HUSD Governing Board Meeting June 23, 2021 Live Stream

001good evening we're going to go ahead and call this meeting to order dr foley roll call yes president reese members of the board please let the record show that four members are present is michelle smith um this evening michelle will not be joining us okay thank you she's unable to join us she's out of town with her family i knew she was out of town i wasn't sure if she was going to try and call in perfect all right we're going to go ahead and have our moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right we'll move on to our agenda i move that we

002approve our agenda as it's presented second any questions or comments regarding our agenda all those in favor aye aye promotion carries four zero at this time our meeting will recess for the purpose of holding a public hearing on the proposed expenditure budget for the 2021 2022 school year in accordance with ars d 15-905.01 members of the audience are invited to make comments and ask questions during the public hearing all right mr moore good evening president reece vice president wilson and members of the board tonight we have the adopted expenditure budget for the fiscal year 2022 [Music] as we've discussed this budget this is the same budget that we've been outlining since i believe last december this is the formal adoption and approval of that budget the same budget again that you've tentatively approved already so

003as this is a public hearing if there's any members of the audience who are here that have questions you may do so okay so a budget summary [Music] why are we bringing this budget back again for approval districts are required to adopt a budget but no later than july 15th of the fiscal year and adopt that with the county superintendent office and ade so that's why we're bringing this back again some things that are unique this year in this budget process is that the state and house have not formally adopted a state budget yet or finalized excuse me the state budget so what we are presenting again today is kind of preliminary numbers um in terms of what we've seen that's included in that k-12 budget the reasons behind that is our adopted budget is

004used to set our tax rates for the fiscal year a conservative approach would be to um budget low and then revise when that budget is finalized at the state but unfortunately there are statutes that limit us from changing our adopted budget so essentially if we adopted low we could be setting our tax rates lower than what we would need from a cash standpoint into next fiscal year so that's why you see in this budget or you're going to see the proposed uh um me funding sources that are in the k-12 budget that has not been approved because we do not want to adopt lower and set ourselves up for a cash shortage into next year finally once once the state approves a final budget um districts will have until september 15th to do a revision

005um why would we need to do revision because we don't have final numbers so i believe just this morning there was an amendment to to the k-12 budget so that is still being discussed so there is a potential for this to change which we do have that september 15th date to revise so that would be required regardless because we do have to adopt our budget on finalized forms what you're going to be signing today is preliminary budget forms so regardless if the budget changes or not we're going to come back september 15th with this either may look the same or it may look a little different so and mr moore i just want to note that it's coming to us now because we don't have another meeting until the towards the end of july so

006it would be after the july 15th so correct yeah our next board meeting is july 21st which would be after this deadline um so unless we wanted to held hold a special meeting um which i don't think is warranted at this point um that's why it's coming today so mr moore what is the deadline date for the governor to pass a state budget does he have one um well yeah i mean if they we if we're not going to go into a furlough um june 30 would be the date in which they need to adopt something um or else they they could go the state could go into a um into a state where they would be furloughing or no budget um be assigned so i don't think that's gonna be the case but um

007time will tell we we have five or six days before the 30th so um yeah we will see president reece remember kayla there's motivation for the state to get themselves finished soon here and even if that doesn't fail that i think we are protected as a school district so we from a teacher perspective it wouldn't be furloughs et cetera like that so so what is included in this budget that the state that what we've seen in the k-12 budget um we are including the estimated 2122 base level amount at 44 45 53. remember this amount is taken times our our 80 or 100 and that determines kind of our base level funding support into next year what's also included is a level of inflation is currently estimate i don't see this changing at 1.21 annually

008they will give us an inflation amount due to cost of living etc number three there is an increase in the state level state support level the tsl calculation this is a per mile increase of 3 cents it doesn't sound like much but when you're talking about how many miles we drive as a district it does add up also in this k-12 budget is an increase in sped weights um this is pretty big for uh mrs miller and her department and we're we're looking at an estimated additional funding of 673 thousand just to changing some of those weights for reference those weights are added to our budget for those students who have high needs so i don't recall the two weights that are increasing but they are increasing and you can see the the funding that's

009a associated with that increase also new to the budget is a actually a gifted weight um it's not much but we are estimating it is new money at forty thousand dollars so um in that last bullet point we are including the sr3 allocation of 7.8 million in this budget this is going to be budgeted under the federal funds so it just doesn't affect our state level calculations this is a federal subsidy that we are going to be budgeting and i'll refer to this later as we're at then are working to identify a plan for this money budget highlight so for reference again this is the same budget that we have been discussing since december and the same budget that you tentatively approved both on march 10th for the mno and april 7th for the capital

010just so just for reference this is what was included in that budget and what's included in this budget today so it provided a five percent increase for all employees um it also included an increase to the supplemental pay schedule it imposed no district increase to employee benefits with the exception of asrs increasing 0.19 which is mandated by the state it also provided a conservative budget balance carry forward into next year it also reduced the the transfer from mno to capital by 1.5 million and i'll relate to this 1.5 million in that conversation in another slide it also allocated funds for additional fte and reclassifications which uh miss martens is managing that throughout the fiscal year and then it projected a flat enrollment growth for next fiscal year so all increases you'll see in this budget

011compared to the one tentatively approved are strictly funding formula related we did not change anything in terms of the tentative projections that we're giving you the only changes are strictly coming from the k-12 budget that's proposed at the state so it's just funding formula increases to our benefit so mno you've kind of seen from hopefully should be familiar with these two kind of numbers mno did increase a little so our proposed jbl or general budget limit for 22 is 1 million 100 million six excuse me 106 million 760 771 dollars um this back in march we tentatively approved a 104 million dollar budget so this is a two million dollar increase again just based on strictly funding formula numbers that are in this k-12 budget this includes a phase reduction in the m o transfer

012again we're trying to spend down some of that capital budget and move some of that back to the mno it also like i mentioned before it includes all proposed legislation that's in there so the new inflation the new base level support and the additional weighted counts so you compare that against what we revised back in may we revised the budget of 95 million this is our current fiscal year that estimate came down slightly from what we anticipated but it was down 800 000 so the general difference between these two budgets is 11 million 753 754 744 that's three million what we tentatively approved back in march above what we tend to be proved so again that's additional budget balance carry forward that we can carry into next year basically increasing our budget bounce carry forward

013to 6.3 which is very conservative a general number that you would want to be between is four to eight percent so we're right in between that going into next year this allows us to cover any emergencies if we take a massive enrollment growth we can we have those funds allocate or set aside to address those concerns average teacher salary so by the arizona revised statute requires districts to the to display the average teacher's salary prominently on its website the statute does not provide a definition of what shall be included in average teacher pay therefore husc has defined defined average teacher pay to include base support level as well as any supplemental pay a teacher may or may not receive this is not right or wrong because the statute does not give us any direction one

014way or the other this is just how husd defines a teacher and how that number is calculated yeah so this has been since calculated this way since 2018 is when the statute started um so you'll notice in an average asd teacher back in fiscal year 2018 um had an average pay of 47 972 over the next three fiscal years that increased to what our prior year dollar amount is of 212 dollars and then going into our next year our budget year it will increase to 173 dollars which is a 30 increase since fiscal year 18 um to teacher pay that does include again our definition so just with that caveat in mind that's how we define average teacher pay and what's included in that number so moving on to our capital outlay budget again we

015tendedly approve this on april 7th we brought a detailed capital plan outlining our intentions on the initial look at this the appearance may have may appear that we're losing money however we are if you recall we are budgeting we are budgeting high over the course of several years we identified that we were consistently taking and rolling over a extremely high amount that was not appropriate for husd um so our annual capital allocation from the state as uh for reference is a six million dollars so this is almost four times that annual capital allocation so as we begin to build these detailed plans for our capital budget you'll see this number start to come down the difference between these is six thousand dollars six thousand four hundred fifteen dollars um but that includes several intentional reductions

016that we've been planning so it includes a phase reduction from our capital transfer that we've discussed remember that's our lease payment includes it also includes a full restoration from our daw so we're giving someone taking some back um you'll see this budget intentionally outlined and i believe we're going to bring some some quarter quarterly reports on how this is being spent throughout the year some other funds um identified five funds here that have some high dollar amounts and then generally some interest in terms of um outside of our mno in capital so our classroom site fund there was a bill passed sb 1139 in the spring which collapsed the classroom flight plum buckets so there was three buckets that we had to statutory align our expenditures to those each had restrictions in which we had

017to maintain going forward i think miss martens is going to be working with the meet and confer team to identify a new plan considering this bill that passed collapsing these buckets so within that bill it also included new employee groups or support service groups so um there's gonna be this plan needs to be uh revisited um with our meet and confer team and i believe those conversations will take place this fiscal year some other funds title one of our bigger grant funded budgets from the federal government again it's pretty straightforward we use that to address students who are furthest behind in our school system ida pretty much the same from the prior year again it addresses school-aged children with developmental disabilities so sr-3 the american rescue plan we are in the process of forming a

018committee to identify a plan for this allocation we do hope to come back to the governing board in september with that plan so and then our remaining bond we estimated we're going to be at 3.5 million going into next year again one of the reasons why we've been bringing a new proposed bond to you um we are running out of bond funds um from that 2013 authorization so dr founder's team have identified some needs for a new bond and as you've approved and so we will be also we'll be coming back in july with some information on on the next steps going forward in terms of some bond road show dates we've identified a spot on our website for an informational landing page for our public our employees to get some more information regarding the

019bond president reece or i don't know who that does i don't know um going back to slide um six where it talks about the average teacher salary and in the footnote there at the bottom it says on our average teacher salary salaries include base salary supplemental pay classroom site fund monies so does that apply to slide 8 classroom site fund monies the classroom site fund for the other funds is that what it's saying that falls under the average and what what is that money classroom site fund yeah how does it go to the teacher directly um i would defer to ms martens to explain that good evening president reece vice president wilson um board member anderson so you may or may not know um in regards to how we break that out but currently um

020up until this bill had passed we did two different buckets so we have what we call pay for performance that our teachers get and that's based on evaluative factors as well as a paper performance guidelines that was developed for me and confer a number of years before i arrived here at the district and then the other part of it is what we call classroom site funds so what that gets paid out to teachers is in december and june of each year and currently this year it was 16 so 3 200 so they got brought out and paid in a lump sum in june pardon me in december and then in june um and essentially the criteria for that is that a teacher must be present one day every month of that time period to get

021paid those dollars perfect this one makes everybody understood thank you those amounts are also in the con the teacher's contract i believe you approved that um in june um lastly i just have some upcoming reports and and revision dates that i've already alluded to so i will bring a tax rate a finalized tax rate information item to you again that tax rate is finalized using the adopted budget as you know this adopted budget includes several potential legislation legislation and that will be finalized by the maricopa county superintendent's office that's finalized the third monday of august but once that is finalized i will bring a tax rate information item to explain kind of historically how our tax rate has come down due to our assessed valuation increasing over the years so um secondly i'll bring i

022related to this already a budget revision regardless because of the fact that the state has not approved a budget what you're approving now is a um a proposed well it's on excuse me um was it temporary form no it's not the right word preliminary forms that's the right word um so regardless of of when that budget gets approved we'll bring final forms to you in a september we also have our annual financial report that's due october 15th we'll bring that to the board on october 13th and we'll have a little presentation outlining our true expenditures for this fiscal year and then finally our bond election results um this is all mail-in election so we should have those results at some point november 2nd and that is all i have is there any questions i don't

