001good evening we're going to go ahead and call this meeting to order dr foley roll call president reese members of the board please let the record show that all members are present thank you we are going to have a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance all right we'll go on to our agenda i move that we approve the agenda as it's presented second any questions or comments regarding the agenda all those in favor aye aye aye that motion carries 5-0 dr foley superintendents report president reese members of the board we start tonight with our favorite part of our superintendent's report which is the celebration of our fantastic students volunteers and employees and tonight we have our middle schools in the house with us and they are one of many celebrations that we
002will have this evening so because we're going to start alphabetical we're going to start with cooley middle school so i'm excited to invite up mr sean varner mr brent brandenburg and louisa shorts to come join us ms shorts to celebrate our points of pride from cooley [Applause] thank you so much president reese members of the board dr foley cabinet it is my pleasure tonight to introduce some amazing members of cooley middle school that really make cooley middle school the great family that it is and a great place to work in a great place for our students to succeed first i would like to introduce our points of pride volunteer miss beth carlson if you could please come up to the front please [Applause] either side we're not picky again our points of pride volunteer miss
003carlson is an invaluable part of the coulee middle school color guard program she volunteers countless hours working with our students miss carlson teaches basic techniques on all equipment creates choreography and also spends a lot of her time behind the scenes preparing and planning so our students can have a positive experience in the program she is ready to do whatever needs to be done to help our students and she has helped lead our students to several state championships ms carlson thank you for all that you do for our coulee middle school color guard program we definitely appreciate you [Applause] and we have a gift for you as well and i think we have a photo op right now thank you beth all right next up we have our classified employee emily brennan come on up [Applause]
004congratulations miss brennan is an amazing paraprofessional at cooley middle school who works in our self-contained cross categorical classrooms she is a tireless worker and it is obvious from the moment that she walks or the moment that you walk into the classroom that she deeply cares about her students and is passionate about her work it is apparent that she has developed and maintains positive and supportive relationships with all of her students and there is nothing that she won't do is she is willing to help with anything that is asked of her because it will benefit her students we are so lucky to have miss brennan at cooley middle school ms brennan thank you for all that you do and keep up the great work [Applause] a gift for you and of course a photo op thank
005you um technical difficulties thanks curtis i promise i didn't do that to that other microphone i promise our teacher points to pride nominee lisa gilbert come on up [Applause] when you think of an example of a person who is calm under pressure structured organized helpful positive i could go on and on miss gilbert is the person that comes to mind for cooley middle school not only does she exhibit these qualities in her classroom but she also does so in leading the school's math department as she is our math math department chair miss gilbert is a caring teacher who strives to create interactive and engaging learning activities in her classroom and she is open and willing to share her ideas with her colleagues it has been fun to watch her mentor a new to the profession
006teacher this year as well as hone her leadership skills and working with the math department as a whole and more specifically the eighth grade math professional learning community as she indirectly spreads her ideas to students beyond just her specific classroom ms gilbert thank you for all that you do for cubele middle school and again keep up the great work [Applause] i'm doing a number on these microphones and finally our student point to pride nominee miss ella wilson will you please come up [Applause] congratulations where do i begin with ella she excels in the classroom as well as in our coulee middle school student council most of our students recognize ella from her involvement in our school-wide announcements for the past two school years in which she does an amazing job if i had to summarize
007her in one word it would be passionate no matter what she does she puts her full effort and passion into it and it is evident that she cares about her school and her classmates ella is very organized and mature and it is evident that she is on her way to a very successful high school career and life beyond when she leaves cooley middle school she pushes herself on a daily basis and she willingly does more than what is asked of her i enjoyed a positive demeanor that she demonstrates from the moment she gets out of the car in the morning and it is always enjoyable to talk to her about the goings on in student council and school in general ella thank you for being you and keep up the great work and keep on
