001okay 2.1 i make a motion that we approve the agenda any questions all those in favor aye aye aye motion carries 4-0 good to move on this is why we have this meeting tonight is our information and action item 3.1 and we are going to have a brief overview of what we are voting on tonight from dr foley and i'll turn it over thank you so president kaler members of the board thank you for for your quick assembly here tonight in the world of curriculum and instruction we like to say if we are not six months ahead we're already here behind already this year has given us some unique things that create opportunities for planning and forecasting in advance very very hard so we're talking tonight about online instruction so why are we here so
002one of the things that i'm excited to share with you is that as of yesterday june 30th higley submitted its aoi application aoi stands for arizona online instruction so higley was one of the few districts that did not have an online virtual academy one of the things that we learned quickly at the beginning of june was that it was pretty clear that if we didn't have a virtual academy that had been application and submitted that our students who chose to be remote only or virtual only we would not be able to have a mechanism for collecting adm because the state has requirements and expectations for online instruction so on dr susan borges very first day june 8 we said hello and welcome and by noon she was working with a team of people who were
003working this summer to complete an extensive application so that we could submit this to the ade so that higley can become an online academy now in that process we learned some interesting things one of the things that you do is an analysis of the kids who would have been your students over the last several years how many of them may you have lost um so for last year alone for the 2018 2000 oh so for that year we had 131 students that could have been ours that attended um that we know of that attended an online institution so when you think about we lost 131 students and mr holland says to the tune of about 4 359 student dollars a piece we lost about 500 and rounded up 80 000 dollars because we didn't have
004an aoi no so to have an aoi you need to have a pretty solid online curriculum when we take a look to the around our surrounding districts the majority of the districts use florida virtual online and one of the reasons they use florida virtual online is it has some options it allows you to use their management system they have a management system called buzz and if you use their management system the cost is a little bit more or it works beautifully with the canvas management system and it gives the option you can choose an option to have a if you will um a library that for all grade levels all content areas that they have they have entire online courses that you can use to use purely from start to finish or you can part
005and pick and piece to use to support instruction online so we in our application have to define that we are in the process of identifying an online curriculum currently we have canvas as you know we had canvas as a learning management system that was really heavily used at secondary and this year we made huge strides in secondary one of the things we quickly learned after remote learning happened in march was that we needed a learning management system also we needed a common learning management system k-12 because without a common management system parents and students and you heard from them and so so did our principals and so did our teachers you'd get an email with a powerpoint with a link and you need to go to teams and you'd have to download it and create
006your assignment and email it back and so again it's not all in one place so as we shared with you and in in our board summaries and as we shared with you a couple weeks ago we had canvas ambassadors at all levels working to train up and to build content so that we have curriculum in canvas and we do so that's a wonderful thing now one of the things that happened is because we don't have an aoi until how we have an application that was just submitted yesterday districts that had this aoi were able to quickly and you will see quickly expand from just their online for their teachers to all of their teachers because with the fact that virtual learning obviously the governor has shared we're not school in person learning will not happen
007until the 17th so for any any district who wants to open earlier online curriculum is going to be important it quickly became clear to me when i saw that all of the valley districts that had an aoi in place had expanded these resources for all of their teachers so that those who have a canvas management system could could use the parts and pieces to enhance their instruction so urgency and importance in timing here what you have before you tonight is a request a proposal to purchase of this supplemental curriculum to support our aoi and also for teachers who are teaching with these core areas where these exist to be able to use these resources similarly to all of their colleagues in other districts who already have aoi at this time yes our teachers have worked
008very hard they have canvas curriculum ready to go they have modules that they have created but they have created them from scratch and are pulling those parts and pieces together with their existing resources this does not replace the adopted curriculum what this is is some pre-made curriculum units that teachers could use to put in place so that they're not creating everything from scratch again so an online curriculum we would are required to have and this is what would be a comprehensive k-12 online curriculum for an aoi but this also will allow our our teachers to have the same kind of electronic toolbox in their online curriculum that the neighboring districts have now for their teachers because they expanded it because they already had an existing aoi in place so again this is a tool to
