001well good evening I'd like to call this meeting to order Dr Thomasson roll call please president Kaylor please let the record show that we have all five board members in attendance in this very warm Arizona night can say that again we're going to pause for a moment of silence followed by the Pledge of Allegiance okay I move that we approve the agenda second any questions or concerns about the agenda all those in favor I I I motion carries 5 Z at this time the meeting will recess for the purpose of holding a public hearing on the proposed expenditure budget for the 2020 2021 school year in accordance with ar 15- 95-01 which means Gary Holland you are up good evening president Kaylor members of the board Dr Thomson cabinet tonight I have a short presentation
002for you to um bring back in the proposed budget that I for the 2021 school year and ask you to adopt it for this evening so there are many factors that must be taken into consideration when you're doing a budget development you first you look at your projected as student enrollment for the next year you look at your account balances and any carry forward monies that you estimate plus we we also have some state federal and local funds and we also have some tax levied monies that are built into our budget each year when we first started planning the budget for this next school year we had originally been projecting a 1% enrollment increase however due to covid we decided we needed to modify that budget and take a much more conservative approach because things
003continue to change frequently and it's much easier to add money to your budget than it is to subtract it also please know that we continue to search for any additional funding opportunities that may become available to help offset some of these additional expenses due to covid now as I mentioned a portion of our money comes from tax levied monies so there's always a question from our community as to what exactly is the tax rate going to look like for next year next slide please so for fy20 our primary tax rate was 3.8 86 our secondary tax rate was 3.19 for a total of 7.05 for fy21 are estimated it's just estimated at the moment because the county will set that tax rate in August so right now our primary tax rate is 3.72 and our
004secondary tax rate is 3.30 which is made up of two separate tax rates first we have our M override that um percentage is f 1.5 59 and when then we have our bonds at 1.71 for total estimated tax rate for fy21 to be 7.03 which you'll notice is a decrease of 0182 now um in 2017 the legislature had changed the process for calculating tax rates so now you must factor in the qualifying tax rate or the qtr as well as assessed evaluation so the qtr is a tax tax rate that is set by the jlbc to determine the local tax levy required before a district is eligible or Equalization assistance the qtr is adjusted annually based on an inverse relationship to the assessed evaluation for the entire State I.E if the Statewide um assess valuation
005goes down then the qtr will go up and vice versa so what has happened this year so the qtr went down because the Statewide valuation went up so there's more property to spread that value of the tax um cross uh the qtr went from 3.79 down to 3.67 the assessed valuation for Higley Community went up from 684 million to 743 million so there you have more value to again to spread that tax across our override was recently renewed so for another seven years starting July 1st and then the Bond as I mentioned that tax rate that rate is used to help cover The Debt Service payments schedules for our bonds next slide please next we have our calculation for our maintenance and operation or M budget so our Revenue control limit based off of our
006projected enrollment calculated out to be a little over 74 million our m&o override calculated out to be a little over 12 million we have a budget balance estimated carry forward of 3.5 and then higley's portion of the 75 million state land trust sale is estimated to be $812,500 million what you'll notice is an increase a little over $4.8 million from our fy20 revised budget also please keep in mind that our carryover amount may be larger um than the 3.5 however any um additional funding would be reflected of course in a budget revision sometime next year the additional 4.8 money excuse me $4.8 million would be used to help offset to cover some of the salary increases for staff for the next year as well as the additional positions that are needed we also are planning
007for and as I mentioned if we have a possible reduction in our ADM or student enrollment due to covid um and loss of Revenue that 4.8 would help cover some of that loss also I just want to keep in uh remind the governing board and the community that our override um is calculated based on using prior year ADM so when I talk about a 15% you you cannot take 15% of that RCL to come up with the 12 million so it's based on prior year next slide please so what's changed with base support which is the funding that the state um gives for school districts for students the base support level for fy20 was $422 31 for next year we had an inflation increase of 1.74% which calculated out to be $732 next you have
008the governor's 20 by2 which calculated out to be $842 for a total increase of $157 24 bringing the new base support level to $4 4,359 55 which is is an approximate 3.74 per pupil increase for fy21 next we have our average teacher salary information so our average teacher salar um for fy21 are estimated to be $ 59,2 the average teacher salary for FY y20 was $ 56,58 which is a $2,644 increase or 5% now if you'll notice in number five it talks about the average teacher salary for FY 2018 so Higley salaries at that time for teachers was estim average was 47,9 72 so compared from where we started to where we are now that is a 23% increase for our teacher salaries which which please note that is a 3% 3% higher than the
009governor's original 20 X20 plan next we have our unrestricted capital budget so our fy20 budget was a little over 24 million so far we've spent a little over 10.4 so we have an estimated carryover about 13.8 um every year because of the growing need for um Capital items here in the district and the lack of funding that we get from the state we move a portion of our um M budget over to meet that Capital need so this year unfortunately we're only able to move six million where in previous years we have were able to move seven and 10 respectively based off of our enrollment um excuse me the state has begun the process to restore the district additional Assistance or the daa uh over the next fiveyear period the anticipated daa formula um is
010to be fully restored by 2023 however so until then um our daa Cal for this year calculated out to be a little over $6 million the state will keep 15% of that so that's 93 93,500 and the district will receive the remaining 85% which is the little over $5.1 million you see on the screen bringing our capital budget it's a little over $24.9 million so again question well how are we going to utilize those funds well please keep in mind we do still have our Middle School lease payment which did increase again this next year uh we do have a plan for a curriculum adoption for science I believe we also have our it refresh and then of course standard Capital Improvements um or Transportation Replacements depending on on what comes up through the year
011and lastly please keep in mind we do still have our potential um adjacent ways audit finding next we have special education so the classification for all excuse me the total for all disability classifications is going to be little over 13.3 million gifted education would be 728 th000 you see elll incremental for 100,000 and elll compensatory for 72,000 and of course CTE for 210 bringing the that special category area for a total of $14.4 million for next year one thing I just want to remind the governing board and the the community that the state does not provide funding for gifted education so the district sets money aside every year for that particular program and those funds um come from our override so we thank our community again for giving us those additional funds to operate next
012we have our classroom site fund or our prop 301 we have an estimated carryover a little over 3.2 million we have $59,000 worth of interest that we've collected and we estimate our allocation to be a little over 6.3 million for next year bringing that total budget to be a little over 9.6 million I do get questions many times wondering why is that carry forward balance always so large well well in an effort to be fiscally um responsible and conservative the district tries to provide a small increase each year so being conservative helps us to be able to continue that on an annual basis the carry forward um has also helped us cover the additional cost for teachers and expenses which tend to increase each year also as you may recall in the previous legislative session
013Senate Bill 1390 was approved which will go into effect when the existing prop 31.6 sales tax expires on June 30th of 21 this Senate bill will continue to allow the Arizona districts the funding to continue providing additional Monies to our teachers until this bill was passed uh the future of prop 301 was uncertain so our classroom site funds are broken down or allocated into three different funds funds first you have fund 11 which is used for base salaries So 20% of that allocation goes into 11 each year as I mentioned we Tred to provide a small increase for our teachers so in fy20 that amount was ,550 and it is estimated to go to 1,600 for next year fund 12 is used for performance pay which is 40% of that allocation and that um performance
014PID will go from 3,400 last year to 3500 for next year and last we have fund 13 which is used for other and so that remaining 40% allocation does go to that particular fund that fund is used to help cover the cost for additional teachers um that which again as I mentioned do come up each year and um the remaining $1,600 will come out of that fund for our teachers for next year next we have some additional funds that we um always have to factor in for our budget and we're we appreciate right so our federal projects of course are determined by the federal program in Washington those funds of course are pro passed through the department of Ed and then out to the school districts um we have some new money this year which
015is the money from the cares act so our allocation for next year is a little over $657,000 next we have our instructional Improvement programs also known as Indian gaming so that budget is estimated to be $624,000 um and those funds are used for class size reduction also just wanted to remind the board that this is a cash controlled fund of course and so the second payment for 20 has not yet been received so when we do receive that additional um that final payment excuse me that too would be reflected in a future budget revision however please keep in mind that the inding gaming budget of course could change if the allocation goes down due to the loss of Revenue because of covid so what happens now tonight I ask you to accept the 2021 budget
016as I presented here this evening tomorrow our finance department will upload our budget information to the Arizone Department of Education and to the May Copa County School superintendent's office we will also take the um adopted budget and will post it on ad's website as well as the district's website as required by Statute any questions and Dr Thomasson you did not receive any um comments correct from the public on this President caylor members of the board we did open it up to public comment that individuals could put in through the website if they had looked on um for our board agenda or our board meetings are on District website and we did have no calls for public comment at this time thank you any questions or concerns for Mr Holland tried to make it short and
017sweet thank you so much for that we appreciate your time all right now I move that the governing board reconvene an open session second all those in favor I I motion carries 5 Z all right we are moving on to 4.1 upcoming events Dr Thomasson president klor members of the board uh starting on Monday July 27th we will start remote learning for our community so we'll have all students have an opportunity to start their educational experience uh online this year we know that's not the best thing but it's what we have available to us at this time due to Governor duy's educational orders so um on the 27th we start school on the 29th we have a governing board meeting for an update on how things are going so that governing board meeting will be
018right here at 5:00 p.m. in the boardroom that's the upcoming events thank you very much moving on to 5.1 any board comments I just have a one quick go ahead oh I'm sorry I've been watching um the Instagram getting to know you little things that hickley has been putting out about our principles and I just think they've been wonderful and I just wanted to thank Michelle ree because I know she's put a lot of time into making our websites really robust and I've just really enjoyed watching um all the principles tell a little about themselves and a little about their schools so thank you for that thank you Mrs Reese president Kaylor thank you I just wanted to um quickly address something that many people have contacted me about um I had several people contact
019me and ask me why I didn't sign the letter to the governor um or they thanked me for not signing the letter to the governor just to make it clear these individuals who did sign this letter signed as individuals and they are also elected board members but they're not permitted to sign in representation of a board or a district um and so explaining this as people have reached out to me that um they are board members of school districts but they choose to sign individually and that they don't sign on behalf of the district without board authorization to do so in order for someone to represent our district um in a board capacity in that fashion that um it would have to be in a public meeting they would have to um have a quorum
020and a vote for someone to rep represent the district or the board in a particular situation um some districts have done this and some districts have adopted resolutions for when they choose to start school um but for the most part they're individuals signing as individuals yes they are board members but um not necessarily representative of their um School District but as an individual so I had many people ask me about that it's a very um when we open schools when we go in person is a very controversial issue um nobody makes the decisions lightly and um so while yes over 100 board members did sign it it is individuals who are signing that are board members so um they're not necessarily they're District spokesperson or representative to do so so I wanted to clarify that
021I had like I said I had a lot of people reach out to me some again questioning why I didn't sign it it did not go to Every board member it was not sent out to every board member um and then on the other side of that I had many people who thanked me for not signing it so um it's not that I didn't sign it because out of choice it didn't come to every board member um while my choice would not not be to sign it but that would be a personal choice not on behalf of the district so I just I wanted to clarify that since I have received several calls texts emails about it so thank you thank you for your clarification on that any other comments okay we are moving on
022to consent agenda items I move that we approve consent agenda item 6.1 to 6.9 any any comments questions or concerns president Kaylor yes Mrs ree I do have sorry I just take notes um I do have some concerns on 6.7 uh it is just the first read um I have concerns of our policy removing the requirement of receipts um this is for staff reimbursement when they travel on behalf of the district District um it's no surprise to anybody that my thing is policy and procedure accountability um so I'm not sure um who's really handling this is if I know that Dr Thomas and we always submit our receipts so is that changing yes president ker members of the board I was asked to uh take a look at this and for a couple of different
023reasons uh one of the the instances is that individuals were having to keep and hold those receipts and turn those in a lot of individuals did lose those receipts and they weren't uh reimbursed for that also uh we can go two different ways you can it's it is uh perfectly uh okay by the standards of procurement to have the your per DM uh payment for for these expenses on that aspect so I did want to bring this to uh to the board and have the board have an opportunity to voice their concerns and choose a direction either way they wanted to go Mr Holland can answer more questions about that we do have um uh individuals that do spend a lot of time tracking down those receipts making those phone calls doing all that and
024I think U Mr Holland could you tell me the the cost difference between uh what we would have spent last year with receipts and then the perdum for the entire year we had that at one time so president Kaylor members of the board Dr Thomasson yes we did do um a review of all of our expenses last year being I guess the 189 school year and we compared to what the predum amount would have been versus what we paid out the difference that we found for that particular year was only was an $88,000 difference it wasn't that large of a of a difference um and the thought behind it was if it would ease some of the burden on staff to trying to keep up with these receipts um because the state does allow for
025a perdum allocation amount and so we would be adhering to the state's travel policy um what is that per DM for the state it varies depending on the location of where you're going and the time of year yeah so um president Kaylor so I'm totally in favor of this this makes such good sense what happens is is we we're sending these teachers away to these conferences and then they have to worry about you know am I spending like you know $2 more than I should so it just gives them the amount either ahead of time or afterwards for where they're going for that day and then they can spend it as they want and uh and not have to worry about keeping receipts I think a lot of times you have teachers coming back and
026just not bothering to turn stuff in or having a receipt this is easier and it's going to save you a lot of paperwork and time in trying to get those receipts you just you would know that so so and so is going on a trip on October 15th to Chicago here's their pum boom there's the check there's no it's just I think it's a huge time saer uh as well for uh your bookkeeping too do you find Mr Holland that the pums are fair um I find that they're not always high enough based on state but um it is the amount that that we have to adhere to the district can always go lower but they can never exceed the state's policy that make sense and so so the pum in reference is just not
027the food it's hotel and as well as the prum is just for food okay okay if you have incidental say for example you have taxi or any of those you still are required to have a receipt for that um if you uh your hotel is a completely separate amount and again that's based on your location and time of year that you where you're going um and then your mileage of course that rate is is set by our mileage rate which again is consistent with the state so it's just we're just talking per DM for food when I traveled with with the Community College we just did exactly what he so same thing we didn't do receipts on the food but hotels and Conference that all was the receipts yes okay makes sense and of course
