001good evening we're going to go ahead and call this meeting to order dr foley roll call president reese members of the board please let the record show that four members are present thank you it's my understanding mrs anderson is on her way all right we're going to go ahead and have a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance one nation under god indivisible with the racism all right i move that we approve the agenda as it's presented second any questions or comments regarding the agenda all those in favor aye aye aye aye that motion carries 4-0 dr foley the superintendent's report please president reese members of the board we're excited tonight to start off with recognitions and celebrations this morning miss board member schultz and vice president joe wilson were able to join
002myself and sherry richards and other members of cabinet when we acknowledge the recipient jeffrey bickel for his exemplary principal award in maricopa he was one of seven and and it was a brilliant assembly as we watched the entire school body welcome him and surprise him we were all moved to tears including mr pickles so that was a pretty fantastic start to the day and something we're really happy to celebrate today uh tonight we are also excited we have some state champions in the house who we want to acknowledge and celebrate so i'm going to ask mr dilly to come up and highlight our state champions girls in la crosse all right where do you want me to stand uh okay thank you all right um i'm gonna ask the coach whitney and our awesome team
003to come up please these these you guys are the ones they want to see come on up please [Applause] all right as they're on their way up we are missing a couple but this is this is a great turnout ladies thank you for coming so a little backstory because coach whitney who i'm going to turn it over to in one second is too modest to say what i'm about to say so i'll say it for her we were blessed to start a lacrosse team boys and girls three years ago the first year of the ladies they were a jv program and it was fun to watch because lacrosse is actually a super fun sport to watch very fast if you if you like soccer like hockey like football it's kind of combination of all of
004those and it's it's awesome but the first year in jv was was was interesting is how we'll say it and and the growth between just three years ago and them beating xavier for the state championship two weeks ago 18 to nine and in the process they capped an undefeated season and it wasn't even close quite frankly most of the games against schools who have had programs for many many years were were not close and so it's really cool to see the growth that they've come that's a credit to these ladies and it's a credit to coach whitney levitt i'm going to turn time over to her okay um i wasn't expecting to talk tonight but i'll talk for a few minutes and mainly i'm going to talk about these wonderful young ladies this is our
005entire team this is i would say three quarters of our varsity program um but these are the girls that we should be acknowledging they're the ones that have been committed from day one from the start of the season and i'm not an easy coach so they've been through the ringer just been put to the test a lot this season let's see let's how many where are seniors no seniors here tonight show my junior stand up let's see where our juniors are okay stand up stand up okay so we have three juniors and or four out of these four juniors these were all girls that started with our program three years ago except for brooklyn on the very end but she's a unique situation because she just started playing last year and she made varsity after
006like four practices so to brooklyn um becca taylee they started playing for the first time ever putting a stick in their hand three seasons ago and here they are state champions that's just amazing step back you guys are awesome and then my sophomores stand up noel we have a few other sophomores but noelle gives a shout out because she just made allstate as a sophomore for the state of don't step back stay there girl own it um pretty incredible okay you can step back now and then freshman look at all these freshmen amazing and all of these girls started playing lacrosse what like six years ago seven i don't even know but i started coaching them pretty young about seven six years ago some of them maybe three or four years ago and they've definitely
007brought up the level of play for our girls across this year and they are a huge attribution to why we had success so awesome job freshman you guys can step back putting you on the spot um really they just i think the one thing that sets our team apart from any other program is obviously the support that we get from higley specifically our athletic director who's amazing you guys know um but also these girls they are completely in one supporting of each other and you don't really see that with a lot of other teams you see a lot of just specific players who stand out this group meshes and they are cohesive and they're unified and that's why we won the state champs that's all i'm going to say all right thank you all right
008let's take let's take some photos here thank you okay and to continue with the superintendent's report as you can see we have some celebrations in the next week as we prepare to honor our graduating class with our senior classes on their fields and then in the month of june we've got lots of meetings too so i want to thank those of you who came tonight we appreciate you you coming and that concludes our report all right thank you dr foley and i just want to make note that june 9th meeting is at 10 a.m so it is different all right do we have any board comment or any request to speak mrs reach no okay then you'll need to fill out a little form all right so we will do our board comments while we
009get our forms for request to speak president ruiz mrs wilson we have all been to many awards in the last few weeks since our last meeting and i just want to shout out to all those principals all the teachers who have taken that extra time to put together those award ceremonies for us to attend it's been exciting to see all the concerts that have taken place some of those elementary concerts sound like they should be in high school playing those instruments and i'm just i'm really proud of those kiddos and just a shout out to all of our principals all of the teachers who have made those concerts those events happen because that's no easy feat thank you that is true and for a lot of these kiddos this this was their first concert of
010the year they had not been able to um participate previously and so there was a lot of effort and work that they've worked really hard in putting this together any other board comments president reece mrs anderson um i just want to go off the superintendent report and list i just had a list of congratulations to a lot of people and teams and groups so congrats congratulations to all the sports teams especially the ones that came in phenomenal job congratulations to the high school underclassmen and the seniors for all their awards a lot of achievements have been done this year congratulations to all the cte students with their certification exams that was remarkable to see the numbers with those i want to say thank you to the counselors for their patience and communication to students and
011parents and ensuring that all options have been exhausted for successful student graduation and identifying the advanced honor for excellence in academic diploma and advanced stem diploma i also want to say thank you to i believe is it chartwells that provides the foods at the teacher appreciation breakfast hartwell donated all the food is that correct and i did and that it was a it was a very delicious and very um classy spread black but better word i apologize and congratulations to the teacher of the year and i just want to point out for the comments for the teacher of the year it was pretty hearing the kids speak being a teacher none of the kids spoke about oh you know i'm so glad you know my teacher taught me how to add numbers the best or
012spell the best or whatever the best it was my teacher made me feel the best here taught me the best um uh yeah cared about me there was just so many comments about how the teacher in the relationship which is which is a lot of what's all about um congratulations to the support staff or thank you support staff chris good and ray madrid and all involved in repairing the irrigation line at higley high school and providing water for baseball at that time thank you to the security team at the high schools for monitoring the sites for senior pranks i think we have a few more days to go um thank you for sanitizing chris for chris and the custodial staff for sanitizing the schools keeping them clean and safe as best as possible and thank
013you to the hcpa staff for the commitment to the higley and the community i believe i counted 14 events in two weeks forgive me if i'm off a little bit so thank you so much for providing those opportunities and making them all go well thank you thank you any other board comments we also had our first retiree reception which was amazing i really enjoyed the format and i think it was a great way to honor our staff for that are retiring so i really enjoyed that too and we have been everywhere so [Laughter] we have made up time for sure all right with that if we have no other board comments then we will go on to our request to speak okay we'll wait until we get to that item all right all right then
014we will move on to our consent agenda i move that we approve the consent agenda as it's presented second any questions or comments regarding consent all right all those in favor aye aye that motion carries 5-0 dr foley would you like to take over for a moment i would president reese members of the board with the approval of the consent agenda we have some congratulations that we would like to acknowledge in the administrator ranks who are who are joining our team in the audience tonight you will you have just approved mr jim pasic who will be our director of technology who comes to us with years of experience and we are thrilled to have him on our team yeah you have also approved miss kristen koch being named as the assistant principal at williamsfield and
015we are so proud to watch her continue to grow up in here in haiti and she's been a rock star we're proud of her and we also have one another one of our own who is moving up into a position as we've approved uh mr moore for the cfo we have just approved ms sharon rush camp as the director of finance who is also one of ours and so we're real proud of the additions and the quality of people on our team and thank you for your approval tonight thank you and congratulations and we're excited for new positions and we wish you the best for sure all right then we will go on to information item 7.1 miss martens we have a health insurance update please good evening president reece vice president wilson members of
016the board our community my fellow colleagues this is an update from the last meeting in which i had presented at the april 21st meeting related to our benefits updated our pardon our benefits update next slide please we had some modifications from that last time until now unfortunately i wasn't able to bring it to the board sooner because of the fact that we didn't have a board meeting until today in terms of scheduled time however as you probably saw in the superintendent's report i had reported it as soon as we were made aware of the initial change as well as we did communicate the information to our employees but essentially as we moved forward on our new benefits platform the old imed provider wasn't going to fit with that and so that was really kind of
017a disconnect in the sense that if we're moving to this whole new platform to be able to ease transition um benefit in terms of enrollment and then being able to access information 24 7 on this new web component it didn't make sense that we had an outlier and so we were able to switch to vsp through principal who also is the vendor that is helping us with the e-benefit solver platform there is a slight cost and increase to employees however there are other benefits that kind of in my perspective offset some of that so when you look at imed versus vsp you can see there are slight increases um in the different plan tiers one thing i do have to edit that i just noted um before coming in here i missed punch and vsp
018should actually be 5 45 and not 5 49 i'll make sure that miss reach has that information to update the slide but in regards to overall comparability we have a two year rate guarantee just like we had had with the other one as i mentioned earlier on the platform in terms of the compatibility as well as vsp does have a wider selection of retail providers so they have costco and target for example where imed did not cover in those areas and overall in terms of the in-network provider there is a cost savings for individuals with eye exams in which they have dilation services and it's a 15 cost savings than what had been previously and there are also additional cost savings in regards to frames and electable contact lenses if our members do in-network providers
019so there's some additional cost savings in those areas that individuals will see with a slight increase in terms of the overall plan tier amounts for the monthly premiums so i apologize that this came later but i did want to make sure that publicly we updated the board as well as all the other community members who we reference back to the board meetings and have the correct information perfect outside of that i'll entertain any questions questions perfect thank you for clarifying that all right we're going to go on to 7.2 which is our third review of the study packet and financial information for possible bond election um november 22nd or sorry november 2nd mr gad mr moore i will take madame president at the summary uh for a powerpoint that you have at your desk and
020then mr moore will take the financial portion of that second powerpoint this is the third and final review of the proposed bond election we've been through this a few times but again if you have some last-minute questions i expect this is the time to ask those because at the june ninth meeting you'll have the resolution to approve to actually call for the election so with that i will go through the powerpoint rather quickly some highlights on the second page the capital funding has been improved for the district because of the restoration at the state level of the previous reduction taken by the state some years ago so we're back to full funding on capital outlay approximately five hundred dollars a student technology funding is considerable emphasis in the in the bond so that's as you
021would expect that's important and that's included in a significant amount energy conservation is included safety and securities included we have recognized money for for maintenance quite a bit to especially pay attention to the older buildings in the district we have eliminated reliance on the mno capital transfer so we can spend more money in mno and that's going to be helpful to the district's instructional programs um we also have included a taxpayer saving items a large one that's to prepay the lease that we have of the two leases one of them is included in its entirety here that will save a considerable amount of taxpayer funds somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 million dollars so taxpayers should be pleased with that and i commend the board for wanting to try to help that situation become more
022of a reality the budget highlights again we've talked about some of these we have a five-year maintenance plan included in the in the listing so i think and i think it's very adequately funded to make sure that our buildings stay up in the shape that they should be we have a set aside for any major construction projects that the board may find that are necessary in the next five years so there's room there's money set aside for that purpose and as i say we've completely stopped now the mmo transfer to capital by taking care of the lease payment subject so now with the bond and what we've already done with the regular capital budget we are now transfer free of to capital and now can spend that mno money on programming and those those kind
