J.O. Combs Regular Board Meeting 3/4/2026

001Hey. Heat. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Heat. Heat. N. How do you feel? Heat. I don't Hey. Heat. Heat. All right. Hey. Heat. Heat. What? He 3 2 1 be down. Hey, hey, hey. going to call the meeting to order at 5:30. Um, I will take a motion to adopt the agenda. >> I move to adopt the agenda. >> I second. >> Um, all in favor? I I >> I motion carries five to zero. Okay. Do we have anybody saying the pledge? No. Okay. We're going to go ahead and say the pledge. >> I aliance to the flag and to the nation indivisible with liberty andice. Okay, we have some meeting minutes uh from February 11th. Does anybody have any questions, comments, concerns? If not, I'll take a motion. >> I motion to

002approve the February 11th, 2026 regular board meeting minutes as presented. >> I second. >> All in favor? I >> I. Motion carries five to zero. Okay. So, we will go to um superintendent report. >> Okay. We're moving into uh spring break. I know there's nobody in the audience that's looking forward to next week. I don't know if that's the adults or the kids. We'll just have to see. Um but so things are winding down for this nine weeks and so it's a little bit lighter um before we spin back up for the last quarter. Uh Combmes Middle School proudly added board member Miss Lisa Horn and incoming superintendent Mr. Hogan to their house system. Mr. Hogan is now proud part of Altruismo if I said that right. Um the house of givers while Mrs. Horn

003joined Protos the house of success. So welcome. Uh they also collected 100 ties for students to wear as part of the professional interview practice for their careers class. So they want to thank the community for um their generosity and uh Mr. Lee who's able to uh work with the kids and help them with ties for the first time which is a right of passage for many of them. Uh, high school has some athletic success. We're finishing up winter sports. Uh, state competitions just uh, finishing up and the wrestling team had success at state. Uh, sophomore Gunner Mkeley, sophomore Liam Perez, senior Conor McDougall, senior Cole Jensen, and senior Van Mkeley. Uh, they went ahead uh, and all wrestled at state with Gunnar Mkeley finishing third and Cole Jensen and Van Mkeley both finishing fourth in

004their weight classes. girls basketball team. Congrats to Heather Joe Bush for being named region's all player of the year and first team all region. And then for East region um uh postseason second team went to Ambria Luhan and honorable mentions went to Camala Owens and Everly Aguire. Uh Road Runners over at Ranch had a very successful parent teacher conferences. We had parent teacher conferences across the district and good turnouts uh for um uh all of our schools there. Uh CHS junior Haley Pedrosa auditioned with the American Musical and Drama Academy and received a $72,000 scholarship and acceptance into into the school to study dance and other technical performance reviews. Uh we also note that this month Governor Hobbes has proclaimed March as procurement month. uh recognizing the essential work performed each day by procurement professionals

005across the state. We are proud to acknowledge our dedicated team uh working in that arena under uh Miss Stone's leadership uh district buyer Karen Finch who ensures that the purchase uh the purchasing process is aligned with established regulations and best practices and accounts payable clerk Casey Westervelt who completes the cycle through timely and accurate payment processing. We appreciate their professionalism and I think you see the job they do by the fact that on an annual basis our auditing comes back with with flying colors and that's in large part to uh what they do. So we we congratulate them as part of procurement month and that's all we have for this month. >> Okay. So what do we have next here? >> Uh CCS. >> Yeah. Staff and school and staff recognition for um Ms. Dr.

006Goldby. >> Good evening, Madam Board President, members of the board, Dr. Wyman and Miss Judy. Thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to share some highlights from Comb Center for Success. I have two of my phenomenal staff members here, teachers. Um, last year, you know, we received a grant from the Arizona Department of Education to focus on ninth and tth grade student success. Our focus is getting them on track. And these two ladies that are going to speak with you will share with you what we've done this year with our grant funding and what our focus has been this year and what we've learned in the process. Thank you very much. Um, this is Jamie Neman. She is my math teacher and it is Diane Schnel. She is our English teacher at Comb

007Center for Success. >> Nice. >> Good evening everyone. So this past summer uh we were awarded the grant and we went for a you know summer training and this was with the center for high school success. Um it was a great opportunity to us to really focus on strengthening the systems we already had and um strengthening those supports for students um nth grade and we've actually um kind of duplicated that for all of our grades. Um this partnership has centered around improving graduation rates especially for our ninth graders. Um, part of that we meet every two weeks with our coach Deb Odell and we also collaborate weekly and our PLC's as a whole team. Um, all of our teachers, our counselors, our so our social worker, principal obviously. Um, so we all look at it

008as a team. Uh, we dig into student data and we look at their progress. We identify their needs and talk through how we can better support them. and kind of a little uh road map here that we we get closer the road map for the first year. We've we've already completed. It's like a lot, but some of these things we kind of already um had a little bit established. We've just kind of really strengthened it. So, um to stay organized and intentional, we use data notebooks with our students and advisory. Um we have student trackers, grade sheets, um to help us monitor their student, you know, progress. Uh we email families every other week with updates on grades and progress. So, there's, you know, consistent communication. Um, and these are some other things that we've

009we've added in the advisory. Our periods are broken down in 9th and 10th grade, 11th grade, and 12th grade. So, we kind of have those separate and can really target, you know, certain things. Um, monthly awards. We, um, we honor in our whole class. We have, you know, the whole school comes together during advisory. We have a student of the month awards where we recognize a variety of students strengths and attributes, you know, attendance, um, most classes complete, you know, most improvement, stuff like that. We have leaderboards in each classroom and so we like to honor the, you know, give them rewards for positive things like uh raffle tickets. They like snacks and chips and food like that. Um, we get we let them ring a bell when they complete a class. So, that's fun.

010>> Graduates sign sign the front door, so they get to like leave a mark. >> Oh, fun. >> Um, we host our own graduation ceremony if you didn't know over at the beautiful CPAC. And this year, we've also added more hands-on electives. So we all of these pieces kind of help build that motivation, celebrate progress, and help students feel connected at our school so they want to stay and and stay on track. >> We need to remember if we ever move that you guys need to take the door. >> Oh, I see. It's okay. Nice. >> Oh, so they don't actually sign the actual door. That's too bad. >> That'd been cool. >> Hi. Um, I'm Diane Schnow. Um, so we talk a lot about being on track on our campus. For freshmen, that means

011they've earned six credits by the end of freshman year and haven't failed more than one class. And our campus is small. So we use this metric for all of our students. So sophomores need to finish the year with 12 credits, juniors 16 to 17, and seniors need 19 credits by the end of first semester to be on track for graduation. Um it really matters for our freshmen because freshmen who are on track are three times more likely to graduate than those who are uh who are not. And because of who we are as the alternative school, 80% of the students who enroll with us are not on track, but we offer credit recovery uh classes every semester to help them catch up. Um, please. So this iceberg image shows the relationship between academic performance and

012academic behaviors um is is easily understandable once you make sense of what this looks like. Um we as teachers and administrators can see the part that um everyone can see. So the academic performance which is grades, how many credits they have, their GPA um but it leaves that leaves out the students real individual experience and academic behaviors don't look the same for all of our students. Um and some of that is based on a student's perception of their own ability. So, ninth graders sometimes in eighth grade before they even get to high school are often told that high school is serious. It's hard. You need to be independent. You have to step up or you'll never or you'll never do well or fit in. And the message that gets across to them may be that

013they're not good enough or smart enough or strong enough to even be in high school. So, they're already disengaged before they even start their freshman year. So, that's where um we start with our interventions and the skills wheel. When we talk about tier one interventions and I'll briefly just explain what that is in a basic classroom. Um it's something that you would use for everybody. So things like calling home to check on a behavior or moving a student to sit close closer to your desk or just dedicating time every period you have that student to check in with them. Those are tier one interventions. Tier two interventions are for students who continue to have these unsuccessful academic behaviors um after we've tried tier one with them. So at that point on our campus as a

014team, we look at academic and behavioral data to determine where our students greatest strength and barriers lie. Um, these are different for each of our students and we use the skills wheel to find out where we can most support them. So, a student who doesn't complete coursework may not understand how egeneuity works. And egeneuity is an online program our students on our campus use to get through courses. So, if they're not if they don't understand how that program works, their skill deficit would fall under the content and technical quadrant of that skills wheel. and that helps us determine what kind of intervention we need to help them get back on track. Self-regulation students may have difficulty getting started with work. Self-efficacy students um may struggle with anxiety or completing tasks. And a self- advocacy student