008smiling [Applause] thank you everyone all right we'd like to now invite saseman our celebrate our specimen so i'm going to invite principal dan fox and mr brandon keeling to come up and celebrate our society superstars president reece members of the board dr foley cabinet members thank you very much for allowing us to honor some of our our points of pride here tonight our our stars from our campus um we have so many people to to pick from on our campus and it's always tough to to kind of narrow it down but we've got the real cream of the crop here with us tonight so uh first and foremost our points of pride nomination for our volunteer miss julia migliaccio [Applause] julia has been a mover and a shaker for sosman middle school this year with
009me starting as the new principal and with many of our ptso moving on to new campuses we were in a state of transition fortunately julia has stepped up to help out our new ptso members and to help provide fun events like our far cr fall carnival and pizza days when i have needed help with items that only ptso can help with julia has stepped in and gotten it done quickly additionally julia has helped guide our new officers on the ptso to make sure we are following proper protocol and she has been a presence on campus checking in to make sure everything is getting taken care of in a timely manner thank you julia for being a spartan who could get so much done in support of our teachers and students [Applause] all right for our
010classified points of pride member mr todd schuett [Applause] so in all my time as an educator i have ever worked with a plant foreman who takes on so many tasks with a smile like mr schuett todd is one of the hardest workers i've ever met and that is evident in the cleanliness and care he imparts on soseman middle school mr schuett paints entire buildings and hallways all by himself and he even helps with traffic flow in the morning in order to make our day run smoothly with over 1100 students we need all hands on deck fortunately todd covers the work of many hands he is a leader to our students in his proactive in his approach when we do have a minor emergency he can fix it in no time thank you todd for keeping
011saucemen running and for keeping our campus beautiful [Applause] and then i'll get todd flowers tomorrow [Applause] for our certified staff we have miss haley roener [Applause] thank you so much rover sorry i read that incorrectly miss roner has proved to be a pivotal driver for culture and academics on the saseman middle school campus miss roner provides insights from her experience as a leader to her science department and she also guides our student council on what it means to be a leader within a greater community with ms roener's help the fall festival was very successful not only did our students have fun hanging out with friends and playing carnival games but the carnival was also a great fundraising opportunity for the campus as our advisor for student council ms roener builds culture on our campus through
012spirit days helping with assemblies and creating fun and engaging ways for students to interact on campus not to be undone by her abilities in making school fun for students miss roner is also an amazing teacher she builds authentic experiences for her students and she tries to make her physics class as hands-on as possible thank you for all you do to make sauceman an excellent school [Applause] okay and then for our last person our point of pride for our student is miss chelsea kent and she is so fabulous that she actually couldn't be here tonight because she's currently performing with our band back at saseman right now but let's give her a round of applause regardless [Applause] so we already have some uh some nice pictures of chelsea that we will share with teresa and curtis
013for uh the website uh so that way we can have all four of our people well represented got parents to come down to the campus knowing that we were going to have this performance tonight but in the words of chelsea's teacher miss juaros her band teacher chelsea is a student that all teachers dream on having she's always excited to learn and always prepared to learn from the minute she arrives to class until she leaves she's engaged and attentive i can always count on chelsea to know her music and she is a leader in her sax section helping them if they don't understand she is never boastful or demeaning just helpful she is well liked by her peers and teachers although chelsea did online school for the entirety of seventh grade she hasn't missed a beat
014and maintains very high grades it is an absolute pleasure to get to teach chelsea and i'm so excited to see all of her successes in the future thank you chelsea for being such a positive impact on our campus [Applause] and then teresa curtis will send those over to you so you guys can post them so and at this time we're going to take a short little recess if you will we're going to head outside so that we can honor the 2021 division ii obota state champions the williamsfield blackhawk regiment so if you'd like to join us outside for the band that would be great all right thank you for joining us and congratulating the black hawk regiment on their state championship that was fun all right dr foley uh to complete the superintendent's report president
015reese members of the board we will pull up our upcoming events as you can see we have a superintendent visit coming up at the end of this month or isn't it this month the end of this week uh the last couple weeks there's been so many events it feels like every week feels like a month um we then have our two week winter break and you see when we come back in january we have meetings and our superintendent visit to higley high school coming up so we do have lots of events as we finish out december and go into january and that concludes the superintendent's report thank you all right then we will go ahead and move on to board comments i'll go ahead and just start real quick i was able to go to
