001good evening we're going to go ahead and call this meeting to order dr foley roll call good evening president reese members of the board let the records show that all members are present thank you we're going to go ahead and have a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance all right we're going to 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 the superintendent's report president reese members of the board we have some important meetings and and opportunities coming up as you know this friday we are resuming our superintendent's visits we will be at bridges elementary and we are super excited to be there also later
002this month we have our retreat one of our one of our first fall retreats where we have lots of important good conversations and we're excited to provide the update about the work on the strategic planning that is happening and will be happening this fall and into the spring in addition we are looking forward to next month when as you know starting in november our next regularly scheduled meeting will return with our points of pride and so we are looking forward to that so that concludes the superintendent's report thank you all right we're going to go on to board comments i just want to take a moment to thank tyler and your team and um everyone who's participated in the bond road shows that has taken up a lot of time making sure that we have
003information out there having the public have an opportunity to ask questions so um unfortunately no one came to our last one last night but if anyone still has any questions we have the information on our website you can reach out to the pac for information so if anyone still has questions regarding our bond they can go ahead and review that information if they have any questions they can contact also the district office as a district we are only able to provide factual information we are not permitted to try and persuade for yes or no and so we do have just factual information out there so it's unfortunate i see a lot of incorrect information out in the public and on social media so i would strongly recommend if anyone is seeing information on social media
004and you're interested please reach out look at our website try and get the correct information as as i said like i see a lot of incorrect information and it seems to have some confusion on our school district bond versus the town of gilbert bond because i have seen postings on a certain way to vote because of bullet points all those bullet points are the town of gilbert we have nothing to do with cactus fields we have nothing to do with the town hall remodel so there is a lot of information out there that keeps pointing to the town of gilbert bond so please do some some research find out the difference between our bond and the town of gilbert it will help us fund future projects as we're going to go over tonight we we
005have certain schools that are are full and we need to address it with some building and the only way we can do so is with bond money so so i would just highly encourage people to do their own research and and make sure that they have the the information they need to make a determination on if they're going to support the the bond or not so um anyone else board comments president reese just to follow up on that statement um we are a drop-off point at the district for your ballot so if you do not want to take it to the post office we are collecting them dr foley do you want to follow up on the hours that we collect them i'm sorry i don't know it's sorry to put you on the spot
006but no president ruiz board member wilson we are we are working with the county of election officials we have a drop election box here you will see signs i believe we open at double checking yeah it will be 7 30 i think mr moore to put you on the spot we have the information just we do it sorry and then also um we do have an older school building i've seen some misinformation on that as well that we all have brand new buildings and we do not um hta is very old 100 years old plus and i think that that's a nice way to say that that we do have some older buildings as i've seen on social media but uh mr moore whenever you find that yeah so as of monday october 11th we
007we've started to we have a dropbox here they pick up every day there's there's two individuals that pick up from the elections office we do not touch those at all um that will go through all the way up through the election day november 2nd and then as of monday october 25th there will be about four or five poll workers here in the boardroom i think we'll have the door prop so you can just you don't even have to enter the building um that will be for monday october 25th they'll be here from 7 30 to 4 30 um october 25th through november 1st and then on election day there's extended hours from 5 30 a.m to 9 00 p.m and again those are all ballot replacements this is again all mail-in election there is no
008formal voting taking place at the district office it's all mail-in so if you need to get your balance replaced we are a host site for that thank you president reece mrs kim i also want to thank last night chase hosted a a dinner on behalf of the bond and just a lot of the supporters were there of the bond and so it's really nice to put some faces to names last night and eat some yummy food so thank you for those that participated president mrs anderson i apologize if you mentioned it um mr moore you uh updated the website with a more current um slideshow for the um what we call the road show i just wanted to make sure that people knew that there was an updated version as of yesterday or last night
009yeah ms anderson our public relations team has posted the revised bond roadshow uh presentation as well you can see our original one but we added some additional information to support some additional facts that we felt were being either misrepresented so we have some additional facts on there to help our voters make an educated decision thank you again i appreciate all the time you've put into that and the additional time recognizing some of the misinformation that we have seen in our community and updating the powerpoint to address those concerns all right if we have no other board comments then we'll go on request to speak we have no request to speak so we will go on to our consent agenda and i move that we approve the consent agenda as it's presented and i just want
010to make a quick note if you hadn't noticed we did move our monthly governing board mno financial report into consent as it is a regular course of business item um it's just been moved from informational items to consent so i just wanted to point that out um that we did make that change does anyone have any questions regarding our consent agenda okay all those in favor aye aye motion carries five zero now we will go on to our information items we will go on to our annual financial report for 2021. mr moore yeah good evening president recent members of the board we have been working diligently to wrap up our our prior year uh yes we are in october but we have done a lot of work in the past months to report and gather
011all the information from last year and put it into what we call the annual financial report so what we'll cover this evening is is what is this report just a brief summary of that and what is included with the supplemental material we'll talk a little bit about the the highlights for fiscal year 2021. um some of those highlights include covid i know we've discussed that i know we don't want to discuss that but it did have a financial impact last year we'll talk a little about the esser funding that we received last year then we'll go over the afr summary we won't go page by page i did put a high level summary on there and again all this information will be on our website this is a public document this is posted to ade
