001Uh, I need a motion to adopt the agenda. I move to adopt the agenda. I second. Okay, we have Stephen with the first and with the second. All in favor? I I motion carries. Five to zero. Um, join. Please join me for the pledge. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay. Um 4.1, approval of the meetings uh meeting minutes from the regular board meeting on March 5th, 2025. Does anybody have any questions on that? Okay. If not, I'll take a motion. I motion to approve the March 5th, 2025 meeting minutes as presented. I'll need a second. I second. Okay. All in favor? I I I wasn't there. So, so they just
002put abstain. Motion carries four to zero then. So, you were late. Oh, no. I'm sorry. I was at that one. Okay. Forgot that's where I was at. Um, approval 4.2. Do you want to change that? Yes, that's fine. We can do that. All right. 4.2. Approval of minutes of the special board meeting on March 26, 2025. Any questions on that one? No. Perfect. I move to approve the minutes from the March 26, 2025 special meeting as presented. I second that motion. Okay. All in favor? I I motion carries. Five to zero. Okay. So, we're going to um we're down to 5.1. Superintendent report celebrations and recognition. Thank you, Madam President. a lot of things going on right now. So, we'll uh there is a handout out front, so I'm not going to read every single
003word, but we want to congratulate uh the high school FFA for their Panal County Fair success. Um they were recently at the at the uh Panal County Fair. Uh there's a whole list of winners. Uh we do want to take a moment to thank the not only the students but also their teacher, Mr. Van Vanosichi, Vanessich. And then the list of the top winners were James Morgan, market champion, Durac, Kyle Rednau, market champion and fourth in showmanship, and Bailey Bonner, Carcass Goat Reserve Champion and uh sports showmanship champion intermediate. So they had great success there. Uh also a reminder, we do have the Combmes Education Foundation scholarship. Some of you sitting in there, that might be seniors. You might want to check and see if you haven't filled any out. Anybody I know in fine
004arts, there's a scholarship out there. Um there are variety of different scholarships, about 18 $1,000 scholarships. They'll be awarded at the May uh six senior awards night. So those are out. Um CHS soccer, boys soccer in particular, had a a very successful season, the best in in the uh in the school's history. And we want to congratulate Nathan Alvarez, who was named the region offensive player of the year and under spot on the all region team. He was also on the or joined on the first all region first team by Evan Frasier a defender. Uh Logan Pluganfelder a forward Ramis Garcia the goalie and Andres Martinez a midfielder. And then they had other ones that were named to second and honorable mention. And on the girls side um they had several team members that were
005uh named to honorable mention. The robotics team uh marked a very uh successful first year. Um assembling a a robot. The team produced the first in in first one in three years that went to compet uh competition. Um and uh it's a program that's aligned with esports. It's very successful. Want to make sure that the coaches Kyle Young and Renee Mueller. Uh this is another example. We try to do something for every child in our our district. So, this is where we expand out to other areas that may not be uh traditional um ways that we celebrate. Uh down at CTA this past Friday, they had a very very successful um annual spring fling, second annual spring fling community event with Dr. Peterson uh was down there. They had I don't know the other final
006numbers from Shana, but probably in the neighborhood of 2,000 people, at least 3,000 people that were there. U so it was a beautiful evening and a very successful event. We thank not only Dr. Peterson, but the staff at CTA for all all their hard work uh on that event. It takes a lot of work to make some of these things take place. We had students excel at Central Arizona College High School math competition. Um we had second position team two, which is Emma Brighton and Dylan Cornell. And third possession team position team one, Daniel Donald Hayes and Jack Hendris. Four students qualified for the individual qualifying round. Um, and a big shout out to I'm gonna get her last name wrong, so I apologize, but Miss Sonia Bakandani, who started the club, her first time.
007We've had the club. So, uh, again, very successful. Another way for, um, kids to shine in our district. Uh, Ranch Spring Carnival, had an a tremendous event a couple weeks ago with a huge thank you to the PTO that helped put it on and the volunteers. I know there's community volunteers uh, there, so we appreciate all they've done. Uh also at CHS we had a hosta state leadership con uh conference. Christa Riley's nursing assistance chapter was award awarded the platinum award which is the highest award a chapter can receive. Sports medicine Gracie McDuffy and Payton Everett are in third place in public health. That will qualifi qualify them for the international leadership conference in Nashville, Tennessee. Um, in terms of athletics, Logan Tuckfield will represent Combmes, uh, represented Combmes in the Panol County first annual
008all-star basketball game and Gavin Wala was committed to play football at Black Hills. Um, State University and we had a successful mock interview as I know Mr. Scragam's going to talk about a little bit later this evening. Uh, band and choir also excelled uh, both at the high school and the middle school at the Disney competition. Uh, middle school group uh, scoring second in their division with an overall rating with excellence. and the high school band finished uh with 95 out of 100 points in first place. So, they're to be congratulated. Um Harmon celebrates. They're happy to announce that Pamiva Danielson was chosen as a finalist for the School Connect student champion of the year award. That will be a a ceremony that'll take place on May 1st. Uh we work with School Connect on
009a lot of community events and so we're happy to see that he will uh that that that recognition will take place. um uh and he may be a winner. There's several finalists there. The Eagles in Ellsworth had an exciting uh April. First and sixth graders had a blast at the cowboy glowdown dance music lights western theme. Um third graders wild families and staff with their music performance of Journey and Touter Space. Um our first graders took the stage to perform a year with a frog and a toad. Um and so it's just been exciting things happening at Ellsworth Stallions over at Simington also. uh are working hard. Um they're representing what it means to be a stallion by growing our pop-up positivity program with the support of our counselors and PTO. Fifth grade students successfully
010completed their testing. And third and sixth have also uh completed their doubleASA testing and they went to musical uh musical instrument museum field trips. I know the board approved us to send kids there. I think CTA went there recently too. So that's always good to see them going. Uh we hosted the uh annual civics bee which is very similar to spelling bee. Uh the QC chamber puts it on. Had a number of kids uh from all over this area and even actually going down to Tucson that were there. Four students advanced to the finals and Luke Klester finished fourth place. Um they also had their National Junior Honor Society assemble 50 boxes for feeding to feed my starving children all part of their community service. Uh and then we also took a little bit want
011to take a little bit of time to recognize one individual. Um Salman Rasheed was recently uh in the state spelling bee. Uh he had won uh the at Harmon then the district then went to the county won the county. Oh wow. And at the state spelling be he finished third. Um, and so what that means is that he gets to represent the district and the state at the national spelling bee, uh, May 27th through 29th at National Harbor, Maryland. Extra special this year because if I am correct, it is the hundth um, year for the National Spelling Bee. So, we wanted to invite Salmon up here for a second to uh, show us his trophy and congratulations and say a few words. All right. Uh first of all uh thank you Dr. Wyman and the
012board for uh um for your recognition today. Um, uh, I look forward to representing Harmon again, uh, Joe Combols at the, um, state spelling be next year. And I'm also looking forward to representing the, um, uh, representing the, um, representing Arizona at the Nationals this May. Nice. Congratulations, Congratulations. Awesome. Thank you for sharing that with us. Okay, we have staff um school and staff recognition. Yes. I'll ask Eric Delgado to come up for transportation. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Madam President. Um, I first like to nominate um our lead trainer, um, Brisa Quetta, as excellent staff um, for the employee of the month. Um, Brisa, please come up and receive your blue apple. And I have to tell you, her being a lead trainer trying to get um our district rolling with our students and our
013school bus, she has a very uh challenging role because we want to ace all of our tests. So, we thank Brisa for making our bus drivers strong. Thank you. Nice. Okay. And my second um she started as a bus monitor. Um since we uh were without a dispatcher, she came into position of answering our telephone calls, our heavy complaint telephone calls from our parents. But due to her cool, calming demeanor, she actually has great success with um leaving parents satisfied with the answers and the quality of uh customer service she provides. Carson Mason, please come up and get your blue apple. Thank you. Thank you. Who do we have next? I'll ask I'm not sure if it's Mr. Hill or Miss Loftess to come up for volunteer of the month and make that presentation. [Music]
014[Applause] [Music] [Applause] cute bag on the front of that. Watch the foot. Governing board. Dr. Wyman, it is a pleasure tonight to come and present the volunteer of the month. Granted, this was for March, but we didn't have an opportunity to honor Lori Morgan at that meeting, but we wanted to make a point of honoring her this evening. And I just want to take this chance to have anyone who is sitting in this space right now who Miss Lorie Morgan has supported, helped their program in any manner to please stand up because I think we need the visual. Nice. As you can see, Miss Morgan is a powerhouse when it when it comes to boosters. She supports FFA, student council, combs, trap, and ski. Miss Morgan juggles leadership roles like a pro, ensuring each organization's
015thrive. She's not only dedicates countless hours, but also secures sponsorships, rallies community support, and some somehow still finds time to cheer on students every step of the way. If there is a CHS event, chances are Miss Morgan either organized it, working at it, or more likely both. She gives her time selflessly, always shows up to support students, staff, and school community. With two kids at CHS, her investment goes beyond leadership. It's personal for her kiddos and the other students at CHS. And let's not forget her generosity, constantly finding ways to bring in donations and sponsors and elevate multiple school programs through fundraisers. Miss Morgan is the definition of self selfless dedication and CHS is better because of her. She's more than deserving of a Blue Apple award and I can't think of anyone who wears
