001I sound like I sound like you my plant from Simington is still going strong yeah okay I'm gonna call the meeting to order at 5:00 pm and uh president Steven Ray will not be here today so I will be running the meeting his absence M Tucker and Miss Tucker won't be here either okay so it'll be us the three of us so we do have a quarum um we're going to go into an informational session regarding demographic and enrollment analysis do we need a a motion for that no because it's just a it's just a review so I'll just introduce uh Rick Brammer from applied economics if you remember back in December the board approved uh going into contract with applied economics um to go ahead and and do this analysis they have done the
002analysis ongoing in this District I I think for close to a decade um and so it's a it's an extension of of information they've shared previous years I think it's about every two years that the district has gone out it might be three um and so I'll just turn it over to Rick and I already blanked on your name so I apologize but Rick can introduce his partner and then we'll go ahead look at about 30 minutes presentation and then any questions thank you so much members of the board Dr Wyman distinguished guests it's our pleasure to be here uh this afternoon to share the results of the demographic update it is about every three years that we that we look through these numbers you know and it's just um helpful to try to understand
003what's going on out there because there's such a disconnect you know between what you see in terms of construction in rooftops and what we see in enrollment and we're going to try to lay out all the reasons why there's that difference and try to predict what might happen in the future so the scope of work that we've done for the district has pretty much been the same we do the same scope General scope of work for every District the interesting part of it is that it's the same variables all the time but different ones matter more and less in different districts you know and there's no two districts that are exactly alike but nonetheless we're using enrollment data all we can find um total and and grade level characteristics did geographic distribution we look at
004the actual home location of of all the students and then of course now we're into business of tracking enrollment at alternative providers and now the last two years uh with the empowerment um scholarship accounts esas U the demographic characteristics of the district you're not small anymore there's about 50,000 people who now live in the coms District so you know the characteristics of the population that's already here really matters especially when it doesn't turn over very fast and people age in place and that's happening more and more for a bunch of reasons partially because we're living longer and we're healthier but at the very moment anybody who has a you know a mortgage rate at less than 4% which turns out to be 70% of us we're not interested in moving even if we needed to
005unless we absolutely had to so it's really slowed down the turnover rate at the same time and of course I don't have to tell you what prices and interest great have done to the you know to the to the market in general which is really why Don Graves is here he is our residential development expert he's the one that talks to the planners and the developers and the builders and tries to get a handle on what they're doing and uh he does a really great job in that um and then we do two different models we do a district level kind of top down how does the district fit into the Southeast Valley SL Northern panal County you know from a top down perspective your market share things like that um but then almost more
006importantly is that we look at things from the bottom up so the subdistrict level so we actually have a an enrollment forecasting model that works on these red boxes that you see in front of you so generally we're dividing where there's development we divide the square miles into about four pieces it's not always exactly straight lines because we like to follow roadways and canals and things like that but the thing is is we set up this um system of grids that doesn't change over time and so as Dr Wyman said we've got 10 years worth of data now we know exactly how many students you've served from each one of these boxes by grade for the last 10 years running or more actually I think but at least 10 years worth well anyway we'll start
007back at the top with um these are 40th Day uh headcount enrollment numbers in blue those are from you basically the state's October enrollment reports plus of course data directly from you so it's apples and apples who's enrolled K12 40th Day and then the red squiggly line is the year-over-year percent change and so you know obviously you can see that you know during the original boom from 2000 to uh 2010 enrollment growth pretty much kept pace with housing growth um and there was you know a growth of around 4,000 students um from 11 12 forward um B basically enrollment really hadn't changed much at all until the last two years I mean if you squint you get the you get the CO year in there but you bounced back nice from that but the fact
008of the matter is that you know during this time enrollment because of the drops of the last two years is now down by 550 students compared to 20112 and in that same period of time there's been about 7,700 housing units added um in the district we look at the distribution of enrollment by grade level and when you have a housing boom oftentimes most often it's led by young families in the lower grades so you see the average enrollment in that K2 group The Blue Line shot right up to the top of the of the size categories you know right off the bat um and then of course didn't have a high school originally but when we see that come online still that population group was much smaller because people mov been with young families and