016the williamsfield playoff game at chaparral on friday night which they barely lost it was it was a good game though but also dr foley and i attended the east valley school board consortium meeting which was very informative it was at ebit and i want to thank evit for hosting and they provided dinner their students their culinary students made dinner and provided it for all the east valley school board members for our meeting and it was it was exciting to have all the students introduce themselves and what schools they go to and we had williamsfield and we had higley and so that was that was exciting um but they did have a presenter there and it was very informative and i know mr walker is working on some stuff and it was also talked about at
017the law conference of it just takes one pill the [Music] issues with the fentanyl laced pills that are going around everywhere and pinal county is extremely high and they're right here we do um right here with queen creek and maricopa county is also extremely high so i look forward to the information that we will be putting out to our family our communities our students that it doesn't they don't have to be a drug addict they could get simply get a pill from a friend that could take their life so it was very informative and something that needs as mr edgar out there was talking about a village this also needs a village to protect our children so um i enjoyed that presentation very much and so i look forward to what we will be having
018um as well other board comments uh mrs president reece i think uh several of us enjoyed the gilbert chamber of commerce um gilbert i never say it correctly excellence of gilbert gilbert excellence awards um they do a fantastic job over there uh jd is always entertaining we get the strolling orchestra which is amazing and the food's always good and of course seeing our very own on stage was awesome also honoring the police department was very touching so it was a great night yes that was thank you any other board comments all right with that we'll go on to request to speak we value input from our constituents this time has been set aside for anyone from the audience who wishes to address the board please remember this is not an appropriate venue to evaluate discuss
019or criticize district personnel policy keb provides a process for complaints about personnel speakers should be aware that fault statements about individuals may result in civil liability members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda therefore pursuant to ars 38-431.01h taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for further consideration and decision at a later date we do ask that you limit your remarks to three minutes and we have mr scott hamilton all right thank you president reese members of the board dr foley thank you all for having me here today i appreciate it uh first of all i want to thank each and every one of you in this room um
020you all your the services you provide contribute to student success so thank you very much for doing that and i look forward to the impact higley graduates are going to make on gilbert where i've grown up my entire life my name is scott hamilton and i'm a member of the higley unified school district stakeholder community and i wanted to address an emerging gap in student services currently the district is experiencing a 17 percent decay in fafsa completion between both high schools individually higley high is experiencing a growth of 22 percent compared to last year williams field high is down 40 percent 4-0 compared to last year this is compounded even worse when you compare that to last uh the previous school year so the class of 2019 compared to the class of 2019 higley high
021is down 25 and higley williams field high is down 19 this is what we refer to as compounding fast for losses that we're experiencing because of the pandemic reporting from the previous two fafsa cycles shows us that nearly 41 of the class of 2021 and 48 of the class of 2020 completed their fafsa within the first nine weeks of it being available this friday marks the tenth week of the application being open um as a leading indicator for college enrollment fafsa completion is extremely important for every graduating senior across the district research shows that fafsa completion is strongly associated with post-secondary enrollment 92 percent of seniors who complete the fafsa enrolled by november following graduation first versus 51 of students who did not these emerging enrollment trends are diametrically opposed the idea that students will
022graduate from higley college and career ready independent and financially aware as we know statistics do not exist in a vacuum if these trends are being seen in fafsa completion it bears consideration that related factors such as application rates college entrance exam participation and student post-secondary intention should also be scrutinized these are all key factors in post-secondary matriculation and retention for students as such i'm asking that consideration to be given to what is being done at the school site level to increase fafsa completion and post-secondary pathway support and what as we what can we as a community do to support this initiative as well thank you and we have no other request to speak so thank you mr hamilton for coming with that we will going into executive session i move that we move into executive