015may need help communicating their need um for help from the teacher because freshmen aren't the only demographic we have afraid of talking to the teacher. sometimes. So, helping them address that can push them um to where they need to go. This is our Kid Talk um tool. So, being able to provide our students with individualized help the way that we do requires all of the teachers and staff on our campus to work together as a team. And our Kid Talk tracker is one of the tools we received from the Center for High School Success. Um, it's a centralized place for us to log our main areas of concern in the tier one interventions we've already tried. And then we can also log goals for our students and the results of our tier 2 interventions. This

016process allows us to understand our students better and to find real practical solutions um to their spec specific to their needs to to guide them to success. All students have challenges to overcome and our campus is dedicated to helping them overcome them. You guys have any questions for us. All right. >> Thank you. You guys do a wonderful job over there. Thank you very much. Um, and I am grateful for the fact that I have an amazing staff and this year has been amazing, amazing group of teachers and I get a chance to honor both Jamie and Diane today because of their contributions to their campus. When you're on a small campus, we have 10 people. That's adults on our campus from when you walk in the front door and you see Miss Virginia all

017the way through the back of our school. And you basically get a chance to work with 10 adults, which means that every adult on my campus wears multiple hats. And so I'd like to start first with Jamie and um have her come up so I can speak a little bit about her. Jamie Neman, as I mentioned to you, she is my math teacher, but she wasn't always my math teacher. At one point in time, she's done electives. Um, she, uh, stepped into the math position when we got seventh and eighth graders to help them because that's her background and then she moved in to work with our high school students on mathematics. But she just doesn't do that on our campus. She also teaches electives. She'll be teaching yoga and fitness next um quarter. She

018also is my award person where she collects the names for the kids, figures out who needs awards, figures out who gets attendance awards, prints certificates, and does all of those things. In terms of her classroom, she makes it a hands-on even though we use egeneuity on the computer, but she's got whiteboards all over her classroom, the the erasable kind, because she's been looking at the higher level um thinking skills involved in mathematics. and she gets the kids up and working and gets the kids to sit together and work together as a team because a lot of our students come to us needing to do multiple math classes. So sometimes they're in Miss Neman's class two or three times a day. So Jamie um has been with us at the um center for success and she

019is one of the reasons why we have had a lot of success with our students and she is always kind and but most all of my teachers too they look at our kids and they find all the great things in them and are always looking for a way to support them. She's also a member of my leadership team and that's one of the reasons why all those things are for her to have a blue apple. >> That's nice. Can't break it. That's the rule. So Diane um I Diane is our English teacher and I say that but she's also the newsletter writer on our campus. She's the editor. She blogs in her spare time and is an author and she has a great passion for music. So, as if teaching English is not enough, she

020came to me um at the end of last year and said, "We need a guitar class because the kids here love music." And I was like, "We don't have any guitars." And she said, "That's okay. I'll find them." So, she got out on her blogging or whatever it is that you do and people started mailing us guitars. Nice. >> And so we've had guitar class, we've had music appreciation, and that came basically because she just, you know, is always like, "We need to do this." She keeps asking me if we can have a yearbook. I keep saying no. But who knows, next year we might go in that direction. But she also is uh a ninth and tth grade. They both run the ninth and tth grade advisories. When we started out, we were dominated

021by seniors, but we're seeing a lot more ninth and tth graders. Um, and just recently she came to me because her kids were struggling with Shakespeare. So, they decided that they were going to teach it live. So, she ordered the books, brought them in, and had the kids start doing the work. And one of our students said to one of the other teachers, "I'm really mad. I actually liked it. So, you know, and that's the kind of teachers that we need and that we have. And both of them are also amazing moms, too. And um, you know, supporters, big supporters of the district. So, I'm very proud of the work that Diane's done. She is extremely articulate and um, both of them train the other staff members in the ninth and tth grade so that

022we can apply it to the 11th and the 12th. and they are my blue apple recipients. Nice. >> Thank you. >> Good job. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Student of the month. >> Good evening, Madam Chair and members of the governing board. Tonight, our student of the month. Our focus on our portrait of the graduate is on critical thinking. And so for our students being honored tonight, when I read your name, if you would come and come stand next to me at this podium, I have some wonderful things to say about you that your school and teacher have written. And I'll share with the audience and then when we're done, we'll have you cross the room and you'll get a medallion and a certificate courtesy of the JO Combmes Foundation. So first from the high

023school, Combmes High School, Connor Fresnel. Connor, are you here? Welcome Connor. Connor the high school reports doesn't just try to understand economic concepts in his class. They try and look at uh what they look at the class but also tries to see how they apply in real life situations. He's being recognized because he engages the class with good questions and discussions and is always a pleasure to have in school. Congratulations, Connor. >> Our second student tonight is from Comb Center for Success, Vance Carlson. I know Dr. Pat will find a way to recognize Vance uh at a a school event in the future. Combmes Middle School, Carly Lucas. Carly shows a great work ethic, stays focused in classes, and is always a willing participant in our discussions. She works hard and gives 100% effort in

024her assignments. She is also a student council representative and does a great job in sharing what's going on in student council with her classes mates. Her teachers notice that Carly always uses her time wisely and is deserving of being the middle school student of the month. Carly, congratulations. and from Combmes Traditional Academy, Railin Medonia. CTA reports that Railin consistently demonstrates outstanding critical thinking skills in everything she does. She asks thoughtful questions, looks at problems from multiple perspectives, and isn't afraid to challenge herself to find deeper understanding. Railing carefully explains her reasoning, supports her ideas with evidence, and helps guide class discussion. All of which truly sets her apart. Congratulations, and from Ellsworth Elementary School, Apheta Sinerys. Ta shows critical thinking every day at school. She will choose to be honest and make responsible decisions even

025when no one is watching or reminding her. She works hard to fix mistakes and learn from them. Tapa treats others fairly and follows the classroom rules and the rise code because it's the right thing to do. Her actions show strong character and helps our classroom and school be a safe and respectful place for everyone. Congratulations from from Harmon Elementary School. Noah Figueroa Noah has been chosen as our student of the month because he takes time to think think through every available option when working on tasks. He is persistent and perseveres no matter what. He looks at his learning targets from every angle to completely understand his goals. When he gets stuck, he never hesitates to ask for help and will even look at situations from other points of view in and out of the classroom.

026Noah truly is a critical thinker. Congratulations. and from Rant Elementary School, Spencer Patterson. Mr. Quinn will find a way to honor Spencer. Thank you, Mr. Quinn. And finally, from Simon Elementary School, James Auster Meyer. Simon is proud to recommend James as student of the month for critical thinking. He consistently demonstrates strong critical thinking skills by asking thoughtful questions, exploring new opportunities, and looking for multiple ways to solve problems. He doesn't he doesn't settle for the first answer. and it was always eager to understand the why of why something works. James works well with others, performs well academically, and is an honest, reliable, hardworking young man. Congratulations. As James is getting his award and picture, let's give another round of applause for all of our students. We will take a few minutes break if you'd like

027to get some pictures and then you're more than welcome to stay, but you're also free to leave if you so desire. Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Hey, heat. Hey, heat. We'll move on to 5.5 governing board updates. You guys have anything? Nope. You got something? Did anyone else want to go first? >> No. No. >> You do. >> You first. >> Okay. Excuse me. Um, I was honored to be able to go to Simon uh for Reading Across America, one of their community guest speakers, and it was a lot of fun. Is Miss Lopez still here? She might have stepped out. >> Oh, she's getting pictures. Okay. Um, I I was paired up with one of our local uh business owners and it we went to a kindergarten class, second grade class, and a sixth grade

028class. Um, the toughest one, if anybody's familiar with Skippy John Jones >> because there's lots of madeup words mixed with English and Spanish, and there was no like dry run or practice. I just had to perform. Um, but it was fun. That that was one of my favorite ones. And then I actually brought a donation and gift for uh Miss Lopez to give to I believe it's Miss Saint. She's a sixth grade teacher. And um I just had such a tender moment with those kids. Um I have a a true love for reading. Um ever since I was a little girl, my dad told me, "No matter what you want to do in life, you can learn it from a book." And I took that with me um through throughout my life. And the sixth

029grade class at first you could tell that they were a little bit like oh who who are these people you know and I told them I said well kids I am from the 1900s and Dr. Peterson here is also from the 1900s. I don't know if you appreciated me saying that. And then I found a book that they had in the classroom and it was Journey Under the Sea. if any of you remember reading those choose your own adventure books. And I I grabbed it and the white on the outside of the book was very yellowed because as I told them, this book is also from the 1900s. And we had the most fun because it was interactive, it was engaging, it was like playing a game. And they were competing over choosing what page

030we would turn to, what our our journey would be. And we ended up dying at the bottom of the ocean, Miss Lopez. And and it ended just in time uh for mine and uh Dr. Peterson's time to be done with them. But they were so excited and they loved it so much that they wanted to start over again and choose a different adventure, but we had to go. And so I um I was just letting them know, Miss Lopez, I have this. This is a gift for your school and for Miss Saint and your sixth graders. It is um it's the set that includes the journey under the sea, the abominable snowman, space and beyond, and the lost jewels of my booty. Nabooti, I don't know what something did they >> Okay. Oh, >> yes.