023of things that go more directly with kids and uh we have the purchase of the one middle school uh potential land purchasings is included we've talked to the board previously about the need for a potential site in the northern part of the district i know we just received an enrollment update from our demographic consultant dr fowler shared that with me and there is some growth projected up in that area considerable growth so i think i think this is a good move for the district i think it gives you a second site my more desirable site maybe than the first one and it certainly doesn't hurt you won't pay any taxes on it because we're a governmental entity and at the rate of appreciation of property i think if you ever did decide to sell it
024you probably make an awful lot of money at it so i'm glad that this one is included and then a minimal tax rate increase about 14 cents so it goes flat after that first increase in 22-23 so it's a very small increase in the tax rate that's been projected and we're going to be using with this proposal 95 million dollars of the 125 129 million available bonding capacity so we will be using a sizable a sizable amount of that but mr um tyler will report to you mr moore will report to you the bonding capacity grows considerably over the next few years if the projection of increase in property values is there and some other things so i don't think it'll be awfully long before you've gained back enough money capacity to do a second
025bond and whatever those needs are at that point in time i don't think that's too far off and the last i think it's the last page yeah the last page of the summary lists again for you the items that we've just described it gives you the percentages of the total bond that we intend to spend on each of those it provides a contingency that i think is going to be helpful especially with the rising prices in in maintenance and construction so with that and the president members of the board if you have any last questions on the bond proposal we'll be happy to try to answer them for you any questions president reese mrs wilson dr foley if anyone had a question who should they reach out to you if they have questions if our
026community has a question about this who would you like them to reach out to president race vice president wilson we would encourage them to reach out to the district office to reach out to myself and we would schedule time to answer questions the best of our ability with our with we would share the information we've already publicly done um obviously so that they can answer any questions at the june 9th meeting is when we would look for a resolution to call for if we determined to call for and at that point then different information comes out and informational informational factual sessions are held and all those things but if people have questions we please reach out to myself and we will schedule a time to answer and help you understand and to look at some
027of the very information that we've literally been talking about since october in preparation for this conversation thank you mr president mr moore would be happy to present you that second powerpoint if you'd like him to do that anyone do we need that additional information or i think we're good you guys have been pretty pretty detailed so um and we will like dr foley said we will have discussion and look for a resolution on june 9th so mr moore is there well i mean yeah if we don't want to go through the financial powerpoint i mean it's more power to me but it's his job let him do it i did have a short point just to kind of tie together the financial implications that this bond would impose on the district president reese would you
028like him to share those or are you comfortable with what's been presented we'll have mr moore share those okay thank you all right uh good evening president reese members of the board um like mr god mentioned um there we are you know bring our third review and um this presentation this short presentation would kind of tie together some of the aspects that we've been talking about in terms of some of these definitions and next slide please so you've heard of mentioned some of these definitions and some of our conversations i just wanted to kind of put these out there just so we can provide some context to these i'm not going to read these verbatim but you know assess valuation we've thrown that number out there a lot that is you've seen it on your
029property tax bill um it's determined by the assessor's office um most residential it cannot increase more than five percent in a fiscal year so if you see a lot of times your residential value on zillow right it's way high your your assessed valuations typically trying to catch up to that so that is has an impact on our on our capacity as we continue to grow over the next few years the next bolt there is the secondary tax rate as you know the the class b bonds are against our secondary tax rate not our primary tax rate our primary tax rate is our m o our capital and our adjacent ways that tax rate is determined by those three funds in particular and our secondary tax rate is those overrides bond issues both capital and emino
030override as you know we currently have an mno override which is approximately 61 cents per hundred dollars of assessed valuation and i believe we just authorized that in 2019 so lastly the bonding capacity that should read 20 of the assessed valuation at 30. um but there's a constitutional limit that limits districts unified districts that can bond up to 20 percent of their assessed valuation so i'll expand on that in the next slide so the assessed valuation impact on our tax base you'll notice how we continue to grow in the fall right column is our estimated assessed valuation um everything up until 2021 is uh accurate and current so in the everything after that is projected so that is anticipated growth that we've put out there 5.7 which is very conservative considering we've grown 8.5 percent
031in this current year so as that assessed valuation grows so does our bonding capacity as a as a reminder our district is largely residential so we're not going to see a huge amount of growth over the years we're approximately 86 residential 11 commercial so our av is going to reach a limit at some point in the near future as we um as our land and our vacant land gets bought up and and used for residential buildings so that bonding capacity will hit a limit the next slide please so as mr gad mentioned there is a small increase you'll notice in this current year this is their current tax rate of on the secondary tax rate not remember you have a primary and secondary rate this is not your overall so your secondary tax rate which
032is your bond your current bond and our m o override is approximately 1.58 cents per hundred dollars of assessed valuation the 14 decrease is is going to happen next year regardless because we don't have a bond even if you authorize a bond now we would not be able to sell until 22. so you're going to see a decrease next year which is why we mentioned there's going to be a 14 increase because when we go to potentially sell in 22 22 23 you're going to see that 14 increase so essentially we're going down and then back to where we were we're not pretty much staying flat in terms of our tax implications to our residents next slide please so here's a projected property tax bill we included both a residential and commercial um valuation so
033on a 246 thousand dollar home which is i don't know where you're going to find that right now but um that would be an estimated uh cost and it shouldn't be increased because like i just mentioned it's it's essentially going to be the same property tax bill you're seeing currently would be 140 dollars per year and then um on a commercial business that should be business not home of approximately 1.1 million dollars their annual uh secondary tax rate would be one thousand dollar one thousand thirty dollars so you can see it's a very minimal implication um to both our residential and business businesses um and again you know districts are are forced to go to this secondary tax rate um due to our funding sources being restricted we're again the i think the uh um
034it just came out that we were again 48th in funding um still on the uh annual uh demographic survey so we're still forced to go to this these sources of funding as a public school district to kind of get the funding that we need to get our buildings our student our mno costs up to speed so next slide please and then again we talked about bonding capacity um so currently we would jeff mentioned in the 2122 year we would have approximately 129 million in bonding capacity we're proposing 95 million to not go to that full uh 100 bonding capacity that does limit our potential in the years preceding this you'll see how it decreases in 23 24 and 25 and then as our assessed valuation catches up to our bonding capacity in that 2526 area
035that's where we've kind of earmarked another potential bond cell that would put us five years out if this bond if we do authorize this bond and we proceed with our current plan of five years that 2526 timeline would be a potential area where we can do another bond sale now reminder this is just bonding capacity and does not authorize the district to pursue bonds we still need the authorization from the board to authorize to go out for a bond and that dollar amount so next slide please so we combined both the primary and secondary tax rates and kind of put our neighboring districts up here remember the primary tax rate usually mno adjacent ways in capital and then your secondary tax rates are all your voter approved items your your eminent override capital override and
036your bonds you'll see the highest tax rate is uh queen creek currently uh second to that would be mesa um we are kind of sitting in the middle of this group here and then of course scottsdale paradise valley because of their av is so high it their tax rates are are extremely low we just don't have that capacity in higley scottsdale 121 square miles lots of commercial and residential so we'll never reach that but we can um we are in competitive we're in competition with our competitors here and i think we're very favorable in terms of um comparing ourselves to other districts finally we have our calendar of events so if you go to the march june timeline that's kind of where we've been going with this presentation in our reviews um we've presented three
037reviews so far of the bond as we move into this june and july timeline we're going to ask the board for a res approve to prove a resolution um if that is approved we will go into june and august which we will have the voter pamphlet which we'll have to approve the language on that we'll ask for the board's pro statement we'll also at that time start to schedule some what they call i guess road shows in higley we'll make our rounds to some neighborhoods some communities present informational factual stuff regarding the bond and the stuff that we've presented to the board in our plans and then september it's it's going to be an all mail-in election this year so september october pretty much all the ballots will be mailed out and you know when
038we get to november election day um you know the decision will already be made um in terms of our whether we pass or whether we fail so um we feel confident in this kind of plan and um we feel like we have the community and the board support going forward with what we presented yeah and if there's any questions regarding this timeline or any of the financial information that i presented president reece i just have one quick statement i believe governor ducey at one point has mentioned that if we want more from our education that the own towns need to pay for it our own district needs to pay for it if i'm paraphrasing correctly what he said that i and i just think that's something to be pointed out that um our own governor
039says you know he pays for the basic education and then we have to pay for all the extra fluff so i just think that's something to be said thank you any other questions all right sorry i just have one question how much and this might have been addressed i just forgot how much does it cost us to do this to go out to about like what's the cost for for that and the the pamphlets and things like that yeah so there is an issue when it's cost uh along with this mr devil it's about two dollars two hours and fifty cents per registered voter that's what the county charges so you know it it's it's significant it's up in the hundreds two hundred thousand dollar rate sure any other questions thank you for going through
040all the detail with us all right now we will go on to 7.3 and we have a request to speak so we value the input from our constituents this time has been set aside for anyone from the audience who wishes to address the board please remember this is not an appropriate venue to evaluate discuss or criticize district personnel policy keb provides a process for complaints about personnel speakers should be aware or that fault statements about individuals may result in civil liability members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda therefore pursuant to ars 38-431-01h action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the mater for further consideration and a decision at a
041later date we ask that remarks be kept to three minutes mr edwards with the mahoney group coming up well thank you uh president reese and vice president wilson and all the board members it's a privilege to be here uh it's been an honor to handle the insurance and the risk management needs of the district these past many years um there was a review set out this year on the insurance and there was a little bit of confusion on that review as it took place and so um we reached out today when we saw last night the review that came out and so we reached out today to dr foley's office and uh first instant had recommended us to speak with mr hawes in his office to go over those concerns and so we did that
042and um in the interest of time you know that would have been a lot for them to put on their plate and revise everything and send it over so we took the liberty to go ahead and do that write it in real quick for that review so that the board would have full information tonight as you look at all of the um factors in in that review and so um i was going to speak after we look at the review just to see how what was included in the review and then to help um answer any questions and to be a resource after the review has gone forth and so if that's okay i'll yield until then and then our public comments prior okay all of them yes okay okay thank you all right sounds
043good um i'll just point out a few things then before we do the review um we went through a an rfp process a couple years ago very proud of that and very proud of the results of that we looked very closely at all of the factors for six years with higley and um came to some very definite and important conclusions about why the insurance should be moved and so with a lot of concrete facts on that we went forward there was an rfp put out we participated in that along with the trust and ultimately took over the insurance needs of the district and just very proud of what we've done during that time as you're looking over the review tonight with mr haas i want you to remember a couple things the district is exemplary