009support the work that's been done not a adopt and must use to be done it has it it'd be a resource for um questions for me looking over at the website i do have a couple questions uh maybe if you could start with who was on the task force i'd like to know that it was a group who the group was if we do that and a couple other questions if you could just share with us um in reference to the the fine arts component is music or special education or anything like that is there resources at this site too as well or do the teachers have to be creative in reference to that good questions so a couple things one of the things is that this was created really quickly this this this unlike
010a traditional adoption that would have large committees that we review this for multiple months with the 60-day review this of course did not go through this process the committee that worked together was some instructional coaches are our new director of assessment looking at an assessment of what exists out there that works in our current management system so that was the group that kind of made this recommendation and what we quickly found is that when we looked at all things that exist out there this one was probably the most affordable but it was the one that worked with our existing system and we also saw that virtually everyone around us is using this so it also offered the most amount of electives if you will compared you'll see that it doesn't include everything you saw those
011lists of there's the elementary there's the secondary there's some enrichment opportunities the one thing that this does is this is not a one-size-fits-all for everybody and so there are some there are some as you saw in the elementary one they have some art they have some pe they have some electives in the secondary one the they are not all-encompassing and so this will not be a plug-and-play for all of our teachers it just provides the it provides more electronic resources to our teachers at this time with what exists and the same tools that our neighboring districts who already had aois would have for theirs so it's it is truly a quick adoption with what fits best with what we have trying to get our aoi application ready to go and hence truly a different than
012a core major adoption that would be a long process with multiple stakeholders and 60 you know 60 day review it's a different process for but this is from our from our glance and research on all things out there aoi and i will tell you the application requires you to go pretty extensive on what does this look like and how will it be our knowledge of what is out there this is the this is the most comprehensive one that worked with our system um for us to use i i did look at their website and do some research on it it's been around for some time it has and it's i like it and and thank you very much for bringing that too yes and we'll we will acknowledge that there is no perfect i understand
013i understand and and and and we're we're just wanting to make sure our teachers have especially at this time the same tools yeah thank you uh dr foley just a couple questions how long does an aoi typically take to be implemented or approved okay so this is an interesting process because this year because of the fact that they expanded and extended this application process and and that was one of the reasons why it came to the end it's a modified process this year because there are so many groups and again it's kind of like building the plane while you fly it the funding mechanisms the legislature hasn't changed this is the one that's in place there's going to be an extensive process this year it probably in the middle of the year according to the
014timeline they will come and sit down with us to audit and inspect what is your curriculum how does it so all of the things that we put in here to be approved um will be it will be inspected before they grant it now the good news is ours looks identical now to every other public school who has an aoi this was an urgency because of the situation but when we look at this this is a long-term opportunity for higley to have now an online virtual academy k-12 with a comprehensive online curriculum for our students so that we won't lose 113 you know last year 131 and then and and quite honestly with our survey families have told us there's there's there's potentially 25 percent maybe more who are not going to if we're able to
015come back into the building may not choose to and so now we have a comprehensive curriculum to support in our canvas management system for them um and and have a way for us to capture that adm and not lose our own students right so um the other question i too um mr ratovich was talking about electives and this is this is the hard one especially in our you know upper grades welcome to higley and i know that that's still an ongoing conversation that we're all having and how we're going to have electives offered um in our secondary and these are you know their graduation requirements for some of them so i know that that's going to be i know you were planning i was the meeting today that what we were talking about earlier today
016yeah absolutely uh president kayla are members of the board for the electives we still have the canvas process and the individual teachers in those elective areas would be working with cannabis to make sure they're building curriculum and putting that in canvas and using it the same way we did in the past and they've worked on that over the summer too so we will have elective opportunities for our online to start start out but if you're choosing to go virtual then there will be some electives that may not be officer offered correct go ahead hopefully i i was just trying to get the pitch of our plan as it stands today i know it may change so we have the virtual academy as school starts up okay then let's say sometime in the future school opens