023think so president reese members of the board as you can see conversations about our budget um updates will be as just as they have been a substantial part of our meetings this last year will continue to be moving forward so that you can continue to be updated on this information as well perfect if we don't have any other questions then we will go ahead and close our public hearing and then we will reconvene in our open board session thank you mr moore all right so i will go on to our action item number four and i move that we approve the adoption of the proposed budget for fiscal year 2021-2022 expenditure budget second any other questions all right all those in favor aye aye that motion carries 4-0 all right dr foley our superintendent's report

024please president reese members of the board so we have some upcoming events so we've got important dates on here we have our next board meeting which is scheduled for july 21st as we referenced earlier and then we've gotten a very special important date the 26th what's not obviously outlined on this is we are very very very busily getting ready for our for the preparation for bringing our new teachers on board our admin retreat all of those exciting fun things that are happening as we prepare and plan for the beginning of school which will be happening all throughout the month of july there will be all kinds of updates coming to families on websites about uh back to school meet your teacher um black hawk and kingdom days so um all kinds of back to school

025things are in the works and are being finalized as we are very excitedly preparing for the first day of school perfect thank you you know it's summer but it's definitely not down time that's for sure i think everyone's working even more right now to prepare all right we'll go on to board comments anyone with board comments nope all right moving right along request to speak mrs reach no request to speak moving right on all right we'll get to our consent agenda and i move that we approve our consent agenda as it's presented to us second any questions or comments regarding the consent agenda curtis can you go to 8.5 for me please um i would like to bring this to the attention and recognize centennial pto they donated playground equipment in the amount of over

02645 thousand dollars so thank you to centennial pto and their community and families who helped raise this money they are going to have some amazing equipment when they come back and it's really exciting so we got to see some pictures so i just wanted to to point that out for our gifts and donations so again thank you definitely to centennial pto and and their community and families any other questions or comments on it on consent all right all those in favor aye aye that motion carries 4-0 all right we will go on to our information items we will start with 9.1 our back-to-school mitigation plan update dr foley yes president reese members of the board tonight your cabinet would like to present to you just an overview of some of the work that we have

027been engaged with in planning for back to school for half a second i want us to travel down memory lane it was about this time last year where we came to you with a powerpoint i don't want to travel back there's flashbacks this is not a good thing i don't remember summer last year it was not nice it was not nice no but i i hold up for you the this was the powerpoint that we discussed with you last year that was over about 80 slides tonight's like 14 slides so i will say that we are very hopeful and and moving forward into this next school year which um obviously we have had quite a year and so our mitigation plans we are going to discuss with you tonight the updates that we have and

028the work that is happening so that you as well as our community has an understanding of some of the work that has happened and what connects they can expect when they return to school and so tonight we're going to highlight some very unique pieces to that so go harkening back to at this time last year there were a lot of unknowns and and and as we go into this next year there are more knowns than unknowns and yet we proceed uh cautiously optimistic and are prepared for a multitude of scenarios and so we'd like to share with you an update um of the work that we have done thus far and provide answers to questions that you may have and so we've kind of organized these in different categories so i'm going to start with

029just kind of an overview with a caveat about the mitigation plan we're going to discuss tonight as well as some of the plans one of the things that we have learned is that nothing is nothing is is guaranteed to be permanent flexible is the name of the game and so one of the things that we're going to say is that this mitigation plan is one that is going to be a living breathing real live document that may need to be modified as the year progresses or as unique scenarios present themselves that was something that we had to navigate through quite often last year um and so one one will we'll go into this year saying this is what we know and are prepared to to communicate at this point knowing that those changes may need

030to occur we want a caveat that of course at any given point we experienced executive orders changing um plans expectations protocols at any given point last year and that happened more than once so one of the things that we will caution is that at any point an executive order obviously overrules our mitigation plan and our mitigation plan would be updated to reflect that executive order one of the things that we will caution and what we've added into our mitigation plan which is has has kind of shrunk this year um is that as the superintendent i reserve the ride at any point when there is an emergency situation or a unique scenario that we may need to modify a plan and that that would be communicated as soon as possible for instance if we had a

031specific site that had an increase of number in cases we may need to add a specific mitigation plan for that so one of the things that we know is that if it is deemed necessary for any health or safety reasons that we would modify on the spot as needed and that we would obviously changes or modifications would be communicated to all as timely as possible but we do this so that if we have rising cases or a concern that we can respond respond accordingly and with the guidance that we're given at the time so tonight we have a few topics that we're going to touch base on that we have kind of highlighted some some work we'd like for you to know that our website has been updated and so what you'll see in this

032powerpoint is there are some links and those links are already live on our website so that people can look at this and and and provide questions one of the things that we did as a cabinet team was we have been updating this and modifying this and putting it together we've sent it to our general administrators group which includes all of our principals assistant principals deans directors coordinators for them to ask questions and we've also sent it to our our higley teachers association saying look at this what are your questions issues concerns clarification so again we have had while we're building this quickly we've had the opportunity to get vetted information from our individuals who are are in front of a computer and can provide feedback knowing that this will be part of our admin retreat

033and part of our back to school and part of our clarification on our mitigation and and our if you will our our health and safety plans um and at some point uh as we've discussed and is on one of our upcoming agenda items we will probably at some point go into an executive session sometime in this fall where we will go through some of our emergency plans and protocols so that you also aware of some of the updates that have been happening as part of our training for our safety plans which is super important so um so tonight again these are some of the topics we'll talk about i want to hit on this first one though the sr3 requirements uh mr moore kind of hit on the sr3 one of the things that we've

034all learned in this is any time that there is you know the they always say in in in finance 101 he whom holds the purse strings gets to make the rules so when there is funding that is here we go hi very good very good so when there is funding that is allocated there are parameters and guidance that's required so one of the things that's interesting about the s3 requirements is that um that we kind of outlined here is that one of the things that they required this year with the because there's so three funding is that school districts had to have a formal mitigation plan that was not a requirement last year now higley had one we had one and we modeled it after the state example because i had been on the committee

035we cut our task forces and we created it we wrote it down and we have um documented versions of our mitigation plan as it shifted and changed well one of the things that that came out of the essa requirements this year was that every school needed to have a formal mitigation plan and so the good news is we had one we've already modified it and we're going to talk about that plan tonight with the understanding that there are some key components that have to be in that mitigation plan and and you'll you will be happy to know that our plan last year had all those pieces and our plan this year has all of those pieces so we meet and far exceed the expectation that you're supposed to have in a mitigation plan so obviously

036you're aware of the fact that we have essert that would be our allocation for s3 money um one of the things that we do have to have to have to have a plan and it'll be presented and you formally have to present it in a governing board so you'll see us come back to you probably in the fall updating you on any plan this is now one of those requirements for esther so one of the things that we will continue to talk about and update on are uh our mitigation plans and how it's going in any updates or changes that are needed one of the other requirements and mr moore kind of talked about this a little bit too is going back to he who holds the purse strings make the rules they may give

037categories in how you can spend the money but there's some flexibility in how those can be spent within those categories and one of the things that they want to see is is local lea or stakeholder level involvement in that in fact as you know the ade has to do the very same thing they have a committee built of stakeholders i happen to sit on that committee to give feedback on how do we give guidance in what schools can and cannot do so the state is finalizing those pieces and and we also will be finalizing those pieces as well and we will have a committee that will help give input so when we bring that to you on how and where are we spending within those categories we will have met the requirement of having stakeholder

038input in that process so know that it's happening at the state level and it will be happening here in higley so that's kind of a broad you know there are additional requirements that are part of sr3 and all of these are things that we are happy to comply with and had in place um had in place so with that we'll talk about what are some of the updates that we've done in the mitigation plan because there are some changes that have happened um there are some changes that have happened and we want to talk through them um and there are some things that are staying similar to what we have experienced this year and there are some things that are being modified and will look different one of the things if i could if i

039could summarize how will this year feel compared to last year i will say that this year if i were to use a word it will feel more normal-like it will feel more like what we knew school to be like but there are additional pieces that because we are still navigating a pandemic and we'll be communicating cases and protocols that we will outline here in a minute there will be additional communication and pieces that stay in place and we're going to talk about what those are so right now when you follow that link you'll see our mitigation plan has been updated and it'll be effective july 1st we are currently as we are finishing up summer school we had our we had our mitigation plan updated for summer school elementary has ended secondary will finish around

040july 1st in which we will then transition into the mitigation plan for the return to school if you will um if it comes effective july 1. so one of the things that we have outlined is that notification of cases just like happened last year anytime there is a positive case on campus a confirmed positive case on campus a notification of there has been a case in your child's classroom or or on your child's schedule will go home now one of the things that went away and that went away toward the end of school is we don't have a primary designation or a secondary designation it's just that your child has had expo potential exposure to somebody who has had coveted you'll have the same notification letters the communication is still the same so it will

041go if it's an elementary school it'll go to a grade level if it's a secondary school it'll go to everyone on those the class schedule that that student had so our communication protocol has not changed and will continue um what will happen and and what will also stay the same is our kovid dashboard will stay the same we will continue to track and record and report confirmed cases that will mirror and align to the numbers of communication that go home in other words if we had four positive cases happening at a school that with 404 notifications went out the next day on the dashboard those four at that wherever those schools were would pop up on the dashboard we'll continue to monitor that and we'll do that daily dr foley yes it will be done

042our dashboard will continue to be done daily our communication processes and structures will not change um what will happen though is quarantining will happen on a case-by-case basis i want to share with you that um this will be a case-by-case basis and it will be in consultation with the part we're not going to arbitrarily sit if there is one or two cases in the classroom or if this is connect we are not going to predetermine what that would be what we're going to do is every case is unique we're in a different space than we were even when we were in january prior i mean we have students now some who have been vaccinated we are we are in a different place in a different space and one size does not fit all um and

043so we are not arbitrarily going to for instance last year higley did not do this some other districts did if a positive case happened remember we were primary secondary if you were a primary you might have been um quarantined secondary you were notified in some some districts there was an abundance of caution they would also quarantine anybody who was around that student we're not arbitrarily going to start quarantining uh students around because we cannot control or or you know you may have you may have had exposure lunch you may have had exposure at recess you may have had potential exposure on the bus so we will notify you that there has been potential exposure as far as quarantining if we have a concentration number of cases and the health department is noticing that these are

044linked or that there are common patterns and trends and they inform us that we will after quarantine we will quarantine and all of the quarantine guidance and documentation will be put to place but it will mat it will be different for every individual for instance if it's a secondary student and you happen to be vaccinated what it could look like for you would be different than someone else and so truly every scenario will be a case by case in consultation with the health department on on who and how so we will be working with them and working with families as it needs to happen i will tell you i think we've had an interesting run this summer as you can see patterns and trends i am hopeful they are projecting to what next year will

045look like every day you receive a text on the number of cases that we've had we have had students on campus in elementary summer schools and in on our kids club cases most who are not wearing masks who have been around each other and you have seen that the pattern and trend has been zero cases per day this is a very positive sign one of the things that continues to be really important is that that we still need people to help us if you do not feel well you do not come to school helping us stay healthy at school is going to still be a if you don't feel well you must and you have to stay home and you have to work with us on that so again you'll see in our mitigation plan