009over time they age and so you know it's not uncommon to see that 912 group cross over the other grades in terms of being you know the largest that's happening right now but what's happening is that the smaller grades are now really coming to the high school level so all across the valley and even across the state I've seeing High School particularly people who are high school districts who've been kind of insulated from the whole clining enrollment thing and now all of a sudden you know the effect of forget about choice we're going to talk about it but forget about that I'm talking about how many kids are out there because of birth rates and it's just flowing through and it's really going to hit the high school level now so we can see um
010you know the big drop in 2020 21 especially in the lower grades due to covid but as I already said a real nice bounceback uh the year after that and then you know enrollment declines across all great cohorts um kind of you know to a scale in a short period of time that we really hadn't seen before um and well you know we'll get to looking at alternative providers and talking about you know why we think that is but that is what's that is what's happening so this is the actual number of students that you all serve from each one of the grids or did as of the 40th Day of of 23 24 um it's so red you know we see red shading it's more and less and so forth and we use that
011a lot especially if we're doing attendance area work or school planning work it's good to know where the kids are of course but what I'm more interested in is where how's it changing and so if we just look at the last five years um there's only one of the grids that had any kind of an increase in enrollment at all there was nine student increase um basically in the grid that houses helmes Middle School um the Simington Harington Harmon sorry uh areas had large losses those are also high concentrations of population so you got to think about you know it's red means there's a lot of kids there so it just dark blue means they lost but you know the proportion of it I could do another map that was by percentage but you know
012it's not as concentrated there as it looks it's just that the kids are also concentrated there but um large large de declines and I guess one of the things that hits me is usually when I see those kind of declines it's along the border of a district not in the middle of it you know where you're most most apt to get competition I talked about demographics and it's pretty uh it's kind of an amazing Place really because in in the year 2000 there was only 2700 people living in the entire district and the people that were there were uh older for the most part large group of householders over the age of 65 um and the school age population you know that actually the population I guess I'm using is the under 13 which is
013preschool and Elementary populations uh was only 23% of the total and then during that original boom we saw those lines all go straight up remember that well it jumped up to be 31% just those two groups were almost a third of the total population and then what's happened since then is that's really stopped um so that you know it's becoming a smaller and smaller share of total population now you're still should have gotten enrollment increases because of the sheer number of housing units that have been added but the fact of the matter is the fundamental compens composition you know of the population and of householders is Shifting and it's aging back almost exactly you know to what it was 30 years ago um and as I said wrote to about 50,000 people um but when
014you see negatives in those annual change categories that means there was between those periods there was actually a net loss even with the construction there was a net loss in the in the population under five in both periods so why is that well it's mostly because of this um and this is an awfully complicated chart and I'm just going to talk about the red line which is the state of Arizona um and so what happened during the the Great Recession is it in a period of about uh six years or so 2006 to 2011 I guess that would be five years uh the number of births in the in the state of Arizona tumbled uh the rate went down by 19% number of births almost 177% and so what happened in that short period is
015the number of births Statewide fell from 102,7 to 85,000 and then it kind of stabilized for three years and and a lot of people were expecting it to go up because normally after a recession and a reaction like this by the population of pulling back on births then there was an adjustment on the other side it was like a baby boom almost the exact opposite happened people were so shocked by what happened in the recession they were so shocked by what they saw happen to their parents and they had so much student debt that they basically decided to put off having kids or and when the the longer you put off having kids the fewer kids you will have life gets in the way and so what's happened you know you know since then is
016that we're now down another Well 20% in the rate but because we've had overall population increase the number of births is down by another 10% so we're now down last year 2023 to 77,500 births Statewide compared to 102,000 clear back in 2006 so there are just plain less kids in the system you know to get and it's interesting because I have some doctor friends who are talking about oh that's why they closed all the maternity Wars and I didn't realize there had been such a downsizing and a lot of maternity facilities but it's it's really the same phenomenon so I lagged that five years you said kindergarten down there and so I know that through you know 28 29 or so I'm not looking for any big increases you know in the in the pot