023session for discussion or consultation for legal advice with the governing board's attorney pursuant to ars a 38-431.0383 and ars 38-43103a4 regarding potential consent judgment with the attorney general's office regarding procurement concerns second all those in favor aye aye that motion carries five zero we will return after executive session okay we're going to go ahead and resume our regular meeting this brings us to our consent agenda i move that we approve our consent agenda as it's presented second any questions or comments regarding our consent agenda all those in favor aye aye aye motion carries five zero all right we're gonna go on to 8.1 which is our budget timeline for fiscal year 2023 mr moore thank you president reese and members of the board i just want to acknowledge with that approval of the consent agenda
024item item 7.14 you approve the services for architectural architectural services for the higley high school project to glr group in attendance tonight is miss carmen uh wyckoff she's the lead architect for this project ms wyckoff and dlr brings a wealth of experience to this to this project and we were very excited to work with them a fun fact is they were actually the original architects to build higley high so kind of full circle again we're really excited to work with dlr in this project and you will see more information regarding that project in future board meetings so we're all very excited to have you thank you all right so fiscal year 22 budget calendar timeline um yes we are talking budget for 22 23 already um good evening president board president uh reese members of
025the board tonight you'll be going over a high level overview of our fiscal year 2223 budget calendar timeline uh this 10 diff calendar will cover several important board meeting dates and the information that will be presented on those dates i want to emphasize this is a moving calendar with various factors affecting budget and some of these dates on these calendars may be moved around all right january 2022 starting next year in january 2022 we have two board meetings scheduled uh the first january 12 2022 will bring the first review of a bond a 2022 bond proposal since the november election the district has been reviewing and revising several of the categories presented in the 2021 bond proposal within the process the district has consulted with the consulting agency to survey our voters the surveying has
026just recently begun and we have received a few complaints regarding the the survey and the content within the survey we have since paused the survey and working with the consulting agency to resolve those issues for the clear for clarification the survey is commonly done throughout the state and the intention of the district was to gather feedback from our community regarding the 2021 bond proposal we value our community's opinion and wants to take into consideration when asking for bond funding for our district so the intention of that survey again uh was to provide further guidance for our 22 proposal that you'll be reviewing or we'll take a first review on january 12th also in the first meeting of january we'll review our medical insurance and share some potential changes that we have coming we anticipate minimal
027changes to the employee in terms of plans offered and various coverages offered by the district lastly i mentioned earlier this calendar is tentative and that third item there the meet and confer update we're actually moving that to february 9th so very tentative lastly in the january 26 meeting we'll take a look at first review of the mno 2223 maintenance operation budget we'll talk a little bit about the second stipend we'll also discuss some of the legislative laws that are currently being discussed in terms of the aggregate expenditure limit there's several funding implications regarding that right now we'll review those if no changes have been made at that time we'll also talk about capital transfers we'll review a little bit about the lease transfer and several other factors affecting the 2223 budget and again that second
028item the action approval classroom site fund will be moved to february 26th all right february 9th um february will bring a first review of the 2223 capital outlay budget uh within this bud capital budget we'll discuss some of the implications of the bond not passing and a phase-down major project approach so a lot of that has affected the the capital budget so we'll review that in february 9th and you'll see again a lot of second reviews here so much like we did last fiscal year we'll bring these items multiple times information budget changes constantly even over months so we'll review those and make sure we update the board on any updates that we may have taken into consideration between each board meeting the fourth item down you'll see an information item a new contract language
029for all employees mrs martins will present the new fiscal year 22 23 contract language for all employee groups this is in preparation for march when employee contracts will be issued for next school year so again on that second board meeting um you'll see again a lot of the same information coming back to you you'll see a third review of the 2223 maintenance and operation budget um we put if needed again if none of the information changes and the board feels they have the information necessary moving into march well we'll ask for tentative approval we may pull that item the second item though you'll see an action item on the contract language for all employee groups and again miss martins will provide that action item and address any concerns or changes that may be made made
