currently whether it's dli or our world language courses that's that's to help us understand you know how do we support our teachers do we need to do something differently that data is not a gotcha that data is to help us improve our practice and i think it is important for
130those mandarin kids that are currently at cooley to have a snapshot of where are you are you ready for mandarin so currently they're not having that right they haven't the kids that are in eighth grade haven't had a stamp test so they will this year like i mentioned i i hate to use the covet excuse but it threw off a couple of things last year honestly sure so but they are scheduled just like everybody else okay awesome um and where are we with the bridge program i know you've mentioned it is it reasonable to say it could happen in i don't know three years or is there a timeline or [Music] we've worked with the universities around here they have expressed interest we've actually gone to meetings with their dean of students and they are
131currently in talks the thing that's kind of holding us back right now is do we house the instruction or does the university house the instruction and so that's kind of where we're just in the talks with how does it look and who's in charge we're hoping that by the time our coronado kids get to that that final year that it will be ready for them because it's our desire president current eighth graders the coronado eighth graders will have leaders hopefully by the time they get to that senior year and why do you want to stay so you know we've looked at the different stuff as far as secondary schools go why would someone want to continue in the pathway as far as coronado de cooley to i mean if it's offered at saseman and offered
132it higley and we see the kids last week at um higley high already in ap what's the support or extra support or is there anything for them in the secondary schools okay let me make sure i'm understanding so did i ask that mandarin class is only offered at cooley right and so they have mandarin classes that saw someone but they don't have that immersive course so they wouldn't be getting higher levels i understand but you can still get there yes you can still get if you don't stay on the path you can still get there like through like we saw the kids that are in mandarin ap already at higley high school yes so this would be another entry point for students like if you were in 10th grade and you were in the ap
133class at higley high school and you got a five on that ap test you would be able to then move into those courses as well so it is for any student who is able to pass that ap test to move forward so this is going to benefit all of our students who are excelling in the language okay and then as far as the emerging immersion program and way we grow is it is it along the same lines as other districts as far as the continuation between kindergarten to we are very comparable to what's happening around here and we are actually very comparable to what's happening in the in utah and delaware those are kind of like the ones that everyone looks at because they started first and they have legislation that backs up their programs
134and we have actually been very closely aligned with what they are doing and moving forward we will be on that same pathway okay um mr mccarthy just what was the i just tried to ask but um what was the um the club that you mentioned that you were doing twice a week it was folklorico so dance oh okay okay awesome i just didn't hear what you said and so i wondered what the club asked me to do it awesome um i have some more but i'll let mrs wilson answer it thank you like i got my list come on mrs schultz i'll let you go ahead for now president taylor porter schultz i just wanted to expand upon one of the questions you had that also is important we talked about the funding of the
135resources the addition of the stamp that is an expensive component historically the stamp is a it's a standardized assessment not all of our world languages were utilizing that as a semester exam one of the things that ed services had to do was expand the budget and and to plan for it to expand it to all of our second world tour to our world languages as the secondary level one of the key pieces there is having a content coach who can work with the teachers to align the maps to use the tool for this purpose prior to this year we didn't have someone dedicated in that capacity which we do now which allows for that work to happen so hence the assessment component now is far more solid when we're saying pre-k-12 we're talking about the
136immersion program up to the secondary level the other component i wanted to hit on is it's important to remember that that bridge program requires us to work through the university system to grant the credit having been a previous university administrator both chris street and i have experienced in that area it can take a few years to get it through one of the challenges historically has been their their concern about whether or not um the elementary or the the high schools can teach it at the same level think dual enrollment credit the beautiful thing is because we have stamp and it's an international test it takes out the argument that we can't teach it at the proficiency level students would have so hence our ability to be able to offer it as long as we have
137the highly qualified person that that that that argument is going to make it easier it can take up to two years to work through the university system hence why it's important to get ahead of it the nice thing is is that when we talk about this this is happening with great momentum and speed because there's a desire for this so our hope the the some of this is outside of our control and some of this is mentally in our control and we're working through the right channels to get it there yeah i didn't expect like i didn't i just wondered if there was a timeline as far as that goes i understand working at the universities and all of that and dealing with it so i just wanted to see if there was if you