012after the board approval so i'll go over a little bit the afr summary we'll touch on budget control funds and what those mean and how that relates to the summary page we'll also touch on cash control funds and then we'll go over some questions so what the afr is it's an annual report that school districts are required to do pert statute asrs 15904 school districts are required to prepare and submit an annual financial report by october 15th the auditor general and arizona department of education prescribe the afr format to be used by all school districts and it includes several supplemental forms which are listed there you know these forms are extensive the the school bullet point for the school level reporting is new as of last year and that report has taken an extensive amount
013of time but it basically compares student revenue on each school it's very comprehensive and again these are all posted to our website but my point is this takes a lot of time and a lot of my team has has been uh very helpful in preparing these i get the the preview of presenting this information but um i want to thank you take this opportunity to thank my team for for working through this for working with their sites to make sure all our expenditures are accounted for and documented so next slide please so this is a high level highlight of how we expended by percentage for fiscal year 21. so you'll see a majority of our expenditures are in in classroom those are teachers those are our function 1000s essentially so support our as a majority
014of our teachers as we know we are school district majority of our expenditures are teachers um teaching our students that is what we are funded for and that is what we expense some of the other high level areas include school plant so that is our facilities department those include custodians all our maintenance crew any expenditures used to maintain our schools those are that's included in that percentage you'll see administration those are your your site admins your principals assistant principals your district level administration what else we get instructional support those are your your we have our ptosis at the district level those also include all your other additional supports your tutors your instructional aides those are all reported in there and then we have food service student transportation and last on there i think i covered
015them all but all these numbers are within about one percent of what we expected in 2020 um so it's very consistent in terms of how we've been reporting from 2020 2021 there hasn't been a large um area where we've increased expenditures these are all within one percent of last year best or two fiscal years so some of the budget highlights again i know we covet is we want to put this in a rear view mirror however we need to uh it was an impact in 21 uh it was a fiscal impact we know each one of these decisions made by the board or administration um were made out of the safety of our students and our staff it wasn't at the time a fiscal decision but what what i'm presenting today is the fiscal impact
016of those decisions so where we're what we're looking at is we had school closures and online instruction um we had costs associated with florida virtual you know maintaining an online or actually introducing an online platform for learning we had a continuation of payroll several employee groups we continued to pay them through this covid timeline that includes both online instruction and in person we had additional student devices that we purchased to help support that online instruction there's also several safety and mitigation strategies that we did we had an additional custodial to help our current staff keep the efforts of cleaning up we did contracted custodial with avm for a couple of our sites and then we also increased fte and we made some other adjustments to help increase the sanitation and cleanliness of our schools there
017was other some also increased strategies to increase air flow leaving doors open those increased utility classes or utility costs um again those are decisions that were made of the safety of our students but there was a fiscal impact and then forced adaptation right we we were forced we had a plan to become one-to-one uh you know we were forced into you know expediting that plan so with that expedited plan we had to purchase additional devices that maybe we would have had planned for two maybe three years out all those were pushed forward so we realized those expenditures in fiscal year 21. next slide please so with those increases those covet impact increases we did have some offset right we had some coveted relief funding that we received in fiscal year 21 we've received sr1 the
018esg the enrollment stabilization grant from the governor and then sr2 sr3 we are still working on and that will impact our fiscal year 22 our current year budget as well as the preceding three years but you know these three grants were utilized for a majority to support the safety and mitigation strategies that i just went over it also included several supplies custodial technology everything i just covered but these all had costs associated with them a student to be in teacher devices additional custodial costs teachers for online learning if you recall we provided free summer school this last summer we also added additional six-fifths we helped support transportation costs for some of our programs um in terms of our sports programs so this was a lot that went into this and if you recall these these
019are all one-time funds so um yes we helped offset that that last year fiscal year with these funds um but a lot of these are coming back into our budget next year so what we'll realize is a one-time savings which i'll cover later in this presentation but keep that in mind because every district is going to be realizing this one-time savings but we cannot we have to leave a budget allocation for that in the future um it because these are coming back into our budget we're going to continue to have custodial staff we are continuing to prioritize student devices additional summer school free summer school all these costs associated with that we were able to offset with some of these grants to support those mitigation strategies we'll come back into our budget all right the
020lovely can i just jump in real quick and there were stipulations associated with those funds as well on how they could be spent a portion of them so it wasn't a free-for-all here we just got an additional what almost six million dollars it's there were stipulations on what those funds could be used for correct yeah and what i listed in that previous slide was all um grant eligible expenditures so those are what we and those are exactly the costs that we incurred um for a lot of those coveted related mitigation strategies that we implemented so the afr so this is just the summary page um this is page one of two what i what i've tried to do is make this um as readable as possible um so uh if you if you look at
021the top of the call each column there's a number associated with each column so number one is the fund and and or program these are funds that we are required to use per the usfr uniform system of financial records and we have to account for each one of these funds separately so that is column one column two is our beginning fund balance this is our cash balance at the beginning of the year so what we started july 1 2020 on that was our cash balance column three is our revenue so this is the revenues that we've taken in in fiscal year 21. column four is net financing including use of transfers this column is majority are mostly used for transfers from from grants in terms of indirect costs so these are we typically transfer with