028it always wasn't enough when we went to Chicago and this is only the first read that we're doing today so any other questions or concerns I actually think this is a great idea to save some paperwork um it varies on food I mean we know that you could eat at a festar restaurant or you can eat a McDonald's I mean you can make the decision once you get your check okay this is how we're going to divide it and they figure it out um I think it's a huge time saer so I do enjoy the fact that it would save our staff I would assume your office a lot of time so thank you we do have one only one travel person which is our same as our accounts payable person um so it does
029take she does spend quite a bit of time on having to review everybody's travel claim and all that and staff trying to track down um receipts typically unfortunately some staff will travel sometime early in the year and they save everything to the end of the year and so it does add an additional burden um to the staff and to the Lisa to try to get everything processed president K members of the board I would also like to bring up the fact that if you travel out of country some of those receipts are not in English and they have to be translated and that's a that's an undertaking in itself to to translate and then also figure out the uh the difference between dollars and Yen or dollars in the foreign exchange Mr Helen in reference
030to like the the time you said people sometimes turn them in six months or why don't we have something that says upon return on your trip you 60 days to submit if not you're out of luck I mean it's just there should be something written down that says I mean 60 days is plenty of time to it's just not has not been a decision that the board um a time frame that the board had set okay there's nothing in statute but thank you um I I have a couple questions or concerns uh 6.8 it was just really sad to read all the iPads list I don't know I just I that was sad to me I don't know if anybody else is mourning their loss but I sure am because I know what they were
031to us and what they brought to our middle schools when they opened and I don't know just having a little moment for my iPads okay and also um really excited about 6.9 I know we've gotten a lot of information on that and so thank you um Dr Foley for um getting that application in and all the team that work behind that I know it was a huge undertaking in such a short amount of time appreciate that and then um well I'll wait till after we vote but any other questions or concerns all those in favor I I I motion carries 5 Z and I just want to say welcome to Mrs Schwarz she's joining our family as our assistant vice principal so when we are all all back together we will look forward to uh
032meeting her so just wanted to say that all right now we are moving on to some action and information items thank you Curtis for keeping things going here um we have our um informational governing board monthly financial report any questions or concerns for Mr Holland okay so president KL please keep in mind that you will still have one additional financial report which will be classify or label the 13th month which is basically the clearing month for last school year and that's kind of when you'll see the final numbers of what was the results of 1920 great make sense yes okay thank you okay next is is an informational meeting um or informational item 7.2 and the Higgly Unified School District in conjunction with France Law Firm group will review information related to claims for damages
033associated with Jewel and electric cigarette litigation and a presentation related to the school district versus Jewel Labs will be presented to the school board and this is Mr William shinoff I did I say that correctly Mr William off is going to be presenting this to us tonight welcome president cayor members of the board I would welcome uh Mr William shanoff from the France Law Group to give us a presentation and um also too I'll be uh jumping in once in a while to let us know uh the aspects that have affected the Higley Unified School District as you know we've had some families and some concerns within our district for our vaping concerns for our middle schools and high schools Mr enough Madame President members of the board uh thank you very much for the
034opportunity to have me here tonight um again my name is William shinoff I'm an attorney with the France Law Group um I'm here today to talk about litigation I'm handling for over 90 school districts across the country against Jewel apps I'm already representing school districts in Arizona and I'm here to talk to you about the opportunity for higgy to get involved in this litigation that's already ongoing a little bit about myself uh prior to joining the France Law Group uh I myself was an education law attorney uh in Southern California uh representing school districts uh throughout throughout uh as general counsel and also as litigation councel uh and at the end of my tenure uh I saw this increasing growth uh with the use of vaping in middle schools high schools and unfortunately even in
035elementary school and so what we've gone to to this point is I'm going to go is how we've gotten to the point of getting to litigation next slide what we've done is in the past school districts worked very hard on decreasing tobacco use uh with students uh and unfortunately due to Jewel labs and other companies uh this trend has now uh Gone upside down all the work that was put into it uh has has gone in reverse and as you can see uh between 2011 and 2015 uh ecigarette use among High School Middle School students increased by 900% uh and even between the year 2017 and 2018 uh the in it increased 78% from 11.7% of high schoolers to 20.8% of high school U and also during that same time there was an increase in
036middle schoolers uh of 48% uh as you can tell uh in 2018 4.9 million middle and high school students use tobacco products and 3.6 million of those were using ecigarettes so ecigarettes have become the new tobac has become the new cigarette and that is what this company's whole idea was was to move the consumer from cigarettes to their product and what I'm going to talk to you about is the fact of how they did that by talking about their product being safer and unfortunately their intentional and deceptive marketing the youth next slide uh the director of the CDC has talked about exactly what I said uh that all the work that was put into uh and decreasing tobacco use is now putting a new generation of Youth at risk for nicotine in next slide juel
037who is the main defendant in this lawsuit they are a company That Grew From a doctoral study project at Stanford University by two young men to now a $32 billion company in less than eight years uh they now control 82% of the market and with different restrictions going in place there are other companies that are coming in uh but they themselves are the major component uh to this based on what they did in their their different marketing practices um um as the slide shows uh from two 2015 and now uh there their control of the market has increased and in 2017 alone they generated over $224 million in retail and then in 2018 they sold $ 9426 million in their product can you go next slide now the reason a big part of their success
038was because because of the innovation of their product uh the big issue that they knew with cigarettes and why people were limited to the amount of cigarettes they used was from the hit that you would get from smoking cigarettes and the the throat burn and so what they did is they invented an what's called nicotine salts that's in their pot what that did was that eliminated the hit uh from the from the inhalation and so there wasn't that throat burn and so what they've now done is the ability to use their product a lot and what we've now learned is that their product actually contains 10 times the amount of nicotine and a cigarette and as we all know nicotine is highly highly addictive and also on this chart you'll see some of the different
039flavors of their product and how they intentionally uh made it interesting to children they had they have flavors such as fruit medy creme brulee uh snake oil Snow White I everything to kind of be attractive and to uh be focused on children but at the same time they'll tell you that they had no intention ever to sell their product to a child next slide now based on their dominance of the market and uh from school districts to the police the government then got involved because of the the ep the youth vaping epidemic that they were seeing so in February 2018 the FDA sent a letter to juul expressing the concern about the popularity of its product among Youth and demanding that juel uh produced documents regarding its marketing practices because they were trying to get
040to the bottom of why are we seeing such a high use of of this product in children uh as of October 2019 uh not only the FDA are investigating them but also the Federal Trade Commission U multiple state attorney generals and the US House of Representatives uh at this point what we have seen through those investigations is exactly what we thought was going they went and took the marketing scheme of big tobacco and modernizing so they went and they're using social media uh influencers uh they're buying airtime on Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network and they'll tell us again we had zero atten intention of trying to market the youth but when you're when you're buying commercial time on Nickelodeon in Cartoon Network I don't know who else you're trying to attract and then on September 9th
0412019 uh the FDA warrn Jewel that has violated federal law by making unauthorized representations that Jewel products are safer than cigarettes because their whole slogan was the safer alternative and next slide and now we get to the point of what their actions have done we now have children who are addicted to their product because they thought it was so cool that it was safe but if you go and you speak to kids about this product 95% of them have no clue what's in it they have no clue what the effect is and what they don't understand is that the real reason they're using this product all the time is they're addicted and they don't know how to get over that issue next slide now it's come to the point of who is this affecting so
042it's not only affecting the kids health but it's also affecting School District and that's why I'm here today to go and discuss what school districts can do going forward uh to help the kids in this community now school districts have this interesting blend of how they not only educating protecting you're responsible for the children while they're on campus and to not only educate them through books but also through their community and president Kaylor um members of the board this is where higler Unified School District enters the the picture we know that this year we've seen an abundance of use and students uh discipline due to vaping in our classrooms and in our schools and in our restrooms for the Higley Unified School District we know that each of our middle schools and high schools have
043had to add administrative Personnel to help deal with some of the disciplinary issues caused by vaping within our school district we've also had to put in cameras we've also had to put in extra um sensors in the bathroom that we've been trying out on a on a basis to see if they're working so this is where the actual real cost to our school district is taken into account just the administrative cost alone and time in dealing with disciplinary issues for Vaping within our schools has been an issue not to mention the harm it has done to our community and to our students we've been here in this boardroom and seen parents come to us begging for school support and school resources to be utilized to help us deal with this issue so this is where
044Higley enters the scene thank you I have a quick question um has our elementaries been affected by this we've heard a lot about middle schools and high schools I've never heard Elementary um president Kayla members of the board we do have a few instances where students within the elementary school system have resteemed disciplinary referrals for uh vaping paraphernalia within the campus thank you next slide as superintendent just stated Jew Jewel use on campus has now added another category to the teachers and administrators now they're having to spend time not only trying to educate students but also try to police this use because the way that the product was created it can be used anywhere with without really being taught you know we have kids using it in the bathroom they now call these Jewel rooms
045they now they're able to use it in the hallway and unfortunately they're even using it in the classroom because teacher can turn their back they'll do it become a game and so it's become a a substantial disruption to the learning environment and these are why the school districts are dealing with this in a very unique way of how they've been harmed next slide now districts are now having to divert resources so you're now having to come up with money out of your general fund to deal with putting in these sensors putting in cameras having to deal with are you going to have to do deal with education of the students money and resources that could have been used for something else now having to defert it and that's that's part of the unique situation that
046school districts are are part of this litigation next slide now many school districts across the country have also shifted how they are trying to deal with this uh instead of automatic discipline they're they're changing their policies they're changing procedures are they going to be doing intervention of trying to rehabil itate instead of discipline and there's a lot of time and resources that are being spent by districts I even saw that your District uh has already amended Ford policy jcj to include uh electronic cigarettes and vaping to your tobacco policy and how how you you've already taken that next step and you've already taken the steps to uh put in cameras put in put in Smoke the uh baap detectors next slide and in this talks about exactly what districts across the country are doing uh
047as as a superintendent said you fall within many of these categories of what districts have done uh some districts are putting in cameras near the restroom to be able to see uh people vaping uh they're they're adding The Vape detectors uh some districts are going as far as removing bathroom doors uh because it's becoming such an issue next slide uh and as I said vaping has become a disruption to the learning environment and um I I hear stories not only about The Vaping in the classroom but I'm also hearing stories about kids not wanting to even go to the bathroom at school because they don't want to be around uh The Vape they don't want to be caught in that bathroom when it's going on and it's it's changed the way uh schools are run
048unfortunately next slide in this this brings to what we are trying to do in this litigation and that's to be able to not only number one hold Jewel and other companies accountable for what they've done but also be able to provide your District the resources to be able to deal with this necessarily in the future so in this litigation it's threefold uh monetarily of what we're going to be getting for your District uh first is to be able to recoup any costs uh or time that you've put into dealing with this vaping issue so as the superintendent said you've already put in money into putting in Vape detectors you've already put in money into uh cameras uh you've you're dealing with uh discipline and adding hiring extra staff those are actual damages your district has
049already suffered that will be claiming as damages for you to go and recoup then we're what we're also going to be doing is future looking forward to of what you will need in the future because this is not an issue that's going away and it's not fair for you to have to go and decide whether we're going to be able to hire more teachers because we need to go and shift funds to be able to go put in more vape detectors or more cameras so we're also going to be looking forward to see how much you you would need to go and put in Vape detectors in all of your bathrooms to add more cameras to add extra staff that would be necessary in order to deal with this issue in the future so that's
050part of this case of what we're doing what we're also what we're also going to be doing is uh getting funds for education education is probably one of the most important things that we can do to deal with this issue because there is this Gap now that these companies have created uh through their their deceptive marketing and so what what we will be doing is getting your District the funds necessary in order to put on these programs in the future and so with analyzing the numbers that they are currently at and seeing the spike in the high usage what our experts have already told us is that in order to get the numbers back to where they were prior to juel going on this rampant marketing campaign that we should get your district 10 years
051worth of funding to put on these educational programs and so we we will do that we will be making that demand in this case because that we've already seen through education for districts that I that I work with they've already seen that that is help we know that that that will help and so what my firm is offering for our clients is while this litigation is ongoing uh we already have put a panel of experts together uh that will present to the students and the parents in the harms of vaping at no cost to the district so at least we can start this education process now and not wait for uh recovery in this case in in addition to uh the educational aspect we'll also be providing the ability for re provide resources to your
052students if they feel as though we've already put a network together of doctors and other professionals who can help these students if necessary to deal with any issues of nicotine addiction or any other harm that they've done so we can provide that resource to them without them having to uh do their own research and deal with the other aspect of this case that's not monetary is the social justice aspect this case uh you as board members are leaders of the community leaders of the district um uh and what this case also does is holding juwel accountable and protecting the students of your community and so we're we're doing that in this litigation uh by seeking an injunction on their marketing making sure that they can they stop doing what they're doing of targeting children because
053we're seeing the after effects of what they've done and we want to make sure that there's a there is an order from the court saying exactly what they can and cannot do going forward as they did in big tobacco 20 years ago which was successful next slide uh this goes over again uh the different damages the districts are s suffering from uh so not only do you have the issue of monetary but also with the the health issues related to vaping we're now seeing student absence we're now seeing the the the health effects and them not being able to come to school and the social and emotional issues also that come along with nicotine addiction uh is just another example of the issues that are created uh through the students and how it's harming the