138had a timeline for it um um i just want to say i know sorry i just she brought so i didn't want to forget so 2019 is when this committee was formed and everything in the groups and and dual dli started in 2014 2015. thank you and what is so what if you guys go away what is it to keep it going because we haven't had it in the years before you know as far as making sure there is still a cohesive plan and that it's not up and down because we have seen turnover and so we've seen people excited about the programs and then kind of go down and then back up again so i want to make sure that we're able to maintain that for everyone so what's in place i guess one
139of the things that's really important is sustainability of programs and a lot of that becomes one of the starting points that we started was defining it creating a handbook creating thinking maps aligning aligning a curriculum maps aligning resources a lot of infrastructure work has happened that continues to happen that didn't exist not that work wasn't happening but not systemically pre-k-12 and and again that includes professional development that includes resources that includes a lot of the processes and procedures that we've put in place and sort of been bringing to you to show that um that if individuals are no longer in those capacities those resources don't walk away with the individual they're they are they are owned by the district and that there are systems in place to ensure that they're implemented and that's one of
140the things that ha that is important with leadership and it's also important with the sustainability of programs which is what this team has been working really hard because it's one thing to talk it it's another thing to have evidence artifacts and documents that that that support the conversation which we've been building it and have come a long way um and i'm so proud this doesn't happen without everybody working and lifting really hard my turn okay [Laughter] dr foley i know i asked before but could you go over how many open enrollment kiddos we have in these two programs just for our community so they can hear uh i'm sorry mrs richards maybe it's you um i just want our community to hear how many kiddos have chosen to come to higley because of this okay
141so um currently in district open enrollment at coronado the mandarin dli program there are 93 students and as was mentioned here there are 72 students out of district open enrollment for spanish immersion in district we have 110 open enrolled students out of district weirdly enough we have 72 so there's some connection between these two gods i haven't figured it out a competitiveness yes those two so those are those are outstanding numbers and show that people value this they want this and i think the dedication here radiates out of both of them so mr mercado already has a kindergartner on a waiting list so he's got 51 kids oh i don't know that that happened today can we put banners at both of these schools saying like now enrolling for our dual language um is that
142an option to do some sort of banner as an advertisement that our print shop could possibly do um board member taylor uh president gaylord board member wilson we have a fantastic print job and our promotional team has helped us create some lovely things i think that's a lovely idea um it just might be good if someone is driving by to be able to see that we are offering spanish at and mandarin um i just thought of that when mrs schultz was asking about what we're doing um do our students have to maintain a certain grade in order to stay in that pro in the elementary programs mostly i know middle school that's a whole new ball game but at the elementary level if we're if they're struggling in english should we really have them doing
143spanish how does that work what do we do there board member wilson that's a great question [Music] the i'm assuming the coronado team but also the santan team this is why teachers do such a fantastic job of making connections with kids to monitor that progress knowing that the program the teachers only have the kids for about two and a half hours during the day they work systematically as a team the english teacher and the spanish teacher on the other side as well to ensure that kids are growing and so we don't want them to start falling behind what i will tell you traditionally i don't have the data in front of me traditionally at san tan the district benchmarks that we do our kids in the dli program in general majority of the time outperform
144the general side and that is typically in second grade and higher when we start looking at that data we also look at past dibbles data but it also shows in that dibbles data cadence data that our k1 kids typically outperform the general side and those assessments are done in english and so knowing that i can just tell you on behalf of san tan with me being there for eight years and starting the program over the past eight years that's what you traditionally see with those district benchmark assessments on the english side also can a kid out when they get to middle school if they've been in either of your programs and they get to middle school and they decide that they want to continue mandarin or spanish but they also want to try another foreign
145language as well because in my line of work i've seen people who have eight languages under their belt because they learn one and it's like a bug and they want to keep learning is that a possibility at higley that we allow a middle schooler to continue taking mandarin and or spanish and then take french or well we don't offer french in middle school let's go with some the opposite one is that have we ran into it hey and can we do that can we allow that okay so that it is allowed as long as they have the elective credits available they can take whichever credits they prefer okay um and then just one more quick follow-up um i looked for the email and our email's kind of weird on district email um but a few
146years back i had a parent write an email and just thanked us for the mandarin program sorry mr romano you're gonna be very upset um and just thanked us for the program and said i believe they were driving their child over 45 minutes one way to this program to because it was the program um i want to highlight that parent thank them for their email they were concerned about the program making sure that we kept it but it was something to be said that they reached out to us back then to remind us how important this program was to their family and their students yeah miss wilson that that student actually just left us last year and when they decided not to because they decided to go into a different district because they were driving