022all our grants there's there's indirect costs associated with that so what we do this is this is where those funds are typically accounted for column five is budgeted expenditures this is what was presented on the fiscal year 2021 budget column six is actual expenditures these are actual expenditures that i'm present that were that are reported in this report and that will be uploaded in the afr and then column 7 or the last column ending fund balance that is where we ended on a cash basis so what i'll go over what is not highlighted in this is if in column one there are several funds that are budgeted and several funds that are cash controlled budgeted funds like maintenance and operations are budgeted by the state formula so if you follow this uh form here you'll
023see at the far right mno maintenance and operations it at 27 million that does not mean we have 27 million available to spend mno is a budgeted fund we so emino is is a state formulaic fame formulaic fund so if you look at column five and column six and i'll expand on this a little later but that is our true budget balance carry forward and that's what we truly have to spend i'll touch on that in a little bit that's one of the common misconceptions um if you go to the next slide so this is again the second half of that summary page some of the highlights on this page you'll notice go over uh our well you have debt services that's a budgeted fund but if we go over to the next page this
024is much of the same as the first page but the next page will help me i'll help explain some of the budget controlled funds versus cash control so budget controlled funds those funds are going to include maintenance and operations our district additional assistance that's our capital adjacent ways that's also requires a public hearing when we do our budget adoption so that's not only a budget fund but has additional requirements to it and they're state and federal projects we get those budgets from ade and we plug those into our system so those are all budget control funds so how you read that if you go to the next slide so maintenance and operations for example as shown on the summary page right the ending fund balance was 27 million but maintenance operations is a budget-controlled fund
025so our budget from the state is 95 million you can find that in column five as noted in the bottom there so how you determine our budget balance is you take column five minus column six which is our actual expenditures and you'll see we end with a 16.4 million dollar budget balance um that's roughly i i estimated we end around 13 million in our earlier budget projections in march the difference there is mostly due to vacancy savings so there was positions that were unfilled um and correct me from around one but mostly in the classified position range and so again those vacancy savings are one-time funds we're going to continue to budget for those funds next year and if those are failed we're going to expense dollars to fill this position so typically touch a
026little bit on the 17 of the budget balance this is very high again but i've as we talked about we've taken in a lot of one-time funding we've had almost 6 million in coveted relief funding as one-time funding and we have a little over two and a half million of vacancy savings that is not anticipated to continue in our budget so our ending budget balance will typically be around 48 that is a healthy budget balance but as you'll see we are not the only district that will be high this year a lot of districts have have this high one-time influx of cover-to-relief dollars and again most districts too are also struggling with filling positions so we are going to continue to work on bringing this budget balance down through we have some additional plans that
027we're going to bring to you in november in terms of addressing some of the vacancies that we've realized and then those one-time funding with covert relief will be relieved from our budget next fiscal year as those coveted relief dollars expire and we continue to budget for those expenditures on an annual basis so just to cover a couple of the other budget-controlled funds we covered mno district additional assistance as we noted earlier in april march the district has been transferring an excessive amount of mno2 capital we have identified a long-term plan to spend some of that down over the next three years we have already started to expend some of that down so we ended we started the year with a 24 million dollar budget balance in capital uh we've ended the year at 14 million
028now annually we get 6 million influxed into that so you'll see we've already spent that down 4 million so so next fiscal year we'll again continue to spend that down through a capital um plan with our maintenance department and our in our rit department or another our other high area capital departments so adjacent ways the district has has not levied for several years as as we've you know awaited some ruling um on on whether we can utilize those funds um i think in the next couple board meetings we'll get some more understanding on on how we can utilize those for future use and not just you know sit on those funds so next slide so cash control funds these are a majority of our other funds listed on that summary page uh these funds listed
029here some of the the high-level funds that that are very that i feel important for our governing board in our district administration so school plant that's our property disposal so any property that the district or higley disposes that is those funds go into that school plant fund food service is self-explanatory any food service expenditures that we food service expenses or revenue that we take in that is that is the cash controlled fund so that is not budgeted civic center and rental again that's a cash controlled fund anything that we that we rent out that's truly cash in and then expend the same way community schools another cash controlled fund medicaid that's a federal reimbursement for billable costs with medicaid eligible exceeding medicaid eligible costs and then indirect costs those are costs associated with our grants
030so we can charge and direct costs associated with running those grant programs a lot of our title ida and a few of our other grants have been direct costs associated with them so an example of a cash controlled fund and how to read it if we if we reference back to that summary page so cash controlled fund will take in consideration um all the columns so you'll have um column two which is your beginning fund balance for for civic center our rental fund last year we started with 361 thousand you'll take column three which is your revenues you'll add in those revenues you'll notice revenues uh were down last year this is due in part two coveted and a facility is not being rented you'll take our actual expenditures which was 496 000. this fund
031does not typically transfer anything out so that is a zero and that gives you your ending fund balances which is your true cash balance at 219 000. next slide so i've summarized this those high-level funds that we've talked about earlier um these are pretty much in line with with what i would see or what is typical of a cash controlled fund the only one really of concern is community schools typically our community schools is expending roughly 4.4 million dollars annually so you would like to see a little bit more of an ending fund balance to help support if there was a revenue shortage like we like we experienced earlier this year when when when you lose that revenue um can you continue to support your staff um can continue to support the expenditures associated with
