001good evening i'm going to call this meeting to order dr foley roll call please president kaler members of the board please let the record show that all members are present and to our two new board members we wish you a happy first sport official board meeting it's quite appropriate this is inauguration day so um yes welcome mrs schultz and mrs um anderson we appreciate your your dedication in wanting to join this um group so we appreciate you with that i'm going to have a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance i move that we approve the agenda second any questions or concerns on the agenda all those in favor aye aye aye motion carries five zero inauguration day and our first item up for action is the election of our governing born president
002and then after that will be the election of our governing board vice president and how this works so far new board members there'll be a motion on the floor for a new president and then there'll be a vote and then we'll do the same thing for the vice presidency okay so with that we always had our little sweet attorney here in the past but hopefully i will do this right for mrs reach tonight um i move that we elect christina reese as board president for the year 2021. second any questions comments all those in favor aye aye motion carries 5-0 congratulations mrs reese once again got a year off and now she's back and now i'm going to move on i move that we we approve mrs jill wilson as vice president second any questions
003concerns all those in favor aye aye motion carries five zero congratulations mrs wilson yes this is immediate so now i get to pass off the meeting to mrs reese and i was given this school board president handbook tonight which and i'm just gonna hang out over here i would like though um during board comments mrs schultz and mrs reese i can make a small request before i leave that they give us a little bit about themselves tonight and mrs mrs anderson i'm sorry not rhys we know about her sorry yes thank you i appreciate the little handbook i will look at that all right well then we will go on to our next agenda item the superintendent's report dr foley president reece members of the board tonight we start with one of our favorite uh
004favorite tasks that we do here at our governing board meetings which is the celebration of our points of pride where we as a at this meeting honor our employees our student and volunteers that are being recognized by the school now tonight we do this a little differently because of social distancing we're going to do these a little differently than we have before so we're going to call the pr the principal up and we're going to start tonight with power range and when mr rooter comes up along with along with mrs coda they're going to call the employees student or the volunteer up one at a time and then we will take pictures where you will stand rather than coming down because we used to love to do handshakes and close pictures but for physical distancing
005we do a stand and acknowledge so one at a time and so we're going to start first with power range tonight and then we're going to do santan so i'm going to call mr ruder up and mrs coda up so that they can help us celebrate our points of pride tonight from power ranch thank you president reece members of the board cabinet community members it is my privilege to stand here before you and recognize some awesome people from power ranch we are actually going to start with our student hudson lopez and i would also like to invite mrs tessen his kindergarten teacher to help me so hudson and mrs tetson if you guys can come on up here [Applause] all right good evening everybody um here i have a little paper i had written this
006um beforehand i just wanted to make sure that it was perfectly said for hudson because he's so deserving hudson of lopez has been a student of mine since the beginning of the school year as both quarters have passed he has shown great academic improvements in all areas hudson is a student who stands out simply because he is such a role model to his peers he also has a positivity that is inspiring in a heart that continues to reflect kindness kindness is heavily focused on in our classroom and his ability to show kindness to others often creates a natural ripple-like effect on all the other students i could not be prouder of hudson and i am honored to present him with this award tonight congratulations hudson [Applause] come here buddy some presents for you today come
007right here it's great because you really can see the smiles through the masks so next i'm going to call up our volunteer and it's ms shauna peterson so shauna is here tonight because she's incredible but also on behalf of our entire parent-teacher organization we do some amazing things on our campus and it's all because of the hard work that shawna and her group do for us our best example to date is our elective program which is fully funded by our pto but even besides that they've worked with me the last couple of months to try and support our teachers and recognize them knowing the hard work and everything that they're doing and trying to find different and unique ways to keep our energy up with our staff and our students and we greatly appreciate your
008outside the box thinking and your effort i know it's hard not being in the hallways and supporting in the classrooms but you guys are finding other ways to do amazing things so thank you very much and next we're going to have mrs coda recognize kelly bottice one of our special ed aides on campus kelly goes above and beyond her job responsibilities every day she is at school early and stays until everything is ready for the next day kelly works hard all day long and is so patient working with students and their behaviors kelly has a strong rapport with students and staff and is always there when we need her kelly knows the schedule and helps get ready for the next step all day long she is consistent in her attitude and drive to get the
009job done well she even thinks of our students on her own time and purchases items for activities despite personal issues she begins each day fresh and ready to work kelly needs to be recognized for her hard work and dedication to her job thank you kelly for all you do congratulations and lastly if we could have lauren considine come up please she is our certified employee [Applause] and i don't really enjoy reading um this stuff from here but i'm going to read it because it's from your colleagues and i think it's very important since march lauren has done a lot to support students colleagues and the power ranch community lawrence served as our canvas ambassador learning the program and leading staff pd for our teachers still to this day she supports colleagues including myself with questions
010and troubleshooting she is also she also led virtual staff meditations called mindful moment moments each morning in the beginning of the school year these were also regularly attended i apologize these also then began started started to be done with students my sister is a sixth grade teacher in new york and my sister also was invited to join and she had some other colleagues that joined as well these were in addition to this lauren serves on the site council power ranch leadership team is a student council sponsor and did it all while earning her master's degree in educational leadership her continued support is amazing and we can't thank her enough congratulations lauren [Applause] i'd like to now invite mr mercado and mrs reeves up so that we can honor and highlight the superstars from santan i
011was going to say president kaler president reece i had it all scripted out president reece dr foley cabinet community members thank you for this opportunity um i absolutely love this time when we can celebrate some amazing people i wish we can celebrate all the amazing people and things that are happening at san ten but we'll take this couple of minutes and celebrate some really good people that make a difference on a daily basis our certified member is our media specialist jen ford if you can come up please i've been told that i speak too much in staff bidding so they told me i have to read miss ford is a dedicated and passionate educator ms ford is a team player on our campus she strives to support all stakeholders to ensure 100 customer satisfaction these
012past couple of years she has been extremely flexible as we have shifted the roles of the librarian in our district ms ford communicates effectively with miss baker who you see up there as well to provide a positive experience in the media center and i would say it's a well-oiled machine she has a positive rapport with students with staff with the community the media center is a warm friendly and inviting environment at san tan thank you miss ford for making a difference every day on our campus our classified member is laurel baker laurel baker is our media aide miss baker is a positive and supportive staff member at san tan miss baker is always willing to support our campus in any capacity she is the definition of a team player every interaction i have observed with
013miss baker and students has been with the smile miss baker communicates effectively with miss ford and this is the one one of the reasons why i believe our media center runs effectively on a daily basis we have six sections k through four and five sections actually four sections and fifth and sixth and so these two individuals do an amazing job communicating with each other to make sure that our six-day rotation runs smoothly for our students and staff so there is no doubt that when you enter our media center it is warm and it is welcoming with your smile she is a difference maker at san tan thank you mrs baker for being a dedicated staff member at sentence [Applause] santan's volunteers amy randall i love that energy and passion and that's exactly what you see
014with miss randall on our campus ms randall is a certified substitute and pto member at centenn mrs randall is absolutely one of our best supporters of our programs and services she is a dedicated substitute that has saved us many times at the last minute to ensure students had support in their classroom she follows the lesson plans the teacher creates and has classroom management she is definitely the an effective substitute on our campus mrs randall serves as the vp of fundraising at san ten so whenever i call her ray what do you want because i have all the great ideas right she is always thinking outside the box to secure resources to support our campus recently during the holiday before the holiday break we had um a tradition of cookies and milk with santa in our
015gym where we would have 400 people or so it was just an amazing event that we were really sad that we weren't going to be able to host this year so with her thinking outside the box her support and pto support we did a drive by cookies in milk with santa and so it was an amazing event that community members and students and staff were still able to participate participate with so really appreciate that support when it comes to outside the box thinking for our campus she brings great ideas to the table to ensure we provide the best experiences for our students staff and community thank you ms randa for making a difference every day at san tan [Applause] and an amazing student brandon kowalczyk come up here brandon is a fifth grade student at
016centenn brendan was nominated by his teacher ms stingle as our student points of pride for sentan santan is a lighthouse leader in me school and we believe every student and staff member can be a positive leader i asked my staff to provide me with any student leaders that they believed should be recognized for using the seven habits consistently throughout the school year and brendan rose to the top to be chosen as san tan student point of pride his teacher ms stingle states brendan volunteers anytime there is an opportunity on and off campus he is a role model in the classroom robotics and running club he's just an all-around amazing kid thank you brandon for making a difference every day on and off our campus [Applause] thank you we like to let the families know at
017this time families and our employees know that while we we do not expect you to stay for the meeting so if you would like to we would love to have you stay but we also know you have other things to do this evening so you are free to leave if you'd like to thank you all for coming thank you to the families who share your employee or child with us president reese members of the board to complete the superintendent's report tonight we have upcoming events coming up as you can see we have lots of meetings and trainings we or thank you for your time this weekend and our first training and we have another one coming up again and another meeting other meetings this month the month of february so that concludes the superintendent's report
018thank you and we will go on to board comments and i would just like to take a moment to thank mrs kaler as serving as our board president this past year a very difficult year lots happening and um thank you for your dedication to our board and our district for serving in that position and we will go on to other board comments and mrs kaler you had a request for our new board members give us a few highlights about yourselves since you're brand new tonight up here on the dyes so mrs anderson would let you go first hi my name is michelle anderson um i've been in the district as a parent and as an employee my kids started when they were in kindergarten at coronado and now i've got one grad or we have