031Thank you. It it was um I'll never forget it and I hope they don't either and I hope that they continue to have a love for reading. So, thank you. Um great program at all the schools. Um and then I was able to also take a tour of Project Bridge at Harmon. Um absolutely impressed by what they have set up there. Um by way of clothing, shoes, backpacks, um feminine hygiene needs, regular hygiene needs, food. um so thoughtful to even go through and make kits where if you have um a child that has a birthday, they have it where you can get a soda and a cake and have you seen that on Pinterest where you can make a cake with just those two ingredients? Um but a birthday kit and um I'm just so

032impressed by what they're what they're doing there to give back to the community. So if you if you have a chance to donate to Project Bridge or go take a tour of it, highly recommend it. Um, and then is it is it Protos? Am I pronouncing it correctly? Or is it Proto? Yes, Protos. Protos. Proud new member of the House of Protos. Um, so thank you for allowing me to come and be a part of that. I posted it to social media and I had tons of kids that are former Cougars that think that I guess this is like a cool house. I think your house is probably very cool also, Mr. Hog. Don't worry. but they said that I got a cool house and they were so proud that I was part of their

033house and I took the time to go down there. So, thank you for letting me do that. Um, and then very proud of CMS and their flag football teams. They had two teams. They finished third and fourth. The coaches, I have nothing but the absolute best of things to say about the coaches there. Um, I trust them with my own daughter and they um I love them. I absolutely love them and adore them. So, great things happening all over the district. >> Thank you. Go real quick. I had the opportunity to spend a little time with Santa Dunker and Cheryl Pierce this month um on different days in different buildings, but it um as former teacher, I think when you walk into a school building, it always just feels like home. Like the kids haven't

034changed, the teachers haven't changed, although things have. But um just reinforce the dedication, the passion, the how hard our administrators and our teachers work and you just want you to know how appreciated you are and immediately upon entering the positive vibe that you pick up the aura there. Got to see them in all school assemblies and uh so I just really enjoy and appreciate their time and it it meant a lot to me. So, and then I got to go to CPAC. I went to the Chicago Tribute and was so impressed with I hadn't been to the performing arts, so it was just wonderful to go see >> and I kept staring at the saxophone player and wondering if Dr. Wyman Moonlights >> because he do you have a paper boy hat that you wear?

035I mean, he looked exactly like so. Yep. Yep. But anyway, so I'm just so impressed with what's going on with the district, the people that I'm getting to know, and I really look forward to getting to know many of you a little bit more and spending some time in your buildings. So, I appreciate that. Thank you. >> All right. Anyone else? Okay. All right. Um, we'll move on to 6.1. Any public comments? >> No comments. >> All right. So, we'll move on to some um the consent agenda. Any um any comments, questions, concerns about the consent agenda? If not, I will um take a motion. >> I motion to approve the consent agenda as presented. >> I second. >> All in favor? >> I motion carries five to zero. Okay, so now that brings us

036to 8.1 discussion and consideration of approval of the ES of the estimate of excess capacity for open enrollment acceptance for two 2627 school year. >> Thank you, Madam President. This is the normal uh excess capacity that we bring to you every year. Uh this is the second reading of it. Just a quick reminder, by law we have to uh establish what our capacity is in our schools. We establish it three different ways. by how much the school could hold, how much grade levels could hold, and then how many how much special programs could hold like special education or gifted ELLL. Uh the numbers that we're using in this um uh recommendation have not changed uh for the last couple years. Uh and so we will treat any student that does not if you live in

037our boundaries, it doesn't matter if that capacity you get to come. But if you're outside of our boundaries and we're at capacity, uh then you'll be placed on a waiting list. If if uh uh room opens up then we would look to to allow you in. So I'd recommend approval as presented. >> Any questions? >> No. If not, I'll take a motion. >> I move to approve the estimate the estimated of excess capacity I can't even talk. For open enrollment acceptance for the 2026 2027 school year as presented. A >> second. All in favor? >> I motion carries 5 to zero. >> Okay. 8.2 discussion and possible action regarding changes to policy as recommended by the ASBA and policy advisory 960. Second reading. >> Yeah, this is just a simple policy. They just wanted to

038remove uh June 20, 2016 out of the policy um because it's no longer uh applicable. So, I would just recommend approval as presented. >> Any questions on that one? Okay, I'll take a motion. >> I make a motion to approve the changes to policy DIE as presented in policy advisory 960. >> I second. >> All in favor? >> I motion carries five to zero. 8.3 discussion of possible action regard regarding CHS and CTE CTE and CMS classroom renovations. Madam Chair and members of the governing board, I'm excited to bring this recommendation to you. This is an opportunity for us to make an impact on the learning spaces in four areas. Uh three at the high school and one at the middle school. Um, I've listed those items out, but before we get to those, just

039want to give uh a huge thanks to a few people. First, Mr. Scragum, who really uh brought these to our department to uh uh help make this happen. He had visited with his teachers and saw what the needs were and came with came with a proposal and really took it from there. Uh Priscilla Almanza is our administrative assistant who has just been in contact with all the vendors we considered and uh really her and John leading some tours at the two sites for the vendor uh visits. Um and certainly Julie Stone and Karen Finn for u looking at at the funding that majority is coming from CTE and then a small portion from capital funds. And um so I want to thank all of them for the all the work behind the scenes to really

040make this recommendation happen. Um as listed, we're looking at the the nursing room at um the high school and that's simply removing a wall because of um they've added uh a number of hospital beds. And if you've been in that room, they have patients in in the bed. So, it's a little startling when you walk in and you see that, but this really opens up the area for those additional um uh number of beds. The sports medicine room is a uh more of an overhaul uh because that used to be a computer lab and so that will be a summer project. Um but that's really going to uh just strengthen that program even more. the multimedia room um is just we're it's a safety issue as much as anything. We have wires all over the

041floor and now they're going to be drawn from the ceiling. >> And then at the middle school, I mistakenly put that this is a fitness room and it's actually a career room. And on one part of the room is a classroom, on the other is a more of a a computer lab. And this would allow the teacher um greater visible uh visibility. So if he uh he or she does assign a few students over to the computer lab, there will be two 4x8 uh sections in the wall that he'll be able to uh have visibility. Right now there's a door that connects those two and >> you know you just don't have the line of sight that you would like. Um, as I said, three of these are uh CTE, one of them is our

042capital funds. Three of them will be done if pending board approval over the next two weeks. So, we were pretty excited to um have the three vendors come. Uh they had a chance to visit uh each site, provide us with uh estimates, and um and then we were able to review those. Uh and again uh we're recommending that Rightand Construction uh be approved for um completing these these projects. Three of them over spring break and one over summer. >> Which one is that? The middle school. >> It is the last one where we're creating the window. Yeah. And that's that's $9,000. >> So very small portion of of our capital fund. >> Okay. Very nice. Any other questions? >> No. If not, I'll take a motion. >> A motion to approve Ritan Construction to complete

043classroom renovations as presented. >> I second. >> All in favor? >> I motion carries 5 to zero. >> Thank you. Okay. 8.4 discussion and consideration of formal adoption of K5 English language arts core curriculum. Second reading. Evening, Madam President, members of the board, Dr. Wyman, and of course, Miss Judy, the glue. >> I got to read across America, too. But I got to be with Mr. Hogan, and he's got an epic book on paper, rock scissors. It's complete with voices and characters. Maybe at a future board meeting. It It was quite hysterical. Um, and then he had >> governing board um retreat. >> Then he had some challen some some paper rock scissors challenged with students. Teacher took him down though. did lose to the teacher. So, all right, on the more serious note of