016more hats or wears them better. Thank you, Miss Morgan. Nice. [Applause] I think it's important to note that this um cutting board was brought to you by um your trap and ski program and they wanted to make sure and honor you, but it also mentions the unwavering support that you give to other programs. And we just have a pretty blue apple. Get your apple. All right. Congratulations, Mrs. Morgan. [Applause] So, are we gonna do Okay. All right. We'll go ahead and do student of the month. Good evening members of the board and our community. It's a highlight to come and celebrate our students. And our students of the month are being recognized under the portrait of a graduate for integrity. And so I'm excited to share some of the um words that have been shared
017by the schools, their principles and teachers about the work that these students have done. Students, as I call your name, come and join me. I'm going to say a few words. Then after that, you're going to cross the room and gre be greeted by some board members and receive uh a medal courtesy of the Combmes Education Foundation and a certificate. First from the high school, McKenna Tojo. All right, the high school can find a time to recognize McKenna. Uh, from Col's Center for Success, Hiro Flores. Come on over, Hyro. Few things to say. Hiro stays true to his values and morals and is a responsible young man. He has shown through hard work and dedication courses can be completed successfully. He is preparing himself for his future after high school. and CCS is so proud
018that he represents our campus with his integrity. [Applause] Congratulations from Combmes Middle School. Shayen Hyman. Shayen. Here's what the middle school has to say about Shaylin. Shaylin is a model student, a poster board for the definition of integrity. She is honest, trustworthy, fair, and respects everyone and everything. She has great character, and is constantly setting an example in her honors classes. She is a role model for her peers. [Applause] Congratulations from Combmes Traditional Academy. Axel Galang [Applause] Let me tell you about Axel. He consistently displays an outstanding demonstration of honesty, responsibility, and strong moral character in the classroom. He values and does what is right even when no one is looking. He never takes shortcuts, asks for help when needed, and is a positive influence in class. [Applause] Congratulations from Ellsworth Elementary. Bradley Ford. [Applause]
019Bradley consistently demonstrates integrity even when no one is watching. When he sees a need, he steps up to help. He has a strong commitment to doing his own work to the best of his ability and encourages his peers to strive for the same level of excellence. Well done. Congratulations. [Applause] from Harmon Elementary, Ralphie Jmerson. Come on over. I'm gonna say a few things for you. Okay, are you ready? Ralphie is a role model for following expectations. He adheres to class rules, asks for help when needed, and provides leadership in the classroom by his example of following expectations, completing his class helper roles, and encouraging his classmates to do the same. Well done, Ralphie is right. Thumbs up. Good job. My gosh, they all need to be that excited. From Ranch Elementary, Gabriel Avalar. [Applause] Come
020on over, Gabriel. Gabriel demonstrates integrity in school by always striving to do his best and not taking any shortcuts. He follows classroom rules and is a role model for his peers. He has earned the respect of his teachers and his fellow classmates. Good job. Good job. Congratulations. [Applause] And finally from Simon Elementary, Rory Eley. Rory. All right. I'm sure Mrs. Lopez will find a way to celebrate Rory at his school. Uh, one more hand for all of these students and their show of integrity. We will take a quick fivem minute break for any pictures and then we'll get started back up with the meeting in a few minutes. Right. So, um we do have um those public comments. We have one public comment and we want to um show a Huh? Five. Oh, 5.5. That's
021true. Does anybody any governing board members have anything? You do. Okay, let's hear it. I love it. I I got to spend some time with Principal Lopez over at Simington. Um got the grand tour Very fun. There's a a fun energy. Walk in the front door and the and who who was at the front office? Who's the front office person? Teresa. Oh, she will make you feel welcome. Um, and don't mess with her because she loves the place. She loves those kids. And so it was fantastic. Um, there is a wonderful there's a good feeling going through classrooms, seeing teachers, seeing kids. um the the library. Uh that was kind of a center heart for for Principal Lopez. Just we she stopped in there for a minute and just kind of basked in the joy
022of being in the library. Um so it was wonderful to be be there in Simington, see what's happening. Um there's just so many good things happening. It's too bad that so many schools get some of the bad press, but seeing the excitement that Principal Lopez has for the changes that are being made, um there's some great things happening at Simon. So it was wonderful. Wonderful to be there on the campus for a little bit. All right. Thank you. Hi, Maria. Um, anybody else? Yes. Uh, I had the privilege of being able to attend part of Combmes High School's mock interviews, um, where they had, I think it was mostly seniors, but it appeared to also be some of the CTE students as well. Um, from my understanding, it was upwards of about 450 students, which
023is amazing. Um, that's increased. Yeah. And then there was about 50 to 60 professionals that were there from all um, different walks of life, um, different local businesses. And it was it was amazing really truly to see them take time out of their professional days uh to come and donate their time and time is valuable and to donate their expertise and their experience and to be able to uh see these young their youth the our future, right? the young men and the young women that went in there and they were able to practice their interview skills um in a setting that is not as uh daunting as maybe like a make it and break it real life. Um so it it's really amazing. Um hats off to everybody that put that together. I was very
024impressed. Um, and then I also was able to attend Ranch Elementary's carnival and fundraiser and they had an amazing turnout. They had a dunk tank. They had all sorts of carnival games and hot dogs and food and DJ and bounce houses and all sorts of fun stuff. Um, their PTA absolutely amazing. They did a wonderful job. Um, my kids, I even took some neighborhood kids with me over there and we all had a great time. So, it was a wonderful community event as well. Nice. Okay. No one else. Thank you guys. So, we're going to go ahead and move on to 6.1 public comments. So, we have one. We have one call the public, but we'll play that video first. Yeah, we're going to play a quick video. It's our maiden voyage. The viewpoints of
025citizens throughout the district and considers the responsible presentation of these viewpoints vital to the efficient operation of the district. Members of the governing board may not discuss items not on the agenda and will be limited to directing staff to study the matter for further consideration and possible decision at a later date. The board therefore establishes the following procedures to receive input from citizens of the district. Any individual desiring to address the board shall complete a form and give this form to the superintendent prior to the start of the board meeting. The board president will keep each speaker to a 3minut time limit. Questions or comments on matters under legal review will not receive a response. Members of the governing board may not discuss items not on the agenda. Personal attacks are discouraged. At the conclusion
026of a call to the public, individual members of the board may respond to any criticism made by an individual who addressed the board. The expectation of the governing board and district is that everyone treats one another with respect and that the speaker presents their viewpoints in a civil manner. If more than 10 individuals request to speak, the board president reserves the right to limit individual speakers to two minutes and may set a time limit to the call to the public session. Then I call you to the stand, please. Good evening board members. Thank you for allowing us time. Um just a quick little intro. My name is Stephanie Hatch. I am the swim and track booster presidents at Combmes High School. And um at the past few booster meetings that we've had, the question of
027charging an entry fee has come up in our discussions. Um, there are a few sporting events that do charge an entry fee, but there are many sporting events that do not charge an entry fee. And our thought is if we do consistently charge a sport entry fee, that might help with the maintenance of some of our fields and equipment that is needed. We also notice when we travel to other schools and we are charged an entry fee, it kind of is frustrating for us because we are supporting their athletic department and we would like to reciprocate have the the schools that come and play and visit our schools kind of help support our sporting events and teams and things like that. And then also um many many many years ago there was talks about an
028aquatic center being built and kind of just wondering where that stands and what the progression of that is. So my two questions for you are what is the progression of the aquatic center and the other question is um would you consider because we were told by our athletic director that if we want to charge a fee this is something that is decided upon you guys um would you be considered would you consider charging this entry fee for our sports events across the board not just the few selected ones that we are now. Okay. Any questions for me? Okay, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Let's go um to 7.1 the consent agenda. Is there any questions on the consent agenda? I do not have any. No. If there's no questions, then I
029will take a motion. I move to approve the consent agenda as presented. I second. All in favor? I I I motion carries five to zero. All right. So, we're down to our action items. So 8.1 discussion and consideration of approval of the IG with Panal County Education Service Agencies. Yes, Madam President. This is a annual, not an annual renewal, but the IG is uh generally for five years. They've requested this one be for three. This is us just working with Jill Brousard's office. We do a number of different things with her. So, it's uh pretty straightforward. It's critical for us as as we move forward to continue that relationship with uh with Banana County Service Agency. So, I'd recommend approval as presented. Yes. Any questions on that one? Okay. I'll take a motion if there's
030no questions. I move to approve the IG with Panel County Educational Services Agency as presented. I second. All in favor? I I I motion carries 5 to zero. Okay. 8.2 discussion consideration of approval of the agreement with Panal County Elections Department. Yes. This is request from the elections department uh to utilize our facilities in the case of elections that would be applicable to us. Um at this point out here the only uh areas that we actually use for elections are this room right here at the district office. Uh then at the middle school and uh at Harmon. Uh we have there have been some concerns not only with this district but other districts about uh maybe some issues that occur relative to the last few elections uh especially uh the bigger elections presidential or ginatorial.