054learning environment next slide and again this goes over uh how how we're here to help you so the way this will work is once the board approves our contingency fee agreement we would file the lawsuit on behalf of the school district this is this is a unique case because this is a what we would call a type of class action uh it will not be your District alone versus Jewel what happens is we would file your case in federal court and your case would then be transferred over to uh the federal court in San Francisco with the rest of the school districts across the country and we all together uh work as a team against these the the companies that we are in this case against and we litigate it together but for purposes of
055uh recovery at the end it's done individually it's not done uh through some Global uh you know small amount that you would get at the end you would actually be able to recover the specific amount that we've shown that you you've suffered through this and that you will need in the future uh by also we will be litigating this matter on behalf of the district we'll be working on uh motions Discovery and if necessary uh trial uh throughout this litigation we will will be providing regular updates to the board uh to let you know what's going on uh to kind of provide you where we are in this litigation and as I said we're going to be recouping past and future costs uh to the district related to Jewel jeweles vaping epidemic and we will
056provide you with uh the educational programs uh if you so wish to take advantage next slide and this goes over a little bit of the background of my firm term and uh some of uh our representation and our results um which you can see uh but I want to provide the opportunity to answer any questions you may have at this time question number one um how much time or man hours is it on our end for our employees to get the information you need and then from that is that kind of how you come up with the dollar amount for specific speically just Higley how does that how much time is involved in that that's a good question um as I said this is not like normal litigation uh so what's important for me is
057getting what will happen is at some point there will be what's called a discovery questionnaire uh provided by the other side for me to get information from my district clients I will then work work with your District uh to get that specific information related to your district and that will help us also be able to determine your damages but what I can tell you based on uh my experience of already working with other districts that are the same size of years uh that the max amount of uh staff time would be between 8 to 10 hours in total of this litigation provide me the information I need um also with this case because of how it's litigated there will be minimal document production uh because as you're aware the majority of evidence we will have
058is going to be Student Records which we're not turning over uh but what's important that we show is exactly board policy showing that you've changed your board policies show any invoices of any of any cost you've incurred and then we'll work with your administrators to to try to figure out uh man hours uh that have been put into to dealing with this issue in the past and we have our own experts who will go and put a cost to that and also be a we have experts in place place look in to your needs for the future um so also as part of this litigation there's no depositions so there's not going to be uh your your staff having to go get prepared for deposition sit for deposition um and also what ends up happening
059in these types of cases is if this case doesn't resolve uh the judge has already said that he wants to see a trial by next summer uh they do what's called a bellweather trial uh which is a sample trial to give the defendants an opportunity to see what it would be like to go to trial on these cases they have the right to go to trial on every one of these cases um and so what happens is one of the school districts will volunteer it's a volunteer basis it's up to the district if that's what they want to do and they will be the sample trial that would go forward that District the administrator would probably be deposed there might be a couple other staff members deposed but again that's voluntary and that would obviously
060increase the staff and you mentioned 90 school districts are already on board with this and how many are from Arizona uh I represent over 90 school districts there's probably around 150 school districts already involved in this litigation um there is seven school districts I'm sorry six school districts in Arizona already involved and there's I'm going to be presenting to more in the next two months board members any other questions concerns president Kaylor yes Mrs ree so I was just reviewing the file that we have um and seeing the cost of representation um and I also see that that percentage changes after December 31st um from a time frame standpoint given our situation covid things falling behind what is the likelihood that recovery would be done before December 31st it dep it depends where we are
061in the litigation but I think what's you brought up I want to talk about the cost of the litigation there is no cost to the district to be involved in this litigation uh we don't work hourly we don't ask for a retainer uh we we only are paid our fees if the district recovers anything financially uh and where we have a percentage of that and what I can also tell you is that normally plaintive litigation our normal percentage would be 40% but what we've done is we've cut our our fee to the structure of if it resolves before December 31 uh it would be 20% and any time thereafter no matter how long it takes it's 25% uh it the case has already been L has been going on for for quite some time so
062there is the chance that that it there could be some sort of resolution before December 31 M I really can't guarantee um I can't guarantee that but that that is the timeline so I can't tell you for sure and as you're seeing courts are also having delays uh with that but what this judge has done is he's not been allowing this to been a delay he's been putting uh his foot on the pedal on this case he finds it to be disturbing and very concerning about this case so he this case really hasn't been slowed down uh which is good uh so there there is that possibility I can thank you Mr shof because of the budgetary constraints of the district we've had a lot more things that we've wanted to do that we couldn't
063afford would that be taken into account and would we be able to put some of those measures in place yes that I mean that that's the purpose of this we would go and we would look in the needs what does your this specific District needs and that's why this case is unique and that it's not a class action where we look at as everyone just the same we look at each one of our districts individually and look at their specific situations and look at their needs and that's the important aspect of our interaction with the administration to look at what your specific needs are and making sure that we make make sure that it's supported with the information that we need when we go and present it the other side so if there's a a
064school district out there that's doing an incredible job on addressing this this issue and there's quite a bit of cost reference to that if we wanted to duplicate that is there something here that can help us to to absorb those costs to bring that program to what these other districts are doing up there how does that work sorry can you say that again I really couldn't hear you say there's a district across the country that's doing got it okay and they're really addressing this issue but it it costs x amount of dollars and and we're down here because we can't afford to be up here is there any money available to us through this for us to bring us up you know if there's a program working across the country are all these school districts
065going to be able to have access and bring their programs up to this there there are different organizations that are out there that we will work with your staff on getting them involved with that are having grants in other in other deeds in in California I know that there's been budgets put out by the state to provide extra funding we'll look into that with Arizona but we also we also have connections with different organizations that are helping school districts with providing other resources president K uh so thanks for coming I uh I look forward to I'm totally in support of this I've read everything that has been sent to us um so I look forward to I hope that we can vote on a board to to move forward on that as soon as possible
066so thank you for being here and thank you for doing this I think it's important thank you I too want to thank you for coming um I know we've had Parents up here talking to us I know in this situation we don't um but we've had parents that come in and tell us that their kids are addicted to this stuff and that you know it's been affecting their lives and their daily activity and that we need to do more and honestly we've been trying and I'm thankful that there's more that we can do so thank you for coming yes president Kayer members of the board um we've also been working on this for the last three or four months too and before um M Mrs Goods retirement she did review the contracts and did make
067some changes to the contracts with the law firm so I just want to let you know know that this is something that we have been working on for the last three or four months I guess my only other question is why wouldn't a school district sign up on this why why why wouldn't we I guess is the question I have and why haven't dist like I would think every District if it would sign up so I just kind of want to know Playing devil's advocate a little bit president Kaylor members of the board um the the fritz Law Group is not the only law group that has come to us and ask us to sign on with them we've had three or four but taking a look at the different opportunities the cost the structure
068um what's best for students the ability for them to come in and start working right now on a prevention program was what led me to look at this lawsuit more closely than some of the others so it was the whole package of the different companies there you can find a couple of other uh groups and associations that are also uh moving forward with some of the some of the issues against juel and some of the other companies but when you take a look at the whole picture the cost structure and everything that's what led me torch this company thank you any other questions is there any other companies we should be going after not just Jewel what yes okay I'm like I think that there's more than one I mean I'm kind of not okay
069and that's what we're working on right now uh there's a newer company you're seeing called puffbar uh who's kind of come in to replace juel because juel has taken the flavors off the market which they're going to bring back on uh and so we are looking into these other companies um but what we do know now is what juel has done and we have started looking into other people that worked with juel on their marketing campaigns uh you're going to see uh companies like Walmart you're going to see companies like 7-Eleven uh how they work together with duel on their marketing uh and how that's done but there there will be others brought in uh the investigation is still going on through this case and they will be brought into the case if we can
070find information to support uh our claims thank you okay so moving forward this would have to come back to our um board for a vote is that correct Dr Thomasson yes president C members of the board um it has been the process that we like to bring you an information item too and then to vote on it for the next board meeting and so I will be bringing this back on the 29th for the board board to uh officially um make a decision on whether we want to move forward with this I thank you for making the truck out to hot Arizona I see your business card I would rather be in San Diego right now I mean come on so thanks for putting up with the Heat giving us this information our students are
071very valuable to us and I know that we have all had um interactions with vaping Andor our parent here or whatever it was so thank you for doing this thank you all very much for your time okay safe travels next up we have our update 7.3 on the reopening of schools and this will be the Dr Foley show president Kaylor members of the board good evening um so we are here tonight to provide some updates for you uh like version 100.2 or whatever something like that um feels like it um uh updates so that we can share with you some information that was also shared with families this afternoon and talk about some real specific things before we start talking about the logistics and some updates and some clarification of a few things um we
072want to kind of say thank you for a second um you can next slide we want we we we as District administration Express huge thanks to our families to our students to our employees our teachers and our leaders who are working diligently or waiting for information as we try and figure this out as things continue to change we are working around the clock to get information to you our teams are working around the clock and virtually in in most cases at all at this time um and we also recognize the collective sacrifices that are that are here and again we're providing tonight an update of our details to the very best of our ability at this point knowing that there are lots of um there are other ways we wish we could bring other ways
073we wish we could make this happen um at this point so and we also caution um that there are still changes that may come as as updates uh from authorities continue to be provided to us and we're going to talk about that a little bit tonight and we're going to give some specifics as well so next slide please we want to make you aware of some things that have already happened this week as we prepare for back to school so this is an exciting time we've talked about opportunities and challenges and mindset is going to be huge this year so we officially did our kickoff to our administ ative Retreat uh on Monday morning virtually with the theme song Under Pressure and our our our our visual this year is how we're going to take
074coal and make diamonds of opportunities and challenges and so that's kind of the theme our leaders have been working on and they have been part of let's put it this way no beginning of school year has required such coordination and common thinking and planning together remotely and on the phone and at all hours of the night and so that's important the other thing that we welcome today is our brand new teachers virtually we we I have to tell you your team of instructional coaches Matt EGU and and Kim dods um the gifted uh assistant director reworked retooled and rebuilt our new teacher orientation we we created at a blended approach uh anticipating you know nothing like learning how to use a tool you'll be using to teach than to be a student in it and
075we have have retooled that program to create a virtual experience and we are we were are proud to share that our our new teacher orientation today went about as smooth as it possibly could virtual style um as we are training them on how to prepare to start teaching in the tool that they are learning about our district in so another cool thing is that we now have our um our our Retreat our new teacher orientation so whenever we hire teachers it is all now available virtual at any point in any time so uh again we'll talk about a couple of virtual events that are going to that have been modified or changed here Mr Laten Heiser president Kaylor members of the board uh we've had to make some changes to the calendar for rolling out
076information to our students so you'll notice that Blackhawk and Kingdom days were moved they were supposed to start today in an in-person format and they've moved virtually this year uh starting on the 20th part of that also was in Du that we have the Kev group coming in so we have our online payment options we practiced that today to be ready for the 20th so that parents have that availability to pay fees and different things like that uh online when they receive their schedules and another reason why we needed to move it is to give us more time to work with schedules and how we could do and roll that out and so thank you to the high school staffs for their uh commitment to the detail of that and moving that virtually we do
077have our teachers reporting on the 21st once again in a virtual format and so um the the princip have been working very hard to give up and sacrifice some of the traditions of starting school and so when we talked about sacrifices earlier these are Big sacrifices because a lot of times we want to have those big meetings in person the Rah R let's kick off the year things and they'll be doing those virtually and managing the trainings virtually this year and then we've maintained the consistency of the middle school schedules uh being released on July 22nd uh for the anticipation of the start of school on 27th remotely uh Mr lotson Heiser so does that mean on so on July 20th after the parents pay their fees is that it used to be that we
078would have to stand in line pay our fees and then pick up our schedule so do we pay our fees and then parent view the schedules go live is that how this is actually we're going to rearrange the order on that and so we might be chasing fees a little bit more than requiring them ahead of time we're going to roll it out so that they see their schedules I think with the ability to do but virtually we can't turn you off and then turn you on depending on how you pay I was wondering if they talk to each other or not but no instead we're going to release the schedules and and in some ways that helps a little bit because if a kid wants to change classes and might have a new class
079that has a fee or he moves a class that doesn't have a fee we're not going to have that misinformation they're going to know there's anything online though is better than standing in line for three hours so we are grateful for ke group to be rolled out and they'll also be able to do their um parking pass and all that online correct uh we they can pay for it online we'll still have processes once we're able to open the schools again obviously we don't need parking yet but once we once we get I know that is a big question because that is why everyone stands in line for three hours of Higley to make sure you have that little but also higgle opened up more parking spots here in the district office so we've had
080a lot more a lot less of that headache last year mid year I think we did that or towards the beginning of the year we did that but I did want to make sure that that will be handled appropriately online yes you'll be able to pay for those online but still turn in the forms and just you a side note I did hear little bird tell me too that on Sports fees when we go on Kev group it can be tax credit or not tax credit and you pick and that was very important to a lot of parents this past year so thank you for that too okay president Kaylor members of the board on the elementary side of things we've had an exciting week 6 hours of talking to each other through teams meetings