14745 minutes the parents came to me and expressed the sincere gratitude for that so when we're talking what we're doing and open enrollment and that kind of stuff we are i'm going to echo what dr foley was saying we truly are moving towards being the premier says it in our mission that's our goal but we're talking about being the premier dual language immersion program and world language program in the in the valley i mean the work that's going on is is remarkable and unexplainable per se and when parents reach out to you about that those are things that are highlighted and that parent was distraught i can't express it enough they were really upset so we appreciate that thank you mr schultz you can hack at the floor again uh mr ricardo i wanted to
148say that you were very proud of your students and last week year i sat next to you at the teacher of the year um breakfast and you showed me all the numbers on your stamp test and how proud of your students were so that was great and also just missed um jau doesn't get she get got credit for mr armstrong but she sends out besides the two nights that she dedicates she also sends you a recap she videotapes the lesson sends it out to you and sends you probably five different emails during the week about how to practice and what to do and now i'm a terrible parent i signed up for it and i haven't been able to go as mr armstrong knows but it's amazing and it's a great program and i know
149lots of parents that are a part of that one of the things i wanted to ask if kids are in the immersion program and i know there's only two electives and so they get excited and want to maybe try something else and mandarin is one of them is it possible for them to not take the classes in middle school then test into the program into in and test into the ap courses or president kaler board member schultz you actually hit on the question i was actually going to say because one of the things we find in middle school actually is that you know for the first time they have some opportunity for electives and they don't have very many electives and all of a sudden they want to try the dance they want to try
150the band they want to try something else and we encourage that because there's other enrichment opportunities that they have yes one of the things that we can do is and again there's entry points so you may you may not do this for a couple years which is one of the reasons why programs die if you don't have pathways if you don't have feeder schools because kids do take a little break but then they rejoin that and there's options for re-entry at the secondary level and utilizing the stamp as a tool it allows us to place appropriately so that we set the student up for success so we are in a far better place now with the use of this additional tool to give options for flexibility because we do find some students get to middle
151school and go i still i love my language and i will keep this but i want to try something else and we encourage them to do that that's important thank you that's great um i'm glad to know that that's an option um i think i'll let mrs sanderson talk one of the things i just want to say is as a parent that's been in the program for seven years then i am super happy with the way it's been going and also i'm grateful for the language program as i sought out a language program for my kids is a i think that's extremely important and my kids think spanish is hard when i try to teach them spanish and so obviously i mean i don't mandarin i don't know what they're saying and i can't help
152them at all but i finally got the dialect right on one word after seven years and i still terrible so i'm very grateful for the program existing even though i give mr armstrong crap about it um through member wilson's question my question kind of or you guys answered my question but i was wondering if you were tracking the academics uh comparing like the students that were going through this program and how they like you said probably do better in the standard classes and i didn't know if that could be now a good point for promotion for the community to see that i'm going to say we do and i think that's a great point however i think a dli program goes beyond just the academic component as we talked about the abcs of dual language
153immersion and that kind of stuff academic team being only one of them but that promotion of bilingualism and bi-literacy and cultural competency is going to is truly going to take it beyond and above when we talk about we have we we're an educational institution we want students moving forward in academics we want them to perform so yeah we look at it but that's not the only solid piece really the solid piece is being able to sit there and say as as a sixth grader leaving coronado this year man i'm i'm here and i want to continue moving forward because eventually i'm going to get a job that does this or i'm going to do this and i want to see i said it in a blurb is that the the the information our students in
154both campuses and then those at the middle school in high school that are receiving in another language they have no clue right now what what exists for them in the future and ultimately that's all that's the goal and i want to reiterate yes we do look at the academic piece but our job is to continue giving these individuals these young minds to go ahead and continue moving forward regarding what does it truly mean to have the acquisition of another language and be able to perform and be the best citizen they can be when they leave us and when they enter the workforce so that's something that i yes but i wanted to make sure i touch base on that because i get a little passionate about it i'm sorry i was just going to wrap
155things up unless you have something else i can thank you guys because i think you did a fantastic job i know that um just having the pathways now more secure is a huge huge step for higley um i know that just even at my tenure here on the board coming in i was very concerned what are we doing in seventh grade for these kiddos and now we have plans and things in place and i'm so grateful for that because i think that does give the security to the program for the long term and now i even see the high school with the college pathways hopefully god willing coming that just gives the stability to the programs both so kudos to all of you and the hard work that's been do going on i sat with