031But I will say that PCSO and elections uh department has responded very well and there are officers available not just at our district but throughout the the county for those areas that that or for those school districts that are sharing uh as well as quite frankly any other um uh facilities. So I would uh recommend approval and this will be for the uh through the November 26 election. Um so if we have any election this November as an example, this would cover that. So recommend approval as presented. Any questions on that? I don't think we should shy away from people that are being rowdy as long, you know, we have support. Yeah, I don't think we should shy away from it. I think it's something we should show the community that we're standing for that
032liberty that we need to have everyone. Our real our our only real issue is um uh at Harmon uh just due to the nature of the way Harmon is constructed. Uh and we did have a situation I can't remember if it was two or three elections ago where someone went off and dropping fbombs where we have kids in the it's in the in the hallway area next to the gym. There kids in the gym, there's kids at lunch. So that's the real issue is if someone goes off here, there's nobody around. But when you go into Harmon, all a sudden you have little kids that are hearing language and stuff they shouldn't. So that's our real our real major concern to be honest. PCSO you said would is there either there depending on the situation
033or they have identified officers that that are to respond. They may not necessarily be there at the moment. They have other priorities during the day but they're in the area um and if there's any concerns and if we contact them then they're assigned to that area so they will come right away. So, it's not that they necessarily sit in the parking lot the whole day, but but they're available to us and they're assigned to that that particular voting center. Okay. All right. Any other questions? If no, I'll take a motion. I motion to approve the agreement with Panal County Elections Department as presented. Second. All in favor? I I motion carries five to zero. Okay. 8.3 discussion consideration of approval of the agreement with the cartwheel health services PC. I will cartwheel. Yeah. Cartwheel and
034I will give you an overview and then if there are specific questions um I know Yetta's here and she can probably fill in or Jen. Um but I'll go over just initially and then we'll see if there's questions. It's just a memorandum of standing with Cartwwell Health Services. That is a group that is aligned through the Arizona Department of Education. Um and it's a voluntary uh situation where we would go ahead and work with our kids and their families to refer out um options that are available uh to the families where where there may be a mental health issue or mental health support is is needed. Uh we currently do that uh and have it with access backed initiative. Um we just are looking at another option because this is uh being uh provided through
035AD. So, it's just really more than anything else if we know families or kids are struggling. Uh can we refer out services to them? We're not offering those services. We're just uh working with a company that we could go ahead and offer the services out to the families and then it's up to the families as to whether they choose to accept those services or not. But many times when when families are in crisis, they are not aware of all the resources that are available. So, it's just a way for us to at least provide information about services uh that may be available to them if they so desire. So, that's kind of an overview. If there's any detailed questions uh yet can come on up and ask, but we'll wait and see if you have
036any other questions. Okay, questions? Great. I'll take a motion. I move to approve the memorandum of understanding with cartwheel health services as presented. Second. All in favor? I I I motion carries 50 8.4 discussion and consideration of approval of the 20 202526 salary increase. This is based on discussion we had relative to the budget the last couple meetings. So the recommendation uh as a general rule for the different groups that are uh presented here is a 1.9% increase. You will note that the support staff does not have an increase because uh we do their increase in January as as a result of the minimum wage increase. Um and we we tried to project that out in previous years but uh it became more expensive than we projected. So then we ended up giving a double
037raise. Um, so the recommendation is 1.9%. The agenda item also speaks to uh exactly what um uh would be changed to the salary schedule. It's easy with teachers because it's a 930 added to the salary schedule, which makes it 54,000 as a starting. Some of the other salary schedules uh have multiple different uh starting points. So, we just give the the amount that's going to be added to the to the uh starting salary. You'll also see the projected costs for the different uh uh position groups. Uh please note what those costs. I mean that's our best estimate is right now depending on who leaves, who's hired. This may go up a little bit or down a little bit. Um and we won't know that until all the hiring is done. Uh and people are brought
038on board. Um but that's what we would project out. Also, you will note that um for the extra duty stipens um we are recommending again a freeze uh just because the board excuse me the the budget does not support um an increase uh again for that group. So this is what's been discussed. U what will happen just for your own knowledge is the staff has already received a contract. That contract is based on this year's current uh salary. Um, if you approve this, then we'll come back most likely at the May board meeting with uh a list of all the individuals and what the increase would be. And then if you approve that, then we would go ahead and and give an amendment to the contract which would go out to staff right after that
039and that would be the acceptance of the new salary schedule. So I'd recommend approval as presented. Now we had an extensive study session on this. So, um, but if you guys have any other questions, um, we'll take them now. The study session we had a long few weeks ago was very helpful. Yep. Okay. Okay. Then I will take a motion. I motion to adopt the 202526 salary increase proposal as presented. Second. All in favor? I I I motion carries 5. Okay. Discussion and consideration approval is that oh the 202526 salary schedules. Yes. So this will based on the action on the last board uh agenda item. This will then this is then applied those those increases are applied. So we have a new salary schedule that you need to approve. There are some minor uh
040changes within some of the different salary schedules, a slight changing on a on a title of a position or if there was an error last year and we missed one. But as a general rule, what you're seeing is just the the increase in changes that you just approved on the last one. So I'd recommend approval as presented. Okay. So again, any questions on this one? All right. Go ahead and make a motion. I'll motion to adopt the 2526 salary schedules as presented. Second. All in favor? I I. Motion carries five to zero. That brings us to 8.6 discussion and consideration of approval of the changes to the policy recommended from ASBA um policy advisory 809-818. This is our second reading of this one. So if you have any questions, they can be addressed at this
041time. None for you. Okay. All right, then I'll take a motion. I move to approve the policy changes to policy as presented in policy advisory 809-8 through 818 as presented. I second. All in favor? I I I. Motion carries five to zero. Okay, that brings us to our dis information and discussion items 9.1 discussion and information regarding the community bond survey. Yes. So, what we have with this agenda item was if you remember uh as we uh look to decide whether we go out for a bond or not, one of the things that we did was we hired a high ground consulting. you guys approved to hire High Ground Consulting uh several board meetings back. Uh and so Mr. Paul Benz from High Ground is here and he's going to give the results of the
042survey that was conducted of and he'll explain how the survey was conducted and who was who was how it was uh done and that's just more information and then we'll come back on the 23rd for a follow-up on the bond uh just to get a presentation from the bond committee and then more than likely come back in May to decide to go out for a bond or not go out for the bond. U Mr. bench, you can uh I to the guys in the booth, you'll go ahead and move it forward for us, right? Yes, that's what because it's uh I don't know what is it working. Oh, can you do it? Yep. Thanks. And it's forward and backward, which is really helpful. Sometimes it's up and down. Uh good afternoon, madam president, members of
043the board. My name is Paul Ben. I'm the senior vice president of research and strategy at Highground Public Affairs in Phoenix, Arizona. Highground does a wide variety of statewide, local, and uh regional research when it comes to a wide variety of topics including education, public safety, transportation, health care, and other items. We've already conducted over a dozen surveys uh this year alone. We've so we've basically been in the field in variety of communities pretty much every uh week since the year started. We conducted the survey for this district uh February 25th through the 27th. It's a 300 sample. So that means it's a live caller survey which means we conducted it via telephone to both home phones and direct dialed cell phones as required by law. These were all conducted by live operators which is
044the gold standard when it comes to survey research. Uh we balance it based on voter turnout. And here's what we mean by that. So um about 70% of the adult population in the state of Arizona is registered to vote. So, three out of every 10 of the folks that say, "Oh, yeah, I'm registered vote. I vote. I vote." They're lying to you. So, uh, we start with registered voters, number one. And then number two, we look at people who have a history of voting in our elections. Because when you talk about the record high voter turnout in say 2020 or even 2024, when you're talking about 78% turnout, you're talking about 78% of that 70%. So, you're really talking about 60% or so of the adult population. When we go to a midterm election where
045turnout is somewhere between 55 and 65% you're talking about half the adults in the state of Arizona or in any given election. For an off cycle or midterm election like this when we're talking about when without president or governor at the top of the ticket if you go in an oddnumbered year turnout is closer to about 30%. So it's much lower. What that does for a couple of things is it's it skews the demographic significantly older. older folks show up to vote no matter what and it just comes down to who shows up around them. So we've we've balanced this data to look like about 60 about twothirds 66% or so over the age of 50. It's also balanced based on partic partisan participation. So one of the other things to note is if if
046you live in the state here about a third of folks are registered as Republicans, about a third are registered as Democrats and about a third is registered as other or independent. There's no independent party in the state of Arizona. um they the whole reason is because they don't want to be a party. So what they're actually registered in the filing is uh PND or party not declared no party. Secretary of State also considers them sort of that uh no party preference as it were. Other is you know no labels green party libertarian any of the other ones. So when you see any of these numbers where you see Republican, Democrat, PND, PND in this case means uh independent. So we balanced it based on age, party, gender and region. used your local precincts to ensure
047that we had a representative sample of the overall voter turnout based on what we anticipate a a potential 2025 election to look like. So, a couple things to start. We asked in general, would you say your community is headed in the right direction or the wrong direction? We have about 57% total right compared to about 31% total wrong. We measured this for you in 2020 and it was closer to 74%. So, it's down slightly, but I will say it's actually quite optimistic for the community. Wait a minute. Is this the question you asked? Yes. Oh, okay. Okay. I'm on it now. This is the first question of the Gotcha. Okay. So, we do some warm-up questions at the start of a survey to ensure we get people to start talking about the issues and let