046that notifications stay the same our dashboard will stay the same and we will we will deal with every scenario on a case-by-case basis and in consultation with our the health department you'll notice that one of the things we adopted and we worked really hard on this this was back in november um we created at that time a scenario that you approved as a governing board we talked about a mitigation strategy that we discussed that if we had a rising number of cases on a campus that after a certain point if it was sustained that we would look at school closure for the next week well it was very interesting because where we were in november was very different than where we were in january very different from where we were at the end of school

047in may when we ended school in may we were without masks we had a particular school that had an outbreak of in one grade level had we kept had we hit a certain threshold i would have been sending home an entire school based on that mitigation plan of which it wouldn't have been necessary to do so so one of the things that our cabinet team is recommending is we are suspending the the school closure dashboard that that part of our mitigation plan is suspended because we will not just arbitrarily choose a number if and only if there is direction from the state department based on the the collection of cases how the cases are happening the timing of the cases the number of the cases we wouldn't arbitrarily close that without the guidance hence really

048one of the important things about our mitigation plan now being in consultation with the health department and with me needing to be responsive on a case-by-case as needed basis our hope is is that that we go into next year similarly how we've had success this summer with with healthy healthy schools and staying without any need for quarantining that will be our hope and our goal of course we will be responsive as necessary next slide so again um when and if there's a case and and and there will be cases um and when there are what we will do is very similar to what we've done before classrooms with a confirmed case will continue to be additionally sanitized as you know um clean and sanitized environments are help reduce disease all kinds of disease flu cold

049coven and so if we have a case in a classroom it will continue to be sanitized and and stickers will be placed on the door for teachers to know that their room has been sanitized parents have to parents and employees have to help us keep schools safe and and that stays so if your kids not feeling well please keep them home one of the things you'll notice is that on our website the exclusion guidelines are looking a little more normal-ish they have been updated as of june 11. jillian has worked to be more flexible a little bit although there is guidance so if your child has coveted like symptoms how how and when can you return them to school without keeping them out for multiple days it is looking more normal one of the things

050we want parents and families to know is that your job is to help us help keep your kids safe and healthy so when they're not feeling well keep them home employees when you are not feeling well you still have to stay home but then you can come back to school when you're feeling well and you don't have to stay out as long and so again working with us to help provide guidance on health decisions is going to continue to be important we as we've shared with you that makes all the difference in the world so that is one of the things that stays in place dr foley um will we be giving out like a printout like we did last year about that first day of school exactly what to do we're gonna do that

051same thing okay great because i know we'll get some new students some new faces and i think it's a good reminder to put that thing right on your fridge parents and yes always remember to check your kiddo in the morning and all those things well the beautiful thing is is that we will also be able to provide these things that meet your teacher and so these events will be happening and they'll be happening in person this year and so information will continue to be provided and that's one of the reasons why we're working on getting it updated early and ready to go so people understand and know uh visitors are going to be we're going to return to more normal we're going to return to visitors on campus we're going to return to to pre-covered

052kind of again we are very cautious we want people to come only when they're feeling well we want you to to exercise all good sanitation things as our mitigation plan uh all good practices that we would want you to do no matter what um and and again if we had a situation and this being one of the reasons why why would we say uh if we perhaps had a number of cases rising on a campus what we may do is need to modify at a campus because of this we're not we're not going to have this event this event or this event and those are the kind of things that we would need to modify if needed and we will be responsive as as you know you know one of my favorite mentors used to

053say bless those who are flexible for they shall not be bent out of shape one of the things we learned last year is we had to be kind of flexible and i think that we're going to provide guidance but we're going to be ready to to amend as and where needed you know minimally at best um again all of our mitigation plans have every component that is expected to be in that escrow plan and we meet and far exceed those expectations in fact haley's been very very thorough to think through what if what about now what and and have kind of worked with each other to kind of update our forms our processes um and we now have backup plans that we hadn't even imagined at this point last year we would have possibly needed

054but we now have and if we need to roll them out we are ready to do so so let's talk about our communication protocols this is richard i'm sorry dr fuller before you begin yeah um will there still be temperature checks and expectations of teachers to do cleaning um whenever they can very good question so one of the things that that we have is that materials those materials are going to be provided and we have uh we have a checklist of what are the daily high-touch areas that we had identified as cleaning protocols that will be part of the training platform and sites will do those materials will be available for teachers the wipes will be available there will not be the um the expectation to do anything different than we had done last year

055or how we ended the year okay this the the safety the families are still responsible for if your child's not feeling well or if they have a fever please keep them at home but we are not doing temperature checks at school we're doing it very similar we're doing exactly like last year um and again i know that one of the things the updated exclusion guidelines help parents feel better about also if your kid has a cough a sniffle or a sore throat look at those guidelines because it doesn't necessarily mean you're keeping them home for a week it may be a couple days until we're out with that symptoms so again it's really going to be important for the way we keep our classrooms healthy is by by not sending people to school or coming

056to work if you're not feeling well thank you and as you close with talking about students staying home if they don't feel well or even if they're forced to quarantine is there going is the school year gonna look similar to last year with the um exceptions for due dates is that gonna you know for homework class work everything is that gonna be consistent school and district-wide as well yes one of the things you're going to talk about here in just a minute but because you're asking the question i want to hit on it um attendance is going to be really important one of the things that one of the things that adm and attendance are going to be the ade is saying we're back to normal here folks and we're going to be monitoring this

057so they're going to be tracking and funding as per attendance goes if we have let's say students who need to be out we of course will be flexible with those students but they do have to to you know let us know that their students are out letters the letters for attendance will sort of return although they are not they are not um they are not worded in a way that are threatening they are just tracking your child has been they're not threatening truancy or anything that the law requires that would like this that's legalese it's just a monitoring of we're monitoring and tracking attendance this is just part of adm is back to normal the state is tracking this as they have before even how we take attendance in higley virtual looks more like online

058academy has looked that being said we will be flexible with our families and our students and you need to communicate with us so that we can help determine the best way to support your student the nice thing about what happened last year is that we have canvas as a management system it's not gone away it's a tool that still stays in the classroom students who are not in the classroom can access their work via canvas and that's something that's really important so there's going to be communication and ongoing discussion and awareness with your health and wellness and school needs needs to continue to be something that families have direct communication with their school about so that we can work with them on how to help them and options are we have more options now than

059we would have prior to covet and that's one of the nice things about the true launching of an on a virtual academy which is really a good thing for haley um you brought up sorry you brought up canvas and um that canvas was a struggle in our household we just didn't quite understand the dates of postings and when things were due and when they were assigned so it caused a lot of strife being a parent not understanding how to utilize it is there are there going to be tools or are there tools out there for parents to unders to work better with that system to get their students caught up and stay on track and how are teachers when when are teachers trained on it because when i worked here it was a teacher trained

060a teacher and that that didn't go so well um because that's a lot of work for the the teacher that's training and that in canvas is is quite a beast so it's a very shift in how you think and going from edmodo or where we were at to begin with or google so is there solid training this year professional development for our new teachers even current teachers and for parents president board member anderson those are very very good questions a couple of great things have happened this year because necessity became the mother of invention and sometimes when you're building the plane you don't have everything you need when you need it how you need it but having gone through it you now have some resources two wonderful things la we have two two we now

061have two instructional coaches who are in the area of technology we also have lori collins who is in the assessment department who have been working and creating resources manuals and handbooks as well as additional professional development and are willing to help and support at all time the other thing that's really helpful too is because you could have need um as from an online parent from canvas or you could have need as a in-person um teacher we're all continuing to learn and develop in professional development with with canvas we're really fortunate this year that we've added chris treat as a professional development coordinator who can help with working with providing additional professional development and we now have resources that we have online that are manuals and how to's and videos for families and for teachers that

062wouldn't and didn't exist before so one of the things that we are doing is we're continuing to get better and we have you and we're writing things down and we're putting them in places people can use them and so i think that i would encourage anybody who is having difficulty not to to to not to feel feel free to reach out to your administration so i need help because we have more resources now and we have uh things that we could send to them or people who could organize it coordinated and provide it and support it so i think one of the things we're proud of is that this isn't going away and we're sustaining the professional evolution of how we use these tools and and creating resources that teachers actually can get um on

063their own when they want it at their when it's convenient and organizing in a way if you only need to know this part that takes five minutes how do i get that thing i need now rather than sitting through an hour and a half so we're trying to be very thoughtful about how we put those resources together the good news is we have more people than ever and more resources have been formalized um so my thought is is we won't we we know that there are still challenges this is unique we're all evolving we actually what i find fun is that some of our teachers who were some of our canvas ambassadors last year look at what they created last year in scoff because they've you know they themselves having to use it have only

064gotten better um and are up doing you know improving what they even created last year so um i think what's important is people reach out and say they have a need and want help and we will find resources or individuals to help them and dr foley excuse me i don't know if a lot of parents know excuse me um canvas has a parent login so you can there's a parent piece of it that you can log in to your own canvas to see your kids stuff so you don't have to rely on your kids logging in and things like that so um maybe we can make sure that that information is also available to parents so that um because i i i don't think parents really like they would go over to their kids okay

065log in they don't know what they're looking at they're like well show me your assignments and and so they're relying on their students and their kids kind of looking over their shoulder but canvas has a it's like a parent view of canvas so you can log in as the parent you can see your your students information so i have to say i personally never used that but it was it was offered to me four years ago from having a student in our initial blend class so i know it's there and so perhaps we can try and make sure that that information can be available on how parents can get their own login linked to their kids canvas and then there's all kinds of help stuff on there as well i do know that so okay

066i used it it's there's an app you can do both your kids under it and then you can see all the kids that i only have two kids sorry so amy you're four kids i'm sorry but i'm sure you can see them all so you can see them all and you can color coordinate like each kid to a different color and kind of help that way um yeah so there is a system and there's an app and it works um in canvas will it continue k6 i'm assuming yes this is again one of the things we have as a tool that and again i think the important thing is is that if you're learning online and tonight we have a presentation about higley virtual academy and we'll talk about the fact that that john and

067his team are going to be really helping to support because that's your full that's how you're learning full-time time and that's how you're using that might look different than if i am in an in-person learning except the fact that if i'm an in-person learning that tool still exists and we're still utilizing that because if i have to stay home this is where i will go now again you're not going to get a live t if you're an in-person student and you're out for a couple days you're not going to get the teacher on uh in the in canvas but she's going to have he she or he will have the resources the tasks or activity that you might have missed there that's going to be kind of like the extended web page if you will

068for the classroom so the expectation is that canvas continues to be and again to what extent and to how we're utilizing that is something we're continuing to evolve but it's not going away and one of the things we have our goals teachers had to literally learn how to use this tool if you think back a year ago in may of last year we only had secondary teachers who had ever used canvas so in may of last year we were working with our teachers elementary teachers to create ambassadors to learn a program virtually that they had never seen or used in person and we started school online with a tool that we had never trained teachers or students or parents in person to use so we've come a long way and i think that again it

069was immediate implementation necessity was the mother of invention and now this is a tool that we have as a resource that will continue to evolve and use and then was available that teachers had all year long their need to rely on it if they were in person learning wasn't the same as when they were in remote learning status but it is something that's continued and sustained and will continue to be professional development and resources that we use this is important because again we now have and again we've ordered the devices as soon as they can get here we'll have them but we will eventually when they show up we are one-to-one we have the ability for students to use devices and classrooms this is a plan a learning management platform in which in ways students