032that program so there would be we are working with ms richards in the community department to help bring that fund balance up a little but otherwise most of these funds are well and we are looking to address some of these higher level funds in terms of certain to move some expenditures into those which is some of the benefit of utilizing cash controlled funds so we can move now mno budgeted stuff into some of these cash controlled funds to help offset the eminent budget our indirect and medicaid costs we have worked with ms miller and in other departments to help move some costs that she would typically incur in her budget to some of these cash control funds to help alleviate those those other mno budgets and our budgeted funds with that is there any questions
033again i'd like to know like all these forms can be found on our website and i'd be open to if anybody had any questions or wanted to meet or better understand any one of these forms i would be happy to meet with them any questions thank you thank you to your team and with that we'll go into the next one um is our bond and override presentation which just a quick note is by law we're required to share what we spend out of our override in our bond money in a public forum we have to we have to do this report and show where those funds are being spent so if people have questions on how we spend our bond money we do have this presentation that we're required to do every year so just
034that quick plug there on the accountability piece of that yeah so president ruiz members of the board uh this is an annual presentation uh yeah if you have a voter approved bond or override where by statute we are required to present between september and october um what we spent um in the prior year and what we are budgeting in the next fiscal year so as you see in the agenda why did we do this report we kind of talked about that i'll go over the the statutes we'll go over we have both a m o override that was extended in 2019 as a continuation we'll talk about the expenditures in the budget we also have a we have a bond that was originally authorized in 2013 then was repurposed in 2019 so this report will
035go over the expenditures and budget within those repurposed columns and then yeah if you have any questions i'll be happy to answer any questions so again as as we've alluded to both overrides and bonds are by statute subject to an annual presentation in a public form that is what we are doing today i'm not going to go into detail on each one of these statutes but yes we we are required to present both on our overrides and bond so next slide so in 2019 we the our voters passed a continuation of our mno override our bullet points here indicate what that override is funding so we have five bullet points here it's our first bullet is increased teacher compensation also maintain and improve elementary specials such as arts music physical education and district athletics provide
036staffing to maintain average class sizes support gifted special education and all-day kindergarten and provide educational resources to classrooms so as noted on the bottom this was this was passed in 2019 as a continuation that's effective through the years 2021 through 26 27 unless another continuation were to pass so next slide so how do our expenditures look for fiscal 21. so increased teacher compensation if you recall and miss martens can correct me but there was a 2.5 increase to the base salary last year which equated to a thousand dollar increase there was also a five percent increase in returning certified teachers that's where that six million was expended from it helped support um those those expenditures we also maintained uh continued to fund specials as done in previous years as we mentioned those include arts music
037band pe 2.4 million was used to help support main and maintain current class sizes as we call husc has a board policy on class sizes which is very competitive if compared to our neighboring districts so again this override helps support and maintain those class sizes again support help maintain and support gifted sped in all day kindergarten and then lastly help support current resources at elementary middle and high schools it also allows for the district budget to add additional resources that may not have been covered in the annual budget so this override gives us additional funds to add potential new resources to our classrooms and help support our teachers and it's pretty straightforward but we were budgeting the same columns in fiscal year 22. not much change there so next slide so the voter repurposed bond
038in 2019 the the bond was repurposed to these four columns in 2019. you'll see 11 million was allocated towards construction remodel renovate and approve school facilities uh 3.2 was allocated to technology upgrades and improvements 1.5 to pupil transportation and 1.4 was allocated towards administrative construction remodel renovate and improve school facilities that totaled 17 million but remember that was 2019 so what you'll see in the next slide is what we expended for 2021. and so those four categories that we just discussed you'll see how we expended them in 21 so 3.6 million was expended in construction remodel and renovate about 3.3 was for that william for our williamsfield field house so a little bit will carry over into the fiscal year 22 budget as we as we wrap up a construction project uh i believe we
039will be back to the board um in the coming months to to uh address some of the final costs for that project technology upgrades um the majority of these costs were related to the completion of the median centers uh those costs rolled over to the early 2021 or it'd be 2020 calendar year but 2021 fiscal year what we have budgeted is for what one of our upcoming projects which is going to be a school edition which i'll allude to a little later people transportation 842 000 was spent on four special needs vehicles as well as two 84 passionate buses and i'll have some pictures of those in a later slide and then uh what we have budgeted is 300 mr crosby has identified a couple of the white fleet vehicles that we'll be adding to
040the fleet uh those will potentially help offset some of the the bus driver shortages that we have and allow coaches to drive some of their students for those smaller sports teams to help alleviate the large transportation requests that instead of using a big large bus we can use a smaller white bus for some of the smaller teams and save some some costs there and then lastly um 141 000 was used for a deal renovation we also have budgeted um 150 for next year for some major sewer issues that we are experiencing and that's it so we expended 4.8 million in fiscal year 21 and in fiscal year 22 this is the remainder of the 2013 bond authorization 5.1 million is all we have left in that and i'll discuss a little bit about that what
041we have budgeted in terms of our construction project so next slide please so we've highlighted um this is our williamsfield field house again we we've expended a majority of our bond funds the 3.3 have been expended towards this project we are eager for this completion um yeah and we look forward to it being completed soon people transportation this is uh we added four special needs buses so those are the small buses uh to my right and then on the left is the 84 passenger buses that we've added to the fleet so those are replacing those high need those high mileage older vehicles um mr crosby shared with me the other day a very extensive list he has a lot of history within the district and he has a very extensive list of vehicle age vehicle
042mileage vehicle use he's very organized and as we continue to replace these vehicles i'm confident that these vehicles are truly on their last leg and that they are in high need so what we have looked forward to um through this process this new process that we've identified in our bond roadshow we we have identified higley high school as needing additional site capacity due to enrollment growth we just passed our 40th day numbers and those numbers continue to support the growth at higley high outline below is a potential timeline for this project so what we're looking at right now is is interviewing architects we have a proposal on the street for lack of a better term to several architectural firms we will be evaluating those proposals uh in selecting an arctic architect to help us build