030from the first meeting in february as we move into march we only have one meeting in each of these months again you'll see a lot of the same information coming back to you in march we'll ask for tentative approval of our maintenance and operation budget this is again so we can issue contracts early this helps with staffing letting us know which employees are coming back it also helps with budgeting knowing which employees are coming back and budgeting for those particular employees we'll bring a second review of the capital outlay budget and then we'll also tentatively plan to bring a resolution for the 22 bond you'll note that this is a lot earlier than last year um a lot of our bond information we plan on rolling over into this proposal excuse me um again with
031reviewing and revising some of those implications that we get back or some of the feedback we get back from their community our stakeholders our principal group et cetera the reason this this bond proposal will be or we'll ask for a resolution early is so our pac can get out early and start that communication and april 20th we'll ask for tentative approval for the capital outlay budget this is a reminder to get out in front of those summer projects that need early procurement so we'll we'll have a tentative approval of the capital budget on april 20th and then [Music] may and june so on may 11th we'll bring back the medical insurance conversation may 11th was picked due in part to open enrollment being attended to plan for may 12th through the 27th if there is
032benefit changes we anticipate minimal we do plan to have that information available at that time and ms martin's will be available to present that information so we can make our employees aware of any changes or potential changes that may take place for next fiscal year and then we have some uh some fun public stuff so this is some annual stuff that we are obligated to do um by certain dates so we'll have our public hearing for our budget revision for fiscal year 22 our current year we are obligated to do that before may 15th and then june 8th and june 22nd we will have our proposed budget and a public hearing for our drops of budget for fiscal 23. so these will be budgets that we have reviewed throughout all throughout the year from january
033to march and so this will be the official time in which those budgets are adopted and again at that same time we'll bring some of our annual purchasing renewals several our co-op contracts and if we have any rfps that we're renewing for next fiscal year we'll also bring that as well so in short that is a quick highlight of what next year entails in terms of budget again we'll have information coming to you in terms of status as well as we'll be in front of you multiple times regarding the same information so if there's any questions i'll be happy to president reese mrs wilson dr foley if we're getting closer to that april time frame and it's still looking like it did this year with construction costs and all that please feel free i think
034from my standpoint to push it up to that march date so you can get that procurement so we can have those things ordered because i know last year we struggled having some items in time so if that happens to be the case this year as it seems like it might be already in december that you know we push that up to make sure that our crews are working through the summer president race vice president wilson thank you for the feedback i'd like to also and i it's really important to see this is kind of this is a big deal the every little bullet on here is hundreds of hours of work behind that and it gives you an idea too so that you can have an understanding of what we're bringing and why and when
035and you'll also begin seeing these details also in status reports so that you can ask questions and that that way we can come prepared and again we always try to provide the information and information before you vote and it's really important too because we start early as tyler did a great job of explaining you're kind of building this as you're flying it and different things come from the state and change and and what we do is we take our forecasts and we begin to get clearer and clearer and clearer about what our reality is and again a lot of work is going into this but so that you can see we have a a very detailed timeline you should see the behind the scenes what when where how much what needs to be done for
036each of our meetings for preparing for this and then providing for status so just know that we have a lot of work to do but you have a great team who's working really hard to get information so that we can be progressive and thoughtful in all of the proposals that we bring to you thank you and mr moore thank you for all the work and time and effort you put into this i can tell you with going through the same process and having these dates and knowing um what we were going to be talking about that you went over it over and over again which was great i'm not saying it was very helpful so um while this past year our information didn't change a whole lot we knew we were waiting on some federal
037funding and different things like that i have to tell you i felt so much informed so much more informed on our budget and what we were doing where we were going how this was happening and then like dr foley said some of the why why are we doing this and why are we doing that so i appreciate i know that's a lot of time that you put into not necessarily the powerpoint but like dr foley said everything that goes behind that and i can tell you i appreciate that um with the information you provide and you give us ample opportunity to ask questions and to be informed so thank you any other questions perfect thank you all right we'll go on to 8.2 on our substitute daily rates miss martens good evening president reece vice