070can access and turn in and engage with their content in their classrooms so this is ongoing professional development work and our coaches and chris treat and our and our administrators are all aware of the importance of the ongoing professional development to support teachers and our evolution and an understanding of this but canvas has not gone away so dr foley i don't mean to get off track here um but back to well still canvas have we thought about maybe i know when we've had like a college and career night or something like that we've had in the media centers or um thinking ahead even with our elementary schools in the computer labs on back to school nights you know fast fafsa help i mean fafsa the first fafsa every time um you know it's that is

071also quite you know extensive so maybe thinking kingdom days and black hawk night or black hawk days having the media center open for a how to quick parent i don't want to add to what's already going on on those days i know that's a lot but even back to school nights having somebody in the computer labs with our elementary parents hey if you want to pop in and learn a little canvas maybe this is a night that we could offer something like that even if it's not this year moving forward putting that out there because it is a big learning curve for a lot of parents and so just thinking ahead we did the same about parent view we did we we did a how-to parent view and a how-to fafsa so maybe we can

072do a how-to for parents canvas just a thought not trying to add to anybody's already workload but thank you for that suggestion and we'll work with our teams to figure out the best way to provide meaningful support and help and ways to access um how to know where to go and and you're right sometimes there's nothing like um in person um although we've learned how to do an awful lot online sometimes it's just really nice to do that in person so dr foley i just had a question and this is more like a question that's out there and something to think about not an answer question um one to one we're going to be one to one this year elementary kiddos do not take those computers home when they're sick if there's a way for

073them to get if they do not have access at home to be able to get that computer or um just and that's just a thought you don't have to have an answer today just something to think about how are we going to get maybe you do have an answer sorry i see sherry so go ahead i'm sorry but that was just the thought i had that might be something good president reese board member wilson one of the things we're excited about is that a few weeks ago um we were happy to share that we have a technology director who has sort of hit the ground running and one of the things we are looking at is there is some potential funding out there in which we could figure out how to have borrowing computers for

074those students who don't have those at home that we're kind of looking into and exploring we're just in the beginning phases of that but ways that we could have you know like streams or something that could be checked out to home for for families who don't have computers at home so that in the event that you don't have one at home that we could have something again that is potential exploratory we're looking at the funding we're in fact doing all the background work but there are some federal funding and programs that are out there that are looking at and that we're exploring the potential of so we're really grateful to have new resources and thoughts on our team helping kind of to explore that but in the immediate in the immediate future if we have

075a student who has who will be out for multiple times we would work to figure out how to how to check out a device for the students so that they could they could have it while they are home our hope would be eventually for students who don't have one at home would be that at the beginning of the year there'd be a way to check out so that you did have a device at all times that's awesome thank you for thinking ahead on that thank you both and our technology director as well dr polly can i on something about canvas a new teacher orientation the coaches have of course planned the whole week and one of the things is those teachers will leave with their home page built they will be well versed as as

076you can be in a few days in canvas and what was fun is those ambassadors are coming to help do the training as well so it's not something we started and we left that you know we're going to continue and i think we've gotten really good feedback and now our administrators have to use it too because we're putting our handbook in there and so it just keeps growing and growing so you're welcome dr foley excuse me getting back to the execute exclusion guidelines on the mitigation plan how often are we intending to review this and the reason i say that and i get it and we're still in a pandemic when we had our discussion about masks you know we had some very concerned parents kids are afraid to go to the nurse's office because

077they have a headache this last year the nurse in the past as parents we signed saying yes you may give my child acetaminophen or ibuprofen or things like that kids get headaches it happens and last year we didn't do that a child went to the nurse because they had a headache they got a call home and they got sent home and especially in our elementary kiddos that can be the first sign of an eye problem i mean we you know that they may have a sight issue as we're coming out of the pandemic um like you mentioned everything still happens and i'm actually anticipating to see more illness this next year because everyone's been wearing masks everyone's been inside every i mean we're starting to get there and we started getting there a little bit

078towards the end of the school year but we didn't see a normal course of flu last year we didn't see all the strep throat last year we didn't all that stuff that normally happens we didn't see because kobe just overshadowed everything so these kids are going to start to be exposed again to normal kid things normal illnesses and so we're going to start to see that and reading our exclusion guidelines there is still a potential that a child could have to be out for 10 days i don't want to say for no good reason but for no good reason given our excuse exclusion guidelines and i get that and i appreciate that we are very we're we're going more normal-like so we're going to have a new word normal like and um we prefer it

079to pivot yes yes and but um i i hate to see that we are rushing our kids to get coveted tests um i'm actually anticipating here fairly shortly that they won't be as readily available to get done i mean you'll be able to go to urgent cares and things mrs reese you can buy them at walmart now well but will we accept a one that's been done at home i mean will we accept the lab results of one that there are test results of one that's been done at home i don't know i mean we've not talked about that but they're not it it's not going to be like it was last year we know that so kind of the long way around back to my initial question is how often are we going to

080be looking at updating this because a headache is still listed as a symptom um and you know if you have if you have a negative test result and it says fever-free for 24 hours without a reducer and symptoms have resolved again headaches headaches aren't in children while they're normal they're not normal they're usually a sinus headaches could be strep throat headaches could be an issue with vision um yeah i mean it could be stress it could be anxiety it could be several things so i'm just trying to picture as a parent my child sent home with a headache has to be kept home that as long as it's gone within 24 hours and there's no other symptoms then after that they can go back to school so here they would have to miss school for

081a day for a headache or you would have to take them or get a walmart test or whatever do uh get a negative coveood test but then say the next week they have another headache are they gonna be sent home i mean so it i get the no taste the no smell those are clear identifiers of covid um but sore throat a child can be congested allergies are horrible here sleep with their mouth open and can have a sore throat so i'm just concerned we have updated some exclusion guidelines and and i appreciate all the work that's done in that and i get going into the school year being cautious and everything but i am concerned if we're going to be looking at this all year long if we're going to kind of keep it

082this way and our anticipation is looking at that how do we do through the first quarter and we'll reevaluate it at fall break because we could be excluding kids that don't need to be excluded so president reese members of the board very good questions and all questions and conversations that we've had very deep dialogue about so one of the things you notice is at the bottom of those exclusion guidelines it talks about it was updated on june 11th and when you you take a look at that you also see in consultation with maricopa county department of health department one of the things is that guidance and multiple times our exclusion guidelines evolved last year yeah they will continue to this year this is our guidance right now in consultation with the health department which it

083tends to run on more conservative side on cautious so that we can minimize and minimize and protect the spread of all kinds of illnesses on campus so i can guarantee you that this is something we're going to continue to evolve and update and look and and update right now what you see is the guidance that we have updated this time in consultation um as you know we'll even formally be bringing this mitigation plan to you as required by sr3 minimally we will be publicly discussing these again when we talk about those exclusion guidelines which are requirements that we have to have that align with the health department so i i hear you and i understand your concerns and i think that this is something just like everything else that will continue to evolve this year

084and this right now is the document that was been developed with in consultation with the health department that pretty much all districts are following very similar plans this is truly not higly going uh rogue um if you will and so we will continue to review modify stay updated and communicate as things are are updated but i hear your concern and i know that you speak for several parents um and and and and sound like the many of many calls that jillian has jillian and the other health assistants have navigated throughout i think one of the important things that we've learned is that communicating with the child's doctor and providing additional documentation helps them make appropriate decisions for students when we have a particularly health conditions that have been documented we are able to easily accommodate

085and support um with those additional pieces so i going back to again this will continue to be a it depends and there's a lot of individualized circumstances that will influence so going back to it's so important for us to continue communication on individual situations so that we can accommodate and respond appropriately thank you good good questions so we're going to go back to and some of this is going to feel repetitive but we wanted to kind of highlight again some communication protocols mrs richards would you talk a little bit about that yes president reece members of the board you're going to hear themes and patterns here and if we learned anything last year it was communication is key and protocol systems procedures will help us succeed or trip us up so we keep talking about

086communication and how important it is and our website is really a place that the community parents employees go to get information so keeping that active case dashboard going is important because i had several employees tell me that just made them feel better to be able to go there and see what was going on so we're going to keep doing that we've also updated the coven 19 guidelines and that's where you can link to the mitigation plan you can see our family health screening tool the quarantine the quarantine expectations are there should we have to go into that hopefully not and then also some more information about our communication protocols so i think you know as a school district one of the most important things we do is communicate some kind of one benefit of going

087through this rough year is i think we've all gotten better at communicating with one another and communicating out so that should serve us well no matter what's going on can you go back thanks site level communication we've already talked about those letters and how in elementary it'll go to the whole entire grade level and at secondary it will be based on the kids schedule so it's good that we're not shifting everything away from what we found was helpful and beneficial so if there is a quarantine decision that needs to be made parents will get a phone call and written outlined instructions all right curtis all right now we get to talk about the fun stuff and that's instruction so we're excited we're going back um again this year full time in person on all campuses

088and when i listened to dr foley at the beginning you know we were sitting in a rough seat last year trying to figure out what to do how to do it and this is much better um we're also excited about higley virtual academy opening up and it's been exciting to watch mr dolan because he's so excited about it and he's doing a great job of communicating our elementary and middle school kids will be full time online there won't be a combination however high school students can have a combination of some classes in person and some online and mr lottenhauser is going to talk about that in detail in a few minutes that the numbers are going up we've hired the teachers they're getting training we're getting them the supplies they need so we're ready to

089go we're also recommending transitions between models of being an hva or on site in person like we would prefer go all year but if something has to change we want to wait till a semester break president ruiz vice president wilson members of the board we've already talked about attendance a little bit but remember we are encouraging our families that if you're feeling sick please have your children stay home that is helpful for everyone else but you know the attendance is year with ade last year they suspended some different things they made it easier to track attendance but this year the adm is going to drive our funding and it is going to be counted and so it's going to be very important for us to keep and track the attendance we talked about the letters

090uh that are going to go home we really need to keep parents informed uh especially you know if they're not missing or excuse me if their students are missing significant amount of times and we need that for them to call in and excuse their children when they're keeping them at home and those are reminders to do that so we can track it for our tracking of our adm and attendance with hva will talk about a little bit more uh in my next presentation but how it works it's not the same as distance learning from last year just this learning from last year basically we had to have an indication that they were online anytime during the day and we got to count them now we have to track hours and that's going to be a

091process that's going to be involved where parents can have to help hold their children accountable to the hours that they're doing and submit those sheets to us on a weekly basis and that's a process that we will be doing through hva and mr dolan president reese vice president wilson members of the board that is that is just a a requirement for being an online institution that's not something that we're instituting as a above and beyond it is just a requirement for online attendance and as you'll learn about a little bit later there are being that we are an approved uh online institution there are requirements that and the components that you have to ensure um are are happening um to maintain your ability to stay in online institution now we'll talk about athletics and activities

092and basically i think if there was a theme it is returned to the pre-pandemic plans about what's happening and so what does that mean you know we talked a lot about how many people could attend events aia had rules about who could attend high school sporting events different things like that those rules are no longer in place and we will look at when we go to our events unlimited spectators that means student sections get to return and we get to have the support from that aspect especially at our high school and our middle school events there is not expectation of physical distancing we are not going to limit the tickets that we are going to sell one thing that worked out really well was go fan that's the paperless ticketing program and we will continue

093to use that in meeting with the east valley athletic directors that's going to be very consistent with almost every single east valley district will continue to use go fan and be ticketless or paperless in their tickets additionally we're looking at social activities field trips those kind of activities will resume following our district guidelines and our district policies and so when we look at school dances different events concerts those things will approve we'll continue to approve and they will happen following our guidelines you know a question was about live streaming because we were able to live stream last year uh at our high schools we have with the pixlr cameras and we will continue to live stream that through the nfhs network which is a subscription based and that's what happened last year you get a