081not all at once but over the past three days so I want to compliment my group of principles assistant principles and R1 Dean because everybody jumped in and problem solved together so meet the teacher will be virtual principales will send a welcome video on the 22nd they will find out their teacher is assignments at 5:00 p.m. on the 22nd on the 23rd the teachers will send out their welcome video and they will highlight you know their classroom canvas how to sign up the following day for live sessions with their teachers and they're going to give the parents and kids a homework activity in canvas so they'll learn all about it right then so we're excited about that and it's a new learning opportunity Mrs Richards so on the 23rd is it a certain time that
082that teacher is going to go live they're going to send it out at 4:00 p.m. okay but the 23rd isn't live the 24th will be live we were a little scared that if we all went live at the same time our technology might go wonky and people people couldn't get in so on the 24th the live sessions are little mini sessions for like groups of five parents at a time so fingers crossed that works we've really um gotten creative in education yes we have thank you thank you for that Richards and what time are those live session supposed to take place they're going to sign up through um what it my brain to swim sign of genius and so they'll be five time slots they'll make sure they get them all in so it'll be
083throughout the day so like two and a half hours of time usually is there evening slots available um at this time they were going to try to put them in the day but you know on Monday they're going to offer oneon-one sessions if they need to as well okay because we have to remember all our kids are not in school parents are working and so we our meet the teachers have been typically in the evenings so parents can get there and if although we're virtual if we're doing it during the day we we have to be cognizant of yeah that's great those families who are still working so so I'll pass that on because they could put possibly put that on Friday is another time slot so thank you thank you so I know that
084many of you have um have expressed um what is an update for our Athletics and our summer activities um to be opening again and so I just wanted to give you a brief uh summary of what's Happening uh we have met with the high school administrators in the athletic directors and the principles and talked about our process and looking at what we're going to do with these uh athlet and people in activities starting this summer and so as of right now currently ours are suspended but the plan is that we will look at resuming once again and we need to emphasize this heavily on a voluntary basis coming in on Monday July 20th and so that is next Monday we we need to emphasize that this these are optional activities for students to be on
085they're not mandatory practices and parents will have that ability to make a choice whether they feel comfortable for themselves to have their students participate or not and you know an heavy emphasis is being placed with coaches and with uh directors saying that there are not going to be penalties for kids missing that is a choice and these are some are activities once again voluntary and optional are two words that we're using quite often we will continue to follow the uh guidelines that the district had put in place starting in early June about what happens when a student comes to practice and what are the guidelines that are allowed them to participate and we are going to be what's it called stage two and the reason we're at stage two is that's where we left off
086of out outside groups are going to be at 50 or less so that we can have space interior groups are going to be at 25 or less mask will be required to and from coming to it depending on the activity as much as we can to wear masks that we will temperatures will be taken uh parents will be asked to provide or and students to this is where I'm at with my own health and then we're going to record that information one of the important things for us to continue looking at how we address this issue is maintaining the information that we have from our campuses in terms of ins idents in terms of how many students are involved and how we can continue to check and so when the question is asked what data
087are you going to look for starting when we come back on the 20th we're going to look at that specific data that's going to be within our own people coming onto our campuses maintained by our coaches and directors and going through our athletic directors additionally we're going to follow models that are consistent with most of what the East Valley is doing being in communication with other District athletic directors I know that a lot of our peers are planning to open once again on the 20 and talking with Gilbert and talking with Mesa and part of Chandler as well and so when I think I look at that we're being very consistent about what's happening within the East Valley in general and um I know the question has come up due to some um publicity about
088whether bands are going to be allowed I I think that Athletics and bands go hand inand and so when we take a look at what happens with our band programs specifically I've had many conversations with Mr Edgar at williamsfield about how he has incorporated health and safety standards within what he does and the opportunities provided for kidss I'm more than comfortable in saying that he will be tracking the exact same data and we'll be all part of the same uh database when we're looking to allow for students and people to come back once again on a very voluntary basis and and why now I think is a question that people asked because last week we made the decision that we were going to suspend for a continual week but why now we're coming up to
089some deadlines unfortunately in terms of how we prepare our athletes and our activities for competition we can't expect for our student students to walk in on August 17th provided we're open and be full board ready to go knowing that we're going to have competitions the first week of September uh with the current guidance that's coming out from the AIA they need time to acclimate and that's why the summer things are so important for them in order to be prepared to come back and and to do that so yes we are offering those opportunities on our campus on a voluntary basis and going through that and I I do want to thank our High School principles and athletic directors and meeting with Mr stangle and Mr D about this and the confidence that we have in
090order to follow these procedures that we've all put in place uh we feel comfortable that this is the right move looking forward to reopening activities and Athletics uh Summers on July 20th which is Monday do have some questions I'm extremely nervous this with where you're going with this um my concern is um Arizona you're looking at other school districts here in in the state Arizona is not the leader in this country in reference to addressing this this virus that's taking place um I feel like I feel like almost like in Arizona here we like the orchestra on the Titanic and it's sinking and the conductor keeps telling us to play and the orchestra we keep telling I hear water that's where weat here okay and and um I I'm just really really concerned that um
091especially with the music program and things like that there there's virtual choirs there's virtual ban I mean there's it's it's pretty incredible what's taking place across this country um for the safety of our children and um I really don't want us to to um use our teachers and our students as a commodity for economics okay we're human beings and I want us to be safe and um my other concern is is the training okay you're you're telling me okay the coach is going to looking out for these students so and so who's training them okay and how are we even addressing this and what's going to happen if some of these positive and I mean who's making sure the tables are wiped in the gym and and the band instruments are cleaned this is this
092is huge and I mean if we don't have a set procedure at each school like this is what's going to happen at this school this is going to the in instrument is going to be clean the students are going to be apart from each other this is going to be a free-for-all here I can see and I'm extremely nervous and I'd like this to be known know that me that myself as a board member this evening I'm extremely nervous as far as where we're going with this and again it is voluntary at this time even when schools resume July 27th our schools are technically closed so anybody that wants to participate if a sport opens up later on and the schools open they would still be a part of that sport is that is that
093what I'm understanding that is correct these are voluntary uh things that are happening right now and there will not be penalties for students and families who say that they um are making the choice not to have their uh children participate thank you for that clarification Mrs ree I'm just going to assume that this is also at the request of our coaches our directors that we're not telling them you need to go out and do this that they're requesting that this happens so we're not directing our coaches our directors if they're not comfortable doing practice or whatever it may be then yeah we're not telling them they have to they're asking in no in no way shape or form are we requiring any of this and uh many of our coaches and directors are are looking
094forward to that sense of normaly and being around kids who want to be around them and the different literature that we were reading a lot has to do with the social emotional Warfare of our students and the isolation that they've been feeling and how Sports and activities can allow a reduction of that and and quite honestly we were getting feedback we get feedback on both sides of this from our community and that uh a lot of the feedback that I've gotten recently has said please this is what my child you know this is their life and this is what they want to do and I please allow them to have that opportunity um and and we'll make the commitment uh about how we follow through in sa health and safety procedures for them and uh
095we do have protocols put in place for all of our campuses outlined um these started in early June once again about the cleaning procedures and different things in the expectations of the coaches and the training for that was done at the beginning of the summer president Cay members of the board also like with our community education program and our program that we had started in early June we are daily tracking individual students uh um activities whether there're signs of illness or not too along with the staff and so we do have a good data track from the beginning of June through our community education program and through our Sports programs too that very important so we know exactly how many students um did not attend because they were feeling ill we know exactly how many
096adults did not attend and we track their their signs their Vital Signs and their um their symptoms while they're in the activities too and so it's a very uh heavy datadriven process that we're also utilizing so should the need come up to take a look at whether we need to shut down down immediately we do have that data information available and thank you for recognizing the social emotional the sports that are happening the band the um the programs that are going on these kids are involved kids and I have no doubt the last four months have been very difficult for them because they're typically used to being involved and being potentially isolated at home um or less involved because there's nothing for them to do from that social emotional piece that for some and I've
097heard from some parents that that's been the harder part of of this for their for their child that they wouldn't see their kid unless they went into their room for days at a time and they just had no desire to get up and move where their child's normally a very involved student um or person so thank you for addressing that social emotional piece I too got the emails about the social emotional piece from parents there were parents who emailed us directly and asked that we support these programs um I and it's voluntary I know You' said it's voluntary I'm going to say it again it's voluntary for the coaches and the staff correct and their directors they are that is correct it's voluntary voluntary voluntary that is correct okay um and just a thank thank
098you for thinking of that piece just like Mrs ree said I've seen the emails from parents these involved kids are they're struggling and we have to address some emotional states too here thank you Mrs Wilson Mrs ree following up this morning too had an opportunity to talk with Bob Edgar who also happens to be the president of the aboda organization and the abota organization for marching ban has already made the decision that the competitive marching season for this fall uh will be suspended at this point however the uh organization is stressing the fact that um participation is and involvement in this is more than the sum of competition and so that there are ways in which students can continue to be involved and engaged and so hence the theme that there is the continuation of
099this even in the removal of the competitive SP for the marching band component and so um my other question is so I know that williamsfield ban is is higgle ban and interested as well and are we communicating what each school is we are communicating when we when we sit and meet it's all of us in the room together and I think one thing that's important for us is to provide the opportunities for both campuses to be the same and consistent and so um their their band if I know correctly right now has been doing virtual band camps instead of being in person and then that's that's the choice of their community and their director great thank you for that okay thank you all right um I'm excited to tell you that title one summer school
100is going well we had pushed it back to July with the hopes that we could be in person but that didn't work out and the good thing was our teachers were trained they were ready to go and canvas is going very very well so it's kind of good for us because it's a little test drive of what's going to happen on the 27th um actually 25 more students joined in after we announced it's not in person it's virtual so we have about 80 kids every day participating and it's kids from Gateway chaperel and power um they're focusing on math Ela specials and social emotional so you can see the quote notes up there and that was probably my favorite report was these teachers these teachers are excited about it along with the kids so that's
101our little update on summer school okay so let's talk about the school year schedules and now what um so some communication has gone out to families today specifically from their administrators at their school to start talking about schedules and talking about what it looks like and we're going to go through some of those details together tonight um one of the things that we wanted to do is sort of a clarification of terms and then an update to where we're at today based upon again the evolving Logistics of how do we make this work and work well for everybody with with ever evolving changes that are happening at all levels so again the remote learning com the remote learning term when we were talking about remote learning was obviously for those initially we had Parents identify
102which Camp do you want do you want to be an in-person learning and we're going to call you remote you know this will be remote learning um until inperson um learning is possible to you can go to the next slide to the idea of online which was distinction so that if you or or don't have any plan or want to return to school at any point that you could go all online okay so next slide so where are we today and this is kind of where it evolves and and again the going back to the idea of that crystal ball you know what making decisions for today for tomorrow with an unknown future here um one of the things that we are saying is that all of our students are going to begin what we
103call uh remote obviously because we're not able to open person iners buildings um we also want people to know that I mean and the news if you're one of the things that's been being discussed right now and that is a Hot Topic as well is um the potential um her words exactly that we are actively re-evaluating the date in which the governor would allow in-person learning so right now that is the date we have um but again there's the potential that that may be moved um logistics for scheduling um and wanting to limit the difference between if to be honest with you if we um the date moves back further there may be families who choose one thing today who may say you know never mind tomorrow so one of the things is because it's
104virtual any how we're starting with everybody and a remote model the other thing that this helps with is tonight on the consent you mentioned you approved our uh the forming of our official uh higgle virtual online Academy tonight you approved the ability for us to get a ctds so that we will actually have a school number to register with the state so we can actually enroll students into that we are working with the state to do that so one of the things that we have decided is to stop asking our families what do you want do you want to commit today to being all of this or all of this with knowing that we don't know how long this or this may last and we don't want you shifting back and forth between there's also
105a lot of Logistics in planning scheduling training moving numbers teachers how many who so um right now we're beginning with everyone remotely um and we sent that clarification to families today so that they understand that now we're going to talk about next slide what does that mean Dr Foley can I just ask a quick question yes because you had on there that we're going to be surveying families again is there a way we can do this through parent view student view that when they log in whether it's High School Middle School to get their schedules or the elementary because they're logging through canvas something where there can be an option that is selected so that we really can have a better idea that like everyone it's hitting everybody I mean if you want to know
106your schedule you've got a for middle and high school you got to log in to student view or parent view um to be able to get that instead of an email survey um and the reason so part of the reason I'm asking is we've started sending out information today um today I enrolled my great niece and nephew at Coronado clearly they can't get it inputed and all that information so because we're remote um we're already missing information you know because they wouldn't have already gotten this letter that says click on the survey here if you need a a a device or this is what's going to happen and so it's we may have families missing Vital Information and sometimes surveys go to junk mail sometimes they're like I can't take this right now I'll come
107back to it forget about it we know we don't get a true it gives us an idea but not a true scent based on the the response we get so is there any way we can look at at trying to gather this information through that where then we know like Yep this family's checked off this family's checked off it doesn't mean they can't change it right but we do need to know who not just how many yes yeah I think one of we can we can work closely with Brian on this because a lot of this has to do with us so the enrollment because Clarity in that program um is actually enrolling in and enrolling out and what we were trying to do is save as people's minds change as dates change the enrolling