044our ELA adoption here, um I'm going to go very quickly because these first few slides you have seen before. Um so, I won't take any of your time on that. Just a reminder, these were the overall scores um after the materials review. These were the overall scores based on the vendor presentations. Um from that, we brought you these top two selections last month. Um these were the scores from ED reports. I remembered this time to update the slide and add for you the gateway components at the bottom. So they're judging it based on text quality, building knowledge, and usability. Um, so that's the information there. Again, high scores for both of the potential proposed vendors. Um, both of them have some strong findings with the science of reading. This is the other vendor. All stuff

045you saw last month. I just added those gateway pieces down below. Um what I'm bringing to you this month just to give you that other piece of information um is a little bit of updates on the pricing components. >> Um so the overall cost didn't change from last month to this month, but we do have a couple of different ways to break that down. Um so we reached out to both vendors and said what would you be able to offer in terms of a payment plan knowing that we're working on some budgetary constraints. So um the first possible vendor of Wondersh was a total cost of just over $600,000. um they would offer us an opportunity to break that down into a three-year payment plan at approximately $200,000 per year. Um we went into this

046looking at a budget of 750. The less is better. I know Julie, less is better. Um and then so that would kind of break that out over a couple of years and help us as we stabilize as a district. Um the second vendor HMH's into reading was a cost of about 511. Um, how that payment plan could work with them if this is your selection is we would have an initial payment of 21199. Um, that's higher the first year because that includes all of the print materials. Um, and then we would have from years 2 to 8 the digital materials only at 50,000 a year. Um, so a little bit of a heavier hit. I pop back to the previous slide. So you're talking um 200,000 there, 211 there, but then smaller payments spread out

047over the eight years of the loan. I feel like I'm helping buy a car. Yes, you can. We can prepay early. Um, that's an option for us, but it does give a little bit of flexibility on the payment options long term. Then on Sorry, I should pause there. Any questions on the ELA side of things? For the world languages, just a reminder, these were our scores for the world languages. From the materials review, vendor presentations, that was Spanish, materials review, and vendor presentations for French. We brought you forward these two um possibilities last month. In a similar vein, reached out to KL and asked them about some pricing options. The total adoption eight years, it would be 96,629, an average yearly cost of a little over $12,000. Um they would work out a similar payment

048plan with us if this is the direction you want us to go where we would make an initial payment of about $20,000 in the first year. That gets us the teacher editions, the classroom sets, um, and then the yearly digital access. We did bring this quote down from last month. Um, the original proposal had 200 student texts. Um, so a text for every student. At the advisement of those teachers, they said a class set is just fine. So we just built this around three class sets. Two at the high school, one at the middle school. um makes that a little bit easier on our pocket and still gives them what they need. But they did really want um the I think it's KWL is the digital base. Um that was their preference over having more

049textbooks. And so that's that annual cost of a little over 10,000. So it primarily keeps that digital subscription going. The advantage obviously is that's cheaper for us. The disadvantage is whoever is standing at this podium seven years from now um it gets turned off on by July 1 and we would still have those classroom sets of books but the digital access is gone. The cost for for the French component is built into that 96,000. Um we've had a pretty steady decline in French. So, we built that out to provide support for next year so that our French two and three students can finish out. So, they have the two years of language for college if they are collegebound. Um, but we're not offering French one next year. So, we didn't we didn't include in that

050uh any sort of a long-term plan for French. Um, should you approve this, which is our recommendation, it still at least gives us the approval for the adoption. If the high school goes up in numbers and French comes back, you've already approved the adoption and it's just a matter of buying those materials. If you look at it all together, here's where it gets super fun and confusing. Um, so the eight-year adoption all inclusive for these components is somewhere between 607 and 697 depending on which combination you might want to go with. Um, with a rough average yearly cost of about 87,000. Um, you can see again depending on which route you might choose to go. Um, I kind of broke it down for you for year one year. 4. Um, but I know it gets

051a little wonky because it's like if you take A and B or A and C. Um, but you can kind of see how that breaks out over the the long term. The goal was obviously to get the materials in teachers hands but give us the best financial flexibility as we downsize a little bit as a district. Any questions for the world languages or back to the ELA? The ELA. Um, if I'm reading, if I'm looking at this stuff right, the HMH was kind of their >> preference. >> That was what scored the highest with the committee. Yes. >> Okay. Yep. >> It was also the the more economical of the two options as well. >> Okay. Any other You guys have any? >> Okay. All right. Um, let's see here. Where are we at? Um,

052I'm going to make a motion to approve the adoption of the HMH as the um, ELA curriculum for the grades K5. >> I second. >> All in favor? >> I motion carries five to zero. >> Okay. Um, so then we have 8.5 a motion for the um, French, the Spanish and French It really didn't have a choice, right? It's just to report this. >> Unless your choice, your option is to say no, don't do either one. >> Those were the best options that we felt. >> All right. Does anyone want to motion? >> I motion to approve the adoption of the 6th through 12th grade Spanish and French world language curriculum as presented. >> I second. >> All in favor? I I motion carries five to zero. Sorry. Okay. >> Say evening once again because

053I'm going to stay standing here for 8.6. >> Okay. So, yes, 8.6. Um, discussion and consideration approval of the APS AP US history instructional resource pilot. >> Perfect. Thank you. So, there's a little bit more information on this one and in a minute I'm going to ask um our teacher, Mr. Biggness, to come up to the podium as well to be able to share some thoughts. But, I'll kind of get us started here. Again, you've seen these first few slides. Um, this is a recommendation for a pilot approval. Um, the reason we are suggesting or requesting a pilot approval is because we can get it in place for the start of the school year to go through the full adoption process. As you know, and had just witnessed, takes us a good chunk of the

054school year. Um, and then we would launch a full adoption process next year to decide, do we stick with the pilot, do we select something else? Um, I think best practice is still even in a pilot, we do the the transparency piece. We communicate it with our public. We put it on display so folks know that we're piloting this, give them an opportunity to give information. It just gives us a longer data collection period really. Um, just some additional information I added to this for you. Um, just in terms of AP US history, if you're not familiar, um, AP US history's focus, it might be different for some of us, uh, from our high school experience is rather than some of those dates and times as Mr. Bigness, I'm sure, will tell you, it's really

055about using those resources to analyze that historical context, um, and to bring those pieces to lice to life. Not lice, sorry, where's Miss Lopez? Freudian slip, sorry. Um it's it's those pieces of critical thinking and analysis of those texts and materials from time. So um we had three books um that we or options that we brought to you and Mr. Vignus, if you want to make your way on up here, please do. Um he can speak to these a little bit more, but I gave you basically a summary of each of these texts, um some of the usability and features of it, and then some of the reviewer feedback. Um I can read the slide to you but you can read it too. Um just these are all highly rated and recommended u materials. So

056American history by Alan Brinkley. Um this is a McGraill text. McGra Hill is one of our partners already because we use our science through them. Um they were one of they're the they were the other finalists for the ELA. So we've already spoken to them about the cost on this. Each of these are super affordable. We're talking about roughly $1,500 for a pilot. uh depending on how many sections we make next year. Um the second one was the one we mentioned last month, fabric of a nation. Um again, highly rated. Um and then the third one was experience history from McGraill. So I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Vnas because he's the expert and he can kind of share with you >> um which direction he might prefer to go and you can

057ask him any questions you might have. >> Thank you, sir. >> Hello. Good evening. >> I'm Mr. Vignis, the AP US history teacher. So, whatever. Do you have any questions yet or would you just like me to kind of go into a spiel on which one I would prefer? >> Yeah, go into >> So, the first one is the uh the McGra Hill, the American history. That one is probably going to be the most conducive. It's going to be the best one in my opinion after looking at both of them. Um, it does have a an app, which I know kids are dying to have an app of a textbook on their phone, but if there is reading, um, just because of how extensive APA is, there needs to be outside information, there has to