019one graduating from williamsfield this year and one coming up in a couple years at williamsville as well um i've been around and when i tried to get emotional but i've i've just i'm a teacher as well i teach at queen creek high school chemistry and physical science um but i've been working with these kids since kindergarten i've been volunteering at after school events and crosswalk loved crosswalk i was there for for a bit and it's so neat i know there's a better word than neat but to be with those these kids i've seen them as little bitties i got to teach them in middle school and possibly this year i hope so um i'll get to hand them their diploma as they walk across the stage it's super super awesome but anyway um i'm just
020happy to be here and happy to serve in this manner and hope to bring a lot of good experience and just a positive attitude to this wonderful district that i've given blood sweat and tears to so thank you for having me thank you my name is tiffany schultz and i have two daughters in the district who have been in the district since preschool and my daughter's in fifth grade and then second grade at coronado elementary school i volunteered i was the pto president for two years at coronado and volunteered in different various ways i am a small business owner in the community and hopefully bring a different aspect in the business side of things as far as joining together the schools in the business in our community and i'm really excited to serve and be
021a part of this board any other board comments president reece mrs wilson i just want to thank the two new board members i didn't thank them up until this point because i was waiting for the seat to actually be filled i know there was some question on why i waited but i just want to thank you guys for both for joining and for president reese for coming back another four-year term um on top of the already eight correct i'm like wait maybe i'm speaking out of turn eight years that you've already done and that's a long commitment and i just want to thank you for that so thank you guys both for joining and president reese for continuing thank you all right if we don't have any other board comments we will go on to
022our next item request to speak mrs reach no request to speak all right we'll go on to our consent agenda i move that we approve the consent agenda items as they are presented second all right any questions or comments regarding any of the items on our consent agenda president reece i do mrs anderson oh sorry okay um 7.8 it marked about some increases i just since i'm new and i'm not understanding i'm just curious if this is typical if it's short term and are we looking for other vendors because some of these were significant president reece board member anderson so one of the things you're seeing here is that this is one of those annual things that we do when we have purchases with organizations that have cumulative totals that go over a certain amount
023and so you estimate at the beginning of the year what it is you approve it and anytime that is expanding or extending this is one of those uh ongoing maintenance that we do they're always have been through the appropriate procurement processes but it's just because these totals sometimes like for instance a a power company you're going to based on need that will it will accumulate a total and so you estimate based on previous need but if numbers come in different you just continue to monitor it and bring it back and we follow our policy knowing that if there were anything that was an individual purchase over a hundred thousand dollars it comes to you as a separate item to approve so this is one of our ongoing maintenances of monitoring big purchases for multitude of
024things district wide president reece mrs taylor just a little comment on 7.9 i had talked to dr fowler and dr foley besides just the roofing on cortina i was made aware that weatherization has been submitted to sfb as well and that's kind of would be really nice if the roof and the paint and everything would come together at some point for that little mismatched school over in cortina but anyways i just wanted to point that out that that has been submitted to sfb and let's keep our fingers crossed president reece mrs i just want to thank um all the teachers in 7.2 who are doing six fifths we're getting our next round or our next batch of approvals for six-fifths hours for the second semester and there are a lot of them and i just
025want to thank them and all the teachers every day who are going above and beyond and the staff who are going above and beyond to make the school year happen because you guys are the ones who are making this year happen for us so thank you just to tag on to that mrs wilson we have pages of um approvals on our 7.2 for lots of staff like you said taking six fifths classes so our high school teachers who have volunteered to teach a full day plus an online class we are we have items on here for coverage and where teachers are stepping in for other teachers and we have other staff members who are stepping in and helping cover when someone is out so we have a lot of items on 7.2 so thank you
026for bringing that up because it is the teamwork and cooperation of all of our staff within this district to continue to make the instruction happen for our students i noticed elementary specials teachers on there and elementary fifth and sixth were also teaching online and doing their full day of classes it was just it was remarkable so thank you any other questions or comments all right all those in favor aye aye aye motion carries five zero we will go on to our information items 8.1 the second quarter special education day school report president race members of the board this is again um going back to the theme of the question miss board member anderson had about updates for you on um how we're spending with our estimate of what we've budgeted and where we are at
027this point in the year and this year we're bringing quarterly reports back for you if there are any questions mrs miller would be happy to answer them this is more for information purposes and if there's any questions she'll be happy to answer just as a quick note if we have a student that we feel we cannot provide the level of education they need and they go to a day school the district is responsible for paying that tuition for the day school so i know these will show up in your vouchers as well and so you will see them and we are now getting a quarterly report of what it does cost for the district to pay for kids to be educated outside of our district that we can't meet their needs but i do want
028to thank mrs miller for all the changes and the hard work that you've made to help keep some of these students and that we can provide the services for them within our district and you've made a huge difference for those children so thank you any other comments questions all right then we'll go on to 8.2 our hr quarterly esi report good evening president reese vice president wilson members of the board this evening just as dr foley mentioned in terms of the update in relation to this bed services we're also providing an information update to our educational service inc in regards to what we're paying for our district substitute teachers our rescue subs and for those who need additional clarification in regards to rescue scubs this school year for the first time we hired what we
029called rescue scrubs part b scrubs nut scrubs subs a little faux pas there i have pardon me rescue subs across the district um two permanently at the secondary schools primarily the high schools and one um at the elementaries to service if we had absences that were going to be occurring because of cova-related reasons what you'll see is most of the time we've needed to use those rescue subs across the district sometimes we've deployed them from one site to another site depending on the fill rate at the other sites as well as needing other subs throughout and covering in some cases covert related in some case other pre-planned activities as well as you'll see on there our district hourly subs so we have aids and peras whenever we can get them one thing and you've probably
030noticed in our superintendent status reports is that our fill rates aren't as high as they have been in the past and that is because those that are in our sub pool aren't interested in working right now because of kovid so at times there's been a little bit more pressure in that regard but our overall attendance in terms of our teachers this year isn't largely different than last year it's really our substitute fill rate where we hovered over 90 in the past and this year it's been hovering around 70 percent president reece mrs anderson um so the remaining balance for the remainder of the school year is the 948 569 is that correct yes board member anderson that is correct okay and forgive me for not knowing and this goes to towards paying the teachers whenever
031they cover or that's a separate fund no that is a separate fund our teacher coverage that showed up in terms of the consent items that were earlier is separate fund this is specifically towards esi for all the services we render with them okay with such a significant amount not saying to spend it all but there's absolutely no way to entice people more people to come in and help out to pay more or do anything to take that burden off the teachers it is something we're looking at in terms of future years some of you may or may not recall previously we vendored out i'm drawing a blank on their name right now smart schools smart schools smart schools sold to esi and esi purchased them we had already obligated another contract one of the things
032we're looking at this year into next year is whether or not we can bring those services back in house for the cost fee that we have for administration services we could probably look at bringing on another staff member to help in those areas and then be able to raise our substitute daily rate as well as our long-term rate as a result we are competitive to our surrounding areas with the exception of one school district that i'm aware of that a couple months ago increased their sub rates quite heavily but it would be a good time for us to assess that as we look into the spring for next school year any other questions thank you all right we'll go on to 8.3 with our athletic update president reese members of the board um i'm not
033one for putting pictures in powerpoints but if i did there would be a roller coaster right on the front because it has been very interesting uh beginning of this aia sports season tonight we're going to talk about just the timeline some of the changes that happen uh some of the aia mitigation strategies that we've implemented give you an update on where high schools are at where our middle schools are at and then we need to acknowledge some people who've done an outstanding job in moving our athletics forward traditionally the winter season starts with practices the week of november 1st with normally the first game around november 23rd that's right before the start of thanksgiving this year because of covet it was moved back and adjusted to january 4th and then teams were given the option
034to start practicing on december 30th that was at the option of the coach permissive practice and so many of the teams were ready to go they jumped in and started practicing with the anticipation we would come back and start with competitions on january 4th then the aia moved it back to january 18th so now we knew we had two additional weeks that we could practice then on january 7th which was a very interesting day the aia executive board voted to cancel the season a lot of i would say uproar a little bit of it from our people our coaches and and just trying to figure out what was happening and on that day we did pause practices on that day we'll follow the rules and they said the sports weren't going to go so we
035paused our practices and then we found out the next day on saturday that the aia executive board was calling an additional meeting on january 12th and so we allowed our practices to continue one of the things that came out of this was there was such a drive and need i believe for our communities to play not just our communities the surrounding communities everyone in the state that as soon as the aia canceled a lot of other organizations said well we'll host a league we'll do what we need to do the basketball coaches association of arizona had already come up with a schedule and a plan on how they were going to implement it whether the aia was going to be involved or not so on january 12th the a executive board re-voted and this time
036it was a 6-5 vote for the start of the winter season and so they adjusted it we kept the the start date the same and we started our competitions yesterday on the 19th so the mitigation strategy they put in place and honestly this is where i'm really glad that the aia tried to do this and then we're not dealing with outside organizations because while we're following the aia mitigation strategies we have more ability to implement rules and have people follow the rules the first one that they did was all the everyone in the gym or on the field is to wear a mask at all times including during competition so that's not just the the coaches and the players the referees the parents the people working at the table all of them have to wear