108in the enrolling out because it is uh it is a massive logistical process but using that same platform as a way to Garner that information when we do survey we real to see how helpful that could be We Will We Will We Will explore the extent of how that would best work so that we can ensure to get it but also the very good point is one of the reasons why having everyone start remote is as we have new families enrolling and some moving out trying to formalize and finalize Who's online who's not online who's remote who's not REM when we're all using the same platform similar curriculum in a similar ways at this moment you know at this point until the 17th but but potentially potentially longer um is getting that information so we
109can adjust accordingly so I I I hear you you and absolutely correct the hard part is is even those we've heard from are saying um I'm not sure right this moment because I don't know or or I think I've made up my mind but I I reserve the right to change it so at this moment we're going to say we are we're not going to ask you to declare either way we're going to staff and make sure we get you started and start connecting with you make sure you have the the your device you have your access you know can you log on do you know how to use it in fact while we were sitting here I got we got a text the three of us got a text from from Chantel who is
110monitoring obviously the communication went out with a survey for do you need a device well here we are at this point and we already had over 765 requests for devices so the good news is that they're reading it um but the good news is they're reading it now we got to make sure we get them those devices um and so but again you know the start of school is right around the corner and so getting schedules and teachers and prepared and devices connecting with you and then we will help figure out what model you're in and honestly that'll work really good for us too because the state getting us a ctds number to make us an official school to enroll them um was going to be a challenge until that capacity was done anyhow so
111again this is where we are building our plane as we fly it as we wait for you know the state to also get clear on logistics for attendance and and making that work with our student information system and then training people on how to do that so ready or not here we go um when we talk about remote learning um and we talk about it with our with our teachers and we talk about it with our leaders when we talk about it with our families one of the things we're going to be conveying and we want to convey this without creating Panic is is that the remote learning that's beginning this school year is different than the remote learning um than you that you ended school year with we may be calling it the same
112thing but the experience will be very different we learned a lot you've heard us talk to you about canvas lift you heard us talk about summer school the fact that we now have a literally we are evolving um we now have we'll have an online Academy in Higley we have a learning management system that is being utilized K12 is Big um and we are going to be more explicit in and providing instruction and assessment and engagement so one of the things you're going to see here in a minute is we're going to talk about what the schedules look like yes remote learning is different um we are expecting participation we're expecting or in we're expecting engagement checking in with students will be learning activities there's going to be instead of and our our families will
113have an opportunity to learn about this um instead instead of getting emails and trying to open things and having multiple places they're now going to have a One-Stop place to go um grading will be part of the learning and feedback will be provided and attendance will be taken now while we say that we also realize that we that there will need to be flexibility there will need to be accommodation there will need to be communication that happens between families and teachers so um so that if you cannot turn in something on a set date because of a reason that you will not fail because you didn't turn it in on this date but the expectation is you will turn in that work and that learning will happen versus optional participation Dr Foley I have a
114couple I have just a couple questions just to shoot in here yeah um I've seen on social media some people are wanting to buy a device can we put out something on what requirements might be nice for the new device that they may buy that's a great idea that's because we have some people like saying what can I get for my kindergarten what computer I'm willing to buy a computer to get up to and get it all ready what and maybe we could provide you know I've heard the fire the Kindle Fire does not work for certain programs but maybe if we provide something some guideline some a I don't know what but maybe something there and I just want to thank our teachers and staff um last year was hard we know ending it
115was not easy um and then coming into this year that we're going to do a another new thing for them I just want to thank them because I know we're changing things and I know all of you are thanking them but just from the bottom of my heart thank you because we're changing the way we educate kids on the Fly and they're doing a great job so those are the two things I wanted to maybe just interject quickly thank you Dr F yes sorry sorry to interrupt no how I guess how is attendance going to be taken I kind of want to walk through that in my head like Elementary they're checking in every day or is it going to be the attendance on the days that they're scheduled to meet with their teachers like
116secondary like Monday Thursday Tuesday Friday in between how is how does that look president Kaylor you would answer you would ask the question that the state is still giving us guidance for exactly how that looks that's okay and here's the deal what we know is that because again for ADM a average daily membership the requirement for attendance from the state is something this is not something that we are doing to families this is something the state is requiring of us to conform that students are accounted for and are learning for and so those those details are being finalized as we speak on how that might be you know again aois or online institutions had logs and things kids had to do they are looking at this not looking like that that the remote log will
117be check you know teachers visually seeing them monitoring attendance and again this is one of the things too when we get clarity about where parents will also need to report if their kids are sick or are out so that the teacher knows that they won't be be connecting with them so this will be one of those things that we will need to provide an update for because literally we are they are are figuring out logistically how this works in the system so that we can teach so that we can teach administrators and teachers and parents and students on how to do this so it is one of the things that expectation is engagement attendance will be taken exactly how that is being done is still being figured out entirely so like everything else today it's
118clear as mud and it is it is and and this is not Higley hasn't figured this out yet Higley is waiting for guidance from the state on how to do this within the management system the Synergy Management system that we use president Kaylor members of the board one thing that is clear from the state is that we do have to have uh an attendance login One Time by the students in the first 10 days of education and so so between the 27th and two weeks after that we do have to have um One login for State funding purposes but that's really all the guidance we've had so far and is still evolving from the state level so thank you to our attendance clerks as they're uh maybe trying to I don't know monitor without being
119able to that sounds super fun to me so thank you for to them as well because I can't even imagine what they're trying to figure out how to Mark attendance this is one of the challenges that are this simple things that you would take for granted so easy how to take attendance is something we're still learning and figuring out how to do is is is just an example of some of the simple challenges that are a whole lot different when we look at at transforming how learning will happen um yeah Dr Foley yes hello um two things one is more of maybe commentary and the other is a question but there are things that you've already just talked about so I hope you don't mind my asking them but I think as the in at
120least in Maricopa County i i as start dates get continually moved back I don't I mean if that continues to happen our original survey was at taken I think at a time when we all thought things were going to be better I Envision a time where we um because I haven't been getting better in Maricopa County that we ask that maybe people reconsider and consider a third option I'm not eager to have 800 kids in a cafeteria in a day I'm not eager to have 30 plus kids in a classroom in a day and so we might want to resurvey and ask and I know that's a lot more work and it's a big ask but if this continues to get worse and things get moved back we should probably ask our teachers and our
121community again uh about that third option because I don't I mean at the time I I think I would have answered the same way everybody else did right so I just want to say that and then secondly I did notice and um I don't like you said we we ended the 9 weeks and it wasn't really grade sensitive stuff fine but we're starting the year and this this stuff is going to count and and uh and and matter to the grades I don't know how we've bought a lot of devices I've seen them come through so I know we have a lot how many do we have number one and number two I did see something that and I've already looked ahead so I'm jumping ahead but you know that I know that I'm we're
122looking at for high school and stuff a form that I saw from one of our secondary schools said you can get one device for every two kids but uh I think that's going to prove to be a problem so how many devices do we have anyway I mean if our middle schools are already one to one I don't know why you know anyway could you talk about that a little bit please or are you going to later uh president Kaya members of the board so we were prepared by the end of this school year to be a one toone school district now we know because of covid-19 a lot of that has been postponed because not only the higgle Unified School District but districts across the country are now now back ordered on computers so
123but we what we do know is the devices that we've had from last year and the ones that we have have come in over the summer would be enough devices for all of our students to be able to uh utilize the online remote learning at the beginning of the year with the individuals that needed remote learning computers and information to start the year out and so we're good on that aspect but we're not completely there to a one-on-one aspect yet we expect to be there by the end of the year the other the other aspect is that when we we checked out those devices to students at the end of last year we never collected those devices back uncertain if we needed to start the year we didn't want to collect the device from you
124to turn around and have to redistribute it to you again so the there the student device requests that we have right now are in addition to those requests that came in first so and we they're checked out to these students through Destiny um so that we have an idea aide of who has the device and what grade level and what family and how many are each family and so I think the hope would be is that as more devices come in if we're not able we will be able to provide more devices to families as our equipment comes in in October november-ish more devices can be deployed to families if we are not yet back in buildings okay my my what I'm wondering though is the form that was sent out says one for every
125two kids is that old language that was just taken from the end of last year and repeated because if I'm reading that as a parent and I didn't get one and I have two kids that are high school kids I I feel like I you they kind of need two devices in that household but this form is telling them you're not going to get two here's the issue because the new the new the new devices are not in yet based upon if one we have enough that could be deployed for every one to two at this particular point is what do what what Chuck Kelly are are Tech person provided to us when we asked about double checking on the language with what he knew he had his ability to get out to families right
126now that was still to keep it there without the new devices being in our in our possession um and again the idea was the end of this school year would be where we would purchase to have enough for one to one for everyone so again it's still a evolving um process we we are um on the trajectory to being where we want to be ideally we are not where we wanted to be yet uh at a time we would have been really nice for that to be the case president Kaylor members of the board I also wanted to address the hybrid uh educational option that we have not put together for the higgle Unified School District right now with the executive order of Governor Ducey with a hybrd option you would still have to make
127your schools available and open for any student that wants to come to that school for the regular amount of school days and the regular amount of hours as prior to covid-19 within the State of Arizona so the hybrid option would also leave an unmet need and an un um facilitated need for students that would show up for school to not have a place to go that we would have to make sure that they're supervised and that they're they're cared for while while we have school in session regardless whether they were uh part of the a schedule or the B schedule or the c Schedule whatever it was and so the highbrid option for the higgle fight School District was not a feasible option at this time but it's something that we continue to look at
128and we continue to work with our legislature to see if they would make that a more viable option but at this time the way the executive order is written we would have to have the opportunity for any child in kindergarten through 12th grade to be able to come to the school during an open time regardless whether it was a high breed model or not side okay this is one time where I'm going to tell you up front I think Elementary was more complicated than secondary and I've been giving him a hard time because he's like why do you have all those words on your page I'm like cuz I had to but anyway the principles worked really hard on this with me they did a great job so in a nutshell in first through fourth
129grade we wanted to do our very best not to overlap on top of interaction times with teachers so that if you have a kindergarten and a third grader and you've got one device which kid gets gets on and um we backed all these live sessions up to specials because we know how important they are for kids some of these will be live some will be recorded but if you're a kindergartener your parent knows you know what I'm going to get my kid with their teacher at 8:00 every morning and I don't want you to think that it's 45 minutes of lecture because we don't teach our kids like that there'll be interaction going on there'll be discussions I'm sure there'll be movement in kindergarten and some dependent practice so if you look at the schedule
130I realize it's not perfect but in first through fourth grade that was the thinking um and also on Wednesdays we know how important that social emotional piece is and we had a committee look at different resources and they found something called Sanford Harmony that they've been real intrigued with it's it's free it has a lot of components as far as um what works with kids and PD for teachers we also know we have Leader in Me schools we're going to have a no excuses University we already have a lot of things going on plus literature is a huge tool in teaching social emotional skills so Dr fully has this book in her office and it says she persisted and I keep thinking that's what we're all doing and then I'm going to Elbow this guy
131over here you want to tell him what book you got this week my experience with Elementary School is very limited and with elementary teachers is very limited but I was presented with a gift uh on Friday afternoon and the title of the book was David got in trouble and and it's and it is now very happily on my shelf following apparently it's a sequel to a book called No David and so I haven't read them all yet but I will well you're indoctrinating him H to the social emotional of the district office and literature was a big part of our afternoon both those books are great don't worry don't worry so in addition so I have a kindergartener let's say and I know they're interacting with their teacher at 8 every morning they've got specials
132but within in their canvas shell they're going to have Ela math science and social studies every day some of that might be a 10minute lesson in science it's a science experiment it's not that they're huge things but every day they've got work in canvas every live teacher or live teacher I hope they are every live lesson will be recorded So if your kid Miss this is a lesson they're going to be able to jump on and view that lesson teachers will also have time in their schedules um for small groups individualized instruction gifted support sped support EL support literacy support the teachers if you look at this you go what are the teachers doing all that time they have office hours they're pulling small groups they're in plc's they're planning they're grading they're giving feedback
133and they're having professional development so the one last thing is fifth and sixth grade looks a little different so looks a little bit like secondary can you go to the next one and so they're going to have two um instructional live periods a day plus specials and you'll see that kind of rotation that you're going to see in secondary that looks like a lot but those teachers typically don't pull as many small groups or as much you know individualized but they'll still have time for that so this was this this ends up a little bit on top of first through fourth grade but we're hopeful that these kids are a little more independent Mrs Richards yes just on this Elementary piece so you did say that all the lessons will be recorded I'm assuming there's
134going to be some perhaps a larger group of kids who won't be able to participate in the live sessions right so um they'll be able to is it are they watching what transpired will they see the other interaction with the other kids they'll see as much as we can record through canvas Studio that's what we're going to try to use and so I'll be honest with you we're going to see how this goes and so the good news is we're getting training on canvas Studio next week which is is something new to Canvas and I think it's going to be really helpful but we're going to have to work with our teachers to know how exactly to do all of that but anyway good questions and then they'll I'm assuming that the kids will watch
135that lesson find all the other documents within canvas and then like you said the teachers are going to have office hours so for some these parents will be teaching their children yeah for sure 5 6 7 o'clock at night because that's when they're home with them right and so they'll be able to then communicate with the teacher and and try and make sure yeah and so then the kids logging in once we figure out attendance even though they're not logging in live as long as they Lo log into sometime during that day okay and we talked to a lot about following up with those kids and how important it is because we did have some kids in the spring that weren't participating and so we're going to work really hard to support those families and