017if you will how many kids there are out there to be educated Rick can you look there is the the purple line that's penel County it seems out you just explain that to them so they understand what that is my thunder Dr Wy except in panal County yes and it's because and it's it's I mean it's somewhat you guys but it's really Maricopa um and to where their young families have been able to find houses they can afford to buy and there still the number of births is is you know 10% of the Maricopa County number so it's not going to you know drown us but the birth rate in panal county has trended upwards since 2019 like last year there was 5500 live births in panal County give you an idea but yes it's
018one of the places that's affordable enough for people to still be to still be coming to so Dr Wyman it's an important Point um we you know we do track the enrollment schools not only the ones that are in your District but the ones that are located you know nearby or the ones we know that are you know capturing students uh from the district and we you know the interesting thing about it of course is now it's kind of maxed out you look I mean in 1920 there was 6,200 kids in those charter schools and last year there was about 6,100 kids in those charter schools so they did have a gain this year uh because of a new facility or two um but generally they haven't really been gaining enrollment so when we think
019about those last couple years and the enrollment we're losing it's you know it's not necessarily charter schools and I think we don't have all the data we'd like to have yet but I believe that's where esas come in and and I've seen it hit in big ways in two types of areas um very affluent areas where people were already almost affording private school before and now they can um and then areas where there's a lot of homeschooling because you know those benefits can be used uh to pay for homeschooling expenses as well and so you know we're really still waiting to get good numbers and see how big that impact's going to be but we'd kind of seen not just in your District but in a lot of districts Charters almost you know saturate if
020they built another one they were just going to be stealing students from each other you know so uh it's changed Don's going to talk to us now about housing if we see on the chart you know there's been about 7,000 units in added in the last 10 years uh about 500 were build to rent units uh sometimes called a horizontal Apartment project and there's been about 500 of those in the last couple of years that's the orangee part of the bar it's on there uh next year there's going to be about another 166 of those units while they finish building two of those projects that are still under construction uh the blue bars are the single family and that's gone down the last couple of years basically because you've got projects building out while other
021projects are starting up but they haven't really kicked in full gear and the projects that have built out is Magnolia and Archer Meadows that's Meritage and DR Horton those are both high volume Builders so when they stop building you know those numbers come down pretty fast and that's what's going on with you know with that where the permits are uh comes road is turning into a pretty active Corridor if you look out out to the east you got comes Ranch that's Taylor morison they're going pretty good on the phase one next to it is Wales Ranch uh on the east side is where lenar is building and they've been very active in that project and uh Ashton wood and starlight is on the west side of that project so there's three builders in that one
022development so that's picking up a lot of speed uh up in the north you have North Creek it's Woodside Homes they're building that's a little bit more moderate but they're they're going the projects I mentioned that we building out or complete the Archer Meadows off the east and then Magnolia is the one that's on Meridian there by the railroad tracks so there's no more activity there but they there have been so other than up in the north and at Ovation which is age restricted most of your activity is along com Road excuse me I I have a question what's happening with wear Farms because it looks like it started and then it stopped and and now it looks like there's some activity but not a lot no they're Mass grading phase one which is uh
023just under 800 Lots uh TriPoint they're working on infrastructure by now I think so they'll be starting you know houses here in another year but uh Tri point is uh they took down the first 800 and some lots for the phase one they've sold some of those to David Weekley so they're going to have two builders in there to start and weekly tends to build they're capable of building at a pretty fast fast rate try point is they're the ones doing that Waterston project over in Chandler so you know that's a it's a nice Builder to have so so here at the in the near future you're going to have one two three four five builders on comes Road in three different projects and so so they're moving forward uh the first phase is going
024to be all of that on the west side and they're going to be starting down on the south on the hasn H knife road is where they're starting they'll be there and then working their way up working their way North and you will note that that subdivision down there by the railroad tracks um the issue we have there is it's across railroad tracks it's not easy access and across the street from that subdivision is uh Queen Creek's I don't know if it's nine or snap Elementary so I've I've been down Gary several times and the kids just walk right across the street so we have not really gathered many kids out of that neighborhood just because of where where Queen Creek's school is it's uh it's a short walk parents can walk their kid across