094monthly subscription ten dollars and you can watch anything any school that you would want to uh that has those events we also live stream for other things where we just did it in-house and perhaps posted it on facebook live or anything like that we'll continue to do those but we are encouraging that we are back to normal and we will be having those events we will encourage people to come and join us for those events thank you i know that for just thank you for addressing the live streaming because i know i heard from several parents and grandparents and people who live out of state who would have never i mean i guess there are some silver linings and some good things that have come out over this last year that they live out of

095state and they would have never been able to see their grandkids playing a sport or anything like that and because we did stream last year that they were able to enjoy that so i'm glad to see that that's going to continue so that family and members can can choose to to continue to support their their family here and i will say we are going to start with a bang because our higley williams field football game is on september 3rd the first week of the season so we will anticipate a nice crowd for that one on the first game we nice and hot good evening president vice president wilson members of the board so human resources you may remember back in january the district came to you with a recommendation to create and extend what we

096call the covid19 husd benefits plan the federal government requirement in terms of the covid relief plan had expired on december 31st and at the time we felt as though based on our numbers and the environment it warranted extending it we were one of a handful of districts that had decided to do that and continue that benefit that modeled the same federal program that was there as we assessed and looked into next year and i'm following the theme i'm going to use the term normal like also in discussion with looking at the vaccinations that were available to our employees as well as the fact that numbers have been going down in our community and where we're at we have decided that we would not make the recommendation to continue that beyond june 30th and there's no

097federal requirement in regards to that too and as i said it ended on december 31st in addition to that what we want to overall say is that as employees if something were to happen whether it's for themselves or maybe a young dependent that they have to care for you know to really work with their administration and supervisors in helping them understand what's going on and we'll try and work with them they do have general leave available and because for the last year they haven't had to use their general leave hopefully a majority of them still have that bank so if something were to occur they can use that time in addition to that what we have done we think will be helpful is the fact that we have continued those site-based substitutes so last year

098esi who you approved earlier in the consent agenda had termed this this language of rescue subs they're actually going away from that term rescue subs but kind of for lack of a better word saying permanent subs we've continued those same numbers both at the secondary level as well as the elementary level in those areas and a lot of them are returning permanent subs from last year so which is great so if we have availability and need those individuals can can go in and you can see that the numbers that we've had for esi models similar to what we had in terms of budget for last year it's a little bit higher just the nature of if you recall we also back in april um upped our substitute rates to be more competitive within the area

099in addition to that we always have our employee assistance program and there's other resources within our community as well as our east valley so you know there's two on one there's non-profits if employees need assistance in other ways we'll make sure that they have the resources and we'll work with them and we'll expand and make sure to have conversations with our administrators during the administrator retreat to see how this might play out and if something comes up or if we see as we start the new school year there's a dynamic and culture that we have to readdress then we'll gather as a cabinet talk with one another and decide if there's other recommendations that have to be made because i do know that employees have asked if there was a possibility of this extending and

100we've communicated that this time we're not making that recommendation transportation is another important piece that we want to make sure that we talk with individuals about their some of the plans some of the mitigation strategies that were utilized as we ended school are going to continue um just as they did at the end of school being that there are strategic obviously our buses have air conditioning but one of the things that they do is they do partially uh leave those open a little bit to keep the air flow going on those buses they're also sanitizing between each and every one of those routes high-touch surfaces and cleaning so maintaining the clean cleaning protocols that are in place as well as again the scanning of we have the app the here here comes the bus app

101and one of the things that we work with is when there are cases uh josh works with jillian so that there's continued notification so that if there was the potential of exposure on a bus route that you are also notified as well so again all the communication protocols and awareness of um are continuing just like they did last year and that way parents can be aware and can make decisions for themselves um on what is best for them and they're informed when there's potential exposure for their student next slide in addition one of the things you'll see is that food service is also looking pretty similar again one of the things that has happened again is that for this year the federal government has expanded the free meals for student a student age for students

102of school age up to the age of 18 and they'll continue for this year so chartwells will continue to continue to provide free breakfast and lunch at all of our schools and we will continue to provide out of um higley traditional academy they have a kitchen there for any online students or others who are eligible for that who want their meals to go will continue just like it did last year so our food services and uh and transportation are looking very similar just like they did at the end of the school year as we begin this next school year i'm happy to share that that there are there are pieces that are familiar from last year that will continue there are pieces that are evolving we will continue to keep you apprised of any and

103all necessary changes or if executive orders happen or things need to be modified based on on on being responsive we are we kind of our mitigation plan allows us to be responsive to unique situations that evolve because we now have very different circumstances than we did initially when we created this um so that's a good thing and we are are sure to know that we'll continue to learn this year as we go and and evolve through this process as well are there any additional questions that we can answer for you at this time i do i'm sorry um i just wanted to clarify with miss mom arms martens so if a teacher who has a child and the child has to be quarantined or stay home for 10 days two weeks that would come out

104of that teacher's general leave they would have to do the two weeks i generally that wouldn't as of this time board member anderson that is correct um you know like i said we're going to try and work with them to see if there's potential alternatives i know last year we had opportunities um to where they could help in other areas to support classrooms instructors other components and they logged that so we'll kind of have to see how that that plays out but that certainly could be an option okay thank you and then i just wanted to touch base again on the question i'd sent regarding i'm using the sr3 money for um possible training or educating on mental health or just um things that are going on with students as they um start back in

105the new school year and you had mentioned you know there's going to be the s-e-s-e-l workshop um i looked into that i don't know if that's truly what i'm what i was requesting or looking into i'm looking more for like therapy based counseling based assistance or training or educating as i've talked to therapists and seeing friends and students that are increased in anxiety the numbers have increased i don't have a percentage but that stated a lot depression is up and i imagine as they walk into the next school year there will be it will be better for some but anxiety will increase for others it was a tough school year and they're going to be remembering and recalling and so there will be students that will just not do work out of anxiety you know

106this i know i'm saying we already know but um and i think some of it sometimes it can be perceived as laziness um you start changing your lessons to interact more and get them to be more involved and that's not going to do it it's going to take more and so that's what i was recommending is there any way that we can use funds to be able to see these changes in the students to recognize and maybe identify that there's more to it than um than just not wanting to be at school um and and then if it if we are able to properly identify what do we do to help these kids get through the school year because some of these kids a school year like last year as normal as it was or

107was not it can't it just can't continue this way we need to address it and help them and teachers especially educators administrators in the same boat it was very tough and i think a lot of it if we can just educate ourselves on how to be able to help each other the school year will go better um be proactive about it instead of reactive about it so um is there a potential for that i know you mentioned earlier no more no more on our plate says edmunds no more but is it something that we can look into because doing it now makes it easier later so president reece board member anderson you're talking about lots of levels of support so one of the things that i think is important is when we talk about um

108social and emotional learning is one you know when i think about the pyramid of interventions when we talk about the levels and types of support one of the things that you have is a as a strategic initiative for social and emotional learning and that is that is a broad category you're also talking about additional resources that are expertise that are individuals who hire that have also training in counseling which are resources that some districts are looking at doing um going back to remember how we said that as a requirement that you sit on the panel to talk about how you spend it very interesting that you brought this up as i sit on that panel and one of the things that they're talking about right now is that in arizona just we we didn't have

109in arizona particularly in education um systemic resources across the board even being categorized for social emotional learning counselors psychologists therapists who are the resources that exist out there and what's frustrating and it's a great thing and a challenging thing is that this is one-time money that's being provided and we're trying to figure out what is the best way and as a state to systemically support these things because what's interesting and and as you know because there is this money every vendor who potentially could sell you something is is seeking my inbox of would you like to buy do you want to know about is hitting every superintendent in this state and what they're saying is buyer beware not all not all uh programs are high quality programs and how do we help districts with this

110additional funding choose the right resources to support so what i think you're talking about are are probably things that are going to be long-term conversations because the addition of some of these resources will be things that we need to sustain beyond they would be part of budgetary decisions that hiring additional resources yes are important but i think we're going to need to look at almost a pyramid of support and how are we going to fund that so it's sustainable and how are we going to choose the right things to talk about this because social emotional learning mental health and well-being caring for the whole individual child or employee are only more important now than they've ever been before and what what i think this this pandemic exposed is a real need systemically in our state

111for emphasis and support on these resources at all tiers from from from the classroom to to to to to intervention so i think all of these things are we are going to consider and honestly at the state level right now they're trying to organize who are or what are the appropriate resources in each of these categories so as these committees are looking at what are the priorities that we spend wisely and choose the right resources so i believe that this is a conversation that we will be talking more about and i think what we're wanting to do is make sure we spend wisely and that we spend and can sustain what we add because it's levels of support and types of support and i think the the what we put in your your response is

112is the state's initial response to try and do a common social emotional learning because one of the things that we're finding in all of our trainings across the state is people use these terms um as though they uh and they all mean different things and they all have different levels of understanding so i think that this is something we only are beginning to go deeper in and we'll continue to do so because it is truly a priority and a need that we need to address so the answer is yes and there's a whole lot of work to be done and i think it will be we'll be beginning to start on that but we're going to need a long-term sustainable plan and we're going to need to be able to continue to support those resources

113after the one-time money has gone and that's the biggest challenge the training i wasn't even this morning is we're trying to build this infrastructure to help support districts who are trying to make these decisions and creating resources that the state didn't have as a system to support districts yet either so we will we are continuing to build the plane as we fly it this is a very important topic and it's more than it's not just a single curriculum it's levels of resources that we need to build and our tool box for the higley school district and as a state to be honest i appreciate that um it's like we use the term normal like it'll look normal like on the outside it just it won't be normal like on the inside for some no there's

114an awful lot there's an awful lot and i think um that's one of the realities that all of us are are cautiously optimistic about is um there are some things that are returning to normal and yet we've we've gone through a life-altering experience that has long-term ramifications that we will be we will be working through for years to come and and hopefully there are some silver linings like we have found that have caused us to look at and think about and prioritize differently than we have before and this is one of those areas um dr foley um as to mrs anderson's question i sent that article to you this past week and i don't know if you all have seen it but tempe union high adopted their school board adopted the first i want to

115get the curriculum correctly adopted a comprehensive mental health and social emotional policy for students and staff so if you can google that you can look it up and read more about it but even dr foley was already telling me that she's looking at this and many school districts across the valley are going to start looking at this and kudos to the kiddo on the school board that's the youngest school board member that actually put this into motion and so he's living he's living this i think a lot too so he's was instrumental but anyways i i had asked her to share and look at to it more so knowing it might come to us eventually but maybe this speeds things along a little bit more and dr foley how i saw on the one of

116the requirements is that we have a committee how does somebody indicate they're interested in sitting on this committee because it showed we're going to have students through staff through administrators through community members how would someone say they would be interested in sitting on this committee okay very good so one thing we're going to have representing representatives representation from large groups the one thing is this committee won't be very very large what we may do is have like a steering comm this is more like a steering committee and and tyler will be leading this effort and there's like representation you need to have on there so obviously if someone is interested in being on this committee they need to let us know that they're interested but we will be we will be in we will be