017up and you can return back to school whereas other students decide i'll continue with the academy who's going to be teaching us the same teacher going to be teaching both the students that are in the academy and the students so if you could let me know how we're going to what our thoughts are what our thoughts are let me start to explain and i will ask my colleagues to interrupt me if i misspeak on anything so essentially one of the things that's important is that families have been asked to say let us know do you want to return to the building or do you if whatever that may look like whenever that may look like or or are you not planning on ever coming at this point back into schools because you would prefer to
018stay home in remote only when parents are identifying that they want remote only and again we've had of the responses so far a good close to 25 percent say at this moment and again they may change their mind but on today this is what they're saying so one of the things that we're trying to do now is to do a match with our staffing and the numbers of students so for instance in a school building when we have so many let's let me use second grade for an example if i have second grade obviously so many you know we have our our appropriate ratios for classrooms in our district so one teacher 25 28 students right we would assign that to an in-person classroom when we're remote if you're planning on returning to the classroom
019the teacher who you would have in the classroom would be who your remote teacher is at this time right when you return into the classroom your teacher that teacher who you've had remember would be your your in-person teacher now the important thing is their canvas page continues to be maintained because i and this tool that we just bought may help that teacher plug and play some things in there so that whatever i'm doing within class instruction i now have if you were not here some modules and units without having to recreate them in the canvas platform for you to stay up to date so that when you return to the classroom after being ill or sick for any reason you go back to the in class classroom now let's say i'm a second grader and
020i want online only so what we're looking at is how many of those teachers are there and and we're going to identify a teacher who would be teaching online only and she may have or he may have students in second grade from let's say cortina and power and centennial all together because we're not bound to a room we're now bound to a grade level and that person would be assigned those students who identified we want remote only or facilitating it so we're trying to figure out with what we know right and again parents have questions there are some specific things we're trying to work through like what are the online electives what offerings do we have what do those schedules look like now that we know that we aren't starting we were working really hard
021to figure out what in person might look like on the 27th if we could it's not happening so we're adjusting that with what does that look like and who are we matching with so essentially next week if you will there's going to be a heavy matchmaking happening in the number of staffing with what we know and following up with families to get clarity on that as we as we work through what we can and can offer with these resources at this time so that's kind of how that would work um college you have your options of the three classes you can have online only classes and then you can have a hybrid where you go one day a week and the following week and then you can be in person so it's just it's the
022same as in college now i guess the same same option so it is workable it is it's happening it's just different than how we've done it before yeah thank you for all the work you're doing on this this is a huge task you know our our our team our administrators our amazing teachers who are going to come back and and and embrace this and work with us i mean we're fortunate for the caliber professionals that we have across the board here in higley but this is definitely a a lift yes thinking outside the box thank them all for us yeah thank you and we're moving quickly and dr foley on the same note of when a student has chosen online and for some reason they have changed their mind and they want to come in
023person we will have a spot for them on their home campus yes i want to make sure that's correct correct yes yes obviously would be a different teacher but because of the lessons on canvas they would just slide right into that class and go that's one of the really nice things about the curriculum again it's aligned to our standards so when whether you're in face-to-face when we're working on these particular standards you know utilizing our adopted materials or you are online aligned to the standards using those curriculum materials we're teaching content that we're teaching standards and content the same so that again we would obviously have to assess and monitor where you're at but we're going to be able to be common in our instruction our tools or curriculum may vary my other oh i
024just have two more things and then or do you want to go okay um well i i'll say one for later but um speaking of canvas and i know do we i haven't i haven't looked i didn't i i'm asking do we have some canvas how-to for parents out on our website right now and and they're adding and creating more so yes we do have some and the need for that is only going to grow i was just going to start sharing with my friends and parents like if you want you can go on youtube even and start looking at the how-to to canvas and start getting your student i mean our our secondary kids are more savvy on it now but our elementary kiddos i'm kind of encouraging them go look on canvas and