037their masks at all times now granted when you're in physical activity sometimes the kids will pull it down or remove it to catch a breath as long as they're just not trying to be blatant and get rid of it then we're going to be considerate of that there's a monitoring form that all coaches will have to fill out and turn in to the opposing coach saying we've checked with everyone and they're coveted clear as of right now and and basically signing off that we're following the rules and then the officials look at that as well before the contests one of the things that came out and one of the positive changes i believe that happened because of the shutdown originally there was going to be no fans at all and in the clear gym or
038a clear stadium and it's about competition however the aaa came back and said we'd like an opportunity to have the parents because we know that sports is not just for the participant but it's also the parents are so heavily involved and so the aia said that you're allowed to have a student athlete purchase up to two tickets for parent and guardian only and so then we can manage that it's not that they get two tickets to give to their friend or their girlfriend or anything like that it's two tickets for the parent to garden only guardian only and so we are doing that as we uh have these games um on the bench and sidelines we have to spread apart and so it's not the typical gym setup that you see if you were to
039come in there and they must be cleared between games and so what happens on that and i was at williams field last night i went to williams field and was there as they had a game against camp poverty for boys basketball and the idea with clearing the gyms is twofold one is parents can only stay for the game that their son or daughter participates in they can't stay for the entire program and so we need them to exit the second one is and i need to get a shout out to mr stengel who's right back there they put on the ghostbuster backpack and then they do the electrostatic sprayer and splurry down the benches and spray down the bleachers so that when the new crowd comes in that it's already been sprayed down and so
040um that that's two reasons why we're doing it but it really does help us with the crowd control and so we don't have people that are overlapping but let's say a parent had someone that was on the jv team and the varsity they would exit and then they would come in when we allowed the varsity people to come in and i think that's an important part of the mitigation strategies we do have to have our strategies posted and so we have them available as well as and and i think here's the thing for the aia if we have member schools who are not following the rules the officials have the right to cancel the game so if the crowd is not wearing the mask officials can look and say we've warned you we've warned you
041we're done we're canceling the game should a game get cancelled then that school would not be allowed to use aia officials for the rest of the season basically canceling their season and so the idea is let's take this seriously and if we're going to be allowed to have the opportunity to have games and that we can have a limited number of fans there then let's appreciate what we're getting because the alternative is is nothing or it's being run in situations where people can be combined like the club tournaments you hear about now where people are all over the place not messed up not following the rules and that's the last thing that we want mr blatts go ahead um i had a question i know that the aia had originally said that club ball they
042had to if a kid was playing football they had to wait two weeks that's still an effect actually they kind of pulled that because of the cancellation and restart because honestly as soon as they canceled people threw in club tournaments and there were club tournaments that happened they didn't feel like that was fair to the kids who went and participated in that thinking that they wouldn't have a season and then two days later now they have a season but then they'd say whoa but you can't do this and so you have to sit for two weeks as well so they didn't think that was fair so they did not continue with that so if you'll notice our winter season sports that are competing right now we have boys and girls basketball boys and girls soccer
043and boys and girls wrestling the games did start yesterday and honestly one of the challenges moving forward as we talk with the athletic directors we know there are situations where teams will be quarantined or cancelled in games because of covet we have a situation with that within our district right now we follow our covet guidelines and when we do that we're prepared to not hold games and practices and and that's just the reality of what we live in and so it's going to be kind of a continue to be up and down we might find out on a tuesday morning we're not playing tuesday night because the other team's there or vice versa we have to contact somebody and say we're no longer going to be able to participate in the game and we'll have
044to be doing scheduling and that's going to be a challenge and that's really where our athletic directors step in and the communication they have with not only the aia but other member schools around saying who's got a game who needs a game let's find something so we can compete our middle school at the same time the east valley conference follows the direction of the aia and so they're using the same mitigation strategies and so it's been a little bit different to control doing that because typically you don't buy a ticket to go to a middle school game and so they're working with their families through emails and so they can keep track of who's there and not just let anyone go to the games saucemen hosted their games last night talking to mr keeling he
045said it went really well and the parents were respectful and appreciative that they could come to the game and it's for the home games and so um they're going to have boys basketball girls softball and cross country they're having a small three-week season the evc and then they start their third season sports which is here girls basketball boys soccer and wrestling and we anticipate those ones to start the week of february 9th if we remember they're trying to take four seasons and condense them into three and then we lost even more time and so it's condensed but it is providing an opportunity for the kids to compete for our schools and so the acknowledgement first i need to acknowledge the coaches and the players who have been practicing and been anticipating and really it's been
046stressful on them because here we're ago we're not a go they've been practicing for six weeks and it is very atypical of what they're used to and so we appreciate their flexibility and their commitment to what they're doing because it would be easy to say ah let's let's try something else but they're ready and and we know that you know especially at the high school level these coaches give their years and their lives to this and their dedication and it's not just the season it's all of the other work that goes into that and so we'd like to publicly say thank you to our coaches and thank you to our players for being supportive and for continuing to follow the rules and for continuing to represent us in the best way possible and then finally
047there's four people that are really important within our district that really have a thankless job because of all the work that they do um our athletic directors at higley high school mr aaron dilley at williamsfield high school mr darrell stengel cooley middle school louisa schwartz and sasebo middle school brandon keeling and just publicly we'd like to say thank you because it's been a whirlwind for them because the first time something happens that's the first point of contact for a lot of parents and they've been able to handle a lot of tough situations with grace and with patience and with communication and on a personal not i'd like to thank them because i think we're developing a nice rapport where as a district we can talk and try to solve things as a district and not
048individually as schools but all the hard work they do and daryl thank you very much for all the hard work you do leading an athletic program so that's our athletic update thank you thank you president reece i have a question is that okay yep mrs anderson okay um david um it i see that so the spectators not so the not the home team their families nobody can attend it it's just the home team parents the two tickets correct correct it is just a home team and i'm not anticipating anything from our community but do we have a plan in place for enforcing in the stands or anything else are we paying people to walk around are we going to how we handling this because we've all seen the youtube videos where sometimes we go south
049i didn't know if there was a plan in place or if that's another day to talk about oh no that's correct we can talk about that right now we um remember anderson we first it's how we limit the tickets and parents can only we can only get two tickets and who we let through the door first is really the important part so we use gofan parents are allowed to buy them and then we have a list that they would come in and they don't just do the ticket they have to match the ticket the id to the name that's within synergy that says they're a parent or guardian okay and then when you look at the number of teams for instance last night at a home basketball varsity basketball team you have 12 to 15
050kids on there so at the most we're talking 24 to to maybe 30 parents there we probably had 25 there last night we have personnel athletic directors other school employees we still are continuing to have security their ticket takers and our workers to monitoring that and with that limited number of people it's interesting how spread out the gym can become they know we don't even pull out the bleachers all the way so we pull them out part of the way and then they can spread out and for the night that i was at and then talking with mr dillian higley said the parents were very very you know once again appreciative worthy mask we will be there to remind them honestly i think it's a little different when you don't have student sections you know
051and and some of those behaviors and things because they're high school kids and how they want to yell the game is very different from a sound aspect because you don't have people yelling all the time but yes we do have people that are monitoring and we're very being very specific and we there was someone who came up and i'll just share it and said hey i want to can i give my second ticket to someone else and we said no the second ticket is these are for parents or guardians and and that's that's the rule and that's the role that we're going to follow and it's not going to be um kind of a free-for-all in terms of having two tickets i appreciate you guys being proactive instead of reactive that's good thank you thank
052you um and also on that note um mr lotson heiser is that even if a parent um even of a divorced family and the dad is you know he might be remarried but mom's not on that stepmom's not on the she doesn't get to come in so it's very strict mrs anderson it's just parents and guardians that are in synergy and i know they're following it very strictly um so yeah thank you for that thank you thank you to all of our athletic directors again just the same with this whole last year there is no precedence that we don't have anything to follow we we are creating it as we go and with organizations like aia with our other schools the districts around us and this is what we have to do so our kids
053can play and it's important to our kids our high school kids this is important for some of them for college and so thank you and the communication to the families on the teams and everything it it's nothing we want to do it's what we have to do right now so i know that puts a lot of our athletic directors in some bad spots sometimes um and i i appreciate the the time and effort you have to take to enforce these rules to give our kids a season so thank you and i have no doubt our community is appreciative that we get to have sports at all so i appreciate the update and being so thorough and thinking it all out so thank you president reese i'd like to echo your sentiments we've talked to students
054we've talked to parents who in a weekend lost a season and we gained a season so a true appreciation for whatever mitigation strategies we have to do where we are taking them with with purely to heart so we echo your comments thank you all right if there's no further questions or comments we'll go on to 8.4 for our fiscal year 2021 monthly monthly governing board financial report for november and december of 2020. does anyone have any questions regarding the monthly report okay then we will go on to 8.5 which is our mno budget update and projection and president members of the board and congratulations to the two new board members who are here we have been reviewing with the board i think at every board meeting since about november what we predict to be the