044in their risk management and loss control and that's that goes from the top down from district operations with chris good and his staff there fatima and hr josh crosby in transportation mum and hr dr fowler and operations and many others that we have the privilege of working with because of that higley is one of the top tier districts in the eyes of insurance carriers and insurability and because of that we've been able to do what we've been able to do with the insurance and gain the favorable rates that we have i want you to remember a key point tonight as you're looking through the review remember that the trust insures 200 and roughly 250 school districts and must account for that capacity within their within their limits higley is one and they stand alone and
045so those limits are appropriate and good for the district this plan was crafted specifically for them and they benefit immensely in many ways from doing that many things were added to this this program this year as far as flexibility with the council for claims that includes rosenfeld udall shumway as a choice of council during those claims a dedicated employment attorney as well in place of what you now have as prepaid legal and my time is up and so thank you for that if you have any questions after the review i'm happy to i'm here and happy to answer any questions regarding that thank you very much thank you so with that we will start our um is that for our speaker regarding the same subject i'll take it all right so this is also on
046the same agenda item so mr cole will go ahead and invite you up you also have three minutes um looks like you're with the trust is that correct thank you okay grace vice president wilson and board members thank you for allowing me to be here today my name is ryan cole i'm with the arizona school risk retention trust and i just want to provide a little bit of background and history into our relationship with the trust and why the trust was formed the trust was formed 35 years ago in as a self-insured pool for public entities for school districts across the state we started out with five districts in rural arizona it has since grown to 247 members so we're about the 250 member mark over that 35 years of operations what pools have done
047and what the trust has been able to do is really to find a niche market for schools we know the coverage that arizona schools and community colleges need and we've been able to refine our coverage agreements and the policies in order to meet those needs of arizona schools we are governed by and for the membership we have a governing board of directors that's made up of school district administrators from across the state some of your neighbors as well and higley mesa and chandler they're helping to direct the vision and the mission of the trust to make sure that we're providing the appropriate coverages for members over again i mentioned over the past 35 years we've been able to hone that coverage agreement specifically for arizona school districts and community colleges that offer that includes offering
048high limits up to 50 million in liability limits for districts which we feel is vital in protecting arizona schools we also have low deductibles broad coverage where we're able to lean into coverage as well as favorable terms and conditions within that coverage we know arizona claim adjusting we know what it takes we have the appropriate staff that's been in place for many years to adjudicate those claims the number of claims that we've handled for arizona schools since 1986 is 57 000 and that represents 674 million in claims payments again we in the discussion of the liability limits for the districts we feel that 50 million is absolutely appropriate for districts we have a couple examples within that we had a district up in northern arizona in 1996 and auto liability claim with a bus accident
049the total settlement for that was 28 million at the time the district had a 10 million dollar policy they then shortly thereafter joined the trust the second example down in southern arizona a little more recent 2006 general liability claim after a basketball game uh the crowd and some players dog piled another one of the players and that was a 25 million dollar settlement the commercial insurer after that claim canceled the policy and the district subsequently joined the trust so again those are old claims but social inflation is a factor that we we look at as well but we routinely receive large demands uh greater than 16 million in liability limits if the district has students if you have athletic activities you have public on your campus if you employ staff then 16 million in limits
050we don't feel as appropriate we feel we've crafted that coverage to fully protect districts so thank you for your time and i look forward to further discussion thank you all right as we go on to 7.3 we will be receiving a presentation for um as we've had two speakers here for both the mahoney group and for the trust this is for our liability workers comp insurance we'll notice we do have a action item coming up it is important that we direct our questions to dr foley during the presentation or thereafter a recommendation is a specific recommendation is not being made when we get to 8.1 the board will have to determine which policy which package we choose for our district so with that said i will turn it over to dr foley so we can
051start our presentation process thank you president reese members of the board tonight we have an important topic and and this is one actually we've been talking about for quite a while it's been on our agenda as future topics back in september when we did a renewal there was great conversation with the board at the time that when it came time this year as part of our processes and procedures that we do a thorough review and we bring recommendations for the board to make a decision which is what we're doing this evening we've also been talking with and again as as president reece has shared um this is workman's comp and liability but this also has a lot to do with our legal services and we've talked about to do in an in-house or an outsource
052or what does it mean for us in our district and this is this conversation so again one of the things that we've that we've done and that we did as a team is asked we collected those those quotes and worked with attorneys with dustin rosenfeld because with our current carrier the mahoney group if anything had ever gone to a claim the preferred attorney group that we were to work with in those cases was dustin rosenfeld who are one of the two law firms that are experts in educational law and all things encompass with them okay so they have these would be our attorneys regardless of whichever vendor you choose to go with and what they've done is they have thoroughly reviewed these proposals they have been in consultation even up to today in conversations clarifications
053for them to discuss with and to provide clarity for answer questions dispel misinformation or to understand and probe this because this is an important decision the dollar amount to this is huge and we want uh to make the obviously the best decision possible for for our district the one thing that you your cabinet members want you to know is that while we are not experts in insurance we are experts in our field and we would hope that we also have experience in utilizing both of these resources and so we also are here to share if you have questions or would like to know our experiences or our perspectives we do have those prepared to share if you like that information as well as you prepare to make a decision tonight so tonight is important we
054are sort of at a time crunch here because um regardless of where we go tonight there are changes in the existing policy if it were to stay with the current carrier or move to a different one that require background on the back side we've got to get it finalized trained rolled out so that we don't skip a beat because there's an awful lot of um that involves all of us and training in our resources so this is this is something we don't take lightly um and again when working with getting information took some time to get the information as we've kept you posted and up to date in our status reports of this so here we are tonight with an important decision to make so i'm going to turn it over to our attorneys from
055guston rosenfeld both rob haas and jennifer mclennan who were we'll kind of walk through um the the cost proposals for both insurance companies i want you to ask that you please ask questions probe for information clarify any information you would like to know so that you have the information with the with them as a resource and then again your cabinet is here if you have other questions for us we are prepared to speak and share good evening president reese members of the board rob haas with gus rosenfeld my partner's with me jennifer mclennan we're very pleased to be your lawyers our only effort tonight is to give you our best assessment of the proposals that are in front of you there is a little bit of a urgency to this your policies are set to
056expire at the end of june so there needs to be a decision made we were asked to review the two insurance proposals that the district has received that were submitted by the mahoney group and the trust and over the past several weeks we've been doing that we've met with staff to get their perspective and their input we have posed questions follow-up questions to each vendor we've reviewed all of the materials that both vendors have submitted to the district we've requested some supplemental information from the vendors as well and had several follow-up phone calls with the vendors on that to make sure that there has been a thorough review of this that we do understand the issues and that we can come to you tonight with confidence in the information we're presenting to you mr oz
057i hate to interrupt you right at the beginning um i got an email today very late in the afternoon and it's very concerning to me as you were speaking that conversations have been going on for many many weeks and yet i get an email at the ninth hour this afternoon can you kind of talk me through the why that occurred because i'm very confused that that happened when there's been multiple conversations happening for weeks yes absolutely um president reece board member kaler happy to answer that question um of course we we want this to be a we've tried to have this be an open process and make sure that people have had a chance to share what they want to share about their product and service and so that's why we've had this ongoing uh
058review um i don't i was as surprised as you frankly to get that late uh supplement today in fact i haven't even i got it it beeped on my phone as i was driving out here be that as it may uh you know we we can come to you tonight with confidence that we've reviewed the proposals understand them and can highlight for you some of the differences some of the what we perceive as advantages or disadvantages of each and let you make the call we don't really have a dog in this fight as you may know you're currently insured by liberty mutual we are the law firm that liberty mutual uses when there is coverage for a claim when there's not coverage you can use whoever you want and your you use our firm and
059another firm uh so the mahoney group's proposal as you will see we'll go over this we have a short powerpoint presentation and a spreadsheet that we'll we'll go over and tyler may be jealous because we'll get into some numbers here but [Music] the the new insurer will not be the liberty mutual the mahoney's group proposal basically uh is proposing new carriers and the trust you were previously insured by the trust but haven't been for a while um if if the trust was selected we would in full disclosure we would likely be continuing to work with the district both on your day-to-day issues and when there is a claim to be made in many areas mr edwards has assured us i have not seen verification of this from any of your the carriers he's proposing but
060he's assured us that he's gone to bat for the district to make sure that if the new carriers are selected that you would have the option to continue to work with your preferred counsel um so um we are here as your lawyer to give you the best advice we can give you on the proposals um so with that i'll turn the time over to jennifer madam president members of the governing board jennifer mclennan and gus rosenfeld so i'd like to take you through a brief powerpoint that compares the two proposals side by side we prepared this information based upon the proposals that were submitted by the mahoney group and by the trust unlike rob i left a little bit later so i was able to obtain that email that you received late in the day
061and where possible i'll try to address the some of the discrepancies so that you have answers to those questions so just to let you know i did not get the said email so i have no idea what we're talking about with the email so just to let you know thank you i will continue um so the district as mr haas has indicated is currently insured through liberty mutual insurance and the insurance premiums that you have paid out this year are approximately 1 million eight hundred 77 seventy four dollars the cost for legal services to date is approximately fifty thousand dollars um i have spoken with your uh business services department they've indicated that they would expect those costs to rise to about 75 000 by the end of the year next slide please and we
062just want you to know that this is based on information we've received not information that we you know we are not coverage counselors there is a specific type of lawyer that determines whether a claim is uh covered by an insurance policy that's not robbenai's forte one of the terms that will you'll see used in this powerpoint presentation is the aggregate limit aggregate limit is a general limit that is the maximum for the insurance payable during a policy period so you'll often see the um used per occurrence and then per aggregate and what that would mean often it's 1 million per occurrence 3 million for aggregate that's one number that you'd see and what that would mean would be that that policy that particular policy would be um up to the three million dollar mark for
063all claims submitted under that policy and that's exclusive of excess and umbrella coverage which was one of the points raised in the late submitted information so getting to general liability the general the basic general liability policy for the mahoney group would offer one million dollars in coverage the trust is 10 million dollars again this is specific to the policy not including the excess or the umbrella insurance the excess liability coverage the one entity would be 10 million the excess liability on the other would be 40 million mr edwards did submit information indicating that on the general liability the total in aggregate coverage is 18 million 16 million per occurrence 18 million in the aggregate with respect to the employee benefits the this specific policy would be one million dollars in coverage on the mahoney side
064of the ledger the arizona risk retention trust doesn't have a specified limit within there's there's is related to the general liability coverage policy that we covered on the first slide two million dollars in aggregate insurance for the employee benefit with crisis management again on the mahoney side of the ledger one million dollars in coverage one million dollars in aggregate a thousand dollar deductible this is addressed in the general liability coverage for the trust counseling and professional liability services one million dollars in coverage three million dollars in aggregate and again on the um arizona risk retention trust this is covered with respect to the general liability sexual misconduct liability um mahoney had one million dollars in initial coverage three million dollars in aggregate and again this is exclusive of the excess insurance or umbrella insurance policies
065again the arizona risk retention trust that would be covered in their general liability but excuse me i'm sorry to interrupt no problem i have i have the email pulled up on my phone and it's totally different numbers than what you're saying to me right now so i'm not sure sure i'm sorry i i hate to interrupt but i i know that like mrs wilson didn't get the information and the rest of us you didn't is there any chance that we can have this printed for us because so i can i can address it and i think okay then it will be sufficient i just want to make sure that they're all aware since they didn't get the email um which is correct why don't we go back to the sexual misconduct misconduct liability slide so