156dr foley this past week so kind of already got a preview of what was going to go on tonight but you guys covered it further and more in depth than i expected and i'm grateful for that sorry for my word earlier i didn't mean endure it's just been a long time since we've had a two hour plus meeting to be very honest it was those were the kova days and we would say those were enduring [Laughter] so um thank you so much for your time and all the energy that you guys have put into these programs we're very blessed in higley for that i think she has one more question i don't have a question i just want to say thank you and also um i just want to make sure that you're not going
157to go anywhere rebecca like okay thank you thank you thank you for all that came tonight um would it be okay if we took a five-minute break please and we will come back for our mno um budget review thank you okay thank you for that little recess um 7.2 you can see the report are there any questions or concerns i'm good anything if not we're going to move on that's just an informational item and next up we have mr tyler moore he's going to give us the first review of the 2022-2023 emino budget here we go all right good evening president kaler vice president anderson and members of the board tonight we will review the first review of the 2022-2023 maintenance and operations budget as a reminder the eminent budget accounts for all the district's
158financials resources with the exception of the capital items and various cash controlled funds such as tax credit gifts and donations and student activities which are typically fees and contributions to a particular cause like sports participation etc so this is our our whole budget um with the with those exceptions i also want to point out that is january and we're right in the middle of the current budget year but by law school districts must do a budget revision for the current year in fiscal 22 in may and then of course we know we adopt a budget in june um so we're in that time frame to talk budget um and that's what we'll do today so okay so first uh we're going to review the current budget for fiscal year 2022 and the highlights that are
159contributing to the budget at first we're not anticipating any additional covered relief grant funding as we presented last year the district expanded esther 1 and sr2 on items outlined in the requirements and the federal guidelines sr-3 spending plan was presented to the governing board on november 3rd and that plan will go through fiscal year 2024. uh the highlights of the spending plan included free summer school for the next two years in elementary councillors and retention stipends for staff as a reminder next we have been closely monitoring and working with our legislative representatives as well as possibly advocates regarding the 1.1 billion and potential cuts to education funding due to the aggregate expenditure limit for context the aggregate expenditure limit was passed in 1980 to limit how much k-12 schools can spend in a school year
160the cap fluctuates each year depending on enrollment in short the formula takes the previous year's enrollment uh plus inflation where this goes wrong well and also to note charter schools are not uh included in the spending limits since they did not exist in 1980. most schools are funded funds are accounts most school funds count towards the limit with the exception of federal funds much like esther and ida grants as well as title grants fast forward to today and the reason this is now an issue is due to a few factors first is prop 301 or classroom site fund that is now do added to the calculation to the aggregate expenditure limit um due to the original proposition expiring in 2018 that was voter approved as if you remember in 2018 the legislation extended prop 301
161or classroom site fund without provisions exempting it from this aggregate expense limit so that's around 600 million that's adding into this into this budget limit which is a major factor second the state has worked to restore uh funds such as the district judicial assistance from recession error cuts which is a good thing but those research funds are counting towards this limit which are now at risk of being cut higley if this does not be if this is not exempt at the legislature by two-thirds vote higley's um at risk of potentially 16 million in budget cuts to this current year the budget estimates presented in this next slide we'll assume an exemption is will be passed by the legislature but i do have a slide that will present some contingency plans if this does indeed come
162to fruition on a good note higley is realizing some growth this year as we talked about in the bond um first review we are realizing a 2.2 increase in average daily membership that equates to about 250 students that is a positive impact to this budget as we'll discuss in the previous next slides and lastly due in part to the bond not being successful last year the district will be forced to revert back um to the uh to funding its capital leases through the eminent transfer so as a reminder we transfer operational budget um to pay for that lease payment due in part to our capital budget not being enough to support that payment mr tyler were you mr tyler mr talking more tyler moore mr moore will you please explain to as we talked last
163week that um that 16 million if indeed this passes which god forbid for every school district across arizona um that money just sits in our account but we are not able to spend it can you explain that yeah so by law we are the way school district budgets work um we are funded on a per-pupil basis uh it doesn't matter how much inflation increases doesn't matter how much property um rates rise uh we are capped at a per people spending limit and we establish budgets like we present in may and june and those budgets are our limits so if this aggregate expenditure limit comes to fruition what it states essentially we will have to reduce our budget by 16 million that does not mean the property taxes will decrease likewise that just means we have