043a scope for this project in november we'll issue a request for qualification rfq for a construction manager at risk ideally in november we'll we'll know where our current proposed bond is and we may address our budget accordingly depending if that passes or fails throughout the months of november december and january i will be doing the the rfq process is extensive it requires a lot of procurement there's evaluations there's interviews within this process so that it will take place through those months after that process is complete we will come back to the board with a contractor that is selected will come with you with a cost of that contractor to start the conversation to meet with our our public committee meeting so what we would do is as miss will meet with mr fields and talk
044to his constituents within his community and provide input into the project grant these meetings would be very structured in terms of we have a certain a dollar amount of budget uh we can't you know we can't build a cathedral we have a budget but it provides the community a chance to provide input into the project and stuff that maybe we we may have oversight on or maybe we may have not included after that process is complete we can come back to the board with a final guaranteed maximum price we would ask the board for approval at that time so that construction project can commence we would hope for that to start in may june ideally after school releases but with construction timelines that time that is very a tentative timeline so mr moore yes that
045is very exciting news for the higley high family and communities and i know they're anxious probably to hear more details and i know that they'll come as you have them but any kind of construction is this adding to this school is this we're going to be using land that is empty on the school and building do you have any kind of maybe a little bone per se to throw the community of what might be happening over there sure i think preliminary we've we've discussed adding an additional building there's a vacant plot of land um that could potentially be used i think it's adjacent to the field house yeah um but again you know maybe with conversations through our architect once we have that selected there may be other options that we may not be previewed
046to so again we'll do our due diligence through this process we'll keep the border price as well as the community and mr fields but right now we're very early in the spring we we've just selected uh through our decision process our next project so we are taking our time ensuring procurement is done correctly um and yeah president members of the board as you can see the timeline to do these kind of things decisions are made in its multiple years that these processes kind of play out and i would be remiss if we didn't take a second to thank the leadership of mr moore and him joining our team last year was essential stepping in as a director of finance and now being our cfo and the work that he and his team have done with
047the entire district administration our processes our procedures are the way we're rolling things out even today we were sitting in meetings mapping out every meeting from now to the end of the year of what we need to bring to you and the work that needs to be done ahead of time for major projects such as these so uh good work is happening under tremendous leadership and we'll be remiss if we did not highlight the skills that our talent that we our team has and we're thrilled for that dr foley thank you and and thank you for bringing up that point it it does take there's a process it does take time um not to go back to our bond stuff but that is a question that's been asked is why do we have to go
048out for such a large bond right now can't we do a smaller one and then go out and ask for another and another one it costs money for us to do this and two we're trying to be proactive it takes time for these projects to happen and when we know that we have secured funding it helps us move along instead of moving having to stop and wait depending on where we are in the year when the election could be if we wanted to go out and ask our voters for you know additional bonding capacity so these do these larger projects take time not to not to bring it up but i think we're a year and a half on williams field right now and some should not have taken that long but we are where
049we are and some times you run into some issues and problems that do take longer and we're trying to address the situation and an immediate need like you said the growth at higley high school and mrs kaler and mrs wilson i know you guys can attest to this personally that um it needs to be addressed and we need to do something quickly but we're doing it as quickly as we can because it is a process it takes time the procurement process is going to take time um construction is going to take time and if what's going on now says anything about what's happening we'll be lucky to start at the end of may with the delay in construction and and materials and hoping that we have the cost because we've seen those materials go up
050so greatly over the last year and a half so it takes time so that's another reason we're trying to be proactive with having the funding with our bond so that will help play a part into this so um and that campus needs to be addressed more than just the growth there's there's repairs that need to happen as well and maintenance and so thank you mrs reese to add to your point there are a few other schools we've also heard about in our superintendence report the bridges is one that comes to mind when i think that we're i believe out of classrooms over there as well and uh cortina and gateway i believe we're getting close as well and our superintendent's report correct me if i'm wrong dr foley um so those schools are at or
051near capacity and there's no more space for children um in those places and we're building in those pla the community is building in those places so those classrooms will get fuller and fuller and will not be able to stay within the numbers the board has put forward in our policies uh president reece vice president wilson you are correct one of the things that you saw that we worked really hard on and this was part of the work that we did last year was begin to truly understand our capacity and we also did facility index as you recall last year we had several reports done by experts to help us main get a real true understanding of what are our needs as a district not only now but as we continue to grow over the next
052several years the one of the things we've highlighted multiple times in our road show and here in our multiple meetings when we have these conversations is that we've identified a hierarchy obviously safety and security is a a big thing that comes to mind when it comes to to the cost of um capital items but also then our space uh the the the want the nice to have must have and the essential to have and there's a hierarchy of needs for decisions so obviously this information then helps us prioritize what comes first what we can what we can afford and what is our greatest most needed and pressing um need at the time for us to prioritize so yes those are our facts that we have collected and the decision-making process that we are utilizing to