025check it out and go to youtube and just so that we can get that out because i know that that we don't want that on the first day to be any kind of hangout president i just shared with dr foley today maricopa community college has a everything that you just asked for a page for parents and community and things everybody wants to know about the canvas so i shared that with her today as a matter of fact so they're gonna perfect mrs reese i just i can't say how much i appreciate everything you guys do it can literally change minute by minute and i liked your analogy earlier we're creating a brand new road map and we start creating roads and paving roads and then [Music] the governor someone comes in and says oh that
026road is closed now and that's no longer an option and i want our community to understand that this is a lot of work and you guys are working really hard it is not ideal for virtual or remote learning it is not how the majority of the age groups that we serve it is not how the majority learns there is a purpose and it for some this is very valuable too and it is a better learning tool for some but not the majority not to mention you know the national association of pediatrics is saying we need to get these kids in person there is so much more that is happening to our kids than the lack of academics and so um i appreciate you i know you were here all weekend and um working and right
027now you're only supposed to be working technically four days a week and you were here all weekend trying to figure out what is best for our students and our staff at the moment we've been dealt a hand and we have to play it so i appreciate also considering the fact of looking at the future we have talked about a virtual academy for some time we do have students who will find that of value where they may not need it a hundred percent but you have some of those kids that are either excelling in high school and their all their schedules are one-off classes and maybe the classes they need are only offered during the same class period or you may have that student who just struggles in a particular class and that having that option
028to take that online may be a better a better option for them so i appreciate you looking at it from the aspect of this is not just for the first couple weeks that we can't have in-person learning and that that we will be able to utilize this in the best interest of all of our students in our community the cost of this is that an annual cost or is this a cost of what you purchase you get and then you pay a fee for updating how how is that so what we're purchasing right now is a number of licenses for our for for k-12 students like 13 500. so one of the things is that this year it's going to be more expensive because we're buying this for everybody it's like an annual license you're
029buying the right for their curriculum and what they do is anytime and every time they update it it stays that way then you can adjust that accordingly so so that in the future this annual costs can go down one of the things i think this was kind of a telling thing that when we did the analysis that it's going to cost us approximately four hundred thousand dollars for everybody to have access to the licenses for this in the future it we will now have when our aoi is approved and we will have an online virtual academy so that our any student who wants to be online can be online and we can keep our own students and we have now a collection of curriculum but we can adjust that down at the time when it's
030only online students i mean looking at the fact that if you were to round it up you know about 575 000 was lost the cost of this for everybody is less than what we lost for that 131 students again it's a it is an interesting charge purchase for us for this year specifically with the need for everybody to have access to virtual pieces and hence why districts that already had this went ahead and expanded their normal uh licensure to thing but it is like an annual license thing kind of like canvases kind of like others no canvas is one of those licenses that we've also expanded and it's about eight dollars and 37 cents a student but again it gives us a common management system the good news is anything and everything we create in
031canvas is ours forever anything we put in there is yours as long as you have the licenses for that president keller members of the board if you break it down at the cost per student it's about thirty dollars per student per year or a little less than a dollar a week per student perfect and then um just clarifying that we are not changing our curriculum so anyone who's watching we are we are not changing our curriculum this will be an online tool that teachers will have to supplement it will be very valuable when we physically cannot be in the classroom but we're not when we can return to the classroom we are not teaching an online curriculum in the classroom we are staying with the curriculums that we have adopted we will still use those
032this is just an added tool to help while we cannot be in physically in the classroom thank you for clarifying that because again this is not replacing the curriculum that our teachers have had or are using this does not override what they have created in canvas this is simply giving all of our teachers the same electronic library to use to enhance what they have or have created that's aligned to their standards so that they have the same tools that every other colleague they have in the east valley who has an aoi they now have the same tools in their toolbox and that became an urgent recognition this weekend that we realized not only do we need to put this in place for the aoi we want to make sure our teachers have the same tools
033my final question is on our aoi you had mentioned the application was submitted yesterday there's clearly a process of of approval you said at some point they'll come in and they'll audit and given the state of our state state right now um i'm assuming that we're able to operate under this aoi we're able to count and collect adm for our students through the approval process yep that was our that is the that is indeed correct if you submit the application they will then and again being that we are a public school um we are in good place here to utilize this as an operating for our but again had to submit the process to get this to be official correct and then they confirm that you are doing what you said you do yeah thank