164to decrease our budget and we are obligated to reduce it for 16 million but the way the cash and all the funds will still flow in through property taxes but we will not be allowed to spend that money per legislation like i said this is a 1980s uh state funding formula that is clearly outdated but it has not been addressed and fortunately or unfortunately this is being brought up and being more so in the news and so we hope through our conversations with our policy advocates and our legislators within higley that this funding formula not only gets exempted this year but there's a long-term solution for the funding formula where we do not have to have conversations such as this that would negatively impact education and all the programs that we've currently fund through our
165operational budget so as a just a reminder this is the the general budget timeline for arizona school districts our fiscal year runs from july 1st to june 30th the adopted budget the board approved backed in june 2021 is the current budget the district is currently operating under as required in state statute arizona schools are required to do a budget revision in december if they are in a shortcoming of one percent of their adopted budget higley was not required to do a budget revision as we were realizing a budget surplus as noted because we had two percent growth the reason we did not bring a budget revision to you you may be asking why is because that december increase would have counted against us against the aggregate expenditure limit someone else is if we increase our
166budget by the adm growth our aggregate expenditure limit cut potentially cut would have increased proportionately so um with that being said there was no benefit to bring a revision in december which is why we did not this brings us to today and explains why we're discussing both the 2022 budget which is for the may revision as well as the 2023 budget which is for the june adoption hopefully this timeline provides a little clarity about the budget cycle as we proceed to this presentation so looking at the 2022 estimated budget revision uh this is a projected may revision that we do for current year revision as i discussed the board adopted the current year budget back in june of 2021 that budget number is represented at the top which is 106 million that budget includes the
167carry forwarder from last fiscal year which is 16 million as noted during our annual financial report for the fiscal year 2021 that 16 million was higher than projected due in part to the district's inability to fill positions which resulted in vacancy savings as well as several one-time expenses being funded from our sr funds uh we anticipate um those one-time savings coming back into the mno budget for fiscal 23 as it was just a one-year relief next we'll look at what we're projecting for a may revision mostly due in part to growth we are looking at revising our current budget up to 110 million the increase takes in consideration the 2.2 growth in adm this year um but again this is not taking consideration the aggregate the potential aggregate expenditure limit reductions this is best-case scenario
168uh doing the math the difference um the district will look to increase its budget capacity by 3.3 million so i'll go over a little bit on the next slides on what that means going forward but first though that's our may our current may revision that we'd have to do that plays right into our 2023 budget that we'd be adopting in june so first and again we don't anticipate nor are we budging for any additional covert release funding one item that has already been budgeted for from our cover to release funds is the second retention stipend for fiscal year 23. we've discussed this in both our sr3 presentation um as an upcoming item the requirements for the stipend would be similar to the first retention stipend paid out in november employees who signed their contract and
169or were at work well work agreement for next fiscal year and work from july to the end of august will be eligible for that retention stipend again these funds will be prorated on fte or full-time equivalency and as with any funds these are subject to taxes that was one misconception on our first presentation i want to clarify with this second retention stipend as with the 2022 budget revision the 2023 budget will be directly affected if legislation does not pass with the exemption to the aggregate expenditure limit as noted in the 2022 budget revision the budget cuts are not presented in these upcoming present projections but i'll show in a separate slide what our contingency plans are if that again the aggregate expansion limit does come to fruition some good news for our employees is the
170ars contribution rate will decrease next year by point two four percent uh while this is a small cut it is a change of pace from the last several years of increases to the asrs contribution rate um so employees can expect a small increase in their take-home pay as noted earlier we are not reducing the mno transfer for the middle school leases due in part to the 2021 bond not passing emino will fully fund next year the lease payment as we look to maximize our budget to its full capacity we have we've been researching all the options one area where finance and human resources has identified a potential budget savings is within insurance so during the first review of eminem we'll briefly discuss uh higley's medical insurance and why self-insurance is the in the best interest
171of the district also while we don't have concrete renewal rates yet we can ensure that there will again for a second year in a row be no increase to employee medical contributions so again another budget savings and more money back into our employees pockets so looking at our budget estimates for both the 2022 revision and the compared to the 2023 estimates for fiscal year 2023 we are projecting a budget of 112 million due to the projected inflation um well excuse me back up one second at the top you'll see the 2022 sma revised budget that we just previously discussed so if you take that um versus compared to our 2023 projection of 112 million this is mostly due to our the inflation of two percent that we are projecting i will note that in 2021