117intentionally seeking representation for individuals to be part of being a part of a dialogue and we can put additional information in your status report about about our our committee size and our representation so that you have an idea of how it'll look the one thing is is that this committee will be moving will be moving quick and we'll need to meet often and we'll need to have a deep understanding of what we there is um flexibility but within categories and funds so we have to spend the rules the rules kind of govern what you can and there's some flexibility within obviously there will be representation across perfect thank you and mrs anderson to your point too i think and but i think it's also important that for our staff i mean i think everyone has

118different anxiety levels um you know i mean my my whole thing on the masks was can we just get through the end of the year it's not living in fear of covid it was can we just get through the end of the year was my whole thing regarding the masks but there are people who are very fearful and whether it be students staff any staff members teachers or anyone that have to figure out how to how to try and deal with that and i can't even say get over it because that it's not like that so um but so many things are returning to normal and um that it's it's not as there's not as many accommodations there's not as many options so but for our staff it was mentioned earlier we do have an

119employee assistance program and so it's very important that any of our staff members who are who are having anxiety with returning to work or being at work or anything like that that they do reach out either to hr to get the information for our employee assistance program or go through benefits and and everything because there is there is assistance there and um it gives them resources to reach out to somebody for that level of support now it may be limited to a few times and you know things like that but um but it is a start and we just need to make sure that all of our employees know this is available to them so from at least from that standpoint i agree there's stuff we need to work on and just like in our

120retreat social emotional whether it be staff student mental illness has been something we've talked about for years this made it worse it definitely made it worse for some but it has been the focus of of our district and our board for a long time it shifted a little bit it has definitely amplified where a couple years ago we were working with trying to work on the mental health piece and the social emotional in general of kid and teenage life now this has definitely made it much larger so we you know i appreciate dr foley continuing to work on that we made that one of our initiatives and our board retreat even outside of covet it this has been an ongoing theme it's just now it needs to broaden a little bit but i definitely want

121any of our staff to know that they do have an employee assistance program to reach out to so as we work on what these resources are going to be what they look like sustainable for the future all of our staff needs to know that there is an employee assistance program that they can access so i think that's important is that i'm sorry go ahead president reese um is there like some sort of poster or something that we have that is near you know how in our work rooms there is different posters is there some sort of poster regarding the employee assistance okay there is okay good i just want to make sure i don't always look at that when we're at the schools but i do think that would be a good thing to maybe

122make more light of and maybe make it a refresh program that it's a bright poster that people might need to because i do think this year was hard on a lot of our staff we've heard it from our emails and it just might be a nice if it is the same poster over and over maybe we need to refresh it just so people get fresh eyes on it sort of put poster and mention it you know make it make it normal normal to talk about it i think that's a lot of it's just the hesitation the resistance to it maybe i don't need it or maybe won't help or whatever but the posters they should be there it wouldn't hurt to do like a walk through and just have people check the walls and make

123sure everything's updated but also say it in your staff meetings i'd say put in emails but we get enough people enough emails um but that's a good idea to an easy way an easy way for access yes i think that's good and especially bringing light to you know if you're feeling anxiety maybe people have never thought about i can't remember the statistic and so don't quote me on it but i i know a lot of companies end up indicating only like five percent of their staff end up utilizing their employee assistance programs that there are so many and again i can't yeah i can't say that specific that that's exactly what it is but it is it's a low percentage that people actually utilize their employee assistance programs and so um just make mention you

124know like you said in their staff meetings you know if any of you are feeling anxious if any of you are having concerns don't forget we have this available to you check into it it may be something that you can utilize but so many people it is a very low percentage of how many people actually use employee assistance programs so um the reminder um the okay you know this is what it's here for it's okay if even if you only talk to somebody once if that's what it took then then do what you need to so for sure dr foley could we maybe put it in um the email you send out that is our wrap up for the week the email not the status in the email that you send out of what we've

125talked about during our board meeting for staff maybe you could send that out in that as a bullet point that would be a great idea we will have to highlight that we have this and maybe even we will happily put that in there yeah something that we'll put it in the board summary with the the board summary thank you i could not think of the words that's that's a great suggestion thank you any other questions regarding our back-to-school mitigation plan update oh and i want to thank you for having in there that the superintendent can just make changes that way we don't if something needs to happen you don't need to worry about trying to get at least three of us together that you have the ability um and as always with your board if

126anyone has concerns about any of the decisions that you made you're gonna hear um and i say that politely i mean we we have great communication um as board members with you as our superintendent so um anyone would express any concerns um and then if there was something that at one point later needed to come to the board it could but that way you could make immediate decisions um to take care of business do what we need to do so thank you thank you and we will continue to keep you updated one of the things with we've also received updates from you know again we've we're transitioning to the trust they have some additional resources that are available that we're also incorporating into this you know similar to last year when you do an acknowledgement

127when you when we have students log on and acknowledgement um all of these things will be part of the information we put together we will keep you posted on all of our pieces our highlights to our website as well so we are we are we are further we are coming along and we will keep you posted on everything but we wanted you to generally see the direction that we're going and and preparing for thank you thank you and i know it took time but i'm glad it didn't take as much time as it did last year we feel the same way i guess all right well we will go on to our higley virtual academy update our new school president ruiz vice president wilson members of the board i'm very excited today to give you

128an update on the progress that we've made with hva the higley virtual academy so today in our presentation we're going to talk about current enrollment numbers we're going to look at marketing and what we've done in that aspect talk about the physical location of hvac because we are in person for at least the teachers and the principal uh we'll talk about the curriculum the staffing and then i want to go into kind of a deep dive with the duties and responsibilities of the administrative team that's leading the higley virtual academy so current enrollment this was about as of 10 days ago now it fluctuates continues to fluctuate up and down and different people as people make choices in them and they're moving about what do they want to do we've separated the elementaries into k2

129because there's a k2 classroom there's a third and fourth grade classroom and then there's a fifth and sixth grade classroom and so when you take a look at that those are the numbers of the students that have already enrolled i know that we're continuing to have parents reach out and we'll continue to enroll them within synergy to make sure that they're in there and ready to go for the start of the school year our 7th and 8th graders once again full-time online students we have 14 of them and then when we get into our 9th through 12th graders this is where there's a little bit more flexibility and traditionally this is where online academies have housed most of their kids it's in 9 12. and so we have the opportunity for students to be either

130full-time online meaning they're taking all six of their classes online through hva or part-time online let me kind of explain the difference with the part-time what we're allowing students to do is take one or two classes online while the same time they're enrolled in four or five classes at the brick and mortar school and this allows them some flexibility with their schedules in terms of what they want to do for example someone might not want to take a zero hour and instead they can take an online course and that would be okay vice versa if we have students that take maybe four classes online and maybe only two in person those would be considered a full-time online student for hva because that's where they're going to be housed they will be considered an hva student

131and yet there might be some elective choices that they want to take back at the brick and mortar campus they'd be allowed to do that as well and and this hva gives us that flexibility to meet their kids needs especially when we're talking about elective choices and some of the extra programs they want to be so to kind of sum that up if you're taking four classes at the brick and mortar you're going to be that brick-and-mortar person if you're going to take four at hva you'd be an hva student but would still be allowed to take some courses at the brick and mortar campuses and so you'll see that we have more part-time honestly anticipate this going up more and more as people come back from somewhere and learn more about it especially when

132we go through kingdom days and blackhawk days and they have some questions about what some other flexible options that they can have they can work with their counselors there so you'll see our total is up to 126 which is about one percent of our population will mr dolan be present for kingdom days and blackhawk days or will someone be present maybe to answer the case we're working through the counselors and so when counselor questions counselors will know about the hva options and be able to maybe market it that way as well and they've already been working very closely together okay and so mr dolan has been communicating with the counselors uh talking about specific kids as well as once they've been funneled to mr dolan he's been working very well with the families and so

133when john and i talked the week before he left on vacation he made 180 phone calls that day that week just in that week to reach out to the families to talk about here's where we're at we want to keep you informed what questions do you have to try to meet their needs we're not going to be able to meet everybody's needs they're going to be some classes we can't offer online that's why we want to work with our brick and mortar schools to be able to do that great thank you now i also on the part-time and from a marketing standpoint i know just in the past we've run into um scheduling issues for those kids that want to do evit um is this something that we would be looking at marketing the majority

134of our eva kids tend to go in the afternoon but i know that there are some that are only offered in the morning which creates an issue especially with some of the classes that the kids are in so could this be marketed as an alternative that they can pretty much do eve it and then they can do their classes online and that thank you for bringing that up because that is the conversation that we've had looking through to make sure uh we'd still like them with evit they can do the full-time online or they can do two and two perhaps that morning one is the hard one because they miss so much of the morning chunk and they don't have enough time to fill in four classes after the morning and so we would say

135you could take two and continue to be on that brick and mortar you'd be that brick and mortar uh student and then take two with us and even at hva as well and so yes that is one and that's another one where sometimes even kids like to take a zero hour even if they're in the afternoon to try to fit in for before they go over there well they could take one of those online as well as take their in person and then do their even that's the nice part about having it because it does gives us some flexibility in that standpoint right and i know that we've every year we've run into issues and scheduling conflicts with those kids that um want to do evit and so um this may be a really good

136alternative for them primarily eve it's you know your juniors and seniors so it's not like you have a freshman doing that so um so that may be i thank you because that every year we i know we get contacted by parents because they're scheduling conflicts and and ebit and so this is a really good alternative yeah so thank you and our principals are excited about that too to allow that other option to be able to help them with the evit okay next slide please so our marketing department we've put together social media ads that have been running through june as well as that we did an email blast through the east valley tribune how we started the process though is we took every kid that was online this year and mr dolan reached out to

137him and said hey do you want to you want to stay online or do you or do you want to go back in person and we continue to talk with them throughout the spring that kind of led our first bubble of kids that were interested in it and now we're pushing through social media different opportunities like i said we are anticipating a lot more questions when those high schoolers come back on those days after summer now it's real right we're about to start the school year what are my other options available how can i work with my counselor to work with hva to see what flexibility i might have if i want to be a part-time student so hva physically is going to be located at power ranch there's going to be four classrooms they're

138going to have there one will be the quote unquote school office with mr dolan and his administrative assistant mrs marklink and then there's three classrooms for the elementary teachers because the elementary teachers are full full-time online this is where they will report and this is where they will teach out of and so they will have the cameras and the technology available to stream and that's what they will be doing uh right there at the school and those are the three classrooms so they will have their own classroom they will have the manipulatives and necessary things that they need to instruct online with the high school and the middle school most of those teachers matter of fact all of those teachers will be part-time teachers for us so they will have the ability to teach outside

139of the school day and they will have the ability to teach either within their classroom for instance let's say they were a high school chemistry teacher and they're picking up a chemistry class they could stay in their own classroom after school and that's where they could be responding remember with the curriculum on high school it's not direct instruction it's the kids going through the modules through florida virtual so they will be communicating and responding and then have office hours available but they are going to have the flexibility to do that either at their home campus that they are or let's be honest sometimes because of timings they'll do it from home too and provide that support from there at a different time so the classes once again will be through the florida virtual curriculum through

140canvas and we've talked about canvas earlier and so they will go through the canvas as our learning management system using the florida virtual curriculum the high school electives and i remember last year that was a big issue as we talked about remote learning and different things like that because of the number of students in it they are going to be much more limited that's why we need to work with the home campuses if there's a student that wanted to participate in a program that we couldn't offer online they could be part-time and go into their campus so staffing uh these are these are the mr dolemans the principal andrew markling is his administrative citizen and registrar originally when we started looking at this in december we said we need to hire a counselor we want