048them know sort of where we're going. It's a benchmark. It's a canary in the coal mine. It lets us understand where folks are at and ensure we get reliable data. And so, first thing we do is ask them to talk about their community. And the first thing we see here is about 57% think that the community is headed in the right direction. If I were to ask the direction of the state right now, uh, or if I were to ask the direction of the country, it'd be in the 30% range. If I were ask the direction of the state, it's in the 40% range. Direction of communities right now is somewhere in the 57 to 60% range. I have seen one community as high as 70, but for the most part, what we have seen
049is over the last three or four years, most communities are down in the sort of 57 to 60% range. So, it's pretty optimistic. In fact, a little bit more pessimistic than it was a few years ago when we measured it for you. But overall, you can see pretty much every age group with the except exception of 50 to 64 is pretty optimistic about the direction of the community. I point out 50 to 64 year olds simply because they're the most pessimistic audience. And you'll see this come back in the data time and time again. Uh further in their education or further in their um in their workforce, closer to retirement, not likely to have kids under the age of 18 at home anymore. They're just overall the most pessimistic audience. So that's just something to
050keep in mind as we look through it. But the other audience with such a big portion over the age of 65 that we're looking at is you've got a little bit of optimism in the 65 and older category. We asked would you in general would you say K12 education in your community is headed in the right direction or wrong direction. Now bear in mind less than half of these folks have kids under the age of 18 at home anymore. So this is a lot of folks being educated about what sort of they perceive in the national media and other news. they're not getting necessarily the communications from the district itself. You have about 36 total right direction, about 39 total wrong direction. This is down from 49% which we saw in 2020. Um this is
051not unique to Combmes though I will say. Uh what we're actually seeing is this is a statewide trend that pretty much every district has seen a drop by about 10 points over the last four or five years over the direction. And whether that's attributed to to co to the national media discussion or to any number of factors, this is pretty consistent across the board. Biggest challenge here you'll note is that 50 to 64 range. Again, only 29% of those folks think that the K12 education in general is headed in the right direction. Little bit more optimism among among the 65 and older, but certainly you have about 25% of folks who are being honest. You know, they didn't have kids at home. They didn't know and so they don't know. So there's an opportunity for
052improvement here about uh the way they think things are going, but it just does speak a little bit of about pessimism in the environment right now. So we then ask, in general, would you say the funding schools in your community or in your area receive is too low, too high, or just about right? 51% over half of respondents believe it's too low. Um only 22% think it's just about right. Only 7% think it's too high. And 19% don't know. the folks who have kids at home, and that's that bottom section there, 62% think it's too low. Those who do not have kids at home are slightly less inclined to believe it's too low. But overall, um, you can see in general, uh, it's down slightly from 57% in 2020, but the vast majority of the
053electorate still believes that schools remain underfunded. So, to the best of your knowledge, what public school district do you believe provides K12 education to your community? We did not give them the answers to the test. I'm sorry to say we asked them and this is what they think. 38% correctly identified your district. Another 20% think it's Queen Creek. And then you can see a variety of folks. 28% don't know or refuse. Certainly this is an opportunity to uh improve awareness of of who's serving this community, especially with those folks that don't have kids at home. Um the awareness is just simply not there. They do believe that the schools are underfunded, but there is a little bit of confusion of where they're receiving the education from or what what serves their general community. Uh so
054we give them a little bit of background. Then this is the first time we've mentioned the district. We tell a little bit about where the district is, what area it covers, how many students are served in general, how would you rate the overall performance in offering education to the students in the community. You can see about a quarter of respondents give it an excellent or very good. Uh another quarter or so give it an okay. And then you have about 15% or so saying poor or failing. Uh and then un 30% undecided and 3% that didn't know. The younger electorate under the age of 29 most inclined to think it was excellent or very good. Um 30 to 39 was at 24% and then you can see 65 and older actually creeps back up uh
055back up to about 28%. This is the first instance of a mean score. And what I mean by mean score is it's the average, right? So, uh, uh, if one is failing and five is excellent, on a scale of 1 to five, it's also called the Liyker scale, we're going to look at mean scores a lot because it lets us see and measure things against one another. With a mean score of 3.11, basically it means that the majority of folks that gave us an answer because mean scores take out those who don't give us an answer or don't know, um, is at 3.11. So those who know you generally believe that your overall the quality of the education being provided is somewhere between okay and very good. So that's that's a bit of good news.
056Uh certainly an opportunity for improvement. But when you see when you compare that to the portion of the electorate that thinks that education's headed in the wrong direction. It's actually a bit of good news. It's sort of the I don't like what Congress is doing but I like my congressman. It's the same approach. They don't necessarily generally believe K12 education, you know, nationally or whatever dialogue-wise is going the way that they want, but locally here, they're pretty inclined to believe that it's somewhere between okay and very good. From there, we do a pretest. And what this is is a replication of what a potential ballot language would look like. Because if I asked money, if I back to the original question I asked, if I asked people, would you like more money for schools? A
057large number would say yes. Would you like to pay taxes for schools? the lower the number gets a little bit lower. But if you ask them, shall the district be authorized to issue and sell general obligation bonds in the form of class B general obligation bonds not to exceed you the number gets lower. But here's the thing, that's the only thing we can guarantee that a voter will see over the course of an election. So you have to replicate the ballot language. It's the best way to make sure that we get accurate, unbiased, reliable results. So, we pose it to the best of our ability to replicate the ballot language so we can get an understanding of where voters start. We do that at the outset without any education because I'm not negotiating with the
058voters. I want to see where they start. And where we start is at a 58% yes compared to 30% no. In a pretest like this, we like to see items in the 55 to 60% range. So, it falls in that range uh for a great amount of viability. Now, I'm not here saying that I think it's going to pass with 58% of the vote, but this type of survey research shows us that um certainly if it was below 50% that would be a problem. And I see plenty of surveys, particularly for schools that sort of reach that. But in this case, you see that the definitely yes at 24% compared to the definitely no at 14%, it's about a 10-point advantage. The probably yes at 33% to the probably no at about 17%, it's about
059a 2 to1. Um great deal of optimism across the board. And even in that 50 to 64 that I pointed out earlier, we do have a majority at 54%. And pretty much kids versus no kids is very similar as a result. So it starts in a good position. Now that is not to say you can just put, you know, the basket on the on the river and send it down and wave goodbye and hope for the best, but it does have a strong amount of viability here. Uh and there is an appetite for voters to make an investment. Just one second. Yes, sir. Just so you know, uh, when we did this in 20, it was 52% on the pre-EST. So, just for comparative analysis, when we went went out in in 20 when when
060Paul did the survey, that was, uh, I can't remember it was 52.4 or 52.6, but it was in the 52 range. Just so you have perspective. We also chose to proceed with the bonds simply because what we have found is bonds do better than uh potentially an override or something else. overr I'd start with a high amount of unknown because that has speaking of that bout language I mentioned earlier exceeding the revenue control limit not to exceed seven years for purpose of fiscal year 25 26 the language behind an override is incredibly confusing and without explanation we generally find that they don't do as well um we also so the other thing that we find is if you give voters too many options we we tend to negotiate with them and say oh you don't
061want this but you want that and it creates a false positive so we start with the strategy that you pick a proposal that you might want to move forward with and you measure it to see where it starts. Um, from there what we did is we tested potential projects and these were all randomized and rotated. So, some folks got safety and security first, other folks got roof repair first and this was they were asked to r uh to rate all of these items. So, again um everybody got every single question but they order so that we don't add any bias and we don't ensure that just because something was asked last every time maybe it gets a lower amount. What that allows us to do is measure every item against one another. And school safety
062and security uh was one of the top items at 4.47 uh with 71% giving that a five are very important. Basically, every item that we tested in the bond did incredibly well, some more than others. What we find is that the voters are actually have an appetite for all of these items, but to varying degrees. And so this is the this helps us and this is sort of more of a um for your decision- making, for communication, for talking to the audience, for talking to the electorate, what they care most about. Now bear in mind, this is the electorate and what they care most about. Sometimes when parents come up here and they're sharing the information, what they care most about or what the students care most about might be a little bit different, but
063for the voters, this is what the voters care about. And so, uh, this can even help you in the order in which you discuss items, whether you do it in bullet points or in ballot language or in a publicity pamphlet. Um, for many, many years, a lot of school districts would put, for example, all day K first because it started with A. They would alphabetize their list of items. Well, all day K was one of the least popular items that we used to measure. And so, just even knowing the order in which you talk about the items, not using the amount of the budget or, you know, where when it's going to be built or its alphabetical order, using the order in which it's important to the electric can be incredibly helpful for that. So
064what we see is some of the fundamental things like school safety and security, roof repair do incredibly well. They score over uh four. Anything above 3.5 is well regarded. Anything above four is incredibly well regarded. Um heating and air conditioning uh 4.41, one of the top items we measured. Career and technical education upgrades at 4.37 with 58% giving that a five. Another one of the top items we measured. Instructional improvements did incredibly well at 4.35. slightly better than electrical and plumbing repair. But again, all of these are above four and are incredibly well regarded by the overall electorate. When we get down to a couple of the other items, extracurricular facilities at 3.75, synthetic turf was the lowest one that we measured. I would say at 2.61, I've talked to many schools, they said, well,
065it actually, you know, it saves taxpayer money and, you know, it actually is a fiscally responsible investment. spent a couple years talking to voters about that because right now it's not considered as the high priority from the electorate when it comes to some of the other items that are on here. Restroom renovation at 3.46 and modern technology at 4.17. Um you'll see some of these sound similar and the reason we measure them different ways is because words matter. Um I will give you an example. School buses do better than pupil transportation vehicles. They just do. Voters understand what a school bus is. they don't necessarily know what a people transportation vehicle is. Um, modern technology typically does better than laptops despite the fact that sometimes we think, well, those are pretty much the same thing.