066the inf in the information that was presented by the mahoney group which you have in your folder there is a specific line item for a sexual misconduct liability policy and it says that it's 1 million each employee 3 million in the aggregate they have a limit of a 300 000 innocent party defense a deductible of zero so this isn't the information that's in your packet that was provided what uh what the information submitted late indicates that that policy those limitations does not include the access insurance or the umbrella policy so if you add on the excess insurance so once you reach those limits you have an overriding umbrella that would govern the coverage if you add on that it would be 11 million dollars per occurrence and 13 million dollars in the aggregate if you
067add on the aggregate uh that if you add on the aggregate it would be plus five million dollars in excess insurance with a 16 million dollar per occurrence limit and an 18 million dollar in the aggregate that's at the high end whereas opposed the trust again is a 40 million dollar aggregate excess umbrella so those that is the difference in the numbers so each of these policies you've just or benefits or that you've just gone over the general liability is one of them correct and then the employee benefits liability the trust addresses that in their general liability but the mahoney group has something separate from general liability and that's what we're looking at so these are all separate coverages that is not in the general liability with the mahoney group but it is in the
068general liability of the trust is that correct that's correct okay with respect to the ones that we're getting to we're going to get to another one quickly we'll go through the director and officer slide if you can get to that thank you so again this is taken from the um proposals that were submitted and those are the amounts listed therein one difference between the two these two with respect to that policy is the deductible uh that the trust doesn't have um with respect to the auto liability slide next um now we're talking about a different insurance policy okay so mahoney group has one million dollars in coverage a thousand dollar deductible again they also have the excess and umbrella insurance so 16 million and 18 million the trust has a 10 million dollar coverage policy
069on that property insurance both relate to the total insurable value the bahone proposal had some flood and earthquake limitations those limitations are high um 10 million dollars 40 million dollars and there were deductibles that ranged between five five thousand to four thousand uh forty thousand on theirs commercial crime um the mahoney group has a million dollars in in coverage the arizona risk retention trust has 1.5 million dollars mahoney group has a 5 000 deductible trust has a 1 000. cyber liability um this is a part of the trust's general liability coverage the mahoney group has a 5 million dollar coverage with 25 000 deductible equipment breakdown they're exactly the same storage tank liability again the same prepaid legal service so with respect to the mahoney group they have you would have access to a and
070prepaid legal services would be services that are not covered under a general insurance contract um with respect to the honey group there would be access to a consultant and the mahoney group has indicated that as mr haas indicated that we would be both the law firms that the district currently uses would be um available to be used on that um the arizona risk retention trust has three hundred thousand dollars coverage of liability they have a vendor list that's extensive of only arizona firms that are able to answer questions with respect to prepaid legal there is some difference between the proposals here in terms of what what access you would have that that is covered the access to the consultant is a hotline of sorts um with a we're told a local arizona attorney for employment
071related matters but there may be other matters that you wouldn't have access to your um to generalized legal services so for instance in this in the school year that's where the 50 ticket came in for legal services um was because that would be general legal services that weren't covered under your existing insurance policy commercial package total those numbers are here and those are the numbers that are at the bottom of the spreadsheet that mr house and i prepared as well so and that's without your workers compensation your workers compensation insurance two different carriers the alliance and copper point um two different price points with respect to coverage and one million dollars on the mahoney side 500 000 coverage on the trust side and the workers compensation premiums are on the slide here and so the
072total combined premiums on the mahoney proposal one million nine thousand eight hundred and seven dollars on the trust proposal one million one hundred three thousand nine hundred and eighty one dollars less if you exclude administrative practices liability coverage or the prepaid legal option then your then your premium would be 1 million 42 891. and i'll turn it back over to my partner rob paz he's going to go through the spreadsheet okay so we also prepared a spreadsheet to try to put these side by side so so that you know how we did this we took their proposals and and uh kind of broke them out so that you're we're trying to give you the best apple to apple comparison that we can um so i don't know yeah yes there we go okay so uh
073basically some of the main differences that the trust has kind of one bigger policy if you will uh general liability policy the mahoney group is proposing uh several policies to kind of be you know comparable both are both would ensure the district well you're not choosing between good and bad here tonight you're choosing between you know good and better you would be well insured under either scenario in our view but the trust has when we talk about general liability that's that's their major policy and a lot of things that fit under that uh within that um and so you can see we've tried to show you who what the general what the occurrence and aggregate numbers would be realizing that both vendors are offering you an umbrella policy on top of that and then an
074excess carrier on top of that a reinsurance basically and that's how you you see this let's say a one million dollar occurrence okay we have a bad event your limit is one million if you have three but if you have aggregate if you have three bad events you know then your your limit is three million then you have on top of that you stack your uh umbrella policy which would be available in under certain circumstances and then your excess uh excess amounts on top of that that's how you would ultimately get to what the mahoney group is proposing is the upward limit of 18 million dollars and the trust is proposing an upper limit of 50 million dollars in coverage and so we've set out the deductible which is something of concern as well and
075who the carrier would be and so if you i won't go through each page on that jennifer's pretty much covered that but i would like to just touch on uh some of the what we perceive as the benefits the pros and cons of each of each proposal one thing that to board member taylor's concern insurance you want predictability reliability uh certainty and the bit of a moving target is a concern to me i will say that that is at odds with what you are typically looking for when you're purchasing insurance so some of the pros and cons one you have a lower premium total with the mahoney group um you have higher coverage limits with the trust and that's that's an insurance determination that consumers make all the time you know how much how much
076is enough uh and what do you want to do on that the higher coverage limits are something that we think is a pro for the trust because if there was a catastrophic loss you know it seems odd to sit here thinking you could get past 18 million dollars but you think about a full school bus where your driver is at fault and there are serious in a number of serious injuries and you know there that is an issue for you to decide is the trade-off between the somewhat lower premium and the higher coverage limit the prepaid legal plan is also something that you should think about in our view prepaid legal means day-to-day stuff essentially as opposed to a claim when somebody gets hurt at work that's a claim it'll be handled by insurance the
077prepaid legal is a plan that that's available to you if you want it where it's uh the day-to-day issues that are handled you're pre-paying for that as opposed to using it as you go which is what you've been doing now as you using it as you go year to date for you so far is 50 000 that's not that's not reflected in the mahoney group proposal and so the some of the advantages of the prepaid legal plan are it adds certainty of cost to you you know what you will be paying for your day-to-day legal expenses over the course of the year and it gives your business people a an easier budget to deal with because legal expenses aren't always like a car payment they they you know they're not the same amount every month
078they go up and down whereas prepaid legal plan offers a kind of a flat monthly fee mr haas can i interrupt again absolutely i'm so sorry don't we we're here to answer your okay as we're talking about the cost of legal i'd like to hear as you offered us dr foley can you maybe speak to the actual process that we have had with using the mahoney for a legal situation i was able to read in your status some situations with our special education shauna miller provided for us but is there i i see a dollar amount but i want to know what we got in that dollar amount and what was the experience for that dollar amount does that make sense uh president reece board member kaler i'd be happy to speak to that so
079i think one of the things that your your cabinet administration has shared with you on multiple occasions that one of the most important things is that we have the resource have the resources that we need when we need it um the legal is an important important component to that um there's also when we're talking about claims and then we're also talking about day-to-day things when it comes to legal firms in education there are two as i've shared earlier udall shumway and gustin rosenfeld i will tell you that every educational conference things you go to they always have the education attorneys when laws change and we're getting ready to get some that impact curriculum or that impact policies we work with them for crafting our policies we work with them for answering issues questions concerns this
080sharon covid they became our they were our um go-to um to be honest with you as we were previewing and creating resources because being that we weren't in in a trust that created that created resources for districts we were offering often borrowing what had been created creating our own and running it through a legal legal legal our legal counselor guidance so we use them on we use them often and for various things and they're kind of important a phone call to to to guston rosenfeld or to udol shemway is an important part of verifying and checking and us doing our work your cabinet team would not feel comfortable or be okay if you made any decision that allowed us not to have access to these two firms whether we are holding aside money to use
081them for they today um or claims or otherwise so so so know that that to us is important and we want to have access to those same resources um we were informed on friday there was an in and rob has kind of referenced this this came at five o'clock on friday that they had just confirmed that if with that uh munich re that new carrier would allow us to use gus and rosenfeld and udall shem way if there were claims activity so in other words if you're going to be sued right that would be who you're you could use but they had um direct contact with jackson lewis law firm in phoenix for day-to-day legal questions surrounding employment matters for no cost one of the things that would be a problem for for your admin
082team would be to use a law firm in which none of us know the names of the lawyers who they work with on a daily basis i am sure we pulled it up in cabinet looked at the law firm looked at the lawyers i'm sure they're wonderful reputable people but they're nobody that the hundreds of years of experience around the table have had to work with or would use it's important for us to be able to when we have a sped issue or a situation be able to call the attorney follow up on the attorney you read in status an example of for the first time we have a case that is getting ready to go to potentially litigation we claim that as the district we've done nothing wrong i mean we could be sued
083because a student moves into a district and is claiming you saw two districts are being listed in that obviously this is the first time we've gone to claim so we could be working there are and again with no no offense to our current attorneys in the room you have you have you have experts in each area you have spent might use on a day-to-day basis a lawyer with an expertise in sped mom may use um jennifer mcclellan for a um employment issue so you have we may start with an issue with an attorney who has some background and has some knowledge with this and if you change attorneys you start all over again so if we were to work with day-to-day counsel with someone who didn't know the schools or didn't know the students it
084could be a real challenge so you saw that for the first time we needed to go to um needed to potentially go to litigation so knowing that the preferred the preferred law firm for that would be gustin rosenfeld so we had to you know again and she explained her experience with having to um you know again it was far different than just referring it and being done um and it was much more involved and mom in a little bit would speak to our experiences with similar kind of things when you're going um litigation resource resources and such so if you'll go back to your question what was different um is is that it's a little bit more involved in cumbersome to utilize the resource that doesn't mean it's not there it's important for us again
085your your team doesn't doesn't really worry about we need insurance we're not worried about the name of the brand we want to make sure that we as a team have access to the very same resources when we need them and the legal is a big thing so whether they are and and the right resource when you need them um and again you don't know if you need them for more than just day stay today or if you need him for a claim again as you'll notice we work with our attorneys quite frequently and this is the first time in two years we've had a claim and so it's been a very different experience than it had been previously when we had had a claim and she had shared her experience so again um the resources
086matter um and and and we utilize them daily uh dr foley thank you for answering that um i know that in the past in previous board members didn't know but we had an in-house attorney i call it a house yeah that's gonna you're all gonna make fun of me forever and that's fine it's on the tape um in-house attorney so that some of the day-to-day would be referred to her but now that linda good mrs good retired the day-to-day is not in-house and so we've had to look for some of those and and questions presidents board member taylor i think one of the things your admin team would say is while we loved having an in-house attorney the in-house attorney would have to rely on outsourcing uh this on it because these are such niche