038president wilson members of the governing board and my fellow colleagues and community tonight we're going to be discussing our substitute daily rates some of what preempted this was the fact that actually i was at the arizona school personnel association conference back just before the thanksgiving holiday and in that we learned about some other districts and what they were doing to get people taking assignments because we still are we are still observing or having low fill rates and i'll talk about those percentages as we move forward but i oh it would be help if you turned it on so thank you that's user error on my part i apologize um so currently and if you recall back in april of 2021 the board approved an increase to our daily sub rates from what we had previously
039had we had been one of the lower districts in doing a survey across the district with an effective date of july 1 of 2021 moving to a daily rate from 100 to 125 a long term rate to 120 to 145 um and incentivizing the higley retirees from 100 145 actually kind of put this right up there with the exception of a neighboring very large district so we were feeling very good about that but just as we're struggling in many areas with our labor shortage we're struggling in this area in terms of sub pools too and noticing that again like i mentioned earlier our fill rates weren't very high and then of course as we're doing this and presenting and looking to this there was a release in the newspaper the same week from a district
040not too far away in the east valley that raised their subs from 115 a day to 175 so that was a bit of a sulking sober moment for us in the bigger picture but we still think there's value in doing this in the larger picture because of the fact that you know we continue to have shortages as i said um pre-covert our fill rates were in the 90 percentile and currently our fill rates average in the 60 to 70 percentile and our hardest field days are mondays and fridays so at the conference we had heard from some of the other districts not necessarily within the valley but other areas in which they offer higher rates on their hard to fill days and have found that that has proven some value for them and i thought
041well what a great idea um to do that uh and we hadn't done that in the past and so in consulting with cabinet as well as consulting with our attorney um thought it was best to come to the board and do a session as well as an action item so that way we can offer that higher rate on fridays and mondays in the bigger picture we certainly don't know whether or not we'll see an increase in our fill rates but we think that if we can make any effort that we can this is the way to go and i was just talking um with sam our chartwell's director just now as you know were cons commiserating in terms of hard to fill and then hearing something and then you think you're doing good and like
042i said then you kind of feel sober at the moment when you hear the news about something else where it's almost 50 higher than what you're paying currently um but we still think it's important and we're looking at just fridays and mondays because we're already in our budget cycle and we know that on fridays and mondays when we think about cushion and where we're at it's likely that we can comfortably go that way in our budget versus a large overhaul and looking at increasing for all of our days across the board as you recall and you'll get a info item here in january late january you know we do our subs through educational service incorporated esi and you know our budget is in the million dollar range so if we were to look at doing
043this in a larger picture it would have a much larger budget impact and we're just not comfortable with that right now it's something we could potentially assess if we see this as positive and moving in the right direction and looking at what we're expending and how much we're expending as we move forward so um you know we can't move too quickly but again hoping this will incentivize in the bigger picture with that recommendation and you'll see that action item today so we can move there and like i said it's not a number that we don't have currently it's a active daily rate number that we have it's just incentivizing and doing on other days that we had not been doing it and with that i'll entertain any questions i just have one question um so
044there's not a shortage of people right it's a shortage of people accepting correct correct so the esi yes i right correct yeah they have enough people it's just okay so our pool our pool in higley is probably about two to three hundred but we probably have only about a hundred of those that actually take assignments during the covid the heart of covid we did a survey and the survey showed that people just weren't comfortable still in taking the assignments and that's what we still feel is happening as well as the fact that you know on fridays and mondays individuals like long weekends across the board and that's something that we have to address in a big picture in terms of our employees and what's happening on those days too but you know there are still
045things that are happening whether it's something personal it's being pre-approved or there's different district assignments that are happening with sports and teachers that have to be gone um so we need to make sure that we're still able to offer the services that we need for our current community and then support them through this capacity too uh president reese i have a question for sanders mom um are you guys receiving feedback from the guest teachers on their experiences are there are y'all tracking numbers of maybe there's people just aren't returning because of that experience or not they're not prepared and we talked about this before about having things and access to online i don't know how do we how do you guys do it here do the teachers like like where we're at if we're absent