066But what we see is that some things just work better with the electorate than others. So using that strategy to measure different phrases or different words can be incredibly helpful as I mentioned. So in this case, we saw uh modern technology at a 4.17, computer replacement 4.04. People want modern technology. Modern technology to me generally means computer replacement, but there's a difference in the language there that uh people care about. Um exterior improvements uh is at 3.20. So I did give you the bus example. In this case, in your district, student transportation and buses did basically the same. In other places, there's a vast difference between the two. Um so it can be really helpful to just understand all the different phrasing and what voters find important. So I do all of that in this
067section for this slide. This slide is what's really helpful. As I mentioned, voters find every single one of these items important, but there are degrees. Top tier importance, school safety and security, heating and air conditioning, career and technical education upgrades, and instructional improvements. Those are the really the top tier items. Sort of that next tier, modern technology, electrical and plumbing repair, roof repair, computer imp placement. Those are sort of the second tier, but still incredibly above four solid support. You fall down a little bit, front office security upgrades, buses, student transportation, infrastructure improvements, and I'd even put extracurricular facilities in there as sort of the third tier. And then your lowest would be restroom renovation, exterior improvements, and synthetic turf fields. So, uh, with the exception of the turf, everything else does pretty well and
068a scores almost all of them above that 3.5 that I mentioned that I like to see because that's, you know, really skewing towards the somewhat important to very important scale there. Uh, but really there's nothing in here that really stands out as something either that is is sort of a no-go. The bigger thing though is that safety and security and career and technical education really rise to the top as priorities. From there, we do what we call reason testing. And the reason is if I asked 300 people, why are you voting yes or why are you voting no? I'd get 300 different responses. We could spend all night reading them to you. So, what we do instead to keep it uh affordable and to uh really get through the question is we measure sentiment through
069these reason tests. We give them positive statements and we give them negative statements and we ask them how much they agree with them. And we try to take sort of the main themes and we don't pull any punches. We we test negative statements too. We'll see because it doesn't behoove me to get up here and tell you your your proposal has a good number if it suddenly can be knocked down because of some sort of criticism. So, we measure positive and negative statements. In this case, school safety and security uh you know is number is is the top rated with 66% giving that a strongly agree five. The safety and security of our students and staff should be our number one priority. 4.34 across the board. And you I give you the ages. So, those
070are the mean scores for all the different age groups. It's the number one across the board with all the different age groups we measured. You also have a very solid quality of life. People recognize and see the connection between investing in education and its impact on quality of life. And they understand that they need to invest in schools to make in modern facilities to protect our quality of life. The notion that it would be a not a tax rate increase is attractive. 40% strongly agree. It has a higher unknown than some of the other ones. There's still a little bit of a believability question when it comes to if you were able to make a proposal without actually keeping keeping the tax rate the same. So, it wouldn't be an increase in the tax rate.
071Um, there's a little bit of unknown in that one. Still very effective, but you know, critical repairs at 4.05 with 45% strongly agree. Again, all of these do very well as reasons that they're really the sentiment behind them, whether it's quality of life, school safety and security, the fact that it wouldn't be a tax increase or critical repairs, all do really well. On the con side, it should be noted that there is an anti-ax sentiment. Um, this is, as you saw in the demographics before, it's a conservativeleaning community. The overall notion of taxes, and bear in mind, this was done in February before some of the latest uh economic news. Um, but there is a a tax sensitivity that we need to be mindful of. Uh, 26% strongly agree. those with uh the particularly in
072the 65 and older and the 50 to 64 have some tax sensibil uh uh sensitivities. 65 and older also have concerns about inflation and high prices. There's certainly some concerns about that. It's not universally held by everyone. It's not an overarching of impact for every portion of the community, but our 65 and older folks are definitely concerned about that. Um 65 and older are also concerned about living on a fixed income. uh and that's something that certainly sticks out to them and the folks with no kids at home. You can see it's fixed income and concerns about overall spending are not a big deal with the folks that do happen to have kids at home under the age of 18. And then we also measured that the fact that you know more than half of
073the districts in in the students in the area attend to choose one of the local charter schools instead of attending a district public school. We should not increase our local taxes to fund a district that does not even serve half our kids. We test that not because I believe it's a valid criticism. I just want to be clear about that. But we test it because it's said. We have to test the opponents and what they say about things, not what we hope for them to say. And the thing about opposition is they're never limited to the truth. They're not limited what they say, but we need to know if it's impactful or not. You know, you don't go to the doctor. We say this a lot. You don't go to the doctor to find out
074what's right with you. You don't say, "Oh, this arm feels good. Feel this." You know, check this one out. You have them check you out all over. And so that's what we do with these types of questions as well. We ask all the tough questions and put those phrasing there just to see what the vulnerability is like. So after we measure them, basically what we find with the exception of taxes, tax considerations, but truthfully uh all the reasons to support whether it's school security, quality of life, making critical repairs and it not being a tax increase far outweigh or far uh the voters are much more inclined to believe those statements than they are in the opposition statements. I would want mind and I should always say that, you know, taxes are certainly a concern
075for the overall electorate, but making sure that you adequately adequately communicate uh that it would potentially not be a tax increase could help mitigate that because the believability of that is higher than the tax concerns. So we do that and half the folks got the positive statements first and half the folks got the negative statements first and then we switch again to not allow any bias but also to ensure that everybody gets the same questions and they say the same thing. And in fact what happens a lot is I'll get calls and someone will say boy that survey was really super positive. I can't believe how positive it was. And then 10 minutes later I'll get a call and someone say I can't believe how negative that survey was. And it will be the same
076survey just by the order of the questions. So that allows us to know that we're getting that unbiased view that we're looking for to to have reliable results over the course of a survey. In general, what we do see is for the most part, I will say most proposals go down. We like to see a pre-est in that 55 to 60% range as I mentioned and generally we like to see the post- test in the 50 to 55% range because that's typically what happens. This is one of the rare examples where actually the post test it went up 62% yes compared to 27% no uh 2 to1 the definitely yes to definitely no uh a little bit over two to1 on the probably yes to probably no holding on to all the age demographics holding
077on to all the kids at home demographics. Um, what this tells me is the more folks learn about the proposal, what's included in there, school safety and security, the various projects that are involved in that, the more folks learn about the proposal, the more they're likely and a potential to support it. Um, like I said, this doesn't necessarily mean that it would pass with 62% of the vote, but if you were to move forward, it does have a strong amount of viability, especially considering um that we saw pretty much net gains across the board with the exception of 30 to 39 year olds. uh most of the time the right column here is a lot of red. It's usually a fall-off that we see to have uh pretty much gains across the board with increased
078public education is a is a great news. Uh I don't see it a lot. It's not a typical of what happens to these types of surveys. So I I certainly take that as a positive sign especially considering only about 34% of the respondents have kids at home. So um that's pretty traditional of what we do. So with that, I'm happy to No, just real quickly, just for for uh uh benefit of you guys, the last time it went down to 49. So it went from 52 to 49. This one you saw it go up to to 62. So just for perspective, last year when we did last time when we did the survey, early on in this survey, you saw the numbers were higher than uh than this year. But when it came to this
079pre-post, you saw it go up, whereas last last time we saw exactly what Mr. Ben would have expected, it went from 52 to 49. That's just more for perspective as we compare this. I'd also point out that we skew conservative as you all know living in this community. Uh if you would expect sort of evenly distributed about a third considering them some some sort of liberal or progressive about a third considering themselves moderate and a third considering themselves conservative, it's about at least a 10-point shift towards a conservative audience. So this is a very conservative audience. This is an audience that doesn't have a lot of kids at home. This is an audience that isn't necessarily getting their news directly from the district. But overall the results are positive. And so um with that I'm
080happy to answer any questions that you have. You have question you can go. You can start. Yeah. Go ahead. Um I have several. I'll give them to you one by one though. Um there is a Are you familiar with the incorporation effort that's underway? Yes. For this area that includes a large portion of our school boundaries. Um, how do you think that that would affect voter turnout? Um, and do you think that it would affect it positively, negatively, neutral? Uh, I so that's a great question about the incorporation effort. My understanding of the incorporation effort is it's not targeted for November of this year. Um, I believe it to be from what I understood, it was targeted at a different election time than what you're talking about. If that has changed, uh, forgive me, I
081may not have the most up-to-date information about that. That certainly would create a challenge because there would be more than your issue on the ballot right now as it looks there is a probably a fairly clean clean ballot. There's been some discussion. I was uh talking with Stifel and some other folks. You know, the presidential election cycle actually was sort of hit and miss for schools. Traditionally, high voter turnout in a presidential year has done really well for schools, but we actually saw more schools than usual fail in 2024. Um because there it was a two-page ballot with a lot going on with um you know, giving yourself the opportunity to be on sort of a single page probably at the top of the ticket is helpful because then you can increase awareness. Having something