025the street and as opposed to getting on a bus and and driving around to either CTA or or uh um or Ellsworth so just Notting that that that alignment that little triangle has not been beneficial to us just because of the location of the railroad tracks and and just the way the road system works yeah it is tricky to get to that one oh the the potential you have you've got about another 11,000 units that are that are possible here in the next 10 years and another another 11,000 are still longer term there's also a lot of state land with a massive potential that may never get built uh so I guess the long and the short of it is there's plenty of potential here in the district realizing it is going to depend on
026several things you know both water and State landscap sales uh but there's plenty of potential you might notice that the again the orange part of the bars is mulai family and up until two years ago there had been no mulai family in this district and we're expecting to see more coming in the future and more diversity in the housing even the single family is going to be more diverse than what it has been so this the market is opening up pretty well which is something that you like to see this is a the timing map is colorcoded where red is subdivisions or projects that are already active and the dark orange is to be active in the next year or two a lighter orang in the next three to five year period and the yellow
027is a little farther further along you'll see uh like the wear Farms that you were asking about it's cleared out at the southern corner is where we're at least we're expecting them to start on the first phase and then work their way North and then eventually move off to the east comes Ranch is uh Taylor Morrison they started in the west and they're moving their way East whales Ranch is going so that's all pretty dark so you know the dark oranges you're going to have a lot of a lot of activity there in the next few years and then you've got some smaller projects that are starting uh Madam mam is working on a project called the quarters just north of the shopping center there at Combs and uh and Ironwood they'll be building there
028in about a year so what you're going to see is a lot of activity in the next five years you've got a lot of different projects that are all going to be active in the next five years then in about five years you're going to start seeing some of these large projects building out so at that point your housing construction your housing production is going to drop and'll still be you know fairly sizable clear through the projection period but it will be a lot less in the second half of the projection period than it is in the first half thank you so now we're going to try to figure out what that might mean in terms of um well two things really the the projections that we do of housing units and population um are
029very scientific and have proven to be very accurate and then from that we will see that you we project school age population so how many persons aged five to 17 are going to live in the district the part that where you know we where we struggle is how many of them are going to choose to come to us and that's where the variability in the projections come in but from everything Don's looking at with a number of Builders involved it really magnifies things if you got only one Builder he's only going to build so fast because he only wants to build so many units but you get five or six of them involved and it's going to shoot up so there's the housing boom he's talking about the next five years but over the next
03010 years probably about 8,700 additional housing units um and then we turn that into households what's occupied and so that's a household about 80 300 households and then I stratifi the households I don't show you all the detail here by those age groups that I showed in that other table because that tells me what my school age population might be and this is all just looking at history here so if we just look at history from 2010 forward you can see the number of households in the district what the school age population was persons aged five to 17 whether they go to your school or any school they just plain live in the district and you have a high rate you know it's still at over s uh persons per per housing unit and it's
031been declining and it's still well above you know certainly the Maricopa County average and the panell county average now that I think about it so it's still kind of a family place you know what I mean there's still quite a few younger people here on a per unit basis um the difficulty comes in when you compare that to the enrollment numbers and you see the growth in you know the difference between the school age population and what enrollment has been and then I just do a ratio between those two um to try to get a handle on you know how fast or slow that change is occurring because that's the only indication that I can use to really do the projections because it's so much related to Choice an individual decision that it's not you
032know it's very difficult to model so it's difficult enough to model that we we do at least two scenarios so we can kind of Define a range that we might be working in and so I do a trend scenario with the with the uh enrollment to population ratio that line I was just showing you so you know that last column there so it's gone from 56 down to 31 um at that rate of of of decline um which is about two and a half% per year basically it would be near zero um by uh 20 33 34 and I don't believe that's going to happen there's got to be a there's going to be a bottom out there somewhere so as a worst case in this scenario I reduced it at half of the rate