058be, um, I can't cover everything that I want to and that the test requires in a in a calendar year of school. So, the textbook, it has multiple adaptability to it. Um, one of the big things with this and I'm not sure if it the app and they have a um like digital testing I guess you would say. So it is a digital textbook uh print textbook and then there is an app uh on it as well. As the students read each chapter it will give them um all forms of the way that they will be tested. So, a long essay question, a short answer question, document based question, and then multiple choice uh questions. And with the multiple choice questions, it will give immediate feedback on if they miss the question or get the

059question correct, why did they choose, why is that question, why did they miss it, and what could they look out for, if they got it correct, reinforcing what to look out for, and everything like that. And then the SAQs, um, they didn't really touch on it when I was going over it about the written exam because that's always subject to a rubric and also every student can have varying answers because there is multiple multitudes of that. Um, and then but it from a standpoint of living in the digital age, my preference would be this one. Um, and then Fabric of a Nation, that is the second one that I have a teachers copy of that one right now that I'm using for class and for pacing. The first two, either one, I'm not going to

060complain. The first one probably has more digital resources and probably would be better for students because of the immediate feedback, the toolbox that they have and everything that they can do on the computer and what was kind of presented to me. Um, with a digital textbook, I know some kids like a physical textbook and they like to be able to write things down. With the digital one, they're able to highlight, they're able to annotate, they're able to make their own notes, uh, define words, you know, things like that. mark it up in a digital aspect. So we don't obviously it's not like a college course where they can they get to rent the book or they get to keep the book after it but when it is digital it saves everything for them. Uh fabric

061of a nation that is the teachers edition that I'm using right now pacingwise um this being my first year teaching AP US it probably has been the lifesaver for me because I know how to go step by step and what's expected on the test. um at the end of the year in May. And that one is probably both uh the American history the bring the McGra Hill one and this one are very similar. Um and I think they suit the our students needs the best. The last one experiencing history. I don't ever want to like talk bad about something but this would be like this is my third option. Um I think it's a very hard read. Uh giving the given like the student example myself I don't this is gonna be I think this

062would more more be a hindrance rather than a support for our students. Um I think it's very it is a college textbook. It originally was a college textbook and then they went down to the high school level to try to accommodate for uh AP classes. But I think where it is and with the inquiry base and everything that it has, it would make students more confused about the material than being able to synthesize it better. >> Oh, sorry. Go ahead. >> I was just going to ask you, so if you had this year being your first year and you had that first book, that would have been like your ideal ideal. >> Do you know I mean >> connecting with the past? You can't go wrong with Fabric of a Nation. Uh when I went

063to the AP training, of course, their spokesperson came in. Um it goes off of the CTE and it the Fabric of a Nation follows it. I didn't know about the other textbook. I kind of just this is the one I was using and I was the one I was given to by the district as I asked for when I asked for it. Um but the other one from what I have looked into and what and what has been presented to me, it's very similar. But yes, I think that one would be if we have it next year, I could see scores either rising or staying at a very high average for students. >> How closely does it do do these correlate with the exam? >> Step by step, um the both the first two have

064a breakdown. So when you look at it, so right now we're going into period 8 and every period there's nine periods and there is a weight per test per period. So in the test period 9 is like 5 to 8% roughly. Um the bulk of your uh percentage is going to be periods 2 through eight which is roughly anywhere between 20 to 30% of the test. And these books break it down if it 8.1 8.2 8.3 the biggest one like 8.1 talks about all the contextualization which uh for that is how do I use my background information to help myself with uh short answer questions, long essay questions, DBQs. How do I bring in the outside information or the information prior to that period or after that period to help me build a strong base

065for my writing in the beginning? And that gives them that point, but it breaks it down section by section, period by period as if it was they were pretty much taking the test. >> When you say there's a digital option and they can take tests and stuff, do you are you able to see their answers? >> I'm not a I'm not sure. But with AP classroom, there is testing that we do in class as well where we go over it if they have questions or on the MCQ multiple choice questions, sorry. Um, it will tell them like we can go through and I can show them what's the correct answer, what's the non, you know, um, why they may have chosen this or if this is a distractor question or a distractor answer. uh with

066the the digital one for American history, it didn't tell me if I I'm going to assume, but I don't. >> So, like if you if you sign like the first chapter, you don't know whether they like I just want to know if you are able to see whether they did anything. >> I would say I would be able to because I would think it's almost like a Google classroom where they have a specific code. >> I mean, I assume if they're in AP they they probably are. >> Yeah. >> Do you have any questions? Um, I don't have any questions, but I completely agree with you 100%. I did a deep dive into all three of them. Um, I have a son that's in AP Gov and Econ at the school, so a little bit

067familiar with the AP classes. Um, American history connecting with the past. Um, some of the notes that I wrote down, uh, provides a comprehensive chronological narrative aligned with the College Board AP framework, uh, emphasizing historical reasoning, cause and effect analysis, and evidence-based writing. Uh, by comparison, when looking at Fabric of a Nation, I didn't love that one so much personally. Um, it placed a heavier emphasis on document analysis and then historioggraphical interpretation really early in the course. Um, I felt like that might be more difficult for kids. Um while those skills are obviously important especially as you go into the college setting um that approach I felt like it might limit the depth and then cohesion of just the core content knowledge itself. Um particularly in a pilot setting where the students need a real

068clear structured foundations first approach. Um also completely agree with you and so don't feel bad about saying it but I didn't love the experience history at all. like I just throw toss that one. I I didn't love it at all. So, you're you're in good hands here. But, um with that, if if no one else has anything to add, um I would move that we give you your first choice and adopt American history connecting with the past as the AP US History Instructional Resource Pilot for the 2026 2027 school year. >> I'll second that. >> All in favor? I >> I motion carries 5 to zero. >> I think that was all and I don't think I'm up until 9. >> No, you just stay there. Okay. So, now we are um 8.7 discussion consideration

069of approval of 2627 employment renewal contract list. >> Yeah. What I would suggest I know we've had some conversations today uh with different board members uh about the budget in general. Um there's still uh many moving parts to the budget. I'll be doing a presentation just here in a minute or two about the budget. Um but given some of the unknowns that are still out there, uh an example of the unknowns would be what's going to be the uh the healthc care premiums and and we have a second uh bid coming in. Uh what I would suggest based on on what is established within state statute is that you would go ahead and approve the contracts for the certified staff only. By approving them, they will be released to the certified staff on March 16th

070by statute. They cannot be um uh released to staff uh prior to March 15th and that just happens to be a Sunday. So they would be released on the 16th per statute. Uh they have I think it's 15 uh they have 15 business days. Uh if you count up days uh April 3rd would be the 15th day. However, that is Good Friday. Uh it's our spring holiday. Therefore, we're technically closed and so it doesn't count as a business day. So they would be returned back April 6th. Um and our next meeting is April 8th, which is when we're looking to do recommendations on the budget. So it would align with uh classified and administrative psychologist if we push it to the April 8th uh meeting. I think the the bulk of the contracts that we

071need to make the decisions on the budget are really the certified staff and so that we could go ahead and move forward with our decisions on the budgets and then we'll bring back um the other sets of uh contracts on the 8th of April. Um and uh there's no statute requirement for classified. Uh we would have them return them on the 24th of April for um administrators and psychologists. Uh statute under 15503 requires um them to have 30 calendar days. So if we release it on the 9th, they would be due back on the 8th of May um to to meet the requirement and would still be forward would still be able to move forward with that. uh we can release the contracts for administrative staff all the way up until May 15th if we

072we so desire. So that would be the recommendation that I would uh craft, but I'll be more than happy to answer any questions. >> Okay, you guys, any questions? No. Okay, I'll take a motion. I move that the governing board approve issuance of employment contracts required under Arizona Revised Statutes 15-536 and 15-538.01 01 to meet the March 15th statutory deadline for certified teachers and that consideration for all other employment contracts including administrative contracts governed by ARS15-503 and classified staff employment under ARS15-341 be tabled pending completion of the district's reduction in force review and final budget planning. >> I second. Oh, do we need to add to and allow HR to make any minor changes if necessary? Yes, please do. Just in case, >> move to amend to include any pending additional changes by HR. >>

073Just so the board knows, what that just means is when you have for any big situation where you might have 300 people that are getting contracts, if we inadvertently miss somebody, we wouldn't have to wait to bring it back to me, you guys, for a meeting. We could go ahead and just make the adjustment and send it out. So, it's it's really more those kind of minor errors that may occur. um because somebody was missed. We've checked it and we've checked it, rechecked it, but anytime you have that many names, sometimes there's an error. >> Yeah. Do you have that? >> No, you can do it. I just want to make sure that you have the verbiage. Okay. I'll take a second. >> I second. >> All in favor? I >> I. Motion carries. >>