082else on the ballot, depending on how contentious it gets, it certainly could uh impact that, especially if there's a no campaign. a no campaign. Certainly, if somebody did no on everything, I mean, if they do no, what ends up happening is it does impact your overall no number because people get fed up and sort of no on everything. Um, it also creates a uh low education, pardon the pun, uh, in electorate where they're showing up to vote on the other item and don't know much about what's got what you have going on. So, you need to make sure that you're in front of those folks as well that are likely to show up there. So, I mean, I think a contentious election would negatively impact that, but there's also an opportunity if you're I mean,
083if people are excited and positive, um, if they're supportive of it, that could help the bond as well. Okay. Thank you. Um, how would you say how heavily would you say that you would be relying on the conservative vote? Um, you kind of already alluded to it. Um I've h heard different opinions that um Santan Valley is changing and it's very diverse. Um but those that live here um yes it's changing. How much is it changing would you say? How much do we probably rely on a good portion of that conservative voter base? It is changing but it's not changing quickly. You're still a very conservativeleaning community. You have to start with a strategy that's based on who is definitely going to show up. The biggest challenge I see for schools is they say, "We're
084going to turn out every parent. We're going to get them all registered to vote. We're going to go and get all these people engaged." And quite frankly, if that's your strategy, it's a failing strategy. Uh I worked on a campaign once that was in a college town. We registered over 2,000 people to vote. Had 200 of them showed up to the election, it would have passed. Less than a hundred showed up out of 2,000. getting people to change their habit. Voting is a behavior. It's a habit. And so why we talk to likely voters, if more younger voters showed up, if more parents with kids showed up, the numbers would be better. But I give you polling data based on who I know is going to show up because you have to build a coalition
085of support out of that. If you can't, it's really challenging. The whole idea is you got to win that audience and then you grow your margin by turning out additional folks. Thank you. Um on one of the slides there was a question about is our community headed in the right direction. Um very positive um percent that you got back from that 50 plus as well as the I believe it was 65 plus. Um those also happen to be those that will most heavily turn out. Correct. Correct. Um, what would you say if we're if we're assuming that they're falling in line with the 50% 54% conservative um, and it's that older group, they feel that we're headed in the right direction. What would be things that could happen between now and the ballot that would
086change their mind to believe that we are headed in the right direction? Could it be um controversial things, things in the news? What what types of things might that be? So, that's a great question. Polls are a snapshot in time. They they measure what's going on right now, right? Uh economic uncertainty. If the if the market crashes tomorrow and we have a great deal of economic uncertainty that could impact negatively the overall perception of the way things are going. If the incorporation got contentious, that could certainly impact the overall perception of the community. If Dr. Wyman rescues a basket full of kittens tomorrow, uh, it the number could go up, too. I mean, so I mean, definitely do that. And and I know he would, too. But the the whole idea is it can certainly
087go positive. If there was a scandal tomorrow, it certainly would go. I mean, things like that certainly can impact. Just being very direct here. It's it's been in the news. Um, schools across the nation are under scrutiny for DEI. If we were to have the um situation presented before us um to make a decision for our district um one that would be putting us towards um selecting something that maybe the conservative base since we are highly conservatives is not a fan of how would that change their approval of the bond and the bond effort if they chose to rally against it that would certainly create challenges. I mean but it can be any number of things. So sometimes I see schools struggle with things that they didn't even do themselves, something that's happening in across
088the country. They they get they get vict, you know, blamed for something that happens in a school district in Chicago or elsewhere. I mean, quite frankly, locally here within the valley and within the state, I'm concerned about what some of the school districts are doing, the ones that have, you know, went into receiverhip. What does that do to the overall perception of uh education? I'm also concerned about a very contentious uh primary for the superintendent of public instruction next year. I think that certainly is going to be a big impactful issue as well. There's a lot of forces out there. There's a lot of talk of still and it's been ongoing for several years critical race theory. Sure. Gender ideology, things of that nature. Um are those things that you that could have an effect
089on that voter base that we're relying on? Absolutely. Negative or positive? depending on what the how it was proposed and what was happening and and how it was debated and what the outcome of it, it certainly could have an impact. I I can't speculate about one issue or another. I will say it's a certain segment, it is the conservativeleaning segment that tends to believe schools are out of control and gets very fixated on those types of issues. It really is depends on issue to issue. What I see in a broader spectrum, I'll say, is just a general anti-ax sentiment. I'm just sick of paying taxes. I pay too much taxes. The general belief that schools have enough money if they just spent it wisely. Those are really sort of the top of mind general beliefs
090that the negative anti-school folks have. The the DEI type portion of it is a smaller segment. It's a very vocal segment. So if you if something happened that jinned them up to the point where they came out in opposition, that would be a big deal. But it I mean it's it depends on the issue itself. Thank you. Jason, do you have anything? I have one question. Um, seeing our um, data and knowing that you have done several others, how do you compare theirs to ours? Like, can you compare? I mean, what are you seeing out there? So, it's that's a fantastic question. Every district every district is a little bit different. Uh, so I I'll compare you to other suburban districts. Perfect. Uh certainly uh with a growing population, changing demographic, conservativeleaning Maricopa County and
091the surrounding areas, Panal County in particular, um it is in the growing areas is growing more conservative. It's basically it's a a cell dividing. The middle of the of the valley is getting bluer and it's pushing the red or more conservative areas out and certainly your area falls into that. Also in Panau County, it's a rapidly growing community. In fact, if if Santan were to incorporate, it would immediately be the largest community in the entire in all of Panel County. It would be larger than Maricopa. It would be larger than Cassag Grand. Um, and so it's a large concentration of folks. So, uh, when you look at that, I'll say that there's more a little bit more optimism in general for bonds overall. What we really see is those districts really struggle with overrides. uh
092with to basically to every district that I've measured really struggles with overrides. From the bond perspective, building things is starting to come back. There was a few years there where conservatives were not wanting to build things for whatever reason. It used to be 10 years ago if it was a bond, you could get conservatives to vote yes on it because they like to build bu buildings and buses. Um it fell off for a while. Um but it's starting to come back. So, I think it's within line, but I mean 62% is probably one of the higher ones that I measured. As I said, I like to see a our benchmark for a pre-EST is about 55%. We like to see it around there or higher. You know, post test, we like to see 50 to
09355%. You're at 62%. So, you're on the higher end of the benchmark we like to see. Okay. All right. Any other questions? I'd like to thank you for all of your information and time. Oh, no. I was just going to say just for perspective also thank you uh for coming. I just want to give you perspective. So what we'll end up doing just so we take this information we've shared this information with the bond committee that we'll have a presentation on the 23rd from the bond committee. So we have identified 350 is am I right on that Bob? 350 projects we could do and how much they cost. Based on this, we're now going and taking a look and saying, "Okay, what are some of the highlights of what came out of this and then
094how do we go ahead and if we take the 80 million, how do we go ahead and and take the information here and say we want to spend 20 million on this or 10 million on that?" That's what the proposal is going to be to you guys so that you can get an understanding of what we're thinking about. There'll be a discussion about the no taxes because that's critical. We will not have to raise taxes. Um, we've talked about that before, but we'll do a little explanation on that and that'll give you a chance to we're trying to stage it out. So, there's a little bit of information over a long period of time so you can understand what's taking place so that when we go to do the vote, let's just say it's May
09514th and I believe it has to be based on some information we received from the county this week. Um, you will have had time to see, okay, this is what we were told. I'll be honest with you, and when I talked to Paul before spring break, um, and he gave me these results, I said, give me some good news. because I was not anticipating that kind of good news because I knew what the results were in 20. If the numbers had been similar to 20, we'd be having a different kind of conversation. But because we have this, we then come in in uh end of April the 23rd and say this is what based on everything we know, this is what we would propose. And then when we go in May 14th, I believe is
096the date, we would say, here's the bond question. It'll be 80 million, but more specifically, this is what we would look to do with the 80 million. You don't necessarily put that in the bond question, but in the pamphlet and in in any communication to the community, you would start to define what does that 80 million mean? How much is school safety? How much is buses? And so that's what's going to come to you with an idea that you would tell us for sure whether we're going out or not going out on the 14th of May. And then based on that direction, we will do whatever we need to do um from that decision. So just so you have perspective over the next month, month and a half. So, okay, I'm gonna be pretty pretty
097direct here. So, when you guys say that it's not going to raise the taxes, that's a little deceiving because wait a minute. If you're down, So, here's my thing. Next year, like this year, I paid this much without the bond. Next year it would be lower, right? But if I put the bond in place, it'll stay the same. So in all essence in essence you are raising the tax because it would going to be here but with the bond it'll be here. It'll be the same. It'll still be the same as it was last year but if the bond didn't pass it would have been lower. So yes, and that and that it's true and that that will be that will be the number one argument you have to you have to get to and
098we won't spend time here because we're going to get into this more but again the issue is just going to be and I've said this before we've had presentations on the budget squeezing blood out of the turnup right the turnup is dried and so we have to come up with something different I'm not saying it's I'm just saying that I just don't think I don't want it to be so deceiving that oh we're not going to raise your taxes I mean I'm okay with it but I think that we I think that we need to educate and be be just put it out there and so that the board understands what happens if you do call for the election then we have to get a pack together and I think that becomes the question of