087situations case by case quite honestly the example is we've been working with the lawsuit that we recently had we'd be working with an attorney would have to switch to another attorney but the attorney who's representing the other district also represented this family in the ninth circuit court so again every time you change i can't imagine changing to an attorney that wasn't an arizona special ed law attorney they may be great litigation attorneys they may be great day-to-day but they're not um we would prefer to work with those who are expertise in the area and field and guide us and we utilize their guidance office often several i can count on my hand multiple times this week where we would pick up the phone and say we have an issue with this contract we have an
088issue and concern with this this teacher we're going to proceed in this way do you have any concerns as our attorney if we were to proceed this way and sometimes they guide us carefully and say nope that will cause you could potentially or you're open you're violent you're putting yourself in a position where you will be vulnerable you could be liable okay how guide me what do i need to do us to have that will save us from having to likely go to litigation so whether you prepay it or whether we set it aside to be able to utilize the preferred guidance it's essential to your team to have that we do not not although we loved linda i don't think that putting a salary for a specific person would be as beneficial as just
089having the ability to utilize the right person for the right resource because before we were utilizing her to work through them to come back to just work with them directly and not that she wasn't wonderful but again i think we use them for i mean lots of things when we're creating policies when we're creating handbooks and we're creating um issues with teachers that are coming forward or that need to be we need to be thoughtful about how how we word things before we bring an iga to you an imminent memorandum of understanding before we assign and agree to the district we would have someone from a legal council review it to give us guidance you would want us to have that so and again we would want to be able to work with the attorneys
090we have confidence in who who who provide us the resources this year as i refer kind of referenced earlier we used the resources that our colleagues would share with us that the attorneys who who work with them for the trust which had created we would share it modify it and then send it because again we were it wasn't being created for us um and again we were able to get the resource um we borrowed it and modified it and then had our legal counsel review it but again just a different a different way of getting the information dr foley thank you what was the name of the day-to-day attorney was the jackson lewis law firm and again our cabinet pulled it up not that we are saying that they are not um wonderful we've we
091don't recognize any of them and it's a larger group a larger group that has practices and all across the united states i am sure they're very knowledgeable and very reputable but from a day-to-day thing usually the issues that happen day to day the history that we have with that attorney saves us when it's time to go to litigation starting all over again or getting the question why did you do that we wouldn't have advised you to do that my concern is that when i go to the asb law conference every year it's it's udall shumway it's gus rosenfeld these are the attorneys names and i've seen maybe maybe jackson and jackson has presented at the asba law conference i have no idea but that would be that would be a question for me to know
092if they are actively involved in the arizona school law and are actively participating even with our asba president reece board member taylor i would never want to profess to use something that will that i would be mislying misspeaking otherwise i am sure they are wonderful reputable attorneys they are not names that all of us who attend state meetings um have worked with learned from or are consulted with on any of our things done on a daily basis are they a school board attorney or are they a school attorney this jackson lewis i think they're a gender i'm sure they have people in their practice who are education but i will tell you that an attorney for another for an education attorney in another state uh is different than arizona we're a little peculiar we just
093are arizona is a lot different and we have i mean from like i said this is this is more than just litigation things these are day-to-day things like policies new laws we're rolling things out um you know legally we're getting ready to be potentially needing to look at the training we provide our administrators for curriculum and controversial topics and potential litigation fees of up to five thousand dollars if we you know have teachers who break this i mean so these are things that if we you know don't have guidance for on a daily basis it could be problematic dr foley just real quick as we were talking about that um but that's part of our coverage with asba though correct i mean we use them for our policies we make sure they create them they
094make sure they update them they push them out to us to make sure from a policy standpoint that's what our membership of asba helps cover and and we have access to as far as policies we have access to the asba law team to make sure that we're following the policies they're updating and and we're part of their membership that make sure that we're in compliance yes they do help us with those policies where we get help with with our legal counsels when we need to amend them if you'll recall earlier this year we had our policy our face mass policy that we ended up needing to amend part of the reason we needed to amend was guidance from our legal counsel to prevent litigation so sometimes their help is in refining our policies that guide
095our practice to help us stay out of um litigation and this was in reference to our face mass policy you'll remember did asba provide our face mass policy and then we amended it we amended it at face the week i remember amending it but did asba provide that policy the original one for us or did we amend it first before we adopted it i believe we did a whole lot of amending on our specific policy um the one that they had was very general very vague and we did not admit to this we did not take it as copyrighted so often time but we did it in consultation with an attorney because we knew we wanted to have something that we were i mean you had an official policy some people adopted it with a
096copyrighted and hence they didn't have to come back and change it we had to come back and change it because we had our own policy thank you i didn't mean to open up such a big can of worms mr haas but no thank you sorry very good questions um so just to uh circle back and put a bow on the the prepaid legal thing um this year's a good example to look at why you know as you think is this something we want or don't want it's been a weird year let's just say that and it can't end soon enough from everybody's perspective i think but because it's a weird year there's been lots of issues that have come up that are not formulaic you know we've been very busy dealing with all this as
097you have too and the prepaid legal one of the advantages is certainty of expense to you um and so that's something about even the year before that you think about all the red for ed stuff that was going on and that created a lot of upset and worry about what's going on and so the last two years are you know a good thing to think about is is this a value to the district or not um i will also acknowledge the mahoney group has has something there for you on this too the the the hotline or the access to the jackson lewis firm but but i want to point out to you some of the limitations of that and i'll read from the material that the mahoney group provided to me about that in response
098to one of our follow-up questions the hotline is available monday to friday from 8 30 a.m to 6 p.m eastern time i know miss martens has my cell phone and i want her to have it i know dr foley has my cell phone i want her to have it i know they have jennifer's cell phones as well what can i use this service for the hotline is for general legal overview it is not intended to provide a determinative answer as to whether a specific adverse personnel action should be taken um it's good for what it does but uh if ms martens calls me after 6 pm eastern time and says they have a hot personnel item and i say well my answer is not intended to provide a determinative answer as to whether a specific
099adverse personnel action should be taken she's not going to be too happy with that is my guess nor should she be in my view and so again this is a valuable add-on service to you but uh our our task that we've been asked to do is to highlight distinctions for you so you can make make assessments mr haas again another question sorry does president reece have access to that phone number and could she use that service as well as president of the board because i know last year i was president of the school board and there was an issue and i had to seek outside counsel asap is that the same coverage yes you know certainly dealing with us we don't want this to be the case you know and hope it never is but
100there are instances where the superintendent and the board aren't getting along our client is the district you would have direct access to your lawyer in that instance okay um another issue is the uh the workers compensation piece i know there has been some frustration with the workers with the district's experience with workers compensation some concerns about the level of service and communication and support that they received uh again that carrier will be changing but the alliance does have does underwrite insurance workers compensation insurance for many many school districts you're the proposed carrier from the mahoney group copper point used to be called the state fund they they underwrite many many policies as well but it's more for general business matters and there may be instances where that becomes significant so those are some some of
101the the pros and cons that we see here for you both i will say both vendors offer some value-added services trainings inspections supports those sorts of things our assessment is the trust is has a little bit of an edge in that area it's all arizona focused it's primarily school focused um and uh you know that's that's a big marketing point for for the trust again you pay for that and it's just up to you whether you whether that's a valuable service to the district or not my final point would be as you look at insurance policies there are a claims made policy there is an occurrence policy and that's important because the policy kicks in if it's an occurrence when the occurrence happened you know even though you may not learn about it for a
102while when the occurrence happened that that's how the policy is written whereas with the claim if it's a claims-made policy when the claim is made that's when you decide whether there's coverage or not um and i've i've asked uh so there was some cons of course most of most of the policies that were being proposed to you are occurrence-based policies which is in our view as is the preferable approach but we did ask some follow-up questions on that and in two areas in particular educators legal liability which is a lot of personnel stuff and police professional liability the information the mahoney group provided to me indicates that those are claims-made policies and the retroactive date on each meaning how far back the new carrier would look to decide whether there was coverage on this claims-made
103basis as july 1st 2021 so if you're leaving a current carrier and moving to a new carrier there is a possibility where there's a window of time where you would not have coverage there's and so you have that's you may have heard the term tail coverage before you buy a you buy a another policy to cover that little slice again in these two areas educators legal liability police professional liability the retroactive date on the policy would only go to july 1st 2021 so if you do go with the mahoney group we may want to look into this whether there's a need for some tail coverage in those two particular areas with that um happy to answer any other questions that you have uh and i i don't know if jennifer you want to piggyback off
104them the only other point i would like to make is just to make sure that we're comparing apples to apples and one point that was raised by the mahoney group which is that the trust coverage is the the 40 million plus the 10 million is for all the school districts they insure so it is a different a pooling approach the mahoney group the coverage is solely for higley so i want to make sure that point is heard as well so thank you very much for your time and we appreciate being recognized as council for the district and and as education council we are here to help and we really appreciate that you all recognize that and receive our information thank you i have a question um curtis on that third slide it's titled historic costs
105for workers comp so if we pull that up am i understanding this slide to be we had an additional 50 000 in legal fees for workers comp issues madam president if i might answer that question the 50 000 in fees this that number my understanding and that this is from your business services department is that is the cost that the district expended this year without ms good who i have a great deal of respect for so um that is the cost that you all expended for fees that were not covered by any of your liability policies so for instance there's been a discussion of the lawsuit and the pending claim and that has been assigned to our office and and so we are assisting and you are not paying directly for gus rosenfeld fees that
10650 000 would be fees that you had to pay to get general questions answered this year okay so that's not directly related to historical workers comp information that yeah that is in general are just additional legal costs outside of legal coverage regarding claims like you said our day-to-day which that and i know you guys at the beginning also said that you estimate that to go up before the end of the year which it has been a crazy year it's hard because we don't have a lot of information prior to craziness because we were you know we were with the trust and then um we also had ms good who provided some guidance and legal advice but our legal costs here too is we've had a really crazy year and a whole lot of legal stuff
107came up really fast because we were given executive orders that we were expected to follow right away but no one knew um you guys were trying to figure it out just as as we're all calling you guys you're like i know it's there but i gotta find out so um and that legal cost also um references some of our we've had to have super contract superintendent contracts reviewed um some unusual items that we did have to seek outside legal counsel for that we typically would not have so i was just clarifying that because that cost what has been what our legal cost has been is um actually the difference between the cost of the trust and the cost of the mahoney group so like dr foley said bottom line we've determined who our attorneys are
108going to be whether that's through prepaid or if we go with with a lower cost and premium that that money would be set aside for um for legal cost so i did just notice that it's actually almost almost identical of what we have here versus what the difference in cost of the two policies are if we have the trust policy without the add-on prepaid um i i think it's like literally a hundred and fifteen dollars difference um what we have here versus the difference in cost so so that is still an option that based on what we have paid in legal cost um that we can have that set aside still have our our attorneys of choice for our day-to-day uh as well so thank you for that clarification i was a little concerned if