046we're like go to go to our google classroom everything's there now like there's no more making copies it's all just online and and almost remote is that the same or do you all have the same capabilities in the classrooms here so board member anderson it's a good question and correct we did dialogue a little bit about this um so are what we term rescue subs or permanent subs which we created in the heart right before covet or during covid um you know i still am using the excuse it's all a blur but um those rescue subs get training um in regards to our canvas page access um and they have more access and rights because they're there on a daily basis at our various sites from our elementaries to our secondary schools so our one-off
047subs those subs that just do a day here a day there at multiple sites at various sites they don't have the same access rights but we do make sure that there is a packet of information available to them you raise a good question and this actually came up probably about i would say three to four weeks ago where we did receive some communication from some of our subs that the experience is very different from one site to another site so we have a new hr specialist who oversees our sub area and i've talked with her about surveying and taking a look at the schools that have received positive feedback about their sub experience and how we can model that in other areas we additionally want to make sure that in addition to what esi is
048providing for training which they're doing globally because they serve multiple districts so um you know they're not niching necessarily specifically but what can we do to offer a supplemental to that to have it niche specifically for higley so our new subspecialist who just started probably about a month ago once she gets a little bit more acclimated we'll start to look into that too president reece when you when you talk about this sub rate there's going to be teachers leaving the field to go be a sub at this point it's it's kind of scary to me that that would be you know the fee so anyways thanks for bringing this to us yeah board member taylor actually as we were sitting here i received a text from a certified teacher um which another school district here
049in the east valley is now incentivizing their subs as long as they work 60 days a year they can receive a thousand dollar supplemental so we're trying it just goes to show how dire it is right and you say that the fill rate's so different but what are the numbers of the absences like how much of those increased so it's 90 percent before but now you know people just feel more obligated to be out because they're just so worried you know so just to sneeze a headache you know just even a fear of having anything dishes out their children for everything though yeah board member anderson we did do our diligence in regards to looking at uh last school year and compared to previous school years best was pre-covered to look at our absences and
050our totals and for the most part we're trending in the same direction um there wasn't anything more and there had been some questions from some of our our constituents in regards to is it individuals who are not interested in returning and utilizing time as they depart and we were seeing average use of rates at the same for those who were returning versus those who were not returning so there wasn't any difference in the bigger picture so it's good too thank you for looking into all of that i mean substitutes is another part of the labor pool that we continue to struggle with everywhere and you know i appreciate you trying to be creative the other problem of it is our other teachers get burnt out because when we can't find substitutes we we pull who
051we can from the site and then we pull who we can from at the district level and then at that point if it's in elementary school those classes have to be broken up and go with other teachers so other teachers are getting more kids at the high schools they're missing their their prep time they're compensated for it but when it's over and over and over again they're missing their prep time for their own class and they're covering other classes so it that creates another it's just the domino effect that creates another concern on teachers are already stretched thin and when we can't find substitutes that makes it more difficult so um i'm hopeful that this is short-lived i hope um but i'm also fearful of this back and forth competitive where does it end where
052do we land and then what is our new number coming back from this so that budgets can support so thank you for bringing this and and coming up with an alternative solution at least for our hard to fill days i appreciate that all right any other questions okay so we will go on to our action items all right so we'll go on to 9.1 i move that we approve entering into a consent judgment with the attorney general's office regarding procurement concerns and authorize the district administration to execute any necessary documents second any questions or comments nope all right all those in favor aye aye that motion carries five zero thank you all right so we will go on to 9.2 sorry i'm having some technical difficulties i know it's oh it's at the bottom thanks