099what's the communication strategies that are going to be utilized and what's the arguments that are being made and how do we make those presentations and so as we move forward these these are the questions that we will be looking at and say okay how do we develop a strategy for what we're going to say relative to these types of issues I don't know technically what all those strategies are, but you're right, Shel, that that that idea of it going down if we don't do it is definitely there. Okay. Anything else? All right. Again, I thank you for doing this. It's very nice. Okay. Um let's see. 9.2 discussion information on student achievement April the April report. Good evening, Madame President, members of the board, Dr. Wyman, and audience members. Um here today to talk to
100you about um our March 17th district professional learning that we had just to give you some um highlights for that. So, we started with a campus launch. So, everybody came back from spring break and started with their campus to begin the day. Our principles set up that intention of the day and gave their staff some direction. Um, this was the qualitative feedback. So, they felt welcome. They discussed schools with their departments and teams. Um, they had great reminders to remain focused on doing their best every day. That came up quite often in the feedback. Um, we had a couple of campuses use AI in their planning. I believe this is Ellsworth's feedback um, planning morning meetings and how that helped them relieve stress in doing that. So they had some great feedback on that and
101um they reflected on their challenges from the past and kind of setting the the stage for moving forward intentionally. Then um this is the part I'm most excited about is our staff presented. So we had 34 staff members either facilitate on their own or co-f facilitate with each other. Um that led us to have 13 choice sessions for each of our four time slots that we offered. And those sessions were around instructional strategies. We focused on differentiating to meet learner needs. Uh student centered learning. Other sessions were around classroom management and focusing on those positive relationships that we're trying to build with students. Uh technology integration. Our special ed department focused on AI for special education teachers. Um and then content specific sessions around foundational skills, literacy, and math tools. And all of these were
102presented from our teachers based on what they felt comfortable sharing. and it was very well received by staff. Um, their feedback from those sessions were they felt like they walked away with specific strategies. Uh, this was from Miss Sarno's class for activities to help kids regulate themselves. There was such positive feedback from that session. Um, really like the hands-on questioning practice. I believe Miss Arerodondo and a couple of other teachers facilitated questioning strategy sessions. U, better ways to maintain and encourage self-management within their classroom. We had quite a few teachers propose that from elementary, middle and high school. And then um some amazing learning for thinking strategies that they had in the sessions and the last one was um using their resources to help them with data notebooks in the year and providing resources for
103their students. I know Miss Douglas also from Ellsworth ran some sessions that were super positive with notebook strategies for kids from resource that they can take to the gened classroom. So lots of great feedback from our staff led sessions and then at the end of the day we had some campus closure. So everyone came back to their campus groups and their feedback was they felt like they had that opportunity to compare uh collaborate with colleagues and share ideas. Um they focused on how they could implement those new strategies in their classrooms. They love that opportunity to have some time to plan and then um as we hear each time and we we do respond by trying to give more of that planning time but they did express that desire for more time to plan and
104prepare. So we do hear them and we are taking that feedback each year or each time um some quantitative feedback. So I didn't put something from all 13* 4 times whatever sessions but overall the sessions um were asked these three questions was their presenter prepared and the fe feedback for the most part was a three or a four for all sessions. Also when we look at the resources providing um support for their understanding and implementation were also very high in all of our sessions. And then that comfort for implementing what they learned was also high. So this is just a snapshot from one, but in looking at all of the feedback surveys, they all had a similar graph in their responses. So moving forward, we are excited to have from solution tree Maria Nielsen. She's
105the author of the 15-day challenge, which was um a resource that really helps teachers structure their planning for units of study around standards. Some of our campuses dove right into that and some of us are still kind of working through that. So, we wanted to bring the expert in to support us with that learning. So, we're going to have district and campus leaders as well as teacher leaders um for that day on May 27th. And then in next year, we're going to continue our focus on PLC with that 15-day challenge, still focusing on standards, proficiency scales, planning for assessment, and then for student engagement. So, that was just a quick snapshot of our fabulous day with our teacher leaders on that PD day. What questions might you have? A lot of people did wear green.
106Lots of lucky and Irish. And I was actually quite excited to see all the green. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, [Applause] Madame President. Uh members of the board, Dr. Wyman, thank you for the opportunity to um share with you a little bit of an update on our mock interviews that um Miss Horn had mentioned earlier. We uh we did increase our our attendance at the event. Um as most of you know, as we've reported in the past, we typically have this event for our second and third year CTE students, which is close to about 200 students on a on a usual year. I'm not touching. Um, uh, Miss Loftess, uh, gave us a little bit of a challenge and she said, "Mr. Scrogum, can you do it for all my seniors?"
107And I looked at her and and what I said on the inside, I did not say on the outside. Um, because that was quite an undertaking, but we probably doubled. We had uh 4 and about 470 students scheduled to interview. Uh, which means we had to increase the number of volunteers from the community. And I will tell you that um that was not a problem. It was it was a pleasant surprise to have so many members of the community step up and and want to help. Um so we ended up at the end of the day we interviewed 410 students. So we had some students that were absent, maybe some students that missed their appointment, but the majority made it there. And and for me that was the most impressive part. Uh the day before
108the event they were given an interview appointment card. They had to hold on to that card for a whole day, bring it back the next day. It told them where to be, uh, what time to be there and so forth. And I would say probably 98% of them showed up with their card at the right time in the right place. Um, many of them dressed up for the occasion, which is is usually the bigger challenge. Um, but they were very comfortable coming in and uh the gentlemen wore uh ties and dress shirts and the ladies wore uh dresses and skirts or or suits and it was it was really neat to see. Um, we also had 57 business and industry folks. That is not including anybody from the district. So, this excludes anybody that helped
109out from the district. We did have a couple that volunteered some help, but that is strictly uh uh businesses and post-secondary representatives. So, very nice turnout, very a great opportunity to get them on our campus to see our kids. And as always, it never fails. The adults um are are pleasantly surprised at what Combmes has to offer our youth with our youth. Um they they always walk out with a smile on their face and and really impressed by our students. Um the process leading up to the event um we did have our CT teachers and our uh senior ELA teachers prep the students. Um so they uh practiced interview skills, they created resumeumés uh leading up to the event and then the day of the event they came in and they were able to demonstrate
110uh the skills that they had. Uh we had about 225 resumes. So we gave the students an option if they wanted their resume to be evaluated by one of our industry professionals. We had about 225 students that said yes, we'd like them to look at our our resume. So we distributed those out. Uh we'll get those back next Wednesday and then back to the students so that the students can get uh additional feedback uh on the event. Um these are the businesses that participated and this is impressive. Um you as you look through that list uh you can see that we have small business owners from the community. We have large uh organizations that were part of this um all eagerly wanting to to do something. Special shout out to Uru Autoare. Uru um for
111the second year in a row sponsored our hospitality room for our volunteers. Oh, nice. So they were able to have coffee and and juice and and things to keep them going throughout the day. So really uh impressed with these folks and their willingness to help us out. Um so uh what I would rather do because you know I can talk I talk a lot. Um is that uh we had our English teachers here but they had to go get their kids so they had to leave. Um but we have our nursing assistant teacher uh Miss Riley and we have two of her students Carly and um don't say it Nicole. and um they participated in as well. Aren't they nicely professionally dressed? Isn't that awesome? Um and then we also have Miss Loftess. So, I'm
112going to turn the mic over to them. Uh uh if you Krista, you want to share kind of from the teachers perspective and then we'll have the students. I am not that tall. Good evening. Hi, I'm Christa Riley. Good evening, community members and staff board and uh Dr. Wyman. Um I'm teaching assistant program. Um, but I'm going to kind of generally speak on what I know all my peers in the CTE um, world are doing in the background behind this. We see their scared to death faces that have never ever been through interviews before in their life. And we're asking them to write cover letters, resumes, showing them how to do that because not only are we all tasked with um their competencies and and in incorporating educational standards, um all the technical standards, but
113we also have to incorporate professional standards. And so we take it very um seriously. We conduct our programs in a professional manner. When they come in, they are coming to work. Um, and so this is very valuable to them because it shows them um, exactly what it is going to look like. And this is the fourth year um, that I've done it with them. And I have had um, at least one student every year get a job offer at one of these events. And this year we had four. Super super proud of them. Yes. Very proud of these guys. But you probably want to hear their experience um, more because they can tell you exactly how it went for them. But just know um this is an incredible event and the fact that we were
114able to get all the seniors on board with this as well I can imagine was a feat and um but it seemed to run very smoothly and I always tell my students I want the community and the industry partners because we work with our regional advisory committees that's how we got Banner Health Premier you know a lot of these people to come out to us and and support us and so that work with the regional advisory committee actually have them come and speak at the regional advisory committee as well Um but just you know this is very important for them and and steps for them but I'll let them go ahead and speak on their experience. So evening board members and audience. My name is Karly Wilson. I am a senior at Combmes High School
115and uh this is my second year in the nursing assistant class. So my junior year I actually started my mock interview and I will say that I think it is extremely helpful with building up confidence. I can say for sure that every job opportunity afterwards really my confidence flourished and I was able to walk in and I was like I had the mindset of I'm going to get this job. I already have this job. And I can say as a senior this year it also really helped because I was able to actually get a job offer. I was one of the four that got a job offer. Congratulations. And I went and I actually went and I have the job now. I'll be starting Monday at Premier Healthcare. So, I can say that this is