136those kids yeah I mean we talked about it earlier parents parents are still working they are and so um the expectation of someone else being responsible for facilitating this it may not not be a reasonable expectation um I can tell you at my facility we will not be able to facilitate the remote learning I have 20 School agers between Kinder and fifth grade and it's going to have to be something their parents do because I have special needs kids they're all in one class and I can't have my staff be responsible for this one and that one this one's on now that one has this this one has that crazy right so I mean it's going to have to be available for them and you know hopefully the parents will be able to have that
137good communication with the teachers and like Mr Glover said and thank you for asking that question because I will have a first and sixth grader you will you will and they're on at the same time and so from a device perspective that may become very interesting not to mention from a Wi-Fi perspective when I have three well I'll have a high schooler two so I'll have three kids on school and two adults working all at the same time um and I'm not the only one and so that Wi-Fi piece is really important as well um so it may be that I can or the first grader or the sixth grader can't log on that they're going to have to wait so and so our teachers they've been so great and they'll work through this we'll
138be flexible with due dates and Grading while we're supporting and later we're going to talk about kids club but we're going to have some Educators and kids club from preschool until we get back in the buildings supporting those kids with canvas so that's exciting anyway you want me to send some of those to your place too and I've we approved Florida virtual so that will be pieced in here correctly right correct Florida virtual we approved at our last board meeting I believe or two board meetings ago so that'll be able to um piece in some extra help and I think that was I tinkered with it I got to view a few things I think they did decent instruction on there to kind of teach me how to teach my kid so I would really
139encourage teachers to put those in whenever they see fit because it did help quite a bit like going through it because I'm going to have to probably teach algebra this year and it's been a while since I took algebra so it's uh it might take me a little bit I'm sorry Mr Glover you teach it a lot I do not so there's answer keys we can get you now that trainer of trainer sorry that trainer of trainers um training is Monday afternoon so anyway we're excited to have it thank you and Mrs Richards I have heard concerns from teachers saying you know my kid is going to go into kids club and you know they can be somewhat um not completely independent but sort of independent but having that ability to have a teacher kind
140of oversee our kids in higgle that's amazing because that would be really helpful to a lot of our working parents so I did hear about that and I was very grateful go good so from the high school perspective uh once again our secondary task team that worked this summer of high school administrators I did think did an outstanding job about developing a schedule for kids as as a former High School principal last spring trying to go through managing time having a set schedule for kids and for parents and expectations I just think is outstanding and the the thought that they put into behind how they would manage these students through this time I think is once again I I would be excited if I were still a principal to say this is something I could
141communicate to my families so if you take a look there and I think you've seen this before when we presented um basically we're asking the students to be in person for three of their classes per day uh twice a week and then with Wednesdays being our office hours and PLC time uh to provide enrichment opportunities as well as strug support for students who are struggling so when you're look from 8 to 855 similar to the elementary schools we're not expecting them to be in a teams meeting or at a zoom meeting or doing something like that the entire time but there will be opportunities for direct instruction and direct interaction with the teachers followed up with times that they can work and ask questions from the teachers this idea of of recording them uh right
142now is going to be highly encouraged however uh a lot of times we don't know about the timing and so we're going to work on that in terms of recording and posting of those uh lessons that are going but the expectation is regardless of whether there's a post posting there will be direct curriculum and support for teachers or sorry for students and families that will be posted upon canvas especially for those kids we know that aren't going to be able to be there and we I think the concern is the same that you brought up for elementary is the same concern for us and and honestly the question was 8:00 in the morning for high school kids as well is this too early and how we look at it but we are expecting them to
143come back into the buildings at some time and they'll have to be there earlier than 8 o'clock and so maybe this is a transition time for them at least I know it will be for my son that he has to get up before noon and engages within the content earlier than night my children are getting up at like one or two o'clock in the afternoon right about the time I need a nap yes I think I think it's so wrong they become nocturnal so we need to get them on a schedule I love it and so taking a look at that and then when we look at what happens in the afternoons this is still a really heavy lift for our teachers to be able to be creating this content this is where the integration
144of the Florida virtual supplemental curriculum can occur while they're creating content and and being consistent about that delivery we have a little phrase called 8 and8 8 8:00 in the morning on Monday mornings is when assignments are going to be due so kids are going to have some flexibility about making assignments due we're going to do at 8: in the morning for that next week and then at 8:00 they're expected to have their lesson plans and things posted so that parents can know ahead of time what's going to be expected of them during the week other than the live lessons and so we've asked for consistency across all the secondary levels so that a family that has a Jun a middle schooler and a high schooler that phrase 88 applies to both of them as
145well and so we really don't want these questions to be going well if I have someone at Higley how different is it going to be at williamsfield no we want to have the same expectations for them and so I think that's going to help families uh as we go through this I will note that this this is somewhat of an old slide and the next slide is going to help explain something we we're taking a look at the high school bell schedule and and really the question was posed when we come back in person how can we increase the opportunities for social distancing for our students and Mr Glover brought this up earlier going to lunch with 900 kids right and so we've implemented a different system but where instead of having either a fourth
146period or a fifth period lunch uh all of the we're going to go from two lunches to three lunches and so when you take a look at that we're going to reduce by 33% of the amount of kids that have the opportunity to be at lunch at the same time and so the difference between 900 and 600 is significant when you're back on campuses for uh the ability to social distance I was touring higgle high with Mr Fields today and we're talking about also how we're opening up additional areas so that the kids could spread out typically in the past we wanted to keep them as confined as possible okay and for those you've been at a high school campus at lunch it's quite an experience okay Junior High even more so Junior High 10
147times louder but when you're looking at them we're going to offer different opportunities for them to spread out more than traditionally because we want to allow for that physical distancing when they're on campus and so this was a big lift and I need to thank our principes for wrapping their heads around looking at a schedule like this and uh and honestly for our support team behind the scenes in terms of changing things within Synergy to allow that where it didn't become an overburden on our high school counselors to change a lot of schedules they figured this out this week so thank you to Brian and to Steve and to Allen for figuring those different components out and our middle schools they already have three Lunes the midd scho they had already switched right last they
148had a switch and and when we met with the principles earlier we felt like the numbers about the previous schedules would be able to fit the high schools were of the ones we were really worried about when you're talking you know 2100 kids at Higley High having two lunches you're looking at about a thousand we know that some of our kids leave anyway she about 900 at each lunch now at least I can say hey we're reducing it down to 600 and trying to to allow for that more are we asking for some flexibility on our teachers especially those ones who have be lunch so if you take a look at that means they'll go to class they'll go to lunch then they'll come back to class so they have two smaller 30-minute periods and
149we're asking for their patients as they go through this honestly this is a schedule I'm very familiar with as an administrators it's the one that we've been running down at at my previous school and so it works and it allow us to be able to spread out more and so when we take a look at that if we would looked at the previous slide then basically 7eventh hour became sixth hour okay and sixth hour would be fifth hour and this fourth fifth would simply be their fourth hour class and so that's why that will be updated and it was actually updated when we sent it out to families today I think that was confusing last year having sth hour at sixth hour like we all got confused as parents so this actually makes more sense
150to me in my head so thank you for that um speaking of just going back to school I know we're only kind of focusing on the remote learning but for our secondary going back to school has there been more conversations because I did get some feedback from the community on the cleaning of our schools in between the classes are we going to be having one-way hallways what are some of the things that and I don't even know if they're set in stone yet but I know that those were some of the concerns that were coming to me in the secondary level so from a process and procedure not the cleaning part yet but the management of people on the campus uh I think what what's going to really look different is when they come on
151a campus and where the expectations of them are to be early and this is the same for elementary it is for secondary in terms of oneway hallways and different different things like that um from the the documentation and things that we've read we don't know how successful truer those are about elim eliminating kids from interacting anyway okay and so you think about it if a kid's going in the hallway whether they're coming one way or the other they're still going to have the inter opportunity to interact and it's going to be their choice whether they're going to be able to physically distance and do those things or not from the cleanliness standpoint I know that we've worked with our Support Services about the process and procedure in terms of having things available for our teachers
152in their classroom immediately so in between classes and I would never say we're going to require a teacher to give up that time to be able to clean but can they put a process within their classroom maybe it's the first person who comes in gets to spray down the desks and use the rag and then we change Rags uh periodically as we go through it but we'll we will have that capability for them to do that um immediately on the classes I I don't know if uh if you guys want to address more of the and president count members of the board um so for hand sanitizer we've ordered uh 5,000 stations to where we can put through all all of our schools and so each teacher will also have their their own hand sanitizer
153the 5,000 or was it 500 five yeah I added an extra zero sorry about that yeah I was going to say that would be one almost for every every two kids so we've ordered five 500 hand sanitizing portable that they carry with them like an IV but but we also have um hand sanitizer for each and every uh employee that that needs it and so those will be an ongoing ordering uh protocol for all of our schools and in across the district that will have the cleaners we do have a new cleaner that is supposed to uh have the um DMS paperwork that will kill the bacteria within 30 seconds with the spray and so we've we've you know taken all the stops to prevent as much as we can with the cleaners and the
154hand sanitizers and everything we can for PE PE for our teachers and staff Dr Foley just a quick question um how I understand it's the governor's executive order for in person not until August 17th how does this remote learning schedule impact our dual enrollment have we had conversation with Chandler Gilbert because clearly they're only taking this class they're participating in a class right now twice a week for any of our dual enrollment classes have we had this conversation with Chandler Gilbert how does this impact it oh Dr l m no sorry just Mr lsen Heiser liser can give you specifics on this one okay so when we talk about dual enrollment basically the approval for for from Chandler Gilbert is about the syllabus and the expectations about what's happening whether it's within a remote learning
155situation or an inperson learning situation so as long as our syllabus meets requirements and we're still going going to expect the same things whether we're meeting in person or whether we're meeting remotely that will continue and be consistent we'll be able to do it obviously we have to have a dual enrollment certified teacher right and but if we're providing the same content at the same time then we'll be approved to continue to have the dual enrollment options for our students where I think it's going to honestly a challenge that's going to take it is if we're starting in dual enrollment and we have the kids in our classes right now and then they choose to go completely remotely how are we going to allow that opportunity they for them to continue to have the same
156uh teacher and be involved and those are things by allowing us to start remotely it's giving us time to figure out those little details they're not little details sorry those very big details but it gives us time to figure them out other than trying to get it done here in the next two weeks can I piggy back off that can we go two slides ahead please the big question that I think you guys have got a lot about what is online learning happen and look and what are the elective offerings because we know that's where the differentiation and honestly a lot of the Joy from the kids come from when they get to take these elective courses preliminarily when we're looking at online electives these are the ones that we felt like we could do
157provided the curriculum and resources that we could offer now please understand when we say offer it doesn't necessarily mean make and one thing that we're looking at the data that we've gotten so far it's very hard for us to look and make a class for three kids or four kids and looking at those specifics and so that's why by allowing us to go remote it's going to give us opportunities to say how can I be creative and allowing students especially in these particular AP and dual enrollment classes provided they don't want to come back in person opportunities to continue with that and honestly the lift for us is to be going to teachers going would you be willing to pick up extra sections to be taught online and what kind of compensation way can we
158provide for them for doing that uh what we found with the survey of our teachers that I think originally we thought there was going to be a plethora and I don't want to steal mums Thunder a plethora of teachers that said I just want to be an online only teacher what we're learning more and more is that that that number is declining less and less so we're going to have to be having conversations with our teacher saying I might have to have you teach four in person could you pick up an extra online or could you do a six fifths and teach one online to help support those students by the making the decision to go remote learning it gives us at least three weeks provided let's say we get moved back longer to be
159able to figure out some of those details for our students and so our goal in talking with the High School principles and they're being very creative in terms of their ideas of thinking how can we continue to support additional electives than these especially ones CTE level two classes that are completers we need those kids to be able to get through those programs that's something that's very very important for them how can we continue to offer those online knowing that we also are offering them in person and we have a limited number of kids who are doing both and where do our resources go and honestly this is the huge lift for us I I don't think it's necessarily just at the secondary level but at the elementary level is when that actual split occurs and
160we have the opportunity to become back in person how can we support those online students by maintaining these the the the hard part at the high school is credits right after 9 weeks they haven't earned a credit yet we still have another nine weeks to go before they earn a credit at that semester and so how can we guarantee and put in places that these kids are going to be able to earn that credit uh through these processes and honestly right now we don't have all the answers but we are continuing to work so much to have Creative Solutions for our kids and provide them these opportunities and just as a followup with that kind of with the dual enrollment um Chandler Gilbert I think it was last year their enrollment time would moved up
161quite a bit so their dual enrollment would be before we go it would start being communicated before we return to iners so I think we're going to have to make sure that we keep that in mind so that we can have clear and concise communication because there's not something physical to hand to the the kids to bring home so that we don't miss deadlines and we don't miss enrollments and um I know they're high schoolers but they're still kids and when they're doing their class and Mom and Dad may be at work I they may see something pop up in canvas and then it's forgotten so I think that communication with dual enrollment is going to be really really important so if we can really kind of keep that um in mind and the other