034you mrs wilson i got to play with this a little today they gave us a little log in so we got to look around it was kind of cool to see um we i discussed it with dr thomason and dr foley today and it was a great piece to see a different way of learning which i thought was great you got to see a different instructor they had videos you got to see a different instructor instruct you so if your teacher isn't maybe clicking some kids don't tend to click with the teacher so it was kind of nice to see that click and also i thought about the idea of substitutes when we do have a substitute if our teacher is out for those 14 days because of covid they a substitute could easily jump
035in and teach some math i think because i would not be equipped to handle math classes in some levels um i'm sure i could teach kinder math but you know above that i might be a little worried and so i thought that was a really nice tool that we can utilize for those teacher for those substitutes coming in and not knowing maybe how how we teach math nowadays and here's a video hey we can show you oh let's step through this together so i did think that was a very cool tool for a substitute to even be able to learn from and be able to instruct from if that makes everybody feel really good it was kind of nice to see and mr lewton how's it ever i'm sorry i tried really hard without mumbling
036lots and heiser whoo oh wait what louts lots okay you could share some experience of it yes in my experience that uh in my previous district we've had it for about five years has been used in multiple ways i've had experience as an administrator and then as a parent whose kids are going through it right now in summer school i think the delivery method and modality of how they're working through them they get through it they go at their own pace they can get a lot of the information and get feedback from there as an administrator not only do we have it on our aoi but also in our credit recovery classes and one thing's about the license that we're getting is we have the ability to manipulate it the way that we need to
037manipulate it so if i'm looking at a credit recovery model i don't have to include everything that they have we find what the kids need and we include that in the model and i think that's an area that we're looking to supplement instead of using other programs that we might have considered before because now we have access to it and it's all inclusive um additionally i think because it's been in place for a few years as you go further with the aoi then you offer more flexibility for kids in terms of on campus and online and perhaps combinations of both of them i'll be honest i don't think we're ready for that yet but i think we're moving in that direction for being able to find ways for kids who might be struggling in different
038things or different life situations we've been able to use it when kids unfortunately had something where they're not going to be in school for a quarter but perhaps we could use it through the aoi get it and i think what's important when we're looking at the high school aspect is how are we assigning credit for the credit work that's being done and so when we look at this idea of kids coming in at a quarter or kids coming out a semester it's really because we're going to be assigning that credit at the end of the semester and so how consistent are we in covering those different standards and so um i know when we were going through this process and having our discussions i'm very much an advocate saying that this is a tool that
039teachers could use and teachers could get into and and i i look forward to continuing to see how it can evolve to give opportunities for for students thank you for sharing thank you any other questions or concerns or comments um this is a wonderful program and i'm looking forward to having you come into our community our do we have any plans or thoughts to not only our current students but there could be students that reside in the higley unified school district can we make those families aware of it too as well as far as to come to us that do we have a great option for them president caleb members of the board we can definitely blast this out on social media and through some of our uh our apps to make sure that this
040is known far and wide that students not even within our district are able to come and take advantage of the florida virtual learning school within the higley unified school district if they would so choose great great idea okay any other questions i think i heard mrs wilson volunteer to teach kinder math is is that i can teach kindergarten but that's it if we haven't though if we have a substitute issue no pain i think i heard kindergarten anything over kindergarten they might be they might know more than i did i made the mistake of going through some algebra things and i thought oh i am not smarter than a friend that's great i went through as well i was laughing at algebra that's the one i picked as well i should be like oh okay
041that's how i should have taught that not the way i taught it to her kinders i love our kinders yes all right so because this is going to be a vote we are going to now move on to 3.2 and i make a motion to approve the purchase the florida virtu approval to purchase the florida virtual online curriculum for grades k through 12. second any other questions or comments all those in favor aye aye motion carries four zero and again i know that mr glover did meet with dr thomason and dr foley before he left town so even though he's not present with his vote he was very you know excited as well about this program and got all the same information that we all received so thank you for that and with that i
042move that we adjourn second all those in favor aye aye motion carries good evening you