074Five to zero. Okay. Just making sure I listen for everybody. Okay. Um so now we're to information and discussion items. Um 9.1 discussion and information on the formal adoption of early literacy supplement reading first read. >> All right. Well, uh good evening one more time. I'm going to go quickly through the first couple slides because you are quite familiar with them. Um this is the early literacy component. Um, it is a supplemental support to the core adoption that you approved earlier and it speaks specifically to some of those early literacy components, phonics, phmic awareness, some of those kind of things. Uh, it's also a piece of what we're required to make sure we have in place to be compliant with the move on reading statute. Um, so these are the materials review scores. These were

075the top two scores out of the materials review. Um, then out of the presentation, I think those both say 95% group. Don't know what I did there. Um then these were those top two pieces. 95% group and Wilson language basics foundations. Foundations is what we currently have in place. That is our existing adoption. Um 95% group did score higher um through the review process. Sometimes that's natural as folks are kind of tired of what we've been using. Um in this case I would say that there's also sorry I didn't mean to click there. Um there's also some good research in relation to 95% group. it is scoring a little bit higher than Wilson Language Basics. So, might be a good opportunity for us to shift to something that has a little bit more of a

076research backing to it um and a little bit more of a comprehensive system. But either of these would would meet our needs as a district. Um in addition, I'm bringing to you Spalding. Um Spalding is the early intervention component that we use at Combmes Traditional Academy. If you've been in education, you're familiar with Spalding. It's been around for a long time. Um Spalding is also a phonics literacy approach. It's different than 95% group in that um if you've again done Spalding before, Spalding teaches you all the sounds of a letter. Um so it's kind of got that linear approach whereas 95% group is going to teach you like all of the same sounds of the different letters. Um so it's just a different methodology. Um but CTA has asked to continue using Spalding. So we're

077bringing that to you for consideration as well. um they did not go through the adoption process because they're already one of our vendors. Um so that would just be a continuation uh possible extension of the existing adoption. Um again strong ESSA based evidence. Um they put these into tiers. So 95% group scores in the tier one. Um Wilson Foundation scores in tier two. So it's still well rated just not as strongly rated. Um and then our cost for these 95% group is an approximate cost of about 78,000 in year one. Um we asked them for the same thing we did with the core adoption of an annual expenditure. Um some of that is digital materials reprints some of those pieces. Um so that comes out to be about $27,000 a year for years two plus.

078Um it's worth noting that we already have foundations in place. Our average expenditure for funds um the three previous calendar years was about 19,000. So when you look at that 19,000 versus the 27, it is a little more expensive, but we're not going from 0 to 27. We were already purchasing something on an annual basis um including the the materials and the print cost for that. So just gives you some context there. Um if the direction of the board is to continue with Wilson Foundations, um that's an initial cost of 118,000 for some of those materials. Um, you're going to look at me and say, "Wait, Tim, but you said we're already using foundations." Um, the foundations that we're using is going out. There's a new version coming in. So, we eat that initial cost

079again because there's some new materials involved in that. There are some components we would be able to reuse um like the word tiles and some of that, but they they get us with a a new adoption cost. And then about $35,000 a year annually. Um, again, this is the the first read of that. Spalding is about I I gave you a cost of 21,350. It's probably not that high. Um, but similar to our AP, we have some work to do to make sure that we're supporting what we've approved as a district and historically we've I'm going to say not always done the best with it. Um, at least with Spalding. So that takes into account yearly training. So I just built it assuming we had two new teachers. Given that there's 10 teachers on that

080campus, we're probably not turning over two every year. But if we did, that would kind of be our overall cost. Um would be 21,000 for the next seven years. So, it's a pretty nominal cost, but I want to make sure that we build that in to to ensure teachers are getting the right training so they're implementing it effectively. >> Any questions? I know it was a lot. >> Yeah. Has Spalding made any um any um I don't want to say improvements but made any adjustments in their as as they move forward. >> I may not be the best person to answer that. Um I think they have made some adjustments. It's still a different system. >> Back to basics. >> Yeah, it is more of a back to b it's like I said it's just

081a different approach. It's that more linear approach. Um I would say it's not as well aligned with science of reading but it is very common in traditional schools right so there's kind of that piece of do we make that >> synonymous >> I mean I I like spalding so yeah >> okay any other questions you'll come back to >> I have a question um so it looks like they scored 95% at 79% and then post presentation correct and uh foundations at 42%. Did anyone there bring up an alternative like Spalding or something else and they only scored that high because those were the two options? Is there something else that they gave feedback they would like to have entertained >> so that we're making sure kind of like Mr. bigness where fabric of a nation

082came to us but then we went back and came back with three and then there was this more awesome option is >> there were others there I was not at that final one so I'm going to phone a friend >> okay vigorous head shaking of the no okay so no that but that's good though and I appreciate the authenticity Um, just like on the third option that we mentioned earlier, that's really helpful for us to know I really or we or they or you know whatever, right? Really love this or even >> we really don't like this at all. We really don't want it. So that's my only question. Thank you. >> That's good. >> Okay. >> All right. We'll move on. >> Bring that back next month. I apologize. I'm going to walk out

083that door and try to make it to my son's honor band. So I'm not trying to be rude. >> Yes. Thank you. 9.2 discussion and information on 2526 district uh student enrollment numbers >> just because we moved a little bit uh one week earlier for our um for our agenda today. Um I know I just gave it to you on on uh uh on Monday. Uh but we're holding a fairly similar pattern to what we've we've done throughout the year. Um I'll talk in a second when we talk about the budget and and I know uh Mr. Britt from applied economics talked about numbers uh uh last month. Um so I would say we're we're holding where we normally would be um and where we think we'd project. We're still a little bit higher than

084what our budget was built on. Uh so that has not uh impacted us. Uh from an ADM uh from a ADM perspective, we're just short of uh 20 kids higher than what we projected in the budget. Um from enrollment process, it's a little bit higher than that. Um, but so unless there's questions, uh, we're just kind of continuing to give you guys information so you see what our enrollment looks like. >> Great. All right. Um, let's see here. So, we have a 9.3 discussion and information regarding the ASBA 2027 political agenda. Looks like it's due May 15th, right? We still have We can come back and >> Yeah. So, it's really just taking a look at what the current one is. It may change a little bit based on what the legislature does or doesn't

085do. Um, and so you can take a look at it. I think the key pieces would just be uh as a district, you may submit one proposal. I think in the past, for those of you that weren't here, I was with a a particular school district, and we had a board member that had a belief that if you weren't on target to graduate, you couldn't get your driver's license. So, that board would bring that forward every single time as a possible legislative uh agenda. uh it never went anywhere, but that would be the kind of thing if there was something that in particular that someone on this board felt was really critical that should be discussed. Uh if the whole board agreed, then that would go into the mix. And then the second part of

086this is uh in September at the law conference, uh they vote on what the different agendas are, what the different options are for their agenda in 2027. If the people that were there from all representing all the districts in the in the state voted yes for your idea, then it adds to the um uh uh priorities for 2027. If they didn't vote yes for it, then it goes nowhere, which in the case of that one, it usually happened. It never went anywhere. But so take a look at it and then uh we just need to have a conversation and see what you guys want to do. And then you can even be thinking of a delegate. Uh I know Mr. raised on it for several years but a delegate in that we have to announce

087I think by September. >> Okay. Okay. Um 9.4 discussion information regarding the 2627 Thank you Mr. Vignis for coming. I appreciate it. >> Thank you. um regarding the 2627 Jomes Unified uh school district budget work with. So really what I want to do today uh tonight is just to talk about the process. Uh I'm purposely keeping this at a high level so that we're talking about what are our next steps and how do we move forward. Um, in the past, um, we've had a second meeting in March. I don't think we're going to need it just by the way everything's playing out this year. Um, so I decided to kind of do it this way. I got to make sure I'm doing this right. >> So again, this is some pretty standard goals that we've