141to be a counselor to manage the enrollments of the students especially to track the ecap and different things and the the credits credit checks for our high school students because of the numbers we've had mr dolan is assuming those roles and so i'll talk about that's why i want to talk a little bit more about his roles and the expectation about looking at because we feel it's appropriate he will be communicating with the high schools and with the high school counseling departments to make sure that we have the continuity of what's needed for kids but for our full-time kids especially at the high school level he'll be responsible for making sure that we are doing our graduation checks on our credit checks and following through with those pieces we do have our three elementary teachers

142as you can see up there k2 3 4 and our 5 6 teachers and our secondary teachers we're still working to make sure that we have the right and appropriate ones that we've chosen quick question um i know attendance is going to be a little struggle at this place i know it talks about it a little later will that be what our registrar is working on as well with the administrative assistant and the registrar and like because she's going to be enrolling kids unenrolling kids correct and and the variety of what other duties yes i feel like that's a lot for her and mr dolan as well okay i'm like i think that's what sounds like a lot because i feel like this attendance may be a bigger piece a bigger chunk than what we

143might think so working with brian campbell in our student information system the ability for the parents to um check and do attendance can be virtually and done online and so that's how we're trying to streamline that process as much as possible so it's not physically signing off but electronically signing off and verifying okay because i feel like when i read about it i felt like that might be a bigger chunk of time especially seeing what our attendance clerks this year had to go through to try to you know check in with the kids at school and check in with the kids at home and so i just that might just be a bigger chunk of time that you may see mr dolan and mrs yes be doing so i'm concerned about the time um so

144if there is something that we need to do to help them maybe people think about that the nice part is with the elementary they have their teachers right we're not worried about that and they have their set schedules and their set times when they'll be going just like what happened this year and so they'll that's a lot more structured and so it's more of those middle school and secondary you know high school students tracking the attendance okay great thank you and so talk about the admin team and i'm just going to say it's admin team john and angie how they work together and these are all the different things that they're going to have to do obviously we've been hiring they've hired the elementary teachers and they're hiring the secondary teachers to fill the roles

145that they need and onboarding them because we're going to have to talk about training as we go forward especially to make sure that our teachers know what to do using florida virtual the nice part is we have a large group of teachers who taught last year online and we have a pool that is available and you know we're marketing this as hey would you like to pick up extra sections to teach for us because this is extra compensation that you can have kind of like do you want to coach a team or do you want to teach an online class those are different ways that you can receive compensation above and beyond your contract i think a huge piece that's going to jump this year that people don't understand is we have to ensure compliance

146with our higley accredited online institution it's called our aoi it's our aoy plan that we submitted last year we were approved and so but now we have a year where we have to go through and demonstrate what we put in the plan is what we're doing in person and so we're going to have to collect artifacts we're going to have to make sure each of these pieces with the aoi we're doing what we said they do and at the end of the year we're going to have to present to the ade and so that we can continue on with our accreditation and that's a very very important piece that mr dolan will be leading to go throughout so besides all of the regular managing the instructional side of things there's this compliance aspect of it

147that he will be leading as well and then we talked about the attendance it is going to look different than it was last year and yes that is that is a huge leap and i know that we've talked with other districts that have had existing uh aois already about best practices that you they're using to track attendance and honestly what we're finding is a lot of it is contact how can we contact them which is you know why mr dolan is already setting up that he'll make calls and do things like that so we're touching base with parents to remind them we've got to sign off on that attendance piece for us as well as that's gonna allow us to have the conversations about tracking let's make sure your kids advancing in the course right

148we can't just say hey you're online and then go do what you do we need to have weekly check-ins to see and make sure they're on pace quick question regarding the attendance piece so since the parents are responsible for essentially signing off how many hours the kids are spending um is there a separate parent agreement that the parents have to like it lays out this is part of being a virtual student this is the parent's responsibility and so do we have a parent agreement or can we create one that says that the parents are responsible for tracking these hours and that there there is a process if they don't so we we have a specific handbook that we've put together that mr dolan has put together that includes that information i'll be honest i don't

149know if i have a sign-off sheet on it or not so we have a signature from them but i know that as part of the presentation that we're providing to the parents so that is a suggestion we'll go back thank you so much already so they know the expectation we already we sign every year yes but being different that they will monitor and track and report the hours i mean yes we have a parent handbook and an agreement but something specifically stating that they know that they are responsible and that it's its own thing i kind of think about even some of the charter schools things like that um they have like a parent volunteer requirement that the parents have to acknowledge that they're required to volunteer so many hours at the school and so

150i'm thinking something kind of like that that this is such a huge piece it is so important this i mean this is funding um and that the parents truly need to understand what their expectation is like you said this is not oh my kid's doing an online school we'll get to it i'll do this hey you know susie did you log in today did you get your homework done that it it's not that this is actual you know the it's a it is it's a public school that the parents are responsible for tracking the hours so if we don't have something like that i would recommend that we do have a separate understanding and acknowledgement from the parents that they do understand that they will monitor track and report just so that it's very clear

151okay um mr lotzenheiser you said that this is a requirement for all online academies is that correct for the public ones that we've talked to and everything yes but the tracking of it is through they have to have a sign off and verification i just find it kind of um ironic because right now i have daughters taking um through chandler online academy summer school and there's been no tracking i think with summer school might fall a little bit differently i know that during the school year there's definitely because summer schools are paid i pay for them to go to that summer yes and so you're not there's not going to be any ade funding that's going to come back to it because you're already doing that somewhere i'm the funding okay okay that makes sense

152i was trying to kind of piece that together but thank you for talking me through it yeah no okay next slide once again we have to you know the administrative team monitoring evaluate the teacher effectiveness and this is the communication that mr dolan is having with those teachers he's directly responsible for the three teachers that elementary teachers are that as well as monitoring the progress and checking on the teachers who are teaching our secondary schools using our evaluation tool now their formal evaluation if they're a part-time teacher will still come from their brick and mortar teacher but we will look for effectiveness as we track throughout the year and that's mr dolan's responsibility this professional development for online teachers we have multi-age classrooms and so we want to make sure that our elementary teachers are

153prepared for the multi-age classroom as well and and also when we start looking at monitoring canvas like we've already talked about and making sure we're up to date how to use florida virtual and how to use canvas um the communication and and i do want to give a shout out to all the schools and and mr dolan about communicating back and forth about the needs of the kids and what they need to do and who's enrolled and who's not has been very ongoing this summer and that will continue to happen to make sure that we're communicating appropriately about which kid is where and what they're taking how can we best support them develop i said develop communication protocols with parents and students this goes back to the attendance piece i know that one of the

154plans we're looking on is taking a specific day maybe monday might be higgly high day and we contact all the higley high people tuesdays williamsfield wednesday sussman thursday's coulee you know and and kind of go on fridays who's ever we've missed but it's that weekly check-in because what we've learned from our peers that already had this that you can't just turn them on and turn them loose you have to progress monitor you have to check in you have to communicate with parents to make sure that the kids are successful and that goes into the monitoring student progress with weekly check-ins we talked about the counseling duties that is picked up by the administrative team we do have some people who are transferring in coming directly to it so to make sure the transcripts are appropriate

155just like a counselor would to make sure that they're placed in the appropriate classes and have met the necessary prereqs the ecap administration for our full-time students were required to do that and so he will lead the ecamp process for them and making sure that we're following the course of study and the credit checks so that they're graduating and we're putting them in a situation that they will be graduating i think something that's neat when we looked at the elementary duties with power ranch we don't want these three teachers just to be on an island all by themselves and so in working with the administration at power ranch allowing them to come in and it might not match up perfectly the curriculum is not going to follow the same pattern but allowing them to be

156in the plc of the grade level that they're in you know honestly going back to social emotional teachers it's nice to have a group of teachers you can bounce ideas off of and work together and i think the three of them will naturally form that plc but allow them to get out and talk to other people and be included in what's happening at power range and then once again this professional development for the multi-age classrooms to make sure that we're what we're doing is appropriate with those students for the secondary um so we're looking at in-person finals for sure midterms i know it's what we want to do as well one thing that we don't accept credit from an online school that doesn't have a proctored final and so we need to follow that exact

157thing we need to have a proctored final to make sure that they're coming in and i know this is an area that some of our brick and mortar departments have reached out and said hey i know they're going to take algebra online but how are we guaranteeing that they're passing the same final and doing the same things and for us as to making sure that they're doing this proctored final and so he will be coordinating that and bringing the students in to make sure that they're taking their finals and their midterms in person uh we talked about the ncaa clearinghouse for student athletes let me talk about athletics for a little bit in terms of hva i want to publicly say that we're not looking to hva is not necessarily a location for athletes to

158come in to go to an online school and then play sports someplace else that is not our goal in this at all what we would like if there is a situation that needs to happen we will work with the athletic directors at the high schools the system that's in place is if let's say i've been at williamsfield for three years now i've switched to online and want to continue to play athletics you would be allowed and you would be available to play for williamsfield but it wouldn't be hey i want to switch to hva and now i want to go play at higgley that wouldn't be allowed that would be a transfer through the aia and that would not be an appropriate thing to do for ninth graders coming in if they're choosing to go

159full-time online they would be eligible to participate in the boundary school so if i live in williamsfield boundaries i could go to hva and play for williamsfield that's okay otherwise we would have to be switching over there and we'd have to make sure that we're following all of the aia policies about switching schools and looking with online schools thank you mr lotzenheiser for bringing this to our attention it was is definitely one of my concerns also speaking though of athletes so are our elementary students what they would still be invited to events of their home school or is it going to be more a power ranch housing for like the carnival or the pto events that go on how how does that look for our elementary students so the initial conversations we have that would

160be kind of included with the power ranch people and looking at that and so they would have that same communication and have those same opportunities to looking at the power ranch also if they were full-time let's say high school or middle school student they wanted to go to a dance they would go to their home school and have those same opportunities they wanted to go to you know attend any kind of events that they would have it would be at their home school because we you know i think what we're learning is that people are making the choice to go online for a variety of reasons it's not necessarily coveted related and so sometimes the scheduling might work out but yet they will still want to be involved with social situations and because of the

161size of the school they're not going to hold their own dance or anything like that so they can go back and go to the homeschool dances do you not want 14 kids having a little dance together um i will leave that up to mr dolan actually and let him run that and with the elementaries like you said your initial discussions being part of participating with power ranch perhaps something that could be recommended as well is that um again through parent view that they can sign up for newsletters that perhaps they sign up for the newsletter for their home school it doesn't mean that they wouldn't be allowed to do that but for those who like you said it's a variety of reasons that may have nothing to do with covid but they may want to

162be involved in their neighborhood so you know maybe having them sign up for those newsletters and communication from their home school could be helpful as well but you did mention and i hadn't thought about this before about um sports and stuff are we allowing people out of our higley boundary to sign up they are we are accepting open enrollments for hva okay but this is this is where that's why i'd like to make it clear this is not used as a tool to have someone who lives somewhere else take the classes there and then participate in our sports on our campuses really that would be a transfer anything through the aia we'd have to follow those processes and procedures i think when you have an athlete that's in an online online class we also have

163to make sure that they're passing their classes and they're doing everything appropriate to make sure that they're eligible to participate as well and so working through that process is another thing so what about a ninth grader coming in because there is no transfer at that point they would be determined so would a a ninth grader who would be potentially signing up for online would they at that point have to choose like okay so your home school isn't either of our high schools you choose which one and that's that is what it is and then from there if it would be considered a transfer if they said oh i want to come over here versus over there correct and and we do not want to put in a situation where they just get to pick because