109we had that legal cost for workers comp outside of claims because then something's not right so any other questions i think mrs mrs martin's had something to say about the workers comp part of the side of this is there something more you can i i i don't want to just make a decision tonight on cost um i want to make a decision based on the people that have to work every day with these groups whether it's the mahoney group or the trust and i want to make sure that i'm completely informed by you all how is the experience been some of you have obviously been in the trust prior and then now the mahoney group so i'm trying to get a feel of the environment and the day-to-day work because i don't work with them
110on a day-to-day basis it's not me i have to entrust you all um to do that so i i guess i want to hear more from the experience side so i because we're going to be on the spot tonight i believe making a decision so i just want to be as informed as i possibly can be certainly president reece vice president wilson board member taylor um thank you for the opportunity for me to share my perspective so i joined higley unified school district about four years ago and at the time we were carried by the trust um and i could tell you in terms of themes of what we've discovered when we made the transition and i'll only talk about through our own experiences in the department and dr fowler and i had an opportunity
111to talk and connect because his department covers and accesses and does the liability in terms of the carrier where our department of human resources does the workers compensation component so amongst the themes that we had had concerns about when we made the transition they were over customer service and support the amount of work and follow-up training and professional development and opportunity so in terms of resources overall so when we first moved over there was a lot of discussion about that the services wouldn't be any different both from the mahoney group as well as previously dr thomason who was our superintendent that just retired so we wanted to make sure that we were very clear that there weren't going to be differences in changes because we were concerned from an aspect of we're a small department
112so making sure that we have the right resources and accessing the right information for individuals and not putting an overburden on our team so what we discovered initially in terms of that customer service and support was that when we were with the alliance and the trust that support was up here the communication and what we were presented was that they would align however in terms of those first i'd say six seven months of the transition it was not up to par and the mahoney group in liberty mutual in terms of our experiences was under par will i say did they do everything in terms of from a legacy pardon me a legality component in terms of the information from workers comp yes but from the customer service support side of it you know we would
113use to go to the trust and things would get taken care of and we didn't have to worry about it and they went above and beyond in helping us with accessing resources for our employees if they had to go in terms of a fast med or finding a medical provider because their injury they had something that happened that they didn't have a provider for so they would work with us to get that information and there were hiccups and just like with any transition there's always hiccups so the transition the new platform as well as reporting we weren't getting the right reporting information from the right people and the phone numbers and when you do anything new people don't always call the right places and don't necessarily know they're calling a 1-800 number but doesn't necessarily
114know who's behind that 1-800 number too right so we had some dynamics of that um that was part of it but certainly from our perspective and we did we talked with mr edwards and we had an opportunity to also talk with the representatives from liberty mutual to say like hey something's not working we don't like this help us get this to work right or help us understand what we're not doing right to where we're having these concerns and these issues and the follow through with this so we actually did have a couple of conference calls and mr edwards um met with some of our employees so that way they could establish those procedures but really what we felt happened was that we just reset our expectations and said this is just how it's going to
115be we've made it work but from a customer level support area overall we still feel that it doesn't compare to what the customer service and support we got from the trust so the amount of work and follow-up that's the second theme that we had and that really ties into that customer service and support in regards to the fact that we had had examples and we had situations in which when we called the trust again just a stump of a finger they took care of it they had all the information and we would you know wouldn't get anything else until it was completed or notification that everything was completed and they had sent out the individuals needed to do the job where consistently whenever we had to hand anything in from liberty mutual we consistently always
116got a phone call 24 48 hours later to say hey we need more information but we provided you all the information you have everything so there was always an additional follow-up in which our experience with the trust was that we made the phone call we gave them the information we gave them the same type of information and they were able to handle and produce for us what we needed and then the last item and theme that we had concerns with was training and professional development and opportunity so many individuals may or may not know if we participated in certain conferences or we did certain things or our employees participated in certain trainings we got discounts off of our carrier for the trust as well as the fact that going back to where when you are
117involved with a large pool of individuals in which they are similar fields to you there's the benefit is that the trust also did an annual conference every year in which we could send our employees to that worked under these areas of workers comp and liability insurance and they would get updated information and we didn't have those same resources we did get emails we were on a list serve with liberty mutual and on a list serve with the mahoney group but there wasn't an opportunity for a conference or actually participating and going i will say that kovid changed everything and there's webinars that were available but sometimes some of the information that came across i know i reached out to our liberty mutual representative on two occasions because i had gotten their national update like participate
118in this webinar and when i tried to look more into it i wasn't able to access it so there was a disconnect and i feel and this is from the perspective of human resources and support services and you know i can't speak to other areas but from my own experiences you know my expectation is also that the mahoney group was a broker for liberty mutual who happened to be the carriers for most of them and so as a broker he and mr edwards should also take responsibility in those areas and we would have wished that the accountability was there more often or in working with us as a as a client more often than we saw in terms of the response and the follow-up so i do want to go back to what dr foley
119mr haas and ms mclennan have mentioned in terms of not only resources with legal but also in terms of yes it has been unusual times and it has been unusual years but i could also speak towards the fact that when i got here and some of you may or may not know but i've been in human resources for over 16 years where i had come from previously we had had a firm on retainer and they were one of the largest educational firms in the state that i had worked with when you develop a relationship and a rapport as both rob has and jennifer mclennan mentioned you then feel comfortable calling them on their cell phones at all times and hoping they'll call you back when you don't have that rapport especially if you have an
120emergency that happens on a sunday night at nine o'clock you don't feel as though you have the opportunity and what i didn't realize was this 1-800 number had limited components in which you could call that number um and mr haas and miss mclennan as well as the other firm that we have talked about url someway we have such great relationships with them that what was wonderful is all throughout kovid or anything that occurred they would always say we'll get you the resources that we helped put the trust together or we'll get you the resources in which we help put together with another school district so it was always wonderful to know that through our relationship and what we had developed over time they were always willing to give us the information that we needed to
121be able to do what the follow-up had to be done and then if we had to tweak it and work with them or consult back with them as necessary in the bigger picture um and that's just in my opinion something that you can't put a dollar amount to because of the fact that you want to be able to know that they know me i know them i can i can sometimes anticipate what i think i might hear back from one of them or from even with denise's little brit from mural shamway who i have worked with too and just being able to dialogue in a way that doesn't put any pressure and maybe sometimes you can throw out crazy ideas that make no sense but then work through that or determine what's best for the
122district as well as what's legal thank you thank you miss martens i just had a quick question too i was on the procurement committee and part of the procurement and went through when a couple years ago when we went through this before um it was my understanding that the mahoney group was going to provide us a direct resource so i'm hearing what you're saying did we not have that supplied resource that was only for us thank you president reese for asking that question so we were under that understanding also when one of the things and i vividly remember this because it was a huge concern in cabinet we asked well how are these going to differ and dr thomas said they weren't going to differ and linda goode at the time said my main concern
123is the prepaid legal component and so we were told they weren't going to differ shortly after the transition we were told then that we did not have that service available to us in our full day training um both liberty mutual and mr edwards through the mahoney group did tell us that we would have a 1-800 number um to be able to utilize if necessary and then also and i can't tell you the timeline on that but later came back and said you know you could first use anybody you wanted to use but then there was a concern about a conflict of interest that liberty mutual had with udal shamway and so they had said that we would prefer that you not use udal someway when the time comes so the 1 800 number was presented
124i did not receive that 1 800 number right away and then my concern of that 1 800 number even though in that training that we participated in was that there would be arizona attorneys it wasn't a confirmation but ideally at that time the discussion was that they believe it would be arizona attorneys but we wouldn't necessarily know who and we wouldn't necessarily know that they had expertise in the education area they might have just had general expertise in relation to employee relations other components and i don't even believe miss miller took place in that training i don't think you were offered the opportunity it was just dr fowler's team and the human resources team at the time and so through our conversations and my concerns what dr thomason offered as an alternative was that we
125would take some of the cost savings that we had had from the mahoney group and the trust and put that money aside to then utilize for day-to-day services as needed and as a result what you've seen we've been able to do that you know mr haas and i had a conversation overall we have not needed to maybe utilize the services of legal as much as others in the past but that has shifted and that has changed and i can tell you from what i have seen in my experience in human resources i think it's going to continue to shift in a direction and from the employee relations side that's going to continue to need legal advice just from the issues and the things that i've had to investigate and work on in the last six
126seven months the theme will be the themes will be title ix controversial curriculum and in special education will be our will be our hot topic themes without without without doubt so but we didn't have a dedicated person to help us with workers comp claims or things like that because that was my understanding is that we would have a dedicated person that would help hr and everything get through those claims so we did get a dedicated person there were some some concerns and so we actually then got switched to a different person and i can't speak about the back end and why we got switched but some of it did have relation to the fact that we weren't getting information timely president ruiz yes dr foley you can distribute the question how you'd like to for
127the mahoney group and the trust is there additional coverage for the gap i heard you say that there may be a need for gap coverage um with one or maybe both is there a need for gap coverage with either group do you know what i'm saying thank you i will you know what i'm going to let the two of you respond to that i'm not sure i understand you have a question so gap coverage i heard something was spoken about gap coverage for one or maybe both of these the options and i wanted to know is there do we need gap coverage a because if we need gap coverage that would be important to note right now and how much that would be either either group that we go with tonight she was talking about
128the workers comp that if there's an injury because either way if we stay with the mahoney group we're going to a new carrier or if we switch over to the trust then that's a new carrier what happens with any claims um did you have mentioned that like they won't even look back and there was a gap in our coverage okay um i'll i'll be happy to feel june to july thank you president reece board member wilson um again one of the one of the things that you should think about is the trust has kind of one it's a one-stop shop if you will for coverage the mahoney group's current proposal involves a number of new carriers for you and so when you're talking about changing carriers you want to make sure there is no gap
129in coverage which is some of the information we've asked them to to provide us to look into that issue on these two particular policies the educators legal liability policy and the police professional liability policy the the effective date would be july 1st so could you negotiate a date back you know if you went with the mahoney group could you negotiate a date further back than that as as they've apparently done on some of the other policies perhaps if not is there a commercially viable product for that most likely yes i don't know what the cost of that would be but i know that everybody would be interested in making sure that there is full coverage for the district now i'm just speaking to my experience as a business owner if i've had if i've changed
130workers comp if my policies expired and i've gone with another one if the injury occurred while that workers comp policy was in effect then that's who that employee goes to and if there's an injury that occurs from that date forward then you go to the new policy is typically how how i've learned how you know the bottom line i was covered by a carrier up until this date so if there was an injury that carrier supposed to take care of it now i say supposed to so could you run into some things maybe but um the carrier whoever was your carrier at the time of the injury um is the one who's supposed to cover it absolutely president reese and you know people don't call us to say everything worked out the way they hoped