053determine what happens when and and what comes next based on need dr pulley thank you for that and it will be important to and i know for mrs richards to continue to having the help that we've employed for support services and moving forward just knowing that we'd want to have anybody that's added to our team in the future here sooner than later when things start really starting to roll so that would just be my only um suggestion of sorts is to make sure that whoever joins our higley team in the future in that department is very much on board with everything we're doing the beautiful thing about processes and procedures is if we find the right expertise with individuals who have the right skill set they step right into those processes and procedures and have
054done great things to enhance the team and hence what we are seeking perfect does anyone else have any questions for mr moore thank you for being specific in that information and um as you referenced we did go back out to our voters in 2019 because we had extra bond capacity that we had not used that was a proof previously we needed to ask our voters to repurpose that because we had spent what we had said we were going to spend on and we had other needs so again that money is restrictive based on we can't just spend it on anything so when we had a need in a different area than what we had initially allotted or asked for we went back to our voters to ask them we're not asking for new at the
055time we were asking to repurpose what we had so thank you any other questions all right thank you mr moore all right we will go on to 7.3 which is our special education program overview mrs miller president reese members of the board thank you for the opportunity today to share a little bit about our special education programs in higley we're pretty proud of these programs and the work that we do in them and so any opportunity we have to share a little bit about them we are excited about and welcome that opportunity um this slide shows you our october first counts over the years kind of a history october first count is one of the few times in special education that we actually take a hard count number because our numbers are pretty fluid across
056the year as you can see we've been really successful in growth until we hit covid and we know you know we've followed the trend that we've seen pretty much in in all areas i will say that our um oh that's the old slide so i'll give you the new the new count is 1886 for this year which is a loss of 13. while we have experienced a loss during this time it's minimal in comparison to our surrounding in comparison to our surrounding districts and we are anticipating that we'll recoup those fun or those students and the funds that they bring over the next um year so but we've continued to grow and we're excited about that i think that's a testament to the work that our teachers and staff and admin put into the programs
057so it's been great um the number that you saw on that previous slide our current number it is kind of tentative the way the state does their reporting we do anticipate that number to fluctuate a little bit so that's the only number that is not solid our sped eligibilities next slide please we in the state of arizona services service students under 16 different eligibility categories this is unique to arizona it is not these categories you will not find consistently in every state so because of that a lot of times when we have students moving in from other states our staff and our school psychologists spent a pretty good amount of time explaining to parents how sped works in arizona and so we do see some frustration in that area but again these are the areas
058that we and we have students in all those areas next slide please our special education programs these first three speech and language therapy is a service that we offer on all of our campuses for students that have articulation or language delays our preschool special education programs service our youngest learners ages three through five with disabilities and those can be found on our early childhood development center campuses we have several classrooms on each campus our resource and inclusion support is for our students with specific learning disabilities typically and those students those campuses are i mean those programs are located on all of our campuses so you can find those district-wide on all of our campuses next slide these programs are unique to certain campuses so our cross categorical classrooms um those are for our students that
059have an increased level of need increased level of support and an increased level of differentiation in the curriculum or increased accommodations and or modifications these programs were recently in the last few years moved to different campuses we did that to take into account space because some of our campuses were filling up but in that process we were really careful to take into consideration how many students on each campus needed that and we tried our best to make sure that those programs were placed on campuses to minimize the amount of students leaving their home schools as you can see cortina takes bridges and santan students as well as their own centennial and also takes in power ranch students chaparral is paired with hta and coronado is paired with gateway point the good thing is we're able
060to offer those campuses on all of our set or those services on all of our secondary campuses so as students transition to the next level they are able to stay at their home school with their community their neighborhood friends and all of that so we're really glad that we were able to do that our mdssi classroom supports our most fragile students that have an extensive medical need typically and a much higher level of need a lot of time we have medical staff in those classrooms and a lot of medical procedures that need to occur these programs in an effort to minimize move these programs are located on two campuses our k suit through seventh grade students are serviced at power ranch we have a phenomenal teacher there that does amazing things and at williamsfield high
061school they take our eighth grade through twelfth grade so that those students only experience a one-time transition our best program is a relatively new program in the district and it's our self-contained private day edp it services our students that have a high need for behavior and social emotional support those programs are located at power ranch for elementary coulee for middle school and williamsfield high school for our high school kids and again those programs have been amazing and really help support all of our campuses and another relatively new program is our htap program that's our higley transition and access program it is a one-year program for students who need some additional transition skills before they transition out into the workforce um and that's located at our old vest building right next to hta they've done an
062incredible job in remodeling it and really turning it into a program that is gaining quite a bit of recognition in the east valley and is becoming pretty pretty popular next slide another option that we utilize when a student's needs are so intense that we just can't meet them on our campus as a last resort we look at our private day schools um while we don't want our students to to leave our sites sometimes their level of need is just exceeds what we're able to do and they go to the private day school those students at those schools our ultimate goal is always to get them back on our home school campuses back with their peers and we work very closely with those sites to develop goals and and reintegration criteria so that they can't come
063back to the inclusionary setting that we offer there's a list there there's many more private day schools in the state of arizona but that's a list currently of what we are using right now and then that could change tomorrow it just really depends so questions i have a question you talked about the 16 different um eligibility categories and then parents from out of state come and we're not able to help them can do you have an example or is are there kids that you we i don't unders for example in the state of arizona a preschool student cannot have the eligibility of autism it's not a funding category and unfortunately that's really what eligibility is in the special education world so we have to remove that eligibility of autism and change it to what we