164they don't necessarily have a homeowner it would they would have to establish um with the aia there are some rules about that as well we would encourage anyone who's coming to that we would rather that they enroll at a semester first semester at the home school and then if they needed to transfer to the hva because they haven't established that situation the aia rules for eligibility with the online schools there's a specific section with online charter schools that is much more specific about those rules and i can update you in status about the more specificity but it's a lot harder to become eligible doing that situation well and i know it's not not necessarily the athletes that we see but the athletes that we do see that the online would be beneficial to or i

165guess swimming would fall in here are your swimmers your gymnasts you know things like that um where the online is attractive to them because of their training schedules um and so i guess that that would that would be some athletics because that could have something to do with the ncaa too so it would and so the reason i had clearinghouse up there mr dolan is going to have to work work to make sure that all of our courses are clearing house approved as well so if they're taking it an online course it will still count the same way for the 16 core classes for the ncaa um another responsibility for the admin team is to coordinate the special with the special education department for the ieps and i know mrs miller has already been working

166and mr dolan with all the students who are interested in going online right now that are on an iep and what specific things needs to happen for them when we look at the iep situation [Music] standardized testing we know it's here and it's just making sure as they go through this year that we develop our appropriate standardized testing procedures and policy working with our assessment department and then finally we've restructured the higley learning center hlc where that person is in an assistant principal in charge of that alternative program which has a maximum cap of 60 people in person and mr dolan will be the administrator overseeing that assistant principal that's still housed at higley high but he will be that direct conduit for that person as well okay so we did a whole bunch but

167are there any additional questions as we look through with hva i'm really excited about the progress we've made and honestly we'll continue to adapt to make sure that we meet the needs of our kids and we can provide a comprehensive program for for the students who want to take advantage of that i know you've mentioned that mr dolan's been making phone calls and talking to parents and it sounds like he's doing an excellent job at that i'm going to echo what president reece said about having some expectations for the parents and maybe doing like a q a or maybe some sort of youtube i know he does well with the youtube i've seen him um maybe some sort of youtube q a on what we're expecting parents to do that it isn't just put your

168kid in front of the computer and walk away um so i would echo that sentiment that president reece had as well that i would like to see something like that just so our parents aren't thinking oh this is going to be easy i'm just going to put my kid there and it's going to be good um i think most of our parents are pretty aware of that you do too but i do think having something in writing or in video form for them um especially when they're being asked to record the hours and checking off on that that would be really beneficial and possibly doing some sort of q a even live where he's able to answer questions for people i'm sure he's doing that on the phone in an individual basis but it might

169be good to be able to do a community forum where if anybody wants to you know find out more about our hva they can come even though they might not be interested in it this year they might be thinking about it down the road for their gymnast or their swimmer um it might be a good idea so that would be my thoughts on this because wow that's a lot of information but thank you all right this is thanks for stepping up i know mr dolan's on a well-deserved vacation so i you know but we needed this update as well um i think our biggest challenge this year because a virtual academy has been talked about for several years we ran into covid forced to go into the online distance remote type environment so i think

170our biggest challenge with launching this year is one understanding it's a separate school like it's its own school so it's very different than anything we've done it's very different than the last part of 2019 2020 the last part of the 2020 school year as well as very different than what was offered this last year as opportunities although we still use florida virtual or their their curriculum it's not the same so it is a separate school this is whole brand new and so i think that's where our biggest challenge right now is to make sure that there's that clear understanding because we are rolling from kind of one thing into this other thing um and so that it it is very different it's its own school we're launching a brand new school not just a new

171program a brand new school um that mr dolan is excited about on figuring out the mascot and so essentially we are launching a brand new school and so i think that's going to be the biggest challenge from a community understanding as well as our parents is everything stopped with what they knew and what was offered it's not remote it's not distance learning it it's none of that and like you said um i think the other hard part would be is we we ended up being very flexible and accommodating to families although we said that there were certain times that they could move in and out of an online environment we were accommodating and flexible to families and didn't necessarily stay the line with that this is changing schools it and so i think again it's

172making that clear distinction this is not like last year it's not like you're going to be home for two months because family members have gotten coveted and it's a long recovery whatever it's not the remote distance um thing this is separate so i think um i think you guys are doing an amazing job thank you for the update and stepping in for mr dolan we appreciate that um but i think that that's that's going to be our biggest challenge in launching this this year it needs to happen and i'm so excited because i've been asking for it like mrs kaler one of my kids i ended up doing a california-based online class for her because of the schedule that she needed which then required a proctor exam so williamsfield the ap government teacher was very

173kind and offered to proctor her exam for um california virtual academy and so um so we needed this because we have students who need options so i'm excited and i can't wait to see where this goes so thank you for all the the time and effort in trying to get this some of it was forced and some of it happened to go hand in hand but i definitely appreciate that mrs anderson i'm sorry i have a couple questions uh can you refresh my memory um so state tests go into pay for performance still in this district like the scores yes board member anderson it's been several years since we had letter grades so we were going back to i believe it was 2019 and basically the way it's been set up is because we were

174all a's and one b everybody got effective so okay does it does it add into part of that yes but everybody got the same okay you know writing so with these with this new school in the students that how does that work for paper performance does that apply to the rating of the school that they live in these are really good questions um president reece board member anderson so it's its own ctds number so again these students are registered to that school so again there is still the requirement on the amount of students who have to be tested and obviously that's one of the things that's continuing the whole accountability formula is a whole interesting thing that the state is going to be tackling but it has its own number so if you will okay

175question i was just wondering do online schools when we do letter grades do online academies get letter grades the requirement for testing will be there i don't know whether or not they get letter grades because of the number of students that it impacts usually they don't and again the whole accountability formula is one of those things that is also being revisited this year you know what's really interesting is schools we're getting letter grades but you know what's in this is so interesting because when we look at things like that are legislatively required like move on when reading the requirement of plans being turned in it alternates every year legislatively but it alternates legislatively back to 2014 when they gave district letter grades which they haven't in a long time so this is one of those

176things where sometimes the legislation and the accountability are not always in line with each other and yet we still have the requirement for ourselves this is one of this is our school it's a district sponsored online academy um part of our aoa requirements aoi requirements is assessment the percent a tested uh will we get a specific letter grade for higley online i don't know that right off hand right now um i know that nobody got one for this year so pay for performance for this school may look different than teachers in other schools potentially just out of curiosity i don't know if it's based off of any of this testing or anything board member anderson i think these are all things we're going to be working through because i mean be honest i don't know

177the answers to i'm sorry questions but i'm glad you're bringing it up because i don't think that we've gotten that far down the road yet and we're going to have a brand new test this year as well so it's not azm2 so we're learning about that in the process but so to to speak to that one of the things we'll do is we'll provide an update for you on our pay for performance we'll talk about assessment actually we're kind of excited because um in july we'll be bringing us you assessment updated assessment information um on on how our students did this year on test even though they won't be receiving uh a getting the accountability formula again we're not taught there we won't be worried about that but we're looking at our results of how

178our students are doing and we'll provide additional updates my second question was please refresh my memory and i'm sorry i wasn't paying attention but so the salaries for the elementary online school that will be like they go through the salary scale but high school middle school teachers will it'll be stipend like they'll have like their salary plus like six or six correct it's a purpose it's per pupil depending on the number of kids on the class and so one thing we're looking at for instance in math let's say i only have 10 kids in one class and five in the other if the teacher's willing to teach both of those then it's they're up to 15 students and they'll be paid per pupil okay and then so with this part-time enrollment so that means um

179there will be students enrolled in multiple schools in our district is that correct so though is that how that works am i saying it wrong correct they would be concurrently enrolled yes in the hva for a period and then five periods of williamsfield or higley and if they do eve it potentially three differences because because of the event wow okay so as far as transcripts and all that they'd have to pull transcripts from all schools for their needs okay thank you now back to oh sorry board member anderson obviously our transcript will be tracking that so their transcript would show how we're tracking their their credit for instance when they when they do their um if you're going to college you are your giggly transcript would track your your where you were from and where

180you got your credit from so it was hva was it williamsfield was it even it would all be on our transcript um maybe this is a school board 101 question but i thought that pay for performance was based on was paid unless that particular teacher was on an improvement plan is that not correct that is correct i was just drawing the correlation to how it was related to letter grade school letter grades in the past and so so they all they all do get an effective unless there's formal discipline or put on an improvement plan so that's correct okay so if the letter grade drops or it's different than an a b or c that oops that does not affect how much what percentage or how much they get it all right well your results

181based funding remember the results-based funding is a different funding yeah results-based funding i think you're talking about yeah talking about talking about this yeah it's a totally different funding totally different thing so there's different funds that are used to compensate so i think that's results-based funding in which depending upon the letter grade there is an allocation for that and that's one of the things we talked about that we would be looking at next year with a committee so that we make sure that we approve that correctly because as you know just about the time you think you get it figured out legislation changes on how you can and can't use the money or who it is or isn't for and so you use a committee to to comprise that so you just approve results-based funding

182i think what we're talking about is is going back to the compensation where we're talking about buckets the classroom site fun that's that's what we were talking about yep different funds that all contribute to this which is easy for con for confusion and and mrs anderson when we approved that that was for 2018 so results-based funding if it's i mean it's we're going to be a couple years in uh before hva is even part of that conversation does that make sense because it was it was retro to what the grade level was from 2018 and we're voting on that in 2021. so we have a few years to figure this out i do believe sorry or unless they change it this year and it goes to 2019 or 2020 to 2020 if they don't do

183anything well said so yeah yeah well said yeah yep thank you for any other questions thank you all right so all right so we are gonna go on to uh information item it's 9.3 it's our first read of policy jliff which is a sex offender notification policy um everyone should have had a chance to review it i don't know that there's anything that needs to be presented on this this is an asba policy that we have also had um reviewed by our our attorneys as well so this pretty much is following the ars law we just we didn't have one before so as our policies update as we are in our first read does anyone have any questions to our policy all right so then we're going to go on to our action items and

18410.1 is that i move that we wave our second read on policy jlif and approve the policy second and like we just said we had not had one in place um we've worked with legal counsel to amend and the aba asba's recommended policy any other questions regarding the policy or waiving the second read for it all right all those in favor aye aye that motion carries 4-0 so we will go on to 10.2 and i move that we approve the sorry i'm trying to read two different things i move that we approve the food program permanent service agreement renewal with the arizona department of education fiscal year to 2021-2022 check it is that you okay any questions regarding this agreement all right all those in favor all right that motion carries 4-0 all right thank

185you for staying in case there were questions appreciate you [Laughter] um future agenda items i know that we had some questions and dr foley would review whether we were putting them on a future agenda item or if there was some answers we can get in our status reports is everyone okay with that yes however either in the status report president reece i have um something for the future and this could definitely be in your status report is i would like to know there was um a few teachers have come to me asking about the start of the day at their elementary schools and that we give some autonomy on how those schools start if there's a slow start um if there is recess before school or not i guess there's just there's differences in all

186of our elementary schools this is not a board decision that those are made that is a site decision and and cabinet decisions um i would just like to see which schools do what and just kind of know for the information because i know they're different so just an information item in your status would be awesome thank you happy to do that any other future agenda items all right well with that i move that we adjourn second all in favor aye aye have a good evening and the rest of your summer we'll see you right before school starts you