131they would uh we usually get the calls that there was a little bit of a glitch and so that's why we're looking into this again could you negotiate a date further back on those two particular policies maybe so uh and but you know how that would work if we chose to go with the trust because at that point we're changing carriers as well so i mean do you have any idea where would we have to look at at providing that do you know is the trust willing to go back or is it assumed that because again either way no matter which way we go tonight um we're changing carriers so i mean the only thing the same is if we if we go with the mahoney group we stay with the company the mahoney group
132but our actual carrier changes if we choose to go with the trust our actual carrier changes so do we know i mean i know you pointed that out for the mahoney group do we do we know about the trust i would defer to mr cole on that point he could probably answer that better than me with more authority than me and we're not permitted to do that so okay i i'm just it was brought up for the mahoney group as to why i we're still changing carriers if we give the trust so we will make sure that there's full coverage whichever option you choose [Music] mr haas again how many districts are with the trust in the state of arizona i don't know exactly there's about 250 districts and maybe 15 community colleges and i
133i think uh probably 95 of those if not more are covered by the trust mr cole reported 240 earlier 240 districts are with the trust okay um and mr haas how many districts does the mahoney group cover i don't know the answer to that i know the liberty mutual covered higley and we're hopeful of branching out from there but i'm not aware of any any success in that area thank you i just have one more question um if i may i should say charter schools a whole new ball of wax you know i think there would be a variety of private carriers that would ensure the charter schools but traditional public school districts community college districts almost exclusively insured by the trust are there any that you know of that have left the trust for
134another insurance group and have gone back sorry uh not to i'm not aware of that let's not say it hasn't happened board member schultz i'm just not aware of that thank you and i just so we're looking at a one-year thing so is that correct is that what the proposal is one year so potentially um going with the mahoney group we could be changing carriers again in a year we don't have a multi-year agreement is that what i'm understanding is that a very good question president reece the the premium proposals are for one year it's possible we could do this all again next year yes okay but uh really i think if you were comfortable with it it would be a much more streamlined process next time getting the the premium proposal and going from
135there well and i just want to clarify too also for our other board members i think for dr foley i think that the process we've used by bringing you guys in and helping compare um this did not come before the board again last month or last year um we had the procurement process mahoney group was chosen and then the next year it did not come before the board again so we were we it came under consent for the approval of the expense but there was no discussion if any changes or coverage or anything like that had happened and then after the fact we were made aware of a large amount of money that was then added on with other coverage that we were not aware of and was not part of the procurement process so
136um hence we are trying to definitely make sure we are following a process and procedure and that's why dr foley had also referenced that timelines were created and that it will get on the calendar every year so that we know this time of year this is going to be reviewed this will come before the board it will just be discussed now there are some times that there is no change and you know here's like we do with our health insurance you know um premium changed this amount but we're not doing that i understand we're in a very um different scenario this is not very common um to answer mrs kaler's question is not very many districts are not with the trust and so um the fact that we left the trust a couple years ago
137um and now we're we're back to doing this uh it it has we've made it very clear though that the board needs to be aware of what our coverage is every year and has to be involved in that process and the cost and and know what we're getting um for that so that might clarify a little bit as to why we're doing this in a little bit different format and again we've you guys have made it very clear you represent higley unified school district you don't represent the mahoney group you don't represent the trust now could you be attorneys for you know preferred attorneys for carriers through the mahoney group could you be preferred attorneys through the trust sure but bottom line you we see dollar amounts you are employed through the higley unified school
138district to represent us to make sure that we we are covered so i appreciate that um but um i hope that i know because we have some newer board members and so we are in a little bit different scenario yes thank you for bringing that up because i've been sitting here spinning trying to figure out why we're here doing this and then i see the history with the trust then when we're honing now we're now trust is back on the board so this is a yearly thing that that's normally brought up through procurement and now it's going to be a board discussion am i understanding this correctly my president reece board member anderson this was a unique uh she was sort of sharing the history with you going back to the theme you've heard an
139awful lot of was administration processes and procedures actually the way that the governing board initially approved this was actually a voucher it was in the vouchers it actually hadn't come to you as a cassette consent agenda item which is a problem in the fact that anything that over 100 in our own policies anything over a hundred thousand dollars comes to you even if they are um have gone through procurement as a purchase so there was concern from the fact well first of all it didn't come the way it should have come as an annual renewal and it came late but then it was why is this different than it had been before we needed to do an analysis obviously there had been a transition had we realized the costs that we had seen as you
140know we've been talking about funds processes and procedures and understanding our funds why have we spent things we've had new people in finance looking at this and so we were asked by the governing board the time to bring forward both proposals this year for us to look at thoroughly so that we could make a decision when we were doing the approval process normally what happens is that you go through the procurement process you have you prefer pick a vendor you do the renewal you bring it in it would be a consent typically a consent agenda item um in which you would approve that it's typically not done we've done like a we did like a small procurement um format this time in which we said let's look at both let's understand them there are going
141to be changes quite honestly even if we even if we had not looked at the trust um there were going to be changes to liberty mutual's coverage and carrier we should thoroughly review it with an attorney here was our policy before here's what we have now what other changes so that we could answer those questions so annually every year this is something we have to do and we would bring to you typically historically in consent but this one came a little different this year because of how historically it had been handled from the processes that as as board members clarified president ruiz clarified perfectly there was an issue in how we had not approved approved it appropriately and so we addressed it and then moved forward for this year so hence this year is a
142little different and for the history from being at with the trust and then going to mahoney is what are you able to explain why there was the change was that because of the process or did something occur a great question so they're just like uh president reece had said there was an rfp request for proposal and they did a study um to look at different options to see if there was a benefit to moving carriers in which they decided to do um so yeah and that was that was strictly a cost perspective at the time and then i believe um because last year we were not brought back to have the discussion we weren't able to even ask the questions and follow up and say how is the service been so this is why i
143kind of asked tonight i do want to look at a dollar amount obviously we are in charge of a very large budget but i also want to look at the product and how has it worked for higley and how has it worked for the people that do it every day so those are kind of why i was asking a lot of those questions tonight michelle mrs anderson sorry um if that gives you anything i would tell you that when i um just a little story um i went to the philadelphia national school board association um convention in philadelphia a couple years ago and this was shortly after i believe that we had left the trust and so i'm at an asb a um they do happy hours and they host different events and so i
144would introduce myself hi i'm from higley oh you're the ones that left the trust that was that was who i was known by at a national convention so if that gives you any idea that leaving the trust was a very big deal and that's how i was known at that convention so mrs anderson also yes i sat on that committee and um and we went through it it wasn't all about cost it was about coverage um and like mr haas has brought up that um you know are we part of and everyone has the access to the same pot or are we part of having our own and insurance is a tricky thing because you try you have insurance to make sure you're covered and you want the appropriate amount of coverage but then it's
145also likelihoods of things i mean granted the likelihood of us going through a pandemic i i wish i was able to bet on that a while ago and you know i could have really made out but um i mean things do happen but we did go through and and look at the different coverages um they were pretty comparable we looked at cost and so at that time based on what we had received it was a committee of several transportation was on their finance someone from student services there was a variety of people and we i believe we started with three and then it came down to two and we asked for you know their best and final um and then through a lot of conversation through each of us ranking them for different things uh
146the mahoney group had had the products that we thought would cover the district as well as there was a cost savings and also at the time again a lot keeps coming back to prepaid legal at the time this was three years ago we went through this for two years of coverage ms good was here so um the prepaid legal while it was important it wasn't the end-all be-all either we did have our in-house attorney we still budgeted for our outside legal that we prefer so again the cost savings and that's why i quickly did the math on okay based on what we've paid in legal doesn't make sense and then just at this point we have to also look at what coverage do we need because are we paying for stuff that we don't need
147i mean we know insurance you know oh you get this and as a bonus you get this and it's like well i don't need that and um and then you look over here and you get what you need so it wasn't cost alone that drove us um to to change from the trust to the mahoney group so um but again full disclosure there was later on additional add-ons with additional coverages that we as a board weren't aware of that came at additional costs and so as a board member that was concerning to me i mean that raised a red flag to me like going what's going on because i sat on that committee and i saw the packages and i compared and i knew what we were getting and i knew what the cost was
148and then to see additional cost come through that that was concerning to me um and so that hence is why now um we are going to have a process and a timeline for this so um i hope that makes sense but i did it was not all cost driven it it was product driven on what as a school district we need what we need as higly may not be the same thing as phoenix union needs you know so um so there was a lot of discussion about that and as you brought up higley a year ago is not possibly going to need different higley this year or future years so thank you for thank you for all of you bringing that together because i just sat there spinning for a while like why are we
149doing this so we will next year we will have another discussion is that what i'm understanding and will it go up for a whole new group are we just discussing like are we going to be having to choose again we we should not be this is not something we should be doing every year um we should there i mean if we need to do this because this was a weird year we would normally go through the rfp process and there would be procurement a whole different process as board members we would not be sitting here we would be asking questions for sure but we would not be solely getting this information it would be based on a recommendation from a committee who went through an rfc process correct president reese just for background then what
150you're saying is in the additional policies and editions were hidden in a sense they came after right so but when they were approved then the board approved them they were hidden in vouchers or hidden in different languages it did not come as a consent agenda item like separate um it did come in vouchers and then as we were going through vouchers is where it came to our attention so we were not as a board aware that there was different changes um and things like that for an overall cost okay and then the pretty package that you were given and based on from the mahoney group then wasn't executed according to miss mum's correct i mean ms martin i'm so sorry that's okay i've got a unique name so i kind of used to do it
151but president reece board member schultz correct from my perspective in my opinion from what we were dialogued and shared with not being part of the rfp committee was different than the result that in which we got and as i said really those major themes in the areas that mattered to us customer service support amount of work and follow-up and training professional development resources thank you yeah i was not aware of that again in the rfp process we were advised that higley would have a dedicated resource to help us through all that because that was part of the conversation with the rfp process is the ease of the access through the trust and if we were going through a different carrier um that we we were supposed to have our own dedicated person i was not
152aware um because we had like mrs kaler said we made a huge change and we weren't able to come back and circle back around to find out how it went and and everything so we weren't aware of their experience in that aspect and just really fast this is kind of a fast thing for us tonight to be able to vote on this and getting an email at 3 that changes things if we have to do this next year or something like this is this something okay um yes mrs schultz i i was i'll be very honest i was shocked to get an email this afternoon at 3 15 at the ninth hour i think it's completely unprofessional in my opinion and that sent a lot of red flags for me tonight alone just asking these