055m o budget for next year it changes from time to time and especially one of the big changes is the funding coming from the federal government for the the covet 19 and that is directly helping our budget as those announcements are made so i'm going to turn over the presentation to a individual that i have a lot of respect for he's new to the district as of january 11th his name's tyler moore he comes with to us with lots of applicable experience and i'm personally very happy that i have some help in the business office with with this gentleman so with that tyler would you like to present the powerpoint certainly thank you mr god and good evening president reece and members of the board tonight i'm bringing to you the second review of the
056mno budget this is for the 2021-2022 school year um i'd just like to pre-face this mr gad did present the first review on december 9th and so for those two new board members i will take my time going through this and uh you know thoroughly explain some of the the budget calculations that we are obligated to follow by the state and how we're implementing some of the coveted relief funds to our benefit so with this first slide here you'll see a few mno highlights that are affecting our budget this year first bullet point identifies the current code relief funds that we have received here today totaling 3.2 million i will follow up on these 3.2 million in the next slide i'd just like to touch on the i'm sure you've heard in the news and
057around the state of additional coverage relief funds being approved by the federal government and the sr2 is what we're calling it is um that nationwide 82 billion that's going to be funding schools again i'll follow up a little bit more detail on the next slide but just know that is going to be affecting our emino budget this year the next bullet points um we are recognizing 150 adm loss in 2021 school year which is our current school year adm stands for average daily membership and what we're referring to is basically students that we've lost in the district enrollment this year these are primarily coming from the younger grade levels so we're anticipating they're returning next year you know due to covet and a lot of the younger grades have been able to at least stay
058at home or you know have a place at home to you know they don't need to come into school the next bullet point there for purposes of budgeting we've recognized a three million dollar reduction in funding for online learning the state currently funds online or distance learning at 95 percent um not 100 of the base support level um so that three million that we're recognizing and i'll touch base on that more as we proceed as a current reduction we're hoping that is reduced with students returning to in class in the second half of the year the next bullet point there is a we're implementing a uh reduction of our mno transfer to the capital budget um and fiscal year 22 so our next calendar year we are going to start phase one of that reduction
059excuse me this current year in our budget revision we're going to start phase one of that reduction and our intention is to reduce that transfer and bring those funds back to the amino budget this budget also has the district absorbing any increase to employee venice so we will not be putting those increases from insurance etc on employees this next fiscal year all right like i mentioned um our coveted relief uh grants to date this is kind of the slide kind of covers a brief breakdown of how those funds are what we've received and what we estimate to to continue to receive so as i mentioned the 3.2 million that consists of the enrollment stabilization grant which was funded by the governor's office that was in the neighborhood of 2.6 million we also received in elementary
060and secondary school relief funds we're calling that esser for the sake of consistency and to not pronounce the that full uh grant allocation act um that was in the amount of six hundred thousand so that that encompasses our 3.2 million that we've received here today that we know of um additional grants like i mentioned the federal grant government passed a we're calling it sr2 and december 28th i believe is the date we've estimated that an award amount to be 2.6 million we have not received an official allocation for that yet but those are just preliminary estimates and you'll see an asterisk there we've also footnoted another another possible funding source um a governor has earmarked in his 2022 budget an estimated 292 million or 98 million excuse me um uh for this funding force is
061based strongly on uh eligible free and reduced students so we don't anticipate a large amount coming from this budget allocation that the governor set aside but we just wanted to footnote that in this presentation alrighty our budget formula um i'm gonna go over two different budgets so the the 2021 budget which is what we're looking at here is a is a budget that we that all school districts revise in may so we're based on current year funding um and those of you who went through mr gad's kind of uh or training will kind of recognize some of these pieces um so this 2021 budget revision we are estimating um a total weighted student count of 17 659 so that's including that 150 loss that we're recognizing this current year in 2021. um that weight account
062does not that is not the current student enrollment in the district the there is a weighted piece to a certain enrollment for group a and group b weights for example sped students are weighted a little higher than regular enrollment kids so that's a whole nother conversation but for the sake of uh this presentation the total weighted suite count is 17 659 then the state gives us a base level funding amount this is the 43 59 per student this amount we take this amount multiply it by the weighted student account and this will give us our base support level of 76 million next we have the online learning adjustment as i mentioned earlier this amount again is uh is based off the 40th day funding so this is really high we're anticipating this coming down when
063we do reconcile to the 180th day on that percentage of students basically enrolled in distance learning classes or you know online learning so we're anticipating this coming down but for sake of budget we're going to plug this this full reduction in there so we take that reduction minus the base support level which gives us a revised base support level of 73 million there is a transportation transportation funding portion in there again that that piece we can have a whole conversation on how that's funded and how that's calculated but for the sake of this budget presentation that number is 2.7 million that we take that number that 2.7 million plus our base support level and that gives us our 2021 revised revenue control limit okay so you'll see that revenue control limit number again at the
064top of the screen so we're still talking about our 2021 revision we do have a couple more calculations in here so we have an mno overhead the mno override is 15 of our rcl so you'll see that calculation and there's that is 11.4 million we get to add that onto our our budget we're projecting a budget balance carry forward we have a revised so excuse me budget balance carry forward from our 2020 afr of 8 million we get to add that back in there we have prop 123 funds more commonly known as classroom site fund that gets put into the calculation and this is where we're talking about that capital reduction piece so currently in our adopted budget that we adopted in june we adopted a six million dollar transfer from emino to capital um
065you'll see we're going to recognize the start of this phase reduction of this transfer in our revision in 2021. so you'll see um it revised down to 1.4 million so we'll again so that's subtracted out of our mno calculation which is why it's in red there for again the the covid relief grants that we've discussed earlier the 3.2 that gets added back into the budget because we're recognizing that in our mno budget we're offsetting certain uh the six fits contracts any additional ppe supplies any expenditures that we've expended beyond our budget out of the mno we're basically funding that back to those grants so we'll recognize those revenues and that gives us our estimated revised general budget limit of 95 million so again in june we adopted a general budget limit of 90 million so
066that difference of 5.4 million we get to recognize and this next calendar year fiscal year 22. so this number becomes important when we look at our budget projections for 22. so now we're looking at fiscal year 22. again you'll you'll recognize this formula it's a same formula that we use for the revision we are estimating a flat student enrollment growth we are not anticipating a loss of 150. we are anticipating those kids do come back to our district and so again we are utilizing that same weighted student count for this formula we take into consideration again the base level funding amount we have heard that there will be an inflation increase we did get a number more recently before we submitted this presentation so it is going to be about 1.22 percent um we only
067recognize in this formula one percent but we'll bring this back to you february 10th with those revised numbers so with that in mind um we'll write you know that base level support number is going to be going up but for the sake of this conversation we'll we'll utilize the one percent inflation number so again same formula we take the weighted student count we multiply that by the base level funding amount and that gives us our base support level we do have the ability to um add in audit expenses from two years back so you'll see our audit expenses for two fiscal years back were 38 000 so we can add that into that base support level you'll recognize here that there's no reduction in distance learning funding that we're recognizing 22. again we're anticipating things
068return to normal and we can move students back to in classroom and eliminate that you know budget reduction that we are incurring this year okay so we we take the base support you add the audit expense that gives you your new base support level again that we have that transportation funding piece in there that's going to be remain consistent so we add that in and that gives us our 22 estimated revised rcl so much like the 21 budget projection you'll see the rsd on the top of the page here for 22. we do have again the same things that we had in 21 so we have the 15 percent of the rcl is our mmo override you'll see that amount increase because of our rcl increase in 22. we are estimating a budget balance carry
069forward of 13 million so that's taking into consideration that 21 revised budget balance difference of that 5.4 that you saw earlier plus a continued eight million dollar carry forward that we're recognizing in 21. that's where that 13 million comes from again you'll see the prop 123 funds in there in 22 we're continuing to reduce that transfer from mno to capital you'll see that reduction there remember if you remember in 21 it was 4.4 million we're bringing that down to 2.9 again trying to move those monies back into m l that gives us our estimated general budget limit in school year 22 of 103 million we you'll notice from the 21 anticipated revised general budget limit of 95 million that gives us a general budget difference of 7.7 million so essentially this is this is what
070we have in excess or calendar year 22 to use towards some of the items that we'll talk about mr moore can i ask a quick question yeah sorry so while we anticipate going back into the classrooms having more students return we're also anticipating i guess the real launch of our higley virtual academy has there been some discussion on what what that will look like are we looking at more of supplemental classes versus regular students just attending the virtual academy what kind of discussions have since that's funded differently we anticipate the majority of our students returning and hopefully life will go somewhat back to normal but the higley virtual academy is something we wanted to launch even previously and so that's with it funded differently do we know how that's going to impact our budget um
071certainly so i mean it will be funding much the same but i'll let dr foley kind of address that president reese members of the board very good question literally when he was talking through i thought oh that'll be a question that comes up so obviously we're going to have families who continue to want online instruction we will obviously have a where this year was a soft launch if you will because it was kind of remote learning sustained because we kept school teachers at their schools kids around aligned to their schools because we didn't know whether we were coming in and going out and there was still a lot of unknown and we were we were shifting based on need and family choice along the way so one of the things that we're working hard you'll
072notice that we have a posting and you've seen in your your status report that we're in the process of actually building administration for higley virtual academy which is an important thing for italy to have we were one of the very few east valley districts that didn't have an online academy so we want that for our for our long-term sustaining uh we now we remember we had to officially apply for it we came together to we had to approve a curriculum because it's required to have a curriculum for that which we now have but what will be important is this that really quickly here we're going to have parents begin to tell us if you want to continue an online we need to know because what will happen is you will literally enroll in the online