064call psd in some cases which is preschool severe delay explaining that to a parent sometimes can be very difficult because they think we're changing their eligibility and that's not what we're doing we just can't have that eligibility we can't report that student up to the state with that eligibility and getting parents to understand that that we're not changing it it's just the way we have to do it in the state of arizona sometimes can take a little bit of time so we're not turning kids away that might have absolutely been restructuring so that the state recognizes it okay that's what i wanted reclassifying okay thank you mrs miller could you just touch i know that most people um curtis can we go back one slide please um these private day schools are very expensive i
065don't think people realize the fees and the cost that goes with this can you i'm sorry oh and the and we and the transportation um could you just touch on that just a little bit like maybe an example of what one student may so for our private day schools they are very expensive um and a lot of the reason for that is because the increased level of services that those students require and so the increased level of training and specialization that occurs with their staff um but typically speaking you can see tuition for those students anywhere between forty six thousand and i mean sorry thirty six thousand and forty two thousand on average some are a little bit higher some are a little bit lower that's just the base tuition and then you have to
066add on the related services so there's usually an additional cost for any speech and language counseling occupational therapy physical therapy anything like that and that is tagged on usually to the tune of anywhere between three thousand and ten thousand dollars in addition to that tuition um we try really hard to um to make sure that students that that are placed at a private day truly need it and that we've exhausted everything on our end as far as interventions and supports for them to be successful with us before we consider that um but when making those determinations we don't look at funding we look at need so need drives placement not funding and so while it is a absolute hardship sometimes it's worth it to meet the needs of the student thank you so much and
067we have been able to grow our special education program in so many different ways on so many different campuses trying to retain like you say those kiddos that we can possibly reach so i appreciate that so much and over the years i've seen justin higley in general the appreciation that our special education team has gotten from our community versus years past so hats off to you and thank you for all that you've done in the special education department appreciate you board member taylor thank you i um i appreciate the praise but i have to say my team is pretty incredible the teachers that we have in higley that service our students are truly here for the right reasons and if it wasn't for them that would not be the case mrs miller i've also got
068to experience a lot of your programming especially htap and the best program i've gotten to see it firsthand getting to tour those facilities and just the work that happens in htap to see those kids at the beginning of the year versus the end and their graduation is it just makes me like so happy inside and i definitely cheer up every time i go over there because they're just so friendly and welcoming and the growth that i see from them it just it doesn't happen anywhere else so thank you so much and thank for the teachers and all the staff and how much they help those kiddos that really need their help we've been able to develop some really great partnerships as well with some outside agency for transition from those students into the workforce and
069stuff so it has absolutely been an asset to the district thank you mrs miller and thank you mrs kaler for um bringing that to light just a as a continuation of that um mrs miller for the private day schools the district pays that tuition correct so while we're talking about um the the cost of it and like you said it we don't take that into account we take into the students needs um they are very expensive and um that is a cost that the district incurs and that we do pay for that tuition so um when people have questions it's not we're not compensated for what we may be paying so it does cost the district some money it does typically speaking special education eligibilities are all funded differently and that would be another hour-long
070board presentation but um we do not re we do recoup money from ade and the department of ed to offset some of that cost but the majority of the time there's there still is a a deficit and the district is responsible to pick that up yes thank you and again everyone has said your team has done an amazing job and when you came in and and started reworking the program putting our students needs first and working with your team and our teachers who do a great job has really made a difference and like mrs wilson said the htap program and so thank you for all the work you've done focusing on the students who need more help and ensuring that we are trying to meet their needs and if we can't then we're finding a
071place that can so we definitely appreciate the overview thank you president reece one more little comment and this be careful with my words district public schools have these programs that our district charter schools do not have we have so many more opportunities in our higley unified school district in placing kids in the right places and taking care of them and so there's a big difference when it comes to special education in our public schools versus our charter schools and we do a great job here thank you thank you mrs anderson thank you i just have a question uh for the htap program so it's a says it's for selected 12th grade students so these are students that could have been outside the program in younger grade levels and then by 12th grade they're placed in
072the program or how does that work so the htap program is a transition program that allows students that have met their graduation requirements but still need additional life skills and job training in order to be successful out in the workforce so it's a program these students work out in the community they help at gateway point they come to the district office they work at some of our community businesses and developing those skills and developing those connections through vocational rehab and some of the other community programs for them to transition into that once they officially graduate from our high schools okay so typically speaking these students are all students that have completed their senior year and are returning for a second senior year to focus on transition skills okay that's it's open to odds assessor i
073was just stuck on this selected and i can add to that but like there's also an iga that we have with the department of economics correctly right yeah that helps support and offset some of that that cost to the district um so it's a it's a awesome program that miss miller manages and we do have some partnerships in there as well okay thank you okay and then for the private day schools um are there for students that are out of district that have come to our district does that happen to where then we would determine that the private day school is best for them has that ever happened and if so how does the funding work for that are they if they're not in our district but they come to their district but then they