033and took us all the way down to 20% but because there's going to be so many housing units built that would still only result in about a 300 student loss in enrollment even if that's the way it goes what I like to think about is at least you know holding your own at some point even if it's 30% or 50% whatever it is you know the first step is to try to get it to not go down and so if it doesn't go down that's all we're saying in that stable scenario in which case you would gain 1,600 students over the next 10 years based on the number of housing units and the population that will inhabit them and so I understand that's a pretty wide range for you know for a projection but you
034know the scientific stuff we do very well you know housing units population that part it's this whole Choice part that really is you know beyond my slide rule so we do the projections two ways based on that environment and a lot of actual data up here and I just want to point out there's two tables in the report look look the same I want you to understand how they're different so this is the past and the projected enrollment by attendance area so this is strictly based on where students would live and you can see from 10 2010 to 2018 we had a net gain of about 400 students however um even during that period of time enrollment in the elementary that level had fallen by you know 272 so it had started you know the
035charters had had started making major inroads into that group um this last fiveyear period heavily weighted into the elementaries in terms of the loss I could go back to the Charter chart if I wanted to but they attract a lot more k6 students than they do 78 or 912 so you tend to see smaller losses in the upper levels I did warn you that we've got coming because of the shape of the enrollment curves what I think is going to be in your area in a lot of areas a dip in high school enrollment for a few years because we have that shock of the those smaller classes coming forward so we we do these projections this is like I said the trend scenario where we would lose about 400 more students over the next
036five years and then actually gain um in the second five years but we have to do it by school also so we look at the relationship between where kids live and where they go to school and so if you read this across you find out that at Ellsworth Elementary they have 355 students that live in their own attendance area plus 13 from Harmon plus 13 from Ranch plus um 70 from simonon plus 64 from outside of the district gives them total attendance students in seats 515 if if you read that First Column down you find out that there's only 423 students coming who live in that area and so in this case the school gains a net 92 between how many can live there and how many go to school there and so when We're
037translating these enrollment numbers into like Staffing and things we have to account for this movement too that kids don't go where they're designated to go now 78.5% of the kids do go to their designated school that's the green on the diagonal um that's actually a fairly High rate I mean I've at one District it's 65% so um it's it's a pretty tight correlation but nonetheless when we're doing our projections by school we have to account for this and we have to account for it not only the in in intradistrict movement but also inter District movement uh with the you know the um out of District number and so finally using that relationship we can translate the projections of uh enrollment by attendance area into what we think the schools will actually do so that so
038I wanted to warn you because this table looks like the other one but this is by school rather than by attendance areas and so the numbers you know show all of the same you know same totals and things um with Ellsworth and Harmon having the you know the biggest the biggest losses basically over the the next five years um basically due to what Don was showing you too where where the development is going to be occurring and um you know the there's been substantial increases in this in the school age population um since 2010 but uh it's been completely offset and until the last two years You' been kind of flat it really hadn't Fallen it had bounced around and being impacted by covid but it really hadn't Fallen until the last two years but
039we know it should have gotten up it should have gotten up that lot so um as Don's talking about with all the excitement you're G to have a housing boom you know whether it's th or 1,200 or 1400 units a year um it's going to happen everything's in place there's really little can stop it might slow it down a little bit but it's there's nothing that can stop it um the magnitude of the impact on your enrollment is going to be very very very much impacted by choice you know we know there's going to be new school age persons in those units so the question is where do they you know where where do they go to school um and we know that if we could hold that you know that um enrollment to population
040ratio at its current level you know we could actually add 1,600 students but you know the actual upside potential you know he's talking 8,000 housing units by the actual upside potential probably about 5,500 new school age persons come to the district so what's your share you know what can you capture and I it's not you're doing I tell everybody this it's really not what you're doing wrong because it's all about external factors and programs and actions that have been put into motion that have encouraged you know both you know in open enrollment charter schools and now esas so you know you're just you're not working on a you're not working on a Level Playing Field so I wish I had you know better things to say um and you know it's not like you know