162thing I would like to ask because we have this opport opportunity I'm going to flip this to an opportunity um just I'm sure you are but making sure that we're looking at our district as a whole in the past with in person I may not have enough kids at higgle High School to have a certain class go and I may not have enough kids at williamsfield to have a certain class go but because we have this opportunity if we know we have these kids and at both campuses who who are interested in a class how can we utilize our online our remote whatever you may call it how can we utilize it to meet the those student needs and we may have some really unique opportunities here um as well as um based on skill
163and teacher teachers and and their knowledge we may have a class only offered at William field are only offered at Higley that because we have this opportunity of remote learning and um online that we may be able to say hey two kids from williamsfield can log in whatever it may be and take this class at Higley and and have that opportunity that they may not have otherwise had so just I know you have a lot of work doing and I know you guys are working really really hard because there's so much that this is brand new and there's so much unknown but I would like to just kind of as we work through some of these things try and keep some of that in our mind and find out where do we have these benefits
164um this is giving us an opportunity um while we've talked about before starting this and what we have to do is not ideal it's not what's best for kids it's um a different learning environment however because we have to and we've done the Higley Virtual Academy and and we're doing these different things that we can really serve the needs of individual students much better with things um that you're going to be working on so but I am very sorry concerned about the dual enrollment we have a hard time with that um when it's even in in person and so I we really need to stay on top of that um I know it's important for a lot of our students um it's important for me I have another student who should be completing her Associates
165after this year and um so I I hope these are not missed opportunities for our kids Mrs Reese um just to piggy back on that um right now we do have the liaison for chanic community college so we should be utilizing them because they're not on summer break they work 12 months a year so there is our person who should be on our campuses I take it we should be having conversations with them because they're there now to answer all those questions and coordinating everything for us so so you do have extra staff there that we should be utilizing and that is a great resource that they're providing for us is that LE aison yes that's going to come be on our campuses new to this year because they're there now so they are I
166was just going to follow follow up with that Mr wov you literally said it is we are excited actually now to have that person who will be able to help in that capacity in a direct line to the uner you know to cgcc to help us do a better job with communication the follow through and and and the paperwork and timelines so that is another thing that we're excited about having this year as a resource that we didn't have last year and we're thankful because that just as you brought forward this is a different time and in a different way um so it will be very important thank you for reminding just share that Mr lsen Heiser I this is so so small if if I thought I could catch you before you leave I
167would I would catch you then can you guys back up one slide I'm just going to try to save you a little a little uh speed bump that you might hit there got the a lunch ends at 11:06 B lunch starts at 11:06 but then the C Lunch ends at the B ends at 11:36 and starts at 11:41 you got some time to flip the tables there but you don't have any time to flip the tables between A and B maybe you already thought of that I'm just going to point that out I saw it it's Petty move on you're quite all right we will revisit that and make sure and that that is a concern the idea of cleaning the tables in between but we have some plans for that um the online elective
168offerings I just want to make it clear these are just for those students choosing to only stay online the students that picked their schedules last spring for in person those electives are still on the book so correct Unified sports and um whatever those electives were those are still on the books and on the schedule for them and that's going to be in their schedule when they get it on July 20th yes I just want to make that very clear because I had lot the not and I said no they that these are just for those students choosing online only online only for the future and it's really once that split happens thank you for that clarification yes next slide okay kids club is going to be offered at four locations HTA Santan power ranch and
169Gateway uh we're going to work to keep that one to n ratio and that's the reason for the weekly sign up or registration there is a discount for employees we already talked about preschool teachers being there we'll also have some of our PA professionals there um and the one thing that I think it's important to all of us is having a health aid on campus at every site so that's a update with kids club good evening president kaylar members of the board um Higley community so in terms of our employees we spent a lot of time tonight talking about the curriculum and as Dr Foley mentioned this is presentation 2.0 um so before I go into this particular site I do want to address something that Mr lsen Heimer mentioned and that was relation to
170our certified um there was a lot of unknown in regards to what kind of Interest we would have from our certified in terms of teaching online um or returning back in person and as all of you know and as our community know there's been a lot of challenges and changes just in the time period in which we started our planning um and the last 3 weeks since our last board meeting so um you know one thing that I do think is uh something as my colleagues have mentioned a great move for us because of timing purposes is to do everything remote um and that does give us a little bit more time to figure out the online component uh we had a number of teachers who were interested in the online component at one part
171and then changed their mind um there was some concern about being able to return return to their current site location which they had been identified for the 2020 2021 school year I think some of the confusion though is that um in terms of Higley prior to covid-19 in regards to our contracts all of our contracts were always about having a contract to be a certified teacher or an employee we never designated or guaranteed a site location it's always based on our enrollment um and so I just clarified that in the recent communication um then it is difficult because as we know we are unsure of how enrollment is going to look in the 2020 2021 school year um and I think we are I think it's safe to say we really don't know what it's
172going to look like in 2021 2022 um so you know there are some concerns out there and I want to mention that but one thing I do want to mention and something that I've been responding with as well as everybody in the department that I work with um in terms of my colleagues is that if there are concerns we want to sit down with pardon me we want to sit down with you and address them um and again anything that we can do to reasonably assure them when inperson instruction returns um that we have their safety in mind and not only for our employees but certainly our our families and our students too so our classified employees um you know we have approximately 900 classified employees throughout the district um and this is a big
173lift for us in terms of human resources and what we do um so in preparation for not knowing what's going to happen and with the governor's delay of inperson instruction certainly what came to our heads and our mind is what do we do with our classified primarily our 10-month employees in regards to the fact that a lot of them are individuals that work directly with our students whether it's our transportation department or our PA professionals that make up almost 250 of those classified employees where their direct work is in person um so one of the discussions that we've had and some of this is through through um legal counsel and talking um what do we do and what options do we have was the encouragement to talk to individuals and say are you interested in
174an alternative assignment so we did take a look at our largest groups and that was our par professionals and our transportation and I worked with our sped director as well as our director of transportation and we inquired all of these individuals some of them were by direct phone calls some of them was a combination of phone calls and a separate individual survey sent to them about would you be interested in an alternative assignment or are you interested in waiting until in-person instruction begins or depending on that alternative assignment in terms of what work we have available um would you be interested in it and or could we look at other ways at supporting you or supporting your roles um you know just with everything else there's been fluidity through this process and one thing that
175I learned um I believe late last week earlier this week the days all merged together so sometimes I forget what day it is but um we are looking to work with our principles at the elementaries and at the secondary level to have our pair professionals if they're interested um and the ability is there to have them actually work remote with our online pardon me not with our online but with our teachers as they're working remotely um so I'm glad we've defined remote versus online because those are two different things now but being able to support them and what ways they can support them um and working with the principles and determining what a schedule looks like how that looks like what's the expectations of those par professionals as they're supporting that remote luning for them
176so we are having those discussions um and as I said earlier we're also asking people especially if they want to wait and they have the ability to wait that they can wait um when in person does begin whether that's August 17th or if it gets pushed back at a later date so what we know of as today this discussion in regards to we're going to try to find alternative assignments where we can um the feasibility of that is unrealistic to some degree as it stands currently um there's no way we're going to be able to find alternative assignments for almost 900 plus employees for up to three weeks before we start inperson instruction um and the reason why we want to look at an alternative assignment is through my understanding through colleagues as well as
177through the Arizona attorneys Association group um you know particularly udol sham who I've been working with and talking with is that the intent of the governor is that he wants to keep employees in a paid status however um until we get something like we did in the spring where we had HB 2910 we don't know clearly that's the intention um and there could be some some opposition um to that if we don't have something clearly in writing so we're hoping and we're crossing our fingers through our relationships with our various lobbyists um at different professional organizations that were involved D in um that they'll look at this executive order uh that has been drafted and see whether or not that that's an option that we can continue with and so until we hear that our
178goal is to find assignments um continue to inquiry and we're hoping we'll know more by the end of the week to determine where we move next for next week um fortunately we have a little bit more time for most of our employees in our 10-mth positions don't start until either next Wednesday or next Thursday according to their work agreement so trying to buy every little bit of time we can in the bigger picture next slide please another item that I wanted to take an opportunity to talk with the board about in our community is that we have updated our positive case covid communication flow chart um I've worked diligently with our benefit specialist as well as our district nurse Miss Folton in regards to this um the the struggle that we have had is since
179our even June 24th meeting guidelines have changed um it's resulted in us needing to change our exclusion guidelines as a result um we're fortunate that our district nurse is on weekly phone calls with the Arizona Department of Health Services um but it's also I know uh a challenge for her because sometimes those weekly phone calls result in weekly changes um so last week when we spent significant time working together um she had shared that uh through communication with the Arizona Department of Health Services they were getting overloaded with phone calls and asking for um recommendations advice guidance from individuals that felt as though they had had exposure and or that were testing positive themselves um and that led to some of their conversations about changing some information that we had presented we don't have um
180confirmed yet that they've made those changes our district nurse as I said will be having her conference call actually tomorrow so we'll see but there is talk about changing the primary and secondary contact exposure um and what that means because a concern larger in regards to um will we have a Workforce if we have this this idea and following the CDC with everybody going out with 14 days um so that will be interesting and as I said earlier we are changing our exclusion guidelines because some of what we've seen is that um and we mentioned this before so this isn't anything new um some of the information and the the guidance from the Arizona Department of Health Services hasn't always followed the CDC guidance um and so they've recently changed to instead of having 14
181days out that they're looking at 10 days out um and you know combination of different things whether they're asymptomatic symptomatic negative test or no lab test so those recommendations have changed since our last meeting on the 24th too so we've updated our FAQs we've updated our website um for our families and for our employees to reflect that new information um and communicating out to them too we also ended up putting a little bit of an aster at the bottom of those exclusion guidelines um to Define what the Arizona Department of Health was was deciding what meant exposure um and even that has changed actually from you know six feet from somebody um at least with more than 15 minutes to discussion of whether or not it's 6 feet with 10 minutes um so are they
182going to change the 15 to 10 and at one point I think it was 10 and they changed it to 15 so there's been some flexuality there too um which has been a struggle one thing I will say though is that we've done a great job working as a team um I do know that you know with the delay in the start of the school year uh that's certainly going to help us in the bigger picture but knock on would um you know we've had very few actual positive covid cases and we've been able to manage them in the time frame that we've had um when I last reported to you back on the 24th at the time we had had none um so we've had a few since then um here at the district
183but we've been able to manage it as I shared with you um I was scared that we wouldn't necessarily get it right um I'll share with you candidly that we had a little bit of some hiccups um but we were able to work through it and get it taken care of and make it right um and you know more than anything um and I believe all of you have said this to us many times at different occasions it's about listening to our employees um and listening to whatever fears or concerns they have and doing our best to work with them um to help support them in that the best way that we can and understanding both sides of the picture um and just wanting an opportunity to have a voice in the bigger picture to
184this chart what is the estimated timeline on this chart I mean from the first up the top to notifying the families that we talking a day are we talking a week what do we what's the timeline you anticipate or planning so um you I have not been directly involved in relation to the student side so I can't answer the student side but I could answer the employee side and I will tell you um in the couple of cases that we've recently had we were able to get everything done within 24 to 48 hours good um okay watching the chart it says school board on the bottom I know there's cases but we haven't been told has anybody been notified you were notified how were you notified oh text one but I think there's more that
185I haven't heard so like School Board is it just going to be a text that the school board knows or how are we kind of made aware president Kaylor members of the board one thing that's very important is that we want to make sure we get a confirmed uh notification from it and that's where we're working with our district health Health uh um our district nurse to make sure that we get positive confirmation from the Arizona Department health services without that positive confirmation then we don't we don't move forward with that aspect to maybe cause rumor or speculation or uh something that may be a false reporting so we don't move forward until we get that confirmation from our district health nurse and she is the only one within the district that can get that
186confirmation from the aizon Department of Health Services and so that's how we move forward and when that does happen and then we move through the process and then that's when the board is notified um at at that time additionally um something that we had talked about the last time was doing it just once a week and of course again um you know I know you know this but I'm going to reiterate it um especially for those that are watching publicly we don't share any names um again because it's a hip of violation we just share that the total number um and you know again getting confused about days and the weeks um um but you know some of this is in terms of confirmed has been fairly recent so you know I know Dr thomasson's
187been working with identifying kind of consistency in that notification process too president Kaylor members of the board I would agree that it's a a very confusing and difficult process especially when you have to go through and you have to depend on other agencies to make sure that you have the confirmed case through them and even if a individual does come in and bring us paperwork work we still have to go through the Arizona Department Health Services to make sure that's confirmed and it's frustrating for us it really is um we still put in the proper protocols and we start the individual uh to their home leave and and take the precautions that we need to do and start the cleaning process but the actual confirmation has to come from the Arizona Department of Health Services
188thank you Miss Martins can I go back real quick to the classified update absolutely um um so I did hear from some employees who were concerned so thank you for clarifying who you spoke to because they were like I was never asked um and so just seeing on the presentation they're like well classified wasn't asked it some obviously some groups so thank you for clarifying that but leaving the question of what about the other 10-month employees that aren't bus drivers or transportation that aren't Paras there's they feel there's been no communication with them they don't know do they return to work in a week um like you said they their um return dates a lot of them are next Wednesday so I can imagine from an employee standpoint being very frustrated that am I going