073academy it becomes a staffing just as we've talked about all along staffing is a big piece of this so we need to know number of need to staff appropriately and to coordinate this but truly we will have an online academy which will continue and sustain and the state may fund it differently but again we're not looking at it as a loss as much of a loss if you will but we will continue that so numbers are going to drive our staffing and our need for that but we are looking at we're working on handbook we're working on the staffing we're working on what that looks like based on demand for us and it may mean some teachers still continue to pay based on need doing uh six-fifths kind of thing or it may require depending
074upon the need a full-time person teaching that as well so we're looking at a k-12 higley virtual academy based on demand staffing it and coordinating it as a separate stand-alone school so it will be a truly instead of a um embedded within this school it will truly be a standalone school so it is still evolving and learning and growing but moving along quite quickly here for full launch this next year and a big piece of this and you'll see that we'll start talking about that when we talk enrollment is demand we need to know what you want to do and the good news is if you want to continue online learning we will have a virtual academy a full full operational virtual academy to enroll in and i think with an enrollment piece we can
075we can take a look at how that budget will be affected you know depending on that enrollment okay so if i'll continue where we left that so for 22 we're going to recognize um i'll just kind of touch base the 7.7 million dollar general budget uh difference so this is essentially budget balance and 22 that we can use to allocate for additional costs we've identified a few costs right up front we can these are recalling these fixed increases we know our medical assurance is going to increase we are you're marking 10 percent it may be higher we may have to increase that a little but 10 um we've set aside uh property casualty in burgers comp we are looking to make a insurance change a possible insurance change so we're earmarking a small dollar amount
076for that change in the instance that you know those premiums are increased with that change or there's cost incurred with making that change we have reserved additional fte these are additional fte um in addition to what we currently have staff in budget right now we've earmarked 500 000 for that currently and then we are transferring um a few stipends to maintain that stipend level for classroom type fund we did have a slight budget issue in fund 12 and so we're maintaining that with an offset to mno so there should be no effect to any of those classroom type fun stipends that we're currently giving and then lastly the projected salary increases we'll go over that in the next slide but total fixed costs um we have identified 1.6 million okay projected salary raises district wide
077i think we we've identified a one three and five percent option um across the board for how we would like to utilize some of that budget balance carry forward to to push money back back to the higley staff first we you know a one percent increase across the district would read as follows so we have a 400 roughly 476 000 for teachers that would for a one percent raise admin would be roughly 72 000. classified tower lose 156 000 totaling 705 000 for across the district for a one percent increase and so below that you'll see the um general budget difference that we projected for 22 of 7.7 million and how that 700 000 affects that so you'll see it still leaves a large balance of seven million that the district can still utilize so
078for a three percent raise um we've identified so that would cost 1.4 million for teachers 218 000 for admin 469 000 for classified totaling 2.1 million for 3 percent district-wide raise you'll see again the same projection so we have the 7.7 million general budget difference and you'll see how 2.1 million affects that budget difference it would leave a 5.6 million dollar general budget limit uh difference which again we feel um well i'll just finish with the five percent so lastly we would the five percent option that's the total 2.3 million for teacher increases 364 000 for admin 782 000 for classified totaling 3.5 million for a 5 district-wide salary increase and again the same principle we we you'll see that how it affects the 7.7 million general budget limit which would leave us a budget
079balance of 4.2 million which is still very healthy and and well within some of our kind of guidelines of what we utilize for budget balance carry forward i just like to elaborate i guess a little on the five percent um i think district wide we can we are supporting a five percent increase to all staff i mean we strongly believe that this compensation will increase the ability to retain staff um maintain competitive salaries and be more competitive with our neighboring districts and attracting teachers mr moore oh i'm sorry pardon me vice vice president wilson pardon me mr moore if i could just insert myself real quickly good evening again one thing i do want to mention for some of the board members that have been here and for our new board members board member anderson
080and board member schultz is last year we did go through a reclassification and compensation study and during that reclassification compensation study through work with our leadership at the time as well as our leadership within our finance department there was a lot of discussion in regards to what we could afford in the amount that we could afford through mr gad's help and mr moore's help we've been able to identify that there are there were a little more dollars available to us to be able to be more competitive in this area where we struggled really hard last year to just make what we did come to the board with in regards to that 40 45 percentile um in terms of going up where surrounding districts although they might not be our comparables according to the arizona department
081pardon me the arizona auditor's general's office they very much are competitors like school districts like tempe union chandler gilbert public schools etc so as mr moore mentioned in regards to that five percent and still having a healthy balance we believe it's something we strongly have to look into if we're going to continue all those things that he mentioned in terms of being competitive and letting our employees know the value that we have for them especially given the time frame of which we're in vice president wilson as well as ms anderson and other governing board members mentioned today just the hard work of all of our employees all across the board from our certified to our classified and our administrators and what they've done this past year and a half so to be able to do
082something like that i think will be valuable and telling um in regards to to their efforts and the things that they have done dr foley um will this and this is probably more mrs martin's question but i'm going to pose it to you and then you can shoot it with wherever you'd like will this make us more competitive to get those first year teachers in and some of those other teachers and if not should we think about a bigger increase i know that sounds against everything i want to do about budgets but um i do think our teachers may maybe need even more sorry and i'm sorry mr gag because i'm sure you're rolling over right now me talking about more money out of the budget president vice president wilson very good question obviously one
083of the things that this is one of the things our conversation here tonight about our budget looks different than what some of our neighboring districts are talking about right now some of our neighboring districts are talking about larger reduction i mean they had a larger hit to their adm than higley did you're also you're also hearing us talk in our budget about how we're looking at moving historically we had been funding some we've been funding some capital out of mno you've been hearing us talk about moving and shifting that differently you're also we've brought to you a plan in which we're going to be talking about mno as well as capital and possibly bonds so that we can make some decisions about long-term financial because each pot of money has different you know rules and
084things that you can do with it as far as as far as being more competitive i mean being competitive that's huge and we would want to be competitive we will be it'll be interesting because a lot of districts are not talking about percentages at this moment and not at this point they're talking about holding particularly until they hear more about what's happening with essa ii esser2 but what you'll see is that we're we are we are anticipating it but we're not necessarily inserting that in here at this moment so that whether or not that's a decision we do for this fiscal year or another we're we are one of the few uh when i have been in uh conversations with superintendents across the state in multiple meetings the conversation is not about talking about prey
085increases in fact uh when when when in discussion they look at me like i have um have i added that correctly but i think every district is in a different position and i think that we're looking at our our um our our own loss um our current spending of our 80 how we're spending our money um and making some projections moving forward so to answer your question um would we recommend more at this moment or we don't we haven't figured the calculations that would be more comfortably to bring to you as a recommendation we wanted you to see tonight that as a board we have some decisions to make and that we could be talking about potential increases safely was still having a balance remaining for some of the unknown uncertain things that we still
086will be navigating and i believe that in everything i'm hearing on all the state meetings that we're attending there is still so much unknown uncertain that's coming with this new administration there's great momentum we're talking about the first hundred days about getting schools across the nation back into school they're talking still big about assessment assessment happening big time legislatively things have to change in order for us to how we're going to use that with accountability but things there's a lot of uncertainty so at this moment we are one of the few talking about this obviously we always want to be competitive and pay our teachers as much as we can possibly pay them pay all of our employees as much as we can but these are the figures that we feel comfortable bringing to you
087with what we know at this moment with the budget we have and making some decisions also with our capital and with our bond decisions that are going to keep coming to you over the next several meetings so those are very good questions but i will say that one of the things that we're wanting to do is in addition we're going to record one of these two wonderful gentlemen on narrating this powerpoint so that we are going to send a summary to our employees about what we talked about tonight in the governing board meeting and we're going to insert this so that they can hear what we're talking about so that they also can ask questions and understand our our our budget if you will for right now because every district is in a different place
088thank you dr foley i just want to piggyback i think that it's very important thank you that you are going to be sharing this with our our staff and all our employees because one of the things that has happened in the state of arizona which um i don't think many can [Music] understand or i mean school finance is always such a bucket of money and here i think it's 50 buckets of money or some i mean 50 yeah it's it's insane but one of them is sales tax and because our state was closed for several weeks and months per se that is going to affect the general education budget at the state level and we don't know what that is yet but it's definitely going to have an impact in education and so even the
089fact that we're talking about raises tonight good on higley thank you higley that is huge for us that we are even having this conversation tonight and again we do want to appreciate our staff and let them know they are valued and if we can do it at five percent i know it may not be the world but guy that's really good in the state of affairs when you start to see the state budgeting and what's going on at the state legislature and you start watching that good on higley so thank you for all the hard work that you've done in putting those pieces of pots of monies together tonight i really appreciate it the other districts that we compete with especially in east valley have done quite a bit of virtual online and not in