116super helpful and super important when it comes to students because everybody needs to know how to write a cover letter and a resume. And learning when you are a junior or a senior is detrimental because even with those seniors going out into the real world, it's really hard and really um complicated to learn those skills on your own. So, having CTE teachers and English teachers really teach us those skills is absolutely important. So nice. Congratulations. Okay. Hi. Um, my name is Nicole Zarate. I am a sophomore at Combmes High School. I'm a first year nursing student and also a second year student for sports med. Um, I wrote everything down on my phone so I didn't feel oblivious. But I wanted to talk about my preparation first. Just like this. I wrote down and practiced
117in my room what I was going to say. I have a fear generally of public speaking and speaking to individuals I am not generally comfortable with. But using my social skills and my confidence was key. I want to first say thank you to Miss Frying at Homes for preparing us nursing students with resources on how to make a resume because I just like many students never made one before. and I thank her for the corrections she made on my draft, reminding me to add all the achievements that helped me get that job offer. Now, for my experience, my interviewee was Luciano Romero. He is a director at Kasa Grand's Banner Health Hospital. He was very bubbly, which made the experience much more calming and enjoying. It's a personal struggle for me to maintain eye contact,
118but the atmosphere was very comfortable, which made me able to maintain that eye contact the whole time and was one of the things that he brought up after the interview that he told me that I did amazing on and I would be great with the kids at the hospital. To add on, we had good laughs and had things in common made the experience memorable. I am extremely grateful for that. After the interview, I had no constructive criticism given to me and I got a perfect score. Nice. Personal advice I gave to myself and others was to have confidence and be true to yourself and remember first impressions are important and to stay away stay away from words such as like and as or sorry like and um um also I just use that but and
119I say to have confidence because I personally feel when you're nervous you're more closed off and avoiding conversations that could advocate you for that job and making those connections. To end, I would like to thank the district for giving us the opportunities because now I feel more prepared and confident for my future. Thank you. I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank John for rising to the challenge to step up and say we can offer mock interviews to all of our graduating seniors. I think it was a great experience and not only did he step up to this challenge, he went above and beyond things that I didn't even know he was going to do. The interview experience was a 20-minute experience. So, they do the interview and then they have an opportunity to
120sit and talk with that person and they give them feedback. I'd had this experience previously, but that was never a component that I had had in my prior location. And so to I was like, "Oh my gosh, he's how is he going to do that for this many kids, that much time for them to get that feedback?" but he did and he scheduled Adel. Those little cards, that's him and his team getting that done. Um, so I really appreciate it and I'm very excited about what we saw in our data report and about how CTE is rated a little bit higher. That means there's more challenges that could potentially come in the future. So, thank you, John. So again, um you know, we we have this we we kind of live by that in our
121department. Um and you saw it and this is why we do what we do is because we want our students, every student, uh to have that experience that they're having. Um you know, they got job offers that that wasn't the intent of the the interviews. That never is. Um but they shine, right? And they made an impression and and our folks in the community are noticing that. So, hats off to all our our English teachers, our CT teachers, and everybody else. I will tell you that thanks for I appreciate the the accolades, but it was a team effort. Uh there were a lot of people involved that that all the pieces had to fall in place and um and it and it did. So, we're we're very pleased with with the way it ended up.
122That's great. Thank you. Any questions? Good. Thank you. Awesome. Thanks. Okay. So, 9.4 for discussion information on 2425 district student enrollment numbers. We got to go to 93 first. All right. And and 93 is just very quickly. I I will note to you guys it's it's the next in the series. Uh one of the things that ASBA's heard is that that the policy manual is too long. So you will see over the next several months that they'll be coming to us with with ways to consolidate to make it a little bit shorter. The result of that is you now have to delete policies and add policies. So you're getting in this case section B that uh policy advisory is 150 pages long. So we've tried to s summarize it for you. We'll come back for
123a second read in May. Uh please take a look at it. Uh like I say the ones that are deleted for the most part are review of it is the reason it's deleted is because they just collapsed it into a different policy. So it's not that anything got taken out. There may be one exception or two exception but for the most part everything's still there we currently have. it's just located in a different area. Um, we will make we have made sure uh Judy's made sure that there are some uniquenesses for example uh the changes with uh the agenda we make sure that what you guys approved at last meeting is in this one so that we don't have that problem. Um but uh again any questions let me know but it is fairly lengthy
124so just take a look at it and like I say nothing earthshattering um a little bit of word smithing and then just collapsing. Any questions on that? All right, this is our first read, so next time it'll be the second read, so we'll be voting on it. So, all right. Um 9.4. So, um student enrollment numbers, I I shared the numbers with you um uh this week. Um and so if there's any questions you you are seeing the numbers go down a little bit which you will see at the end of the year but again I caution you as I said in some cases that's a positive not a negative uh will have especially at the center for success early graduates uh kids that have worked real hard and so when they go ahead and
125and get done uh they will go ahead and step out so they'll be considered a withdraw uh they will come back and go through the ceremony whether it's high school or at CCS but I just caution that in all cases it's not necessarily a negative there are other cases where uh in some cases uh especially at the high school, you start to see that you're just not going to make it. And so some decide to step off um to start fresh next year. So uh it's not uh unique to see numbers drop a little bit in in April and May. Um but if there's anything I can do to answer questions, I'll be more than happy to. those that step off and decide to start fresh at the beginning of the next school year. Is
126am I understanding correct? It may anymore. There's a number of different options. Uh the one thing you got to be careful about if they step off um if they haven't done anything and they're going to step off Friday and then start somewhere new Monday. What's different that says they're going to do anything different? So, we do look at those kids as possible summer school. Uh we do have both summer school uh opportunities. uh in depending on where they're at, our first choice would not be able to would not be to send them to grad solutions because we would like to work with them first in in our programs, but theoretically they could go there. They could do it in June starting with summer school. They could start in July. Um especially online, uh the school
127year technically for online is July 1 to June 30. Um so they can pick it up there. So we would look to grab those kids and see what's what's in their best interest. In some cases, there's to be totally honest a willingness to talk to us and listen to us and see what some options are. In some cases, there's a sense of frustration and they're really not wanting to talk to us. Uh what we do see, and I think most school districts see that though, if I do something right now, I may be frustrated, etc. Come around the end of July, early August, I see the world a little bit different because it's a brand new year. And so, I might just decide to come back at that time. Again, it could be at a
128regular school or it could be an all-term school. Um, but I I just caution that because sometimes when see people see that number, it's like, oo, whoa, whoa. But it's just a part of the natural uh process. What is the outreach like and followup to try to recapture that? It it depends on the situation uh and the individual. Normal, you might have some reach out over the uh probably be a conversation before they leave. Um, and depending on where that goes, what options are, then you'll see some reach out uh as part of registration process um throughout the summer. uh and and to see where they're at. Again, depending on the situation, you might give them direction to do one, you know, take this route or that route. So, we try to work on those
129kids best we can. If they're responsive, in some cases, like I say, uh just like with lots of things, if people aren't responsive, then there's not much you can do. Any other questions, Anna? Okay. Um discussion and information of the 2024 25 annual expenditure budget. Good evening, Madame President, members of the board, members of the audience. Um, this is really quick. It's a reminder that according to ARS 15905 statute, the district must bring its final revision of the budget to you by May 15th. So, we will bring it to the May 14th meeting and then we will transmit that to AD no later than May 18th. the agenda or I'm sorry, the budget will be revised based on the 100th day ADM and any of the AD reports um that have been issued by that
130time so that we can have the most accurate end ofear totals. It will carry us through June 30th and the incumbrance period which runs until about August 30th. Are there any questions about the budget that we'll be bringing to you next month? Thank you. All right. Thank you. All right, that brings us to 10.1 requests for future agenda items. Does anybody have anything they would like? So, if I understand correctly, you're going to come next month with some from the bond committee, some information from We have a special meeting on the 23rd. So, there will be a presentation from the bond committee on the 23rd. Um, that's just a discussion. And so it's one possibly two topic and then based on that I'm sure there'll be discussion and then that will that will determine what
131happens on May 14th. Okay. Is there any is it good to review what bonds have done in the past for the district or is that a bad idea? I we can bring it. I think it's uh some of you may have better experience than I. I know obviously we passed in 16 otherwise we wouldn't be in this room but I think there was a couple failures. 15 was a failure. Uh I think there was a patches that allowed for potentially the unified uh district and and I don't know if there was bond associated with that in seven or eight. Those are just MOS. Those are just so I'll look I'll look for it and I can share it with you. But uh um I don't know that there's been a ton of bond stuff other
132than this latest one because most of these schools were built with SB money. Uh and I don't think they support it. But I'll check and if we have it I I'll bring it. It doesn't hurt. I think that'd be a great time to see if there was anything that you know, I mean, I don't know if the aquatic center was on any of those, but it might be a good follow up with that to see if it was or not. It was not. Okay. I I can speak to that when we get to that point. Thanks. Okay. Anything else? All right. Then I will make a motion to adjourn at 7:21. Second. All in favor? I I motion carries.