074go are we so if we have a student move into our district that has already been attending there um we do one of two things we accept the enrollment there and continue as is and respect the the decision that was made by the former rep team and that placement but before we do that we review the needs and everything to ensure that it's it the needs aren't something that we could meet in one of our in-house programs when we accept a student on open enrollment that their needs intensify and the end result is the need for a private day we are responsible to to take on that cost but we also are also funded just as we would be with our own students through ade in the funding formula i do have one more question
075so i know that sometimes the as far as getting kids the help they need takes time as far as that some of the complaints that i know that parents have talked about how um that it takes a while and can you talk about the procedure that are like why it takes so long or if to be able to get kids help they need sometimes in identifying them so the way that the special education referral process and eligibility works is in order for a student to be found eligible for special education services in most cases and special ed is very gray i can't give you a hundred percent all the time um what first must occur is a a period of time in which interventions were tried and proven not successful so very similar to what
076we call mtss once we've put interventions in place and they have not been successful then at that point we can then move forward with an evaluation a lot of times we have parents that panic they see their students struggling and they want special ed intervention right away and so we'll get a letter or request the way that the law reads is we have 15 days to respond to that request we oftentimes may respond with you know what we've gotten your request but at this time we haven't put interventions in place so we're not going to move forward with testing but we are going to move forward with putting interventions in place we also have to look at factors that may rule out special education some of those are for example educational disadvantage covett is definitely
077falls into that category um attendance falls into that category so there are things that we have to look at and say you know we can't we don't have the data right now to determine that but we have some things that we can put in place once a team decides to move forward with an evaluation there are several steps involved that include classroom observations input and then the assessment piece there is a 60-day school day window for assessment so we have 60 days to finish that evaluation sometimes parents get very frustrated that it takes so long that 60 days but we try to explain to them that it's super important that we not over assess a kid we can't give a student you know a full day of assessment because they become fatigued they become frustrated
078or if they're really struggling that can be really defeating so we'll spread that out over time so as not to have them miss too much instruction but as well as to make sure that the results that we get are truly valid and a true representation of what that student is struggling with so that's how the process works thank you any other questions thank you for the overview all right we are going to go on to 7.4 which is our policy revisions um so mrs richards president reese members of the board tonight we are bringing you four policy revisions for consideration and support these are four policies that the arizona school board association has recommended your cabinet has reviewed these four policies and are asking for your consideration this evening bedh deals with public participation at
079board member meetings dh is purchasing purchasing ethics policy gdb is support staff contracts and compensation and gdf is support staff hiring so at this time do you guys have input questions or concerns any questions these are just additional policies as we've been going through them that have either changed based on on law changes or wording changes that we have received for update from asba no questions just it's interesting the bedh i think that's come because of what's happened to board meetings and called to public across our country so um i can see why that's being put into place yeah the unsolicited services was interesting have we ever have we had an issue with that here ever i don't recall anything but that was an interesting addition yeah not to my knowledge but obviously asba's seen
080it and recommends it before it gets out of control maybe it's time to put it in law or policy no questions okay thank you mrs richards you're welcome all right we will go on to our action items on 8.1 i move that we approve the instructional time model second and just as a clarification um what we approved before was the policy and so what we're proving now is um the actual model that we would accept any questions all those in favor aye aye motion carries 5-0 we'll go on to 8.2 i move that we approved the fiscal year 2021 sorry 2020 2021 annual financial report second any questions since we just went over that all those in favor aye aye aye that motion carries five zero all right we'll go on to 8.3 i move
081that we approve the policy revisions as they've been presented to us any again any questions on those all right all those in favor aye aye that motion carries 5-0 okay anyone have any uh questions regarding our future agenda items i have any questions but is it possible to put forward for an info item um on how the hiring strategies and successes and statuses for bus drivers and any other the lacking i areas that's something that you can update us on good evening president reece board member anderson um yes i think we can do that some of it might tie in with some of the things that we're planning and moving forward with so we can add in some of those discussions as we look at the long-term components that dr foley mentioned you know both
082mr moore dr foley myself um today's wednesday so yesterday and then again today um spent a significant amount of time adding miss richards and talking about what that plan looks like what we want to do and some of those tactics will help with identifying hopefully and addressing some of those vacancies some of those turnovers and some of those other items so if there's something specific board member anderson you'd like to add we can certainly make sure we address that when we do those things we're looking at a tentative component if i remember correctly mr moore november 3rd more detailed related to classified schedule as well as other things to address minimum wage at the november 17th meeting so sorry miss m barnes did you just say you said you'll have it in this it'll be
083in our status or did i say a reporter november 3rd okay sorry we are gonna i am though board member schultz going to add some of that preliminary in our status reports and then there will be more formal discussion and information session um during those two dates that we mentioned at the board meetings thank you i believe those two dates were the 17th and then or the 16th and then the december 8th meeting so the second meeting in november and then the first meeting in december perfect so we can look forward to getting some of that information all right any other future agenda items okay at this time i move that we recess into executive session pursuant to ars section a 38431.03a9 for the purpose of discussion or consultation with the designated representatives of the
084public body in order to discuss safety and emergency protocols right all those in favor aye that motion carries 5-0 we will recess at this time before going into executive session we will ask we will be using this room so we will ask if you're not part of the presentation if you want to wait then you may wait in the lobby for the board meeting to adjourn you