090person that has cost them a lot of money you saw what it cost us for a relatively small amount of time that we have been uh online you know when you have districts that in some cases don't almost don't open at all you can imagine the hit that they're taking on that and from that perspective then unless they have large large amounts of covered monies to help them offset that then uh they're not going to be in a position to do any significant salary increases is my prediction because i know a couple of them they're just trying to get by without doing some fairly massive budget reduction so an answer to your question i think you're going to find that we're very confident in it that you will be maybe the the well i'm sure
091you will be probably the highest in east valley and i think you know miss martins would support if if you can get into the upper half upper one-fourth of those salaries especially those beginning salaries with these other competitive districts that we have it'll definitely help this will give our salary schedules a real boost and that then the corresponding benefit from that especially in recruiting and retaining is money in this particular case is is very key to that whole subject so i thought i would i would add that thank you and just real quick i want to piggyback on that and i appreciate your information um but i also want to make it very well understood and clear that our board did not make the decision to be in person because of finances that happens to
092be a secondary and hearing you know just little pockets here and there um that it's about the money while we're in person or anything when we've made this decision we weren't even talking about this and so i just want to make it clear it is an unfortunate circumstance on how the state has chose to go about how they're ending up funding are the situations that are happening for districts who chose to stay virtual or online for one reason or another and that was what was best for their district you know that's definitely something that going forward all districts are going to have to look at and struggle with on how it all falls and how it all ends up playing out because when these decisions were made no one knew how that was going to
093play out but i just wanted to clarify that we did not make the decision to be in person because of money and um and i appreciate you sharing and you know i i appreciate that we're in the position to even like you said mr grad even to be talking about increases whether it's the one three five when that actually when the proposal actually comes to the board obviously we'll be able to have more discussion because that's not the intent of our discussion tonight but that from our finance department we're even in a place to be sitting with something in front of us that would even indicate that that discussion will be coming forward i definitely appreciate the the work and ability to be able to do that so i i just wanted to get that
094in there real quick president reece i i second that and also i know coming up we're going to be talking some more hr um decisions but things were happening that we didn't know were going to happen we didn't know when this was going to end or this funding was going to start or or what the governor was going to do there was just none of that we didn't have any direction financially from anybody when it came to decisions so i i just want to echo that too thank you for bringing that to your to our attention tonight but i know there's more coming from um hr in a little bit too mr glover would be so proud to see that classified was on here because that was one of his major points at the end
095to make sure classified was taken care of so shout out to you mr glover if you're watching and i wore red tonight which he's like wow president members of the board the other thing i'll stress is that literally i i appreciate what you're saying because this continues to ebb to flow to shift decisions continue to be made more information continues to be shared down in fact today the department of education actually has started weekly meetings with superintendents it started today to give little half-hour updates on the evolving state of the state if you will from a legislative standpoint and a financial standpoint and an assessment standpoint because things continue to ebb and flow and so i think what's important to know is that we will continue to stay on the leading edge of the information
096to come back to figure out so what does that mean for higley so that we can do the best for our district with the decisions that need to be made as as things continue to shift and change and one of the things and one of the reasons why we kind of laid this financial presentation out like we have is that when we're looking at you have an ultimate responsibility for the oversight of the funding and financial well-being of the district and there are multiple funds as you are aware of and you know uh capital mno all of these things play together as a whole package and you have to understand the whole to make decisions so that's one of the reasons why each meeting we will be bringing to you the the information with the
097background knowledge so that when you make decisions you can see the whole and understand how they're coming together and so again this is um i mean literally as we are building this plane as we're flying it as the as the flight pattern shifts midstream we are still in that we are still in that role we are not out of that yet and so i say this to you is we're bringing you everything we know as we know it with the caution like we started the beginning here with caution tape things may change but these there are some things here that when we're budgeting we're putting it in the rocks that we know at this moment that are certain so that we can make solid decisions as these evolve so thank you for your ongoing patience
098with us as we navigate through this financial conversations together over many meetings because this is a this is big and this is different and this is more complex than it has ever been in the history of finances in arizona is is challenging on a good and a good time and let alone in the middle of pandemic president reece and dr foley maybe this goes to somebody could please fill me in on a time frame in the process um you said it's going to be brought forward and i know contracts will be going out probably pretty soon um for us to have conversation and to take this to the next level i'm sorry for interrupting your your slideshow actually you're excited you're actually uh board member anderson you're segueing beautifully because we actually have a calendar
099here of what the timeline is so you are you are your question is is a nice segment oh thank you about the calendar which appears on page if you've got a hard copy the slide that you see here is the same slide that we are the same calendar that we have proposed to you since so this began along with the steps that we believe you need to take at certain places in this calendar to make sure that the planning and implementation of the budget for next year is done on a timely basis we we started out with talking to you about our current budget revision and you saw that again this evening and we're talking to you about the 2122 budget projection and you also saw that this evening in the powerpoint as we move
100forward there are going to be some other opportunities to talk about particularly the 2122 budget projection but what we're trying to head toward is to have your tentative approval not your final approval but your tenant of approval of the m o budget on the board meeting schedule for march 10th that would allow us to get contracts out hopefully ahead of most others and try to retain our recruit and retain the best that we can find so that's the first one um the second one that um we'll be discussing with you beginning on february 10 we're going to start injecting capital out the i need to get closer the capital outlay budget and the projected possible bond budget if you choose to have an election those preliminary will be in front of you in the first
101meeting in february they have a significant bearing on all kinds of things from textbook adoption to facilities to transfers from mno to capital all of that is mixed into that projection that we will be giving you and we we will have that revision or that subject discussed as you can see in number three on three different occasions 210 224 47 and leading up to the reason the 6 9 date is there it's not necessarily a board meeting dave it might be but it is there because that's the last available date that the board can call for a bond election for november so if you if you kind of step back and look at what is important to do between now and then i need to get a basic understanding of what we've been presenting and
102ask questions so that we can try to help you with those answers so that when you get to that point you can make a more intelligent decision about what you want to do so that's the calendar intent i know you've known that probably since we started early in this process so that that will be on the february 10th agenda and we would encourage you if you have questions about anything that we've talked about please call us we'll be happy to meet with you individually we can do that at any time that's convenient for you because i don't want us to get to the point where you know we can't meet some of these dates or at least make a decision relative to some of these states because we don't we just don't understand what some
103of this projection this stuff is all about so please let us know thank you for the time thank you i had one other question that i haven't seen in the presentation regarding budget is are additional curriculum adoptions and they're going to be president race those are our capital and those are going to be you're going to see those in when we bring you capital budget because that is from our capital and you will see a large amount there you'll see our sustaining amount you'll also see for our timeline along with our for our science adoption you'll see also things like uh for for musical instruments and those things so you're going to see in the next meeting and our shift to capital uh the stuff so emino we're talking about um salaries primarily salaries and
104in some cases because we were paying some capital out of mno that's why you've heard some discussion about capital so when we when we shift purely to the capital you will see where we're funding those and you can begin to see how we're anticipating also we're bringing the information as you remember you called for a study we're looking at our demographic study and you're also looking at a facility index we've also done our own priorities with our capital needs for repair for maintenance for textbooks for those things and we have two scenarios for you if we pass a bond what we do and our priorities how we fund things if we don't what what our priorities and needs are so that we truly if we were going to call for that bond election we know
105what we will be living with or without if we don't and how much it will cost us but in any case what we will have for you at the end of this presentation and we'll show you in just a moment the next slides that are what we'll be talking about at each meeting related to this but by the time you're done with this conversation on budget you will never want to talk about it again but we will have literally a five-year plan um on on what we're going to prioritize from from capital how we're going to fund things and what our budgets will look like from all those thoughts and funds of money so this is the year of the financial conversation and long-term planning uh as a board thank you yeah i just didn't
106see it in the line item and that's been a a big topic of discussion so i just wanted to make sure it is in that capital discussion so it is president yes uh thank you mr gad and mr moore i literally have been more um i don't know what the word is but i'm definitely more in tune to education funding in all the different pots i think in the last several months having you on board has really shown the details within the details i always kind of had a broad picture of education funding but you have really schooled us as a school board and i thank you so much for your time and really really digging deeper for us all of us here i'm not a numbers person i cannot help with fifth grade math
107so i appreciate all that you've um both shared with us tonight and the details in it really thank you appreciate that so president reese members of the board so here are so kind of the timeline of the last line is where we are today so we sort of started talking about we gave you a calendar uh to say hey warning we're going to be inundating you with with budget and really this has been a deep dive for us as we are learning and understanding what we have how we've spent things what the funding looks like that's different this year because of kovid with these additional grant stabilization funds there's again a lot of unknowns that are literally unfolding as we as we progress along here so we've been starting this conversation in november and if
108you hit the next slide you'll see basically every board meeting you are going to get more information and you'll see that we're going to start at the next first february meeting we're going to go deep into capital you're also going to get your third review of the mno budget so this is coming back to you again with any updated figures that have been given to us in the interim um you'll also see that on the fourth we're going to talk about those grants and the long-term budget and capital projects and what that means for us so that you have an understanding of what we have and what we anticipate our needs are from a maintenance standpoint from a from a from a priority must have to be really nice if we can do this um