053all right we're going to 9.2 it's december it's something um i move that we approve the um oh my gosh i'm so sorry all right i move that we approve the increase of pay for the classified staff and the increase to the classified salary schedule as it's presented second any questions or comments regarding the salary schedule okay all those in favor aye motion carries five zero anyone else wants to jump in go for it president reece i move that the government overproved me down to 9.3 i move that the governing board approves the modified contract for our managers supervisors and coordinators second any questions comments concerns all those in favor aye aye aye that motion carries five zero go on to 9.4 i move that we approve the uh the 2022 2023 course guide for
054high school middle school and the higley virtual academy as it's presented second all right uh any questions comments yes president reese i wasn't here for the presentation but i did watch it online and thoroughly reviewed the um the guidebooks or the the course guide books and i'm very pleased that there are some new math options for our students thank you very much for that we've been asking for that for a little bit of time so i appreciate that i also am very grateful for american sign language online i can retire now so i'm really pleased to see that at higley hi any other questions or comments i i did miss the presentation as well i was at science camp but um i i reviewed everything too and it looks great to me perfect all those
055in favor aye that motion carries 5-0 president reece one more comment on the guidebook i love the fact too that we have that i don't know exactly what it's called off the top of my head but in high school for the kind of study we called it like study hour but it's for kids that just need that extra time in a class with some supervision i always had that growing up in high school and i always wondered why we didn't have it here in arizona so thank you for bringing that i think that is an exceptional class and needed we used to somewhere along the way it went away with many other things all right we're going to go on to 9.5 i move that we approve for teacher absences on fridays and mondays our
056daily substitute rate is goes to 145 per day versus our current 125 per day second was that okay i thought so all right any questions or comments okay all those in favor aye aye that motion carries five zero all right anyone have any future agenda items we still have ours listed sounds like we're good there all right i move that we adjourned president reece uh mrs king one moment i'm sorry nothing for a future agenda item but i do agree with um mr hamilton that spoke tonight that fafsa um it's a difficult process it's not easy to navigate um it's it's just not easy to be honest and there's all these different steps and so any times that we can have you know those i know parents don't always come but we offer them to
057come to the high school campus and get that training i don't know if we can advertise it more or whatnot but i do agree that you know it's it's a difficult process and it's hard for those new parents especially those with their first time once you do it once it's that first time college student that first graduate that we really need to um reach those parents so whatever you can do board member taylor absolutely and one of the things too as you see is we have one of our upcoming agenda items is how we prepare students beyond one of the things in our portrait of the graduate one of the things that is available that hasn't been available to us before i've been working with joe o'reilly who now works with asu and he also
058works with um helios one of the things that they have done is created a dashboard that allows us to go back to 2017 and actually track how all of our graduates are doing in each of the program areas how well they are doing how well we have additional data to us that has just come out that has never been available for us i mean we've had the um clearinghouse data but we have new tools and dashboards that have just come out in fact we were just playing with these passwords a week ago on going in and in fact one of the things they've identified is that higley actually has one of the best in the states students who do well in engineering we have data for us that we hadn't even seen before so in
059addition to fafsa completion we now have some post-secondary how are our kids doing where are we doing well maybe not as well that hadn't existed before so i think this is a larger conversation that a lot of pieces are being worked on and it'll be part i i think you'll see more of us share more information about what we've learned and what we're doing when we come to you in may as part of that portrait of a graduate and as part of how we're preparing students for life beyond and literally data available to us about our own graduates and how they're doing across than we never had before sounds great it sounds like it's a lot more information than a phone call saying hey are they there did they graduate what are they doing so
060this data dashboard is amazing and you can track it down and monitor how they're doing and what program areas and even how they did in certain classes by their grades so this is a part of a grant with arizona arizona state university and helios but it tracks across regardless of where they've gone so a cool new thing that is coming out um and will be a big piece for us as we look at that um so beyond just fafsa completion right but actually how are kids doing and um if they're doing well why and if not why why are not thank you and i agree with mrs kaler fafsa is not easy so all right then with that i move that we adjourn second all those in favor have happy holidays and everyone we will
061see you after the first of the year that motion carries five zero you