172the state inflation they realized seven percent but yet another outdated policies k-12 schools are limited to two percent inflation increase um per year so we cannot by law um budget for any more than two percent inflation uh for 2023 we are also going to um budget for no increase in adm uh as an additional contingency knowing that we can revise up next fiscal year like i just suggested um also noted is the 4.4 million dollar mno transfer that will be transferred to capital from our mno budget to pay for the lease payment there is a small savings with the arizona state contribution being reduced and that is also estimated in that budget number that you see there so doing the math on the difference between the estimated revised 22 budget our current year budget and
173the estimated 2023 budget we can realize we're projecting a budget increase of six million dollars uh the 2023 budget um well like i said increase approximately six million dollars so as i move to the next slide we'll talk a little bit about where that six million dollars is going in potential next steps so we've identified 6 million dollars as our estimated increase in budget capacity for going into next year assuming the aggregate expansion limit is exempted we have a few fixed cost increases that we have already identified as a fiscal 3 2023 budget impact first we are projecting an increase to our property casualty insurance for next year our property capital state also encompasses our prepaid legal we've had several large um we have some large property claims as well storm damage but we've also
174incurred several um more legal expenses due to impartial covet and other litigation that the district has been involved in so we anticipate an increase of approximately 75 000. in addition as the district continues to grow we must keep up with the demand and additional teacher and support needs so we've allocated one million dollars for additional positions going into next fiscal year most of these positions are teacher positions to maintain or reduce class sizes uh miss martens also has an allocation of 500 000 in there if we do realize uh large amounts of growth we can address that with um to uh either teacher positions or support positions so we have contingencies all over um lastly we're batching for an increase in utilities approximately two percent um utility rates across the board much like everything is
175going up so we are being conscious of that and allocating a small increase for that mr moore um i had heard that gilbert is raising water rates is this two percent uh um is that accounting for that water race it is a portion of that yes okay um there's also been talks of um some of our srp rates going up as well i just wanted to make sure that we were allocating enough money because of that i heard it was a big jump and that families may be um seeing that on their bill soon so i knew that that would also impact us as a district so i just wanted to make sure that was enough that we've allocated to that yeah thank you we have realized some savings obviously with with schools being small
176savings we've been open for majority of kovid but there you know there was some savings in which the time we were closed um so that's why this this increase is smaller but we are consciously starting to budget for the increases going forward so lastly you'll notice that we have not determined a district compensation increase for next year until the legislation acts on the aggregate expansion limit we feel you know it's prudent to wait until that legislation either goes one way or the other before we make a decision on compensation as i'll note in the upcoming slides it's going to have a large impact on what we do going forward before we get there i will talk briefly about medical insurance changes so as outlined in the highlights the district is moving towards the direction of
177self-insurance this is one area in the budget where where we've identified potential savings what we know at this time is what we're looking at moving under the administrative kairos health kairos is a consortium group of basic schools cities and towns where they leverage pooled insurance to maximize benefits for those who are insured in the pool there are several other neighboring districts involved in this under the umbrella of kairos including chandler unified queen creek scottsdale unified as well as well several towns and cities so by higley moving self-insured within this consortium we will still remain independent but we'll be able to leverage the buying power of these other insured kairos has some benefits several benefits that will also assist with enrollment as well as benefits administration higley will also only be responsible for our own losses
178so we while we're leveraging these pooled resources we are still maintaining our independence so if we do realize low claims in a year we will realize those savings not the pool so it's a unique program in which several schools have jumped on in real life savings and that's why we're researching that at this time so again this is another area in which we are currently working on so as we move through the budget cycle uh we'll bring more information regarding this smooth transition to kairos what we know right now is we'll be under the same medical proprietor so it's united to united we're currently our medical producers united kairos is under united where we have seen potential changes possibly in our voluntary coverages so vision dental life there's several other voluntary coverage where there might
179be a potential change we do fully intend to bring all those changes to the board once we have a concrete idea of what those changes are but right now we're just in the initial stages of this transition so that is what i have on medical insurance as we as i mentioned um we do have some contingencies regarding the aggregate expenditure limit so if this expenditure limit were to come to fruition in this fiscal year uh higley again as i mentioned would have 16 million dollars at risk the proposal would be to reduce our budget balance care for it from fiscal year 2021. as i mentioned earlier it was approximately 16 million this reduction would wipe out all our contingencies from our current budget but we would not make we would not have to make any