109so that we have some information making decisions and plus it'll also help us tell the story when we go if we decide as a as a district and the governing board calls for an election we will clearly be able to say this is what we were going to be able to do and when we will do it um then you have the tenth would be our tentative approval of the budget where we would then be able to turn around and issue contracts we would like to be able to do that because we want people to be this is when we have historically issued contracts and this would be really nice for us to be able to keep with that timeline then you'll see that again in april we continue with that capital budget because again
110a lot of these things don't officially approve until later but we're going to keep talking about it so that we can make some decisions because again that date that that you must we must decide by the ninth so again virtually every meeting we will continue to talk more about the different funds and the plans and the priorities just one comment to add to what dr foley's already said if you look at this slide up here the april seventh date is the one that we would ask you for tentative approval but not of mmo but of capital the reason for that is it allows us to begin to do bidding and whatever else we need to do to order those things that you've approved in the capital budget and to have them available as much as
111possible before school starts you know if you wait until july i don't think you're going to make it so the reason here is you know we will label everything contingent upon the june 23rd date that's on this slide where you legally adopt the budget for next year but and and all of the purchase orders anything else that you would authorize us to do through that tentative approval we would make sure is stated to the vendor but the important thing here is to get an early start on buying things computers musical instruments whatever the subject might be so that as much of that as possible is available when school starts thank you that's what i was looking for was the hard lines um so i appreciate the layout of the day so i just want to
112know like if we have a board meeting we don't come to an agreement we need hard lines we need to make decisions and we don't um just thank you i just wasn't sure the process in general i appreciate this members of the board one of the things that you'll find too is that every week you were provided a superintendent's status report and one of the things you'll find is we'll give you some background information of of information we're looking into or quotes we're trying to find or information so that you know if you've got questions on any of those things please always feel free to email us to call us what we'll do is collect them and send them back in writing so that you all have the information but that way we can make
113sure that any questions you have along the way we're answering them and addressing them thank you i guess with that that concludes my presentation i was just gonna say you know mr moore i know that kind of came to an abrupt end for you and you're just you've been so gracious just sitting back there and you're just like but i'm not done so yes thank you i i know that feeling of i guess i'm done like mr gad said though if you have any questions on that and that's a very abbreviated formula and it gets very complex with all the moving pieces um but we're very confident in what we we presented today and and those numbers so um if you do have any questions feel free to reach out thank you and thank you
114for the level of detail i was going to say to mr moore welcome to higley i mean they just you know what we do is we put you right on the center and we have you start doing powerpoint presentations right out of the chute so good job all right if we don't have any other questions we'll move on to 8.6 the uh higley unified school district paid sick leave benefit due to the coven 19 pandemic miss martins good evening again president reese members of the board so our next topic tonight is to discuss the kova 19 paid sick leave benefit some of you might be aware or need a refresher that back in the spring the federal government enacted legislation called the family's first coronavirus recovery act also known as ffcra what many individuals probably
115didn't recall or realize at the time and it was from the onset of this legislation that it had an expiration date and that expiration date was december 31st 2020. many of us sat wondering in november and december would that extend and really didn't know but we started to have discussions not only internally but also externally with our colleagues from other school districts in the east valley what are you looking to do are you going to look to extend this how are you going to extend this um knowing that kova 19 has not gone away although we've had some progress in terms of vaccination there are other challenges that we're still going to have to meet in that process so in december we started to have more conversations when it was clear that it didn't look
116like there was going to be an extension when we came back from our winter break there was a lot of confusion because the federal government did extend the tax credit related to ffcra however what a lot of individuals didn't realize as a public agency we were not eligible for that tax credit so we never actually got a credit to begin with really kind of what we typically say that unfunded mandate we had to follow the legislation because it was federal law however there was no direct benefit to us financially other than the esser and other relief components that the governor has produced which really i suppose if you look at it could go towards anything that we feel is related to covid that we have to supplement in terms of expenses that we've had so
117as a result we've decided that in the best interest of our employees we needed to come back and ask for an extension of ffcra but really looking at it from the context of it's going to be higley unified school districts coveted 19 sick leave but you'll see on this if you are familiar with ffcra it's pretty much an exact copy with some slight modifications and i'll talk about some of those modifications so one of the things that we would like to look to do if the governing board approves this later tonight actually the action item will be after today's information session is that we would retroactively put this back to january 1st and then go until june 30th of 2021. if there's a need to look beyond that we'll have another discussion within leadership at
118the district level as well as at the site level to determine where we at in the status of covid and where we should go as there's probably likely going to be other things that will come up within the next six months for sure miss martens can i interrupt you just a second for our newer board members normally what we love to do is have our work studies um on items that are going to come later for a vote and so um and that's something that we we've mostly done throughout the last year very well so we have work studies on these kind of bigger topics that need further discussion and then later we have a vote this is a time sensitive item for our employees today so that is why it came this way tonight
119normally that's not how this happens but this is time sensitive and so i just wanted to clarify thank you for that clarification board member kayla that is accurate and we had one board meeting in december and it was early december we were still unsure of what was going to happen with the legislation and this month because of the board trainings we only have one board meeting and that's tonight so in discussion with cabinet and district leadership it was imperative that we had an action item as well as an information item tonight so you'll see a lot of similarities like i said because it's pretty much an exact copy of what the original legislation was but what we're looking to do is continue for our employees uh 80 hours of paid sick leave and or the
120equivalent of time for those individuals that are less than full time the stipulation that we have is that they have not already exhausted their emergency paid sick leave from when the bill was initially enacted until december 31st and or have not exhausted their extended family medical leave act we have about employees that have utilized the er stick is what we've been calling it for short here in the district and we've had probably about 39 employees approximately who have already exhausted the time so when you look at about 1500 employees that's actually not that great of an impact in the larger picture but as we know with our you know everything in the news our numbers and certainly the things that we're very cautious of we don't know how that's going to continue as time progresses
121so you'll see that that component of extending it with those stipulations and then you'll also see in the next bullet in regards to the fact that it's certainly based on their own diagnosis and or a diagnosis of the need to quarantine that again is not any different the next bullet also talks about the fact that any employee as of when we returned on january 4th up until now because hopefully the board will approve this tonight will get back any time that they have used to cover their illness related to covid in the meantime since our return and that's going back until january 4th through the 20th and we've been tracking it so it's easily identifiable for us in the system to go back and see who has utilized their own general leave and our vacation
122days to keep them in a paid status to go ahead and retroactively give them back that time and apply this new husd sick time next slide please so looking at additional details in relation to the benefits underneath this paid sick time there are sub-bullets that we have and again you'll see a lot of similarities so you'll see that it's in addition to the own individual employee we're also looking at items of whether or not they have to care for somebody else within their household so again subject to federal state local quarantine or isolation related to covid19 and that also applies with our own medical district nurse too if she is looking to tell somebody to isolate based on the new regulations that came out for guidelines i believe it was the first week we came
123back time is i can't believe it's january 20th already but the first week we came back as there were new implementation guidelines that came out that week so if they've been advised by any other healthcare provider to self-quarantine related to covid19 if they're seeking a medical diagnosis related to symptoms and or has symptoms of cova-19 again if they're caring for an individual that i said earlier within their household that fall within items one in two in terms of their own self-quarantine um or subject to somebody else in their household that they have to care for and or if their kyle pardon me their child care facility is closed and not available and you'll see that we added the stipulation of children under the age of three one thing i think is great that the district
124and i believe it was underneath our executive director ms sherry richard's idea but we created the leap program in which we have for our employees a child care service if our other surrounding districts that our employees kids attend to or on a hybrid station or hybrid rotation and or if they close for a period of time due to quarantine we have a program in which they could come and have some services at no cost to them however under the age of three is a little difficult um sometimes in relation to various components um and how young they are if you know for example we actually did have some employees in which their children were very young and their facilities closed and they had nowhere else to go so we felt it was important that we
125still offered that availability to them but anybody older the age of three we would have the leap services in which we could provide for those employees and then of course if anything happens both at the state or federal level that enacts something we would look to avoid this benefit and apply the legislation that they have if that's applicable i'll take any questions president reece mrs kaler i just think this is awesome that we put this together as quickly as possible i want to make sure that our teachers know that we are so um aware of this ffrca disappearing and how it is crucial that they have the benefits so i'm thankful that you brought this to us asap any other questions yes just a quick one i just want to clarify that waiting for a
126covet test um answer sorry i'm tired is is that's mandatory quarantine so those days will count or not not necessarily board member anderson okay so if they are non-symptomatic and they test it in their waiting they can return to work as an essential employee if they have symptoms and they are awaiting an answer and testing then they stay home and those would be subject to fall under these okay so exposed no symptoms but tested you're saying it's okay to go into work correct that is the guidance that we've received from the arizona department of health services and we continue to be consistent with everything that they have given us okay perfect thank you okay thank you miss martens with that we will go on to our action item 9.1 and i move that the board