088had in the past. As a reminder, um, state statute requires that we have a balanced budget. So unlike maybe federal governments, uh, and state governments, we don't get that luxury. We actually have to have a balanced budget. Um the key piece to our budget will be what's our student enrollment. So where we're going to look at our student enrollment and I'll explain the number in just a second, but where we're going to look at the student enrollment is based on what uh Mr. Bram and applied uh economics presented last month. Uh and so that's the most up-to-date number that we will be using um to project uh what we believe our numbers will be. Our goal is always to protect staff and students. Um I'm put in there to the extent possible just because uh

089recognition of the numbers that we're talking about we're getting into 25 30% cut rate over three years. I don't care what organization you're working in. Uh that's a significant cut. Uh and so it may not be quite as easy uh uh to do that. However, I will tell you things change every single day. And so um in some ways it may be easier than I think. So, what I'm telling you today and when I come back on the 8th, I might be Eeyore today and I might be Tigger on uh on April 8th just because of some things that have changed. Um and then again, we'll look at some priorities uh that we've had in the past in the district to continue to move forward. Um those priorities and again up at the top you'll

090see given the current budget situation all priorities may not be met but obviously student staff uh retention, recruitment, student attendance is something that we are always working on. Um, and so how do you rightsize, but at the same time you make sure you're validating and and uh rewarding your staff uh and your students and wanting to come. Um, we can go ahead when it comes to student retention. We've talked a lot about marketing and I know we're trying to bring some information back to you guys. Um, and Mandy has been working on that and I have a memo I'm going to get to you. I just haven't had a chance that kind of speaks to some of the things that we're looking at. You want me to put a million dollars in marketing? let's put

091a million dollars in marketing. The difference is based on these priorities, where does that money come from? So, it's not a case of of whether the money is is there or not there. It's just a case of the priorities and whether how much we put in based on how much we have. So, so I use that faciciously, but just to let you know that that there is real tight uh situation with budgeting and so we're not in a position to necessarily do what some of the larger districts are doing or some of the districts that are that are growing. Uh here we have staff salary increase. That would be our brothers is give an increase so we can stay competitive. Whether that's possible this year or not, that's a different story I'll get to in

092a second. But that's one of our priorities. Obviously, we would like to see our facilities uh maintained. We did not um pass the bond obviously, so it becomes a little bit tighter, but we are um still working with SB. And so, as an example, we're doing some work on a roof at Simington right now. Some people may have complained to you about it, but um the issue with that more than anything else is there's a lot of work being done in the state. And if everybody was trying to do the work during two weeks of spring break and the uh four weeks at uh uh uh during the summer, there just not enough hours in the day to do that. So, you do it when you can get it. Harmon is supposed to start up

093coming out of uh spring break. Both those projects will take uh I think a couple months. Uh but so we're we're continuing to do the best we can with what we have the dollars that are available to us uh through the state. But uh the state just so you have an idea they will probably have allocated in the neighborhood. I think the governor's budget recommended about $250 million for facilities across the entire state uh just to maintain those facilities that are uh are being requested to be fixed in the state right now is 550 million. So something's going to have to give. Uh obviously we want to look at helping uh our students with any uh behavior issues, mental health uh discipline testing and curriculum and uh staff. Obviously the curriculum uh Dr. Fountain presented

094just uh a few minutes ago and then our staff professional development what we're doing to try to help our teachers and some of that was part of the Wilson training. So those are our priorities. We try to get to them as best as we can but it's just dependent upon any number of different factors. So, normally what I bring to you in the past was, hey, here's option one, two, three, and four in terms of what we think we should project for our loss or our gain of kids. Uh, I don't think we have that um option this year. So, I'm not giving options. Um, we will build our budget on a loss of 68 ADM next year. That represents a loss of a million62752. So, a little over a million dollars. So before we

095start the gate out of the gate irrespective and what that is built on is based on a 2% increase from the state as mandated by statute but what I decided to put in is the applied economics projections for the next couple years and I'll tell you the reason I'm doing this is for a couple reasons. If we are at the 20% we're off the build the the the student loss by 208mm like we were this year next year that means our 60 is closer to 40. That means your 46 is closer to 20. That's not quite flat, but it's getting pretty close. You'll also see that the projections in 2829 and 2930 are gains. What I think we're doing is we're getting into the trough right now of some loss. I don't think we're going

096to see the hyperrowth like QC saw or Chandler in the old days, but you might see some steady growth that says if we rightsize this year, you can get through the next three years um based on the way we build the budget this year and based on the number of people we have in the district, we will be okay. And then if that path of of growth continues, then you make adjustments accordingly. Uh Bramard is is showing a couple more years of growth, not quite 47 and 31 and then a couple three years at towards the end of loss, but I would just caution you that that is fully 10 years out and so 7 to 10 years out. Um who knows what the place is going to look like out here then um especially

097in light of LG plant some other things coming on board. Um so those are projections but that's why we do the projections every two years so that we can adjust. If you remember, I might maybe off a little bit on his numbers, but if I remember his numbers correctly, we're looking to have homes coming into this area in the neighborhood of uh 8,000 new homes in the next five to six years. So, obviously, when you look out seven years from now, if you truly have 8,000 homes built, um who knows what the projections are going to be and and what's going to actually hit reality. So, how do we build the budget and what are our options? Really, you're starting with these four components. We already said the budget shortfall based on the two receiving

0982% inflation from the state is a little over a million dollars. If we were to give an employee salary increase of 2% including benefits, that's going to be $735,000. We're projecting health premium increases at 12% which would be $200,000. Now, that number could change because our number could be higher or it could be lower. Um but based on our conversations with our current vendor um that's a projection we have. Note that um we do we have requested a second um uh group to give us a number. So as soon as we get both those numbers we'll come back with it. Uh the board has routinely for their my seven years here looked at a contingency of a million dollars. Now a million dollars looks like a lot of money but I know truth and honesty

099a million dollars is about a 3 or 4% uh contingency. I would say private sector probably runs more in the 8 to 10% contingency. So some people look at a million dollars and say what are you doing with a million dollars. Uh but the reality is if you're running a $30 million operation on a million dollar contingency, I would say you're got your fingers crossed and hoping every single night that something doesn't happen to really make things a whole lot different. What then happens is what's the combination of those four things that we really want? There's probably five or six other options. This is just to give you an idea how we get to where we get to. But if you were just to say we're not going to give an employee increase and employees

100are going to have to pick up the health care premium increase and so all you're saying is we're going to try and cover the the shortfall from the 2% inflation increase and we want to keep a million dollars in the contingency. We're going to have to come up with $2 million. The next three iterations just show you that you can run the range between 2 million and $3 million. Basically, you could go ahead and do three more iterations, but they're all going to line up between two and $3 million. So really, the issue that just comes out is what's the final numbers going to be and what are we shooting for? And so when we come to you with recommendations on April 8th, you may see a recommendation that says, "We think we can only

101give a 1% increase instead of a 2%." Or we might come to you and say, "We're going to freeze. We believe the recommendation could be a freeze." Now, you guys make the final decision. If I come to you and say, "I think we should freeze." And you say, "No, that's not fair to employees. I think you should give them 2%." Then we're going to have to go back and sharpen our pencils, and something else is going to have to give. Um, and so those are the kinds of things that we're looking at at this point in time. I only show you this so that you have a perspective of how we build the budget at this point in time and what we've done. And that's the work that the leadership team's done. We've met on

102several occasions as a collective group and individually as small groups to talk about what could we do to get to the numbers that we need to get to. There'll be some other things that you can see that we'll talk about. Um, again, you start to bring in key questions as you start to take a look at it. Can you get to where you need to get to and how big will the class sizes go if you do staff reduction? What do you do when you look at, we'll say, the high school and the middle school when you have core subjects versus electives? What do you do with specials at the elementaryaries? What happens with counselors and social workers? What if it's paid out of a grant? What if it's not paid out of a grant?