153questions because i just don't think that would was appropriate to send board members directly even a last minute email and no offense to you whatsoever personally i just think as a professional it was not professional and that scares me when i hear than the other stories of having troubles along the way i'm i i believe that there's some issues here that we didn't address sooner do you guys have any other questions for mr haws or do you have anything else to add with your presentation as we've just sat here no happy to answer any further questions i have nothing further to add thank you okay if we don't have any further discussion then we can move on to our action item we can still have discussion here too um if anyone wants to make a
154motion or a recommendation based on the information they've heard i'll make a motion i move that the governing board award um our district property casualty and workers compensation for the 2021-2022 fiscal year to the trust did i say that correctly mr boss i second that motion okay so here we have a motion to award our property liability workers comp insurance to the trust we do have a second you sit next to me and i still had to look at you [Music] um is there any further discussion i know we've had a lot of discussion um all right go ahead i'm i'm not an insurance expert but hearing from ms martin's and um the cabinet and our legal team then then it just i feel better going with the trust overall than going with the mahoney
155group on this and so that's why i seconded the motion anyone any other questions comments all right all those in favor aye thank you michelle okay all those opposed and i am going to abstain all right so that motion carries four zero one all right then we will go on to 8.2 thank you so much for your time and all the effort and everything that you've put into this we appreciate it i know obviously it's no small task and our pleasure since you are paying us by the hour we'll leave and let you not get built thank you all right so we will go on to 8.2 which is the political agenda so we can see what the what we had was our top five for the asba political agenda um there we go all
156right so um we've the top five five priorities submitted for higley revised school revised the school board finance forum revive rise of school i don't think that's supposed to be school board is it i'm reading on our packet the finance formula fully fund full day kindergarten and include kindergarteners in the override calculation accelerate full the full restoration of the daw funding fully restore 9th grade cte and jted funding and establish financial and academic transparency for all institutions that accept public funds so um we're not i'm purposely not making a motion yet because yeah we're gonna what we'll do is we will um well i'll move that we discuss and then determine our political agenda second top five for political agenda for asba i'll second that all right so does anyone have any other i mean
157there's a lot of information here um this is the political agenda that aspa puts out we submit our information on what's important to us obviously all of these issues they're all public education issues are important the ones i read were our and so we have to figure out our 2022 what our top five priorities are mrs wilson president reese um i really enjoyed reading through these um the three that i kind of starred as i was going through was the managing the impact of kovid i felt like is that just one or do they want the miners under it they would like managing the impact of covet on public schools right that would be so i think it includes everything yes that's what i thought so that's what yes that one i feel like we
158need to maybe keep on there and then since um 2021 political agenda we also mentioned um taxpayer accountability uh i think that that could be a very good one for us as well require and i'll read it it's the red bullet point sorry curtis redder maroon requires public accountability for taxpayer dollars spent on education i think both of those those two lower ones were important to me as i was reading through it these are what the 2021 we can [Music] what is what's important to us we don't have to use these if there's other um topics that we want to submit this is what we can submit to the asba this is just a review of what the 2021 is um i agree kobud's not i mean the impact of it's gonna covet has not
159been cheap on our district and i think the impact of kiddos moving out of district into either homeschool environments charter schools or private schools definitely plays an impact on us and um requiring uh the funding accountability for those institutions especially our charter school friends i think that's a big deal we should all be accountable to the same just let us see your budget so you're about the public accountability yes both are important to me can you put the slide up a little bit please mr but i'm open for any debate in any conversation um there that's good thank you thank you curtis uh preserve and strengthen local control i think um i i kind of hate that one right now and i kind of love it too so i think that um that's probably not
160something that would have been first on my list for um in some areas i think that one came back to itas in the you know what so um i just don't think that's my priority for the coming year i i think that um definitely the funding full funding returning um district assistance all you know all of that is they continue to fight for us in that area and i appreciate the asb on that one so very much again also managing cobit i think that's a huge deal and moving forward how that looks and always making an equal equal paying field equal playing field when it comes to taxpayer dollars in education in the state of arizona i agree mrs taylor with the local control i believe sometimes we are fighting i felt like it was
161more like we were fighting other districts sometimes this year felt like we were fighting for students fighting for what was going on so i tend to agree with you on it kind of bit us in the bottom that's well it's a double-edged sword but um i like control in some ways but it is a double-edged sword i think is it is and i mean what we had to deal with this past year is different because our control was taken away from us and then it was given back to us after decisions were made but nonetheless what this particular political agenda item is talking about funding because there are restrictions on how we can use certain funds and so they continue to fight to loosen those restrictions because again just like the example i used earlier
162what our needs are for our budget and our funding what we get what our needs are can be different than other school districts and for the state to tell us how we have to spend some of that funding um is what's difficult and so that's that's what a big part of that one is but um i mean it really it was like red for ed and then kovid and kovitz said here hold my beer and you know like it was it was really uh traumatic over the last couple years in um that particular area so i'm not sure if i want it to be our top five president reese i understand what you're saying though um i've heard of other other states having five buckets of money and i believe in arizona we have 65
163buckets of money that we i i believe and you guys can correct me mr gatt if you'd like but i believe it's the difference is very big there um so i understand where your point is president rooney and we're the lowest of course of course that's without said um so i get what you're saying president reese on that as well but i would rather focus if i had a vote which i think i do um on the other two mrs anderson what are your thoughts here i mean it's not it's not anything that necessarily these are the top these were the five that were a focus of 2021. um i i'm going to go out on a limb and say covid monopolized that but um i mean do you have any thoughts where you feel
164the district from a teacher perspective i didn't mean to put you put you on the spot but if you answer mrs anderson then you have to be our delegate [Laughter] um i guess the one with the tabs that applies most for the teaching is the adequately inadequate attic equitably fun district schools to at least the national median per per people funding there's a lot of bullets under there that really need to be hit and continue to be hit as i sit in a school district and we need things better funded from what i saw coming out of the legislature and not a lot of these were able to be were able to be tackled um from i mean like i said i think covid and the impact um i don't think the asba was able
165to really focus on a lot of these and so in my opinion i you know i'm good at at all five of these and and putting them as our priority i think that they um what did what did i say we have um ours was the fun the finance formula i think which is important what's not on here one of ours was to fully fund um full day kindergarten another one for higley was the restoration of the daw which is happening i mean so they're they're coming they're working on it and um fully restoring the ninth grade jted ncte eligibility and funding and then the financial and academic transparency for all institutions that accept public funds so those were those are a little bit different than what we see here but that's what higley submitted
166last year and i i think you're correct mrs reese that last year with covet it monopolized everything and i think coming up this year some of the bills that i've seen coming our way are going to monopolize something these anyhow so um i'm really okay with whatever you all decide to be very honest because i think asba does keep a good focus the one thing um student outcome and it kind of again it's a double-edged sword because we do such great student outcome with not a huge pot of money and that gets thrown back in our face sometimes and i and i i dislike that so much because they say well you do such a great job with so little you don't need any more money well some districts do but there's a lot of
167our outlier districts that are struggling with student outcome um and that gets muddy the aspa also allowed us to submit to additional priorities last year and what we submitted was that we would we wanted um a dedicated funding source for pay raises for support staff and to rethink and redefine the role and purpose of state standardized testing um mr meaningful assessments so um so we were able to submit to additional um i i think that for me um i i like the five we have i like the there's just so much um there's so much that needs to be done i would like to see them continue to work on the financing formula which i think it kind of goes back to the adequately and equitably fund um it's it's a combination of both things
168i i if i remember correctly like our funding formula mr moore doesn't that go back to like the 70s uh the funding formula that the state uses okay so 1984 is our how the funding formula we're using so um so i i do like that we try and push for that too um so um all of it just all of it just make it all better everything yeah focus on everything this is reach that was all of it we want all we want it all just to let you know we want it all okay so if we can get some of these down i think we talked about manage the impact of um kovid and i think that that's still important because we're no way shape form anywhere near done with this at least from
169an educational standpoint um so i think that that was one i think everyone kind of chipped in and agreed on and then the public accountability so is that one that everyone agreed on that there should be the same accountability for everyone who uses public funds absolutely so that would be a second one we did it sounded like we wanted some of the preserve and strength and local control from a funding standpoint is that that's one of asba's 2021 do we want to have that one as well for higley or put up number five okay as a number five i like mr glover's i'll shout out to him his um standardized test and meaningful assessment i really like that i think we should i think i agree reading that i really enjoyed that piece um i
170think we're doing great job with pay raises to our staff even though they're not funding them but they're not funding it but we're handling it within ourselves i would like to see everyone able to do that um like president or i'm sorry board member taylor um said mentioned earlier there are some lower school districts that aren't able to do that but if we can only do five i would like to take well and these are pigley's priority whether they take them or not right to them this is what's important to us i want everyone in school districts to to be covered but this is what's important yeah redefine and rethink and redefine the role and purpose of the state standardized test and meaningful assessments i like that quite a bit doesn't that fall under the
171improve outcomes for all students tab under it says um the state standardized testing shall not be used for any purposes other than a year over year measurement of student growth and then tested subject we can just pull a certain bullet point out though and make it one of our like okay we don't have to follow we don't have to use the whole correct okay so we can pull one out and just kind of say this is kind of one of our focuses okay if we'd like it makes it a lot easier mrs reach is that four or is that all five manage covet manage the impact of covid and public accountability then we have funding formula and we have this assessments okay and then local control got him okay so nothing's on there for the
172adequately and equitably fun district schools so we couldn't find anything in that one to add or can we do the two additional they haven't come back and asked us for additional because when we did the additional they came back later on and asked for more um and you were i'm sorry when were you just asking the first one so the very first time the first time it's the things that happened yeah so adequately fun programs yeah exceptional student services um you could put that as our fully the the funding that's the one we pulled the finance the formula yeah that's the one that has the finite the formula to adequately update that oh they are asking us for additional i apologize mrs anderson yes two additional it's something towards the classroom i mean there's there's
173several in here we got fully restored ninth grade cte cted eligibility funding to allow students to explore career fields and our certification completion um allow the cteds to serve students through the age of 21. like just something i want to advocate for things that really just hit straight to the classroom and for especially for students the cte one was one we had last year so we could keep that as an extra that would be great i just pushed that one forward or i i raised my hand for something in that area okay as an alternative another one the ninth grade cte j-ted funding to restore we could put on their funding all-day kindergarten that's been a hot topic even with our superintendent hoffman so um in that regards we could put that in there if
174we wanted as an additional as an additional i think that's a great idea okay so uh fully fun or fully funding full day kindergarten so that should be seven so if we agree on those do we need to second this again because i second discussion no because part of the motion was to determine okay so if everyone is in agreement with those five initiatives and then the two additional items for consideration any other discussion or comments all right all those in favor aye aye so that will carry 5-0 and we will get that submitted to the asba all right and that will [Music] conclude our board meeting for tonight so i move that we adjourn future agenda items anything before we move to a journey i was i was skipping that right now okay you
175can if you'd like but you didn't offend the agenda so yeah i was just if no one was going to chip in for future i wasn't going to stop there do you have something for future okay well thanks for asking no i figured if someone had something that they would chime in because it's like we have a lot coming all right well thank you mrs keller then again i move that we adjourn check it all those in favor i have a good evening you