127approves extending the paid sick leave benefits for employees for the time period of january 1st through june 30th 2021 subject to the how it was outlined in the presentation sorry second a second that motion you have a question oh okay i seconded it gotcha perfect anyone any other questions that have come up in the last okay all those in favor aye that motion carries five zero all right we will go on to item 9.2 i move that the that we approve the updated 2020 2021 certified performance pay plan second questions or comments mrs anderson um i don't know if this conversation applies now but how how does that affect as far as when they're looking at the evaluation how does that affect the teachers or how are they being evaluated if they're teaching online classes
128or if they're doing the physics and so on are they being evaluated in the same manner how does that affect this a very good question board member anderson so right before winter break not too long um a similar question came up i believe by a former governing board member mr glover and our instrument that we use here at the district is the strong strong with an e evaluation system and their pd coordinator sent us a guidance in regards to how we evaluate online instructors really evaluating very similar to how we're trying to do our in-person instructors because there hasn't been the ability for them to fully assess any different types of metrics and systems so we sent out that guidance to all of our qualified evaluators and asked if they had any questions thus far
129we've not heard any i have not heard any specific questions i don't know if mr lotzenheiser or mrs have heard anything from the various evaluators but at this time we were successfully able to do most of our phase one for those group teachers in which our evaluation one for our group teachers that fell within that category before the winter break so if anything else comes about and any other guidance that we get from strong we will certainly pass that along but we are trying to use the same seven standards that we had and you know trying to pop in where we can view syllabi making sure that we're looking at the class schedule and our students and making sure that they're engaged and you know having some of these conversations that hopefully will also prop
130us then for next year as we move to a fully online virtual academy any other questions all those in favor aye aye aye at motion carries five zero all right we will go on to 9.3 and i move that we approve the purchase of carpet and cubicles for phase two of the district office refresh project second who was that oh i'm like i hear it come from this side i just didn't know all right any questions comments regarding this item all right all those in favor i i motion carries five zero all right we will go on to nine point four and i move that we approved the additional williamsfield high school athletic center construction costs in in the amount of 361 341 dollars and 43 cents second all right all right any questions comments
131um how's our construction going gentlemen i would love a little quick update if possible you mr stengel for staying late president reece for board member taylor um struck construction is proceeding um not as quick as we'd like but um we haven't we've had a couple issues that we've had to work out we are looking forward to the um subgrade or um you know base of the floor being poured here in the next week or so and so we're in the rain well sorry don't jinx us here so in arizona it doesn't actually rain until it rains so but no we're we're we're appreciative of the support uh mr stengel has been attending all the meetings and and really helping us uh logistically with those details he gets the the credit too for for really um
132eyeballing those items and and really getting um excellent deals on all those items so uh we're we're anticipating um having this facility ready to use for the next school year and so that's um they continue to to let us have that date and so barring um some unforeseen thing um and we've got most of the info scenes out of the way so once they start building um usually things uh proceed uh fairly seamlessly mr stengel anything else you'd like to add okay might as well madam president members of the board today i was out with them today going over some plumbing items they're finishing the underground plumbing right now they were a little bit behind so i got with the foreman and and talked about the rain upcoming said how are we going to address
133this so they had four extra crews of plumbing contractors come out to make sure they got the underground plumbing done and got all the holes back filled uh before the rain the anticipated rain does come because that'll further delay the project next they'll do the underground electrical and as soon as they get all that approved and uh and signed off by the by the town uh then they'll go ahead and pour that slab and uh so they we anticipate them being back on schedule now because of sending in those additional crews so it was quite a beehive of activity today out there thank you my question comes again are we anticipating any other further costs that have not been presented at this time president reece um and board members um that is a great question
134um working with adolf peterson has been a little bit of a challenge um since this was a hard bid my recommendation in our future construction projects is that we use a cmar construction manager at risk which is a much fairer process and a process where we work together with the construction company we are doing everything in our power to not have any other costs um i can't um say for sure though that that's not going to be the case so i don't want to say yes and we're really working hard to get to that place but um i i'm afraid i can't guarantee that with this particular project but we're we're really working hard not to have any more increases but well i'm not necessarily talking about increases in cost of what they're doing but
135yes obviously the furniture wasn't included in that so is there anything else that we would be adding that would you're anticipating would come back i get if we have to and you know approve some increases because some costs no the only thing that i know right now that we're still working on when we um abandoned the because of it was really complicated to to demolish the 700 building um it maybe didn't look like much but there was a lot of important um information and data that was running to that building and so in fact the link from that building actually linked to the press box where we had fiber and and uh and connections and so that's a challenge that they were still working through um and so there's a possibility that there may be
136some costs related to to reconnecting that but in terms of the the furniture um what you see is what we're going to be working with and and just um in terms of construction projects as you go through each of the stages sometimes things come up that are unforeseen and so what i'm saying is i uh we're really working hard not to have any more things but when they're unforeseen they're unforeseen and so at this point the only thing that i'm aware of and enduro you can correct me that if there's anything else that we've talked about but we meet regularly with them and that's the only thing that that we might have an additional cost in terms of having to to re-run or possibly if we can't find that line that connects to the press
137box because it's important to connect to our network and with with the high-tech systems that we have and the ability to uh to not only stream that game but all those other connections are important and so that is one thing that we're working on right now and trying to resolve it with as little cost increase as possible is there any further electronics tvs monitors i mean that you want to have that we haven't talked about that technology within the um in the um athletic center is still a discussion um so so that that would have to bring back so there could still be some pending but it's it's not extensive as this is a locker room area so there's some coaches spaces but let me let me research that and i'll bring that and bring
138that back in a status update okay i'm just trying to we talked about this with the other things i'm just trying to think ahead and um so that we're i get we run into some snags and things like that but that we're not kind of piecing a project without knowing around about yes complete project so yes president reece mrs cannon i do i do remember saying that when we approved the construction that there was going to be these things coming so i do remember a conversation about the inside piece so um but again i i would appreciate us doing it right from the get-go especially when it comes to the technology and the communication piece and not skimp and then later have a have a bigger issue on our hands so thank you for just
139keeping those and i'm sure we'll see it in status on fridays too as things progress but i appreciate your time and cracking the whip on those employees to get it going president reese board member kayla yes thank you for that feedback and and i will continue to include those details in the status report um really it's been awful boring the last few weeks just because they've just been really as as mr stengel said working on the underground demolishing the building and those kind of things and so you know hopefully those updates will get more and more exciting as they start to actually you know finish the the the slab and start you know having the block go up and and some things and then then be able to start bringing board members to see what's
140going on and see the progress or bring some pictures to show some updates and so i'm looking forward to that so but thank you for your support president reece i would love to see pictures because i haven't seen i haven't been over there i've kind of quarantined a lot so it's a hole i'm assuming it's pretty flat like it was at football season but i have not been since yesterday i will take some pictures when you maybe get over there maybe a picture would be we'll do it it is still pretty boring but it will get exciting soon so thank you i appreciate it and i appreciate you dr fowler i know i i get on you a little bit and i just try and have a a full picture and um everything so um
141i appreciate you letting us know any other questions nope all right all those in favor aye aye all right that motion carries five zero all right we have our future agenda items obviously our budget's been laid out on some presentations and dates [Music] any other future agenda items for our new board our new board members um this is a time that if there is an item of interest that either we want information on we jot it down see when we can get it into an agenda if it needs to be an information item presented in a meeting a work study if it's something that can be put into a status report but these are areas of interest that we may need some more information on president reece i know we talked about this over the
142weekend and we talked about policy review and bringing that back into our dialogue per se and i'm just remembering policy review so i don't know dr foley how you want to handle that but ball is in your court well in and on piggybacking on that i learned a lot about um policy on policy committee of committee of the board and how that works and if we do a committee if the board creates or asks for that committee then it's it's a board meeting president reece vice president wilson members of the board absolutely talk about processes and procedures and how are we proceeding and one of the things you'll see is already we're going to be bringing even to our next board meeting there are some policies that need some revision immediately even once even including
143uh some policies we've recently approved so please stay tuned we'll do is do a process for how we're going to proceed and and bring policies for you you'll begin seeing them first read second read part and piece so we will provide a process for our policy review moving forward and i believe marijuana probably should be one that is reviewed pretty quickly since the legislative laws have changed on marijuana i know we worked in it a little bit but we probably just need to review that a little stronger maybe because everything's a little changed now vice president wilson that was actually a topic of conversation at the arizona school administrators meeting this last week when we were talking about what is asba coming out with new policies in regard to marijuana specifically yes um can i
144don't know if this is what you add but anything um upcoming for uh graduation ideas yes we will add that one of the things you will see in your status is we've even started a committee looking at several different options on that but what we can do is a presentation and update about graduation in the near future as soon as our committee has some um their fact finding and putting together some different proposal options for us as we prepare to be ready with options and we can present that anything else all right then we will move on i move that we adjourn second all in favor aye aye aye meeting is adjourned have a good night you