180budget cuts to this current year the impact into next fiscal year we would have to make some reductions in or eliminate some of those additional budgeted fte that we just kind of talked about we would also have to propose no compensation increase as well as hiring in salary freezes with no budget contingencies in our budget we would be at risk of if there was any sort of catastrophe we would be at risk of having to furlough it's just not pretty i don't want to go down the list of stuff but this is potentially what we are preparing for if this were to come to fruition so um like i said the legislative groups and the advocacy groups that we are working with and currently involved with have a strong sense that this will be exempted
181for this year there's too much at risk for this not to be we are thankful and that we do have this contingency several districts that i've discussed that i've talked to do not have contingencies like we do and they would have to make current year cuts um mid-year so with that news it's already in a bad note but we will be back february 9th with our first review of our capital budget um as well as so february 23rd we did postpone i think on our original budget calendar we had us coming back for a second review on february night the aggregate dispensary limit deadline is march 1st so we don't feel that any change would be made between now and february 9th so there would be the same information presented tonight so february 23rd we
182earmarked as our second review um because we will have we do feel like we'll have concrete information on which way they'll go um and we can present that information to the giving board at the time march 9th we will ask for tentative approval like we did last year so we can issue contracts to our teachers we are always in competition with other districts on who can get the contracts out first and having that send approval approval allows us to issue those contracts and see who's returning for next year um at that same time we'll have a second review of the capital budget and then on april 20th we'll present the third review and tentative approval of capital that allows us to get out early um and place pos for those long term long lead items
183especially in today's climate most of our capital items in terms of any sort of hvc any of those long leak lead patterns or excuse me construction or building items are even exaggerated in terms of their lead time so it's important to also tentatively approve that budget so we can get ahead of those purchases and then like i alluded to in the budget calendar on june is the formal adoption proposal and adoption of the fiscal 23 budget and with that if there's any questions i'll be happy to answer thank you mr moore i just want to reiterate that um higley has done a really great job in our finance department over the last year at two um i'm very impressed with how far we've come as far as preparing for things cycles just so many different
184things in our budget that we've gone over and over again so when we talk about this 16 million dollar possible cut out of our budget that is strictly on the state legislature that is nothing that higley has done that is nothing that any school district in this state has done or deserved and i just want to make that very clear so if there's people out there that are listening tonight this is a state legislative decision that will be made and districts across the state will have to live with the consequences of that it's very difficult for me to sit here and listen and know that our federal government has been quite generous with cobit relief monies sr1 sr2 sr3 and then for our state to come in and say hold the phone we're going to
185cut 16 million it is absolutely atrocious to think about so if there was ever a time that anybody felt like they needed to advocate at the state level now is the time and i just want to encourage people to contact their state local legislators and fight for every district in the state of arizona not just higley but every district does not deserve this so that's all i have to say about that okay no other questions concerns sorry i think we can follow up with um to follow up your statement uh arizona is always ranked very low on funding and now we're going to be even lower they decide to take this money from us thank you because we'll be even lower on the ranking um it's disappointing it's disappointing to see what they're doing in
186the legislation um they're looking at also doing some other cuts to us for a governing board not to be able to pay for certain things professional development wise and it's just it's disappointing yes thank you okay thank you mr moore and we will see more of you in the near future okay moving on to 8.1 any future agenda items that the board would like to see coming down the pipe line yes no maybe so okay this is something um let's go ahead mrs sorry president keller moving forward it doesn't have to be any time soon obviously we have a lot on the board but will there be any kind of presentation to see how the first year of the virtual academy went and where we are and president caleb member schultz we can definitely add
187that as a an over your overview here of how things are going we can identify where i want to add to that this is not an exhaustive list some of our uh annual things that we bring to you on different things we did not outline here these are some of the special topics but absolutely we can talk about a overview year of hba for us as well numbers curriculum all the things we've learned and next steps awesome thank you dr foley i know you're very good about this but uh just a reminder if we could have some follow-up on the we had quite a few speakers for speakers today if we could just have a follow up on those that would be fantastic thank you yes more information to follow on those for sure um
188all right 10.2 i move i move that we move into executive descent executive session to just for the discussion or consultation with designated representatives with the governing board pursuant to ars 38-431.03 a7 second all those in favor i motion carries 4-0 and we will be adjourning in our executive session so we will not be returning here tonight thank you so much and good night you