103All these become questions of what you do with class size reductions, administrative reductions. Can we reduce staff at the administrative level um or can you reduce benefits and achieve what you need to achieve? Again, the salaries, do we give a freeze, so no money, or do you give some iteration between basically about two 0% 2%. Um, and that's what we would take a look at. We'll run the numbers and say, okay, I mean, you can do simple math. 2% is is 735,000, then 1% is half of that. um where's the curriculum purchases? I'll give uh Dr. Fountain some kudos because based on the way he's got them to look at the numbers, um it's going to be less than what I would have anticipated had you come to me a week and a half ago

104and asked me what do you think I'm going to spend on curriculum. Um so I haven't had a chance to be totally honest to to um go through all of his numbers and say what does this mean? Uh Julie and I are talking about that, but it is less than what we had anticipated uh based on on what he's been able to do. Health premium increases. It's a same conversation every year. Is a district going to pick up the employee only? The employee is responsible right now for dependent coverage. Okay. But is the district going to pick up employee only or are we going to start to move over the cost of employee to the to uh uh to the employee themselves? Now, please understand if we move over the cost, we're not talking about

105moving over the tire cost of what insurance is. What would move over would be the increase that we're going to experience next year. So, if the increase was $1,000, that's we are still paying $6,000 for their insurance right now as a district or $7,000. So, we wouldn't be saying, "Hey, you owe us eight total thousand." we would be looking at the 10,000 or some iteration of that if that's what we decided to go to. Okay? If that makes sense. The other thing we'll look at is other fund balances. What do I mean by other fund balances? One of the things we're talking about with other fund balances would be contingency. If I say we're going to roll over a million dollars, that's a number we have to work on. What happens if we only roll

106750,000? That means we just freed up capacity within the budget of $250,000. What happens with Medicaid? uh Jen Corey and the team up there have done a very good job over the last couple years of increasing the amount of Medicaid we have coming into our our uh district. Therefore, we have excess dollars in there. What do we do with those excess dollars and how do we move forward with them? Okay, DAA, we were anticipating having to spend DA district additional assistance, which is your capital projects. We're expecting to pay expecting to pay this much for curriculum, which again with what Dr. Fountain did, we may have to pay less. So, we may be in a better situation. But when you put all of that together, um it's going to give you your budget. Now, this

107slide has changed based on the action that was taken by the board tonight. So, the certified stuff is all legit. What will happen with classified administrative is we'll just change the dates. Um and that way, um it will be communicated uh to staff. The way the communication's going to go to staff um is that tomorrow at some point in time there will be my district update which I send out several times during the year. It will essence take this slide presentation and put it into a one pager front and back. And so that way it'll go to all the staff and the staff will be able to uh look at it on the one pager that goes to them will be a link to this um presentation so they can look at the presentation at

108the same time. Now, it's redundant, but for some people, maybe this looks better than the one pager. Um, so we're trying to get the communication with the contract release. Just please know uh information was sent out the asked the leadership team to talk to their to their staffs um this week on what these dates were going to be. Uh we have this presentation here with these dates. We'll have the district update that goes out tomorrow. We'll remind staff next Wednesday of when the district update or when the contracts are are due. uh in the case of class certified staff, excuse me, we will remind them again on the 23rd when we come back from spring break. Um then we will go ahead and take a look at anybody who's not turned it in and we'll

109ask the the administrators to go talk to their people individually between the 23rd when we get back and the sixth one is due. Just so we're very very clear. Obviously, it's nice if everybody filled it out on March 17th. Life would be a whole lot grander. That's more than likely not going to happen. But I just let you know that we're making sure we are very clear with staff when things are due so that we don't have any concerns, issues uh that that may occur. So when we build the budget, uh basically we're going to assume a 2%. I am not hearing anything down at the legislature that's going to change that. Um so I do believe we will get 2%. There's not a lot of money down there, but I believe they understand that

110they owe us 2% based on on some lawsuits. So, I've not heard that that's going to be uh difficult. The difficulty that may be is that we may not get a budget until May or June like last year. So, you're going to have to go ahead and make some commitments to staff like with contracts before you know the final number. So, there's a little bit of a of a gamble there. And I'll explain what we're going to do with that. So the salaries >> remind me again when um when is the budget when do we have to have the budget done by? >> The budget needs to be done um by uh uh July 15th. >> Okay. >> So there's time for that. Normally you'd like to get hopefully they would do it a little

111bit sooner um because there is a statutory time frame from which you have to have the budget presented and then posted on your website. Right. >> And so there's I think you got about 10 or 15 days. June, right? Okay. Um, so salary freezes or 1% or 2% increase. One thing that I will let you know that, and this is in the uh sheet that's going to go to everybody tomorrow, is that we will be putting reduction in force language in every single contract. And so the idea of a reduction in force is even when you sign a contract normally what might happen is you sign the contract and then something happens in in July, August, September and you have to reduce. Uh in speaking with our attorney, the language that's in there that that

112will be in the contracts is our our attorney's language. What we're saying, even if you sign a contract, let's just say by April 6 because that's the date for certified staff. And then let's say the state pulls a a fast one on us and June 15th they give us a 0% increase to our budget, then there may need to be a reduction in force and legally you're able to do a reduction in force after you sign the contract before the contract year starts. So that's why we'll put in there. I think at this point in time based on everything I know that I don't believe there's going to be a significant reduction in force, but we need to protect ourselves um to make sure that we're aware of a situation that could occur. Um based

113on everything I'm seeing, I think we're going to be okay. But again, this is there's moving parts all over the place and I can say something today and tomorrow somebody can give me something totally different and we're going to have to adjust accordingly. Again, health. Then we would add the health insurance decision. We would look at staff reductions. A couple things I will take a look at with staff reductions. Elimination of six-fifths. Um elimination of six fifths and some other issues potentially going to increase class sizes. You can have a debate all day long um about what the class sizes. Uh I've been in districts I when I taught if I had 32 kids in a class I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Um we were around 36 37 because we were in

114a hyperrowth time frame. I've been in districts as a superintendent where we had 30 uh 40 to 45 in many of our high school classes based on some cuts through uh an override that failed. So what's the perfect number? Just depends. Well, how much money do you have? Um we will review all stipens and see what stipens are necessary and needed. That may be coaching stipens. That may also be stipens for leadership teams. That may also be stipens for department chairs. All that's going to be looked at and reviewed and brought forth with the recommendation. We will look at programs that we have that are covered by stipens and do we continue those programs. So I know last year we had a conversation about um swimming. There may be some other programs that we're looking

115at this year. Look at the reduction initially and hopefully primarily by attrition. So, what we would hope we could even eliminate some positions, but if someone's left another uh uh position and the person is certified, they may not have the position they're in this currently, but they would be offered an opportunity to stay with us and work in a different area. So, they would not lose a job. They just not may be in the area that they wish they were teaching in. Okay. Um so, that would be position elimination. And in a worst case scenario, you'd have a reduction in force. The fund balances are the three that I talked about and we would come back to you with a number. Um, and then we would just have to see. And so once you put

116all of that together, then we come back to here and whatever that magic number was, that's what it's got to hit. So that's kind of the process of what we're working through. Again, I'm I'm I'm feeling comfortable with where we're at. But it's like I got two puzzles on the table and I'm just trying to separate the pieces so I can put one puzzle together with all the right pieces and I'm not trying to jam a different piece into the into the puzzle. Um but I believe we're going to be okay with where we get at. I should knock on the wood so that um I don't jinx myself, but I believe uh we need to be we're we're need to be now. It's just a matter of letting all the last pieces of the

117puzzle come together. So be more than happy to entertain any questions. >> No any questions? >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> All right. So now we have 10.1 requests for future agenda items. Does anybody have anything that they are burning to desire to have on the agenda next month? >> I don't have anything new. Just a reminder of a previous request for governance discussion direction ESA student program and policy framework ARS title 15 um review statutory authority and district responsibilities to identify potential opportunities for board adopted policy and administrative guidelines related to offering district classes program access to ESA participating students including eligibility enrollment attendance funding fee structures as applicable instructional quality staffing transportation and accountability ility measures provide direction to uh the superintendent on next steps in policy development and then also um thank

118you for bringing up the Dr. Wyman marketing. Um so glad to hear that that's being worked on. Um wanted to emphasize not necessarily looking at requesting to spend more um but more so governance oversight marketing communications expenditure and review and return on investment ROI strategy to support enrollment ADM. Uh conduct a detailed review of marketing and communications budget expenditures, contracts and performance measures. Evaluate cost effectiveness and return on investment. Identify efficiencies, reallocation opportunities and strategy adjustments to strengthen enrollment and retention ADM and support sustainable revenue with direction to administration regarding metrics reporting cadence and recommended budget actions. Um, so >> maybe moving funds around or or no cost, low cost. Yeah, >> send me that just so I can get exactly what you need. >> Yep. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Okay. Anything else? All

119right. I'm going to make a motion to adjurnn at 711. >> Second. >> Oh, >> we all second it. >> All in favor? I >> I motion carries five to zero.