189back to work in a week am I not do I have a job do I not I'm I mean at at some point obviously they will but do they have an option outside of transportation and Par Professionals of a different assignment do they have the option to return to their job um if they're not directly with students um if they don't have an option is there an option to take their General leave so they're not I there's all these questions and and I quite understand I have to figure my life out in a week certainly Miss Reese so um we have been intentionally waiting however we've been drafting communication asking questions Talking with supervisors about what kind of alternative assignments do we have um you know unfortunately just even in this last couple of days
190some of the information I've gotten back is that okay we could maybe muster up alternative assignments for 50 people um that obviously isn't going to satisfy the larger need um we have been talking with some of our other um supervisors and site Administration about what other things could we potentially have or again is there anything else um in terms of some of the employees that you've been talking about whether or not their interest so we've done a little bit of out outside categories outside of our Pairs and our transportation not a lot um again primarily because those are our largest groups of individuals within the 10 months but the plan is to have something out by the end of this week and communicating that um yes you know there will be an opportunity to use
191some leave time but there's going to be some other components related to that too and I will I will say very transparently The Hope was and um still is that we might get additional information before the week ends so we're not sending communication that says X and then all of a sudden it's like oh no it's why although I feel like we've been doing that already um and I've you know I've shared with some communication with others as well as um as Dr Foley mentioned earlier our model really is patience and Grace because it is fluid it is going to change but Our intention is to to send something out probably by Friday morning and I understand your concern in terms of well you know here I am as a um media Aid assistant or
192a lunch guard pardon me a a lunch a or a crossing guard and I don't know what the plans are um you know and so you know we will get some information and I understand the concern about okay needing to plan and what's going to happen in a week and what opportunities I going to have what opportunities I'm not going to have um but something for us as you guys know is that it's been an up and down roller coaster um I think uh Dr bourch um our new assessment director had mentioned there's a new coin term called covid coaster um and you know there's an actual definition and I don't have it with me right now but it's essentially ups and downs of covid where some days you feel you're on a high and
193some days you feel on a low um because you just don't know what to expect and what's going to happen next next um and that's certainly something that we're feeling um as a district in that perspective but certainly we'll take your feedback Miss Ree and make sure that we communicate and send some additional information before the end of the week well the other thing too is with some of these 10 mon month employees um and I'm not sure how personal information is gathered like they're not working right now so if the expectation and we're communicating through their District email I think we need to let them know look all of our communication's going to be through your District email and the expectation is you should probably check that once a week um you know because
194for some there are some who are like this is not my contract time and um for others they're like I'm on it so um I think just trying to Define too how we're going to communicate it's between a rock and a hard place like you said patience and great R but sometimes is it worth communicating and having that little asterisk and say look I think everybody knows but the plan is right now this and it could change and final decisions will be made no later than this date um so I know it's hard and I know you guys everything's changing sometimes by the hour um and it's difficult but it's also trying to manage that um other piece of it too if people have to find child care if they um you know not knowing
195what they're doing or um things like that so if we can try and make sure that we're communicating through this whole thing I know we've talked about the communication's got to be as clear and concise as possible but I think everything we communicate has to have that asterisk and says subject to change perhaps without notice you know and so I appreciate you taking that I I know um some of them that I spoke to they were fairly upset um but um and they're worried because they don't know what's going on so um at least if they're watching or um I can certainly follow up that hopefully there'll be some communication to them um I would say by the close of business on Friday just to give it some time but they need to know what
196they're doing next week certainly and we have been working diligently with our site administrators you know at the end of the spring term we worked really hard with identifying a phone tree if you will or a contact tree for those individuals who don't regularly use email um and you know our I know I've mentioned our transportation department earlier but that's there one group that don't um you know very few of them actually check their email and so we've worked well with the areas saying you know is it a group TCH TT do you have everybody's phone number is it followup with phone calls and like I said um you know working with our sped director Miss Miller she made 150 phone calls um and you know our our preschool director made another um 25 30
197plus phone calls um and so forth and so forth so you know we're trying to do our best but I acknowledge um their frustration and I apologize for that and I'll make sure to to seek their Grace in that process when we do communicate we come to you with a conclusion here with some questions now here's the thing one of the things we know is that there are still unanswered questions one of the things we encourage people to do is to let us know what those are to work with your side administrators to talk to your teachers we're going to be working we're going to have to work through this together this is one of the things that's going to continue to evolve and to change we're going to do our best to communicate what
198we know as fast as We Know It with the certainty that what we're sharing is accurate uh to the greatest extent today knowing that we just as you said may need to say uh caveat know that that it is not our intention not to give you everything we know our our goal is to tell you what we know when we know it the most efficiently way we can possible are there some questions that you have that we have not addressed or that we should be working on in in in the near future I I just have um one question is back to the uh Sports and Band program and as I was sitting there I was thinking um last week um the governor closed all the gyms and in I remember the a lot of
199the gyms were saying well we're going to have smaller groups we'll make sure our equipment are cleaned no so all our gyms are closed in the state here for health reasons here and we are in turn opening our gyms up so I just want to make sure that we're not in violation ation of the governor's policies here and we're not going to be held liable because he closed gyms in the state and we're opening up our gyms so I think I want to be really careful on where you're going with this and if you could check into that that that we are going to be okay even though this is volunteer there is some liability here that if he said no and we are doing yes please be careful even though people say okay I'll
200volunteer I'll come in but you know when things happen people change their opinion real quick and say I don't know okay so just I'm just really concerned for the safety here in in this reference Dr fley I would just like to tell you and your staff you've done an incredible job and I'm so proud of what you have done here and I can't can't even say anymore I just it's incredible under these circumstances how it changes every day and and you guys all come together and we're moving forward I am so proud of each and every one of you here so thank you for everything that you have done okay Mr vich thank you I will tell you that it is our amazing higle leaders teachers team employees who have figured out how to do
201this together and honestly we wouldn't be where we are today if it wasn't for the leadership of our of our employees across all levels to help us get here so and we are going to keep working together to do this but this this where we are today versus where we were at the end of of spring break we've we've moved a lot virtually uh this summer as a district so thank you for that and may I piggy back on what Mr wovi said I just it's mindboggling to me that we are perfectly fine and accept that restaurants should only open and and and work at 50% capacity but we are in a complete hurry to open up our schools at 100% it's it's utterly mind-boggling that we're in such a hurry to do that but
202I I am what I am I it's you know we get the emails every day and within minutes of an email of somebody saying please open the schools the next email it says please don't and so um I we hear you out there we hear you we're listening and we're trying our best in these difficult tenous times and um yeah it's just been a ride it is a CO coaster for sure thank you for your team thank you for this update I know um again Curtis canide tell us how many people are watching but again we encourage those people to reach out first to your um administrators if you can't get that answer reach out to um Mrs Mrs Richards for elementary and M doc David Mr lsen Heiser I'm just gonna call you Big
203Lots um big Big Lots is fine okay Mr Big Lots for our secondary and we we are here to answer your questions um I try to respond to every email that I get so um even if I don't have an answer I I just want people to know that we're listening we care and we're trying our best in these circumstances so thank you so much for this presentation president Kay i' just like to piggyback on then if anybody's watching on this I think it's important to understand that we're going to get through this together and if anybody in the community is watching this if they see there's a need or we're missing something by all means jump in here guys okay it's this is this is what a community is about it's about Humanity about
204helping each other out here and I think more than ever we need to come together and we are so please if you're out there watching we're going to get through this and we're going to get through this together be part of the solution well and I think our our kindness message too has been really great because every email that I've gotten so far has been so kind and so thoughtful and I just so appreciate that in our community of Higley is just that you know we may not agree on everything but we can be kind about it and that's a great message that higgle is sending out so I appreciate that with us so I think Dr Foley the last thing I have and not to be answered at the moment but what I have
205heard from community members is um looking for an answer and I hear Mr rovic and I hear Mr lover and um our community is just asking are we going to open our schools when the governor says we can and that way they can keep an eye on it they can plan that they know if the governor extends it they know the governor extends it but if there is no extension that they can plan and expect to for those who choose that's why we have the choices um for those who choose to need to want to send their kids back to inperson classes um they're just asking for sure a a decision that Yep this is what we're going to do we're strictly going to follow the governor's guidance when he allows us to open we're
206going to open um or we're still playing it by ear so I'm not asking you to answer that tonight but that is what I have heard heard from our community is August 15th they don't want to hear that we're not returning to inperson school or if the governor has allowed this to expire um they want the preparation so they're just asking to know yes we are we're we're simply following the governor and when we can we will um so um that way they can plan and they can keep an eye out and know where it's going on their own so that's the only other thing I would ask from um the community stpoint very good um my board members have asked for a little recess so we're going to take a little break and we
207will return in just a few moments thank you okay we're back and we are on 7.4 I move that the governing board approves the fiscal year 20221 annual expenditure budget second any questions comments all those in favor I I I motion carries 5 Z thank you Mr Holland for staying all right we're moving on to 7.5 there a Changing of the Guard coming uh I make the motion that the governing board approves the award of ifb number 16- 07-24-18 price of 3.5 3,540 th000 with the alternates which includes adjacent ways new fencing mill work and kitchen equipment for the price of $171,636 per se okay all those in favor I motion carries 5 Z thank you for staying moving on I move that we ratify it is recommended the governing board ratify the payments for
208college credit by examination incentive program CCE for fiscal year 2018 2019 and 2020 Mr Holland can you explain why we're doing this now please why we're ratifying for three years past two years passed um president did this come up in something that we didn't see before no um these payments have come before the board when when you would ratify the um the bills list each year um but since there was some questions back with the auditor general attorney general um concerns about boards not ratifying or approving all payments so as a process you'll remember we have ratified some other payments as well from previous years and so this was just wanting to bring this to your um to the governing board for um approval to make sure that it's clear that you guys approved for
209all three years of the same okay I just wanted to clarify that any questions comments all those in favor I I motion carries 5 Z president Kaylor yes Dr Thomasson yes tonight's agenda includes my respectful request that the governing board permit me to retire during the Spring of this school year and amend my employment agreement accordingly I have been blessed to work with all of you and our outstanding group of Administrators teachers and staff as well as it has been an honor and a privilege to work with the parents students and other members of our community for the betterment of our students we have accomplished incredible things during the past 12 years I have worked for the district however I'm determined that it is time for me to focus on my family and future endeavors
210should the board honor my request please be assured that I will work with the board and the entirety of the school Community to have a solid transition plan in place before I retire that a mutually agreed upon dates to make this transition as seamless as possible and I just want to thank the board for their consideration thank you Dr Thomasson and not only for your dedication to Higley but for your 25 years of education period And I know um to Higley you have brought so much kindness you've brought so much generos generosity and compassion for others literally changing the climate and the culture of Higley over these past few years um easy I want to thank you for caring for my family and my kids when Mama Bear came out you were there for me
211and I just want to say thank you for that and I I wish you good health I wish you good family times I pray your years to come are the best yet and while you might be far from Higley you're not going to be far from our thoughts ever so thank you president Kaylor yes Mrs W I have a couple comments Dr Thomasson it has been an honor and a blessing to have you as hickley superintendent you have guided us through some really rough rough Waters and I know that you will lead us this year until your retirement date thank you for the years of leadership tonight I will choose to honor your request for a for your retirement I appreciate you notifying us early so that we can get a replacement who is as
212magnificent as you are I wish you the best of luck please rest assured that you have made hickley a better place than when you started 12 years ago thank you Dr Thomasson and thank you to your family because I know you've given up a lot of time for us and our families thank you president killer don't want to look at him look this way um I want to thank you this is tough um for all your hard work and dedication I've worked with him longer than anyone up here um I've had the pleasure of working with Dr Thomasson um since I was elected eight years ago I was proud to serve as your board president for the last four years you have worked really hard to set up our district district for success I wish
213you well for your future thank you for all your kindness and you'll be in my thoughts and I hope you enjoy your retirement Dr Thomasson I um I sat on the interview committee this Mrs Reese and and when you walked in the room and you presented I knew right then and that you were the person to run this district and to take us to the next level and and you did okay and I've been with you for six years through your time that you've been with her um as the superintendent and uh you've done an outstanding job so um thank you very much I retired in February welcome to my world and uh wish you well in your retirement to you and your family yeah um Dr Thompson I cannot will not pretend to be
214happy about this um I want to thank you for a few great years um you're the only superintendent I've worked with here it's um you know I've enjoyed working with you I've enjoyed growing with you I've learned a lot from you and your presence will be dearly missed uh but I too will honor your request so with that I move that the governing board accept the superintendent's request to retire during the 2021 school year and approve related agreement to amend the superintendent's Employment contract a second any other questions comments all those in favor I I I motion carries 5- Z I hear they're the best years Dr Thomasson please show us that please know that my heart will always be in Higgly and I will always be here for you whatever you need thank you
215okay 8.1 any other future agenda items that the board would like to see okay I think we've got some good things still to come so we'll be looking forward to those um at this time I [Music] move where am I 10.1 9.1 no 10.1 H that's our 9.1 is our governing board initiatives that Darlene is keeping on our um on our uh board packet just for our information so it just that's where we kind of put it so that we always have it in our heads from our Retreat so um I move that the board moves into executive session for discussion or consideration of possible change in assignment and related matters regarding associate superintendent of educational services pursuant to ARS 38-43 1-03 A1 second all those in favor I I I motion carries 5 Z
216oh bring that back please Curtis um because we are also I move that the governing board convene an executive session for discussion or consultation for legal advice relating to the executive session item 10.1 with the governing board's attorney pursuant to ARS 38-43 1.03 A3 and ARS 38-43 1.03 A4 second all those in favor I we will return thank you e