041it's the end of the world there's there's definitely potential here for a big upside and I think a lot of us I I believe and I won't put words in his mouth but we've been kind of expecting you know to see it cap anyway because land's gotten so expensive that the idea buying land to open a new charter school you know has gotten you know pretty unpalatable and so we we saw that it's leveled off but now all of a sudden we've got this new thing esas so I'll take questions as well Don of course Jason Shelly any questions I don't okay can um can I just summarize and see I want I was making some notes as you were going through the upside is that there's potential for growth in the housing market which
042is what you've discussed and that there are younger families that can afford to buy the houses so as they come in the birth rate could possibly increase that's a upside potential in in your one little locality in our loc right yes correct okay now downside is that the current birth rate is falling downside is there's competition with Charter Schools and other types of schools and another downside is esas yeah so we're caught between the upside and the downside so our opportunity as it looks like is to get get more of the kids in our neighborhoods to go to our neighborhood school and not to make decisions to go elsewhere that looks like that's our biggest opportunity that is the name of the game for everybody I mean every every District I work for that is
043now the name of the game um what other districts have you done these type of studies for in both panal and Maricopa and are they similar to what you found for Combs or do they differ in certain ways they differ in some we we worked for Queen Creek Gilbert Chandler C Grand Maricopa um so we've we've seen quite a bit um the this part of the southeast I'll call you Southeast Valley I'm going to put you into Maricopa County for just a second but um I think the presence of the American Leadership Academy and the ability that they had to go from building Boutique schools to 1500 student custom built with tracks and things like that change the game and I haven't seen that everywhere so that you've been you I don't want to call
044anybody out but that's been an extra burden I think that you've had and they're just getting ready to open a their first school in Peoria so um we're going to be helping try to sort that out too because you know they should be building another school right now and they can't get money because their enrollment is not going up that's a catch 22 really I do have another I have a question um the multifamily homes or the apartments or whatever um do you do you see those more of like transient type like they come and go quickly well that's the history of of rental units I mean you're typical we really can't count on those right well the thing is is that they don't age either so we don't know who's going to move in
045that same product that Don's talking about like those horizontal ones it's been interesting because you could build the exact same product in Chandler and Poria and Buckeye and get a whole different profile of who lives in them right and so it depends on the locality as to who lives there but the thing is is that they don't age and so if it's always appealing to younger families then it's always going to have younger families whereas your house you move in and you stay for 15 years and you didn't have any more kids necessarily during that period of time so in some ways rental housing helps stabilize the population the other key that we have to look at right now that the district uses a formula uh for the initial uh calculation for elementaries of a.3
046so the total number of houses by .3 for uh middle school and high school we use .2 and 0.19 uh and talking with some of the developers um with some of those homes that you're talking about um they would suggest that the numberers significantly lower than that although they may stay depending on what happens if you have uh individuals moving in that haven't started families and stuff their are calculations if we take Elementary it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.15 to 0.2 so even as you calculate this you're going to have to look at those as we figure that out um I don't know what's accurate but as I've talked to two or three developers that have come through and talked to us about those lands they're saying what they project out based on the
047individuals that live in there and who's living in there um your calculation is a little bit different and so the the second step is you got to remember is after you do that first math step then you have to go ahead by your cap what I'm calling capture rate that was one of the columns the e- p ratio so we're at 31% so whatever that number is whether it's 30% of the total number of housing units total number of people coming in you then have to turn around and do that by another number which is your capture rate so that that stabilization of the capture rate is absolutely critical for US versus Trend data um uh that will that'll make all the difference in the next decade other questions comments I'm good good J I
048think we're good yeah all right thank you very much we really appreciate you coming and sharing your your findings with us thank you thank you very much for the opportunity we appreciate serving you guys you're welcome and then we would take probably about a 20-minute break and we'll start up at 6:00 okay okay so we're on break until e okay I'm going to call the meeting to order at 6 p.m. uh this is the regular scheduled meeting um can I have a motion to adopt the agenda please I motion to adopt the agenda second I'll second okay all in favor say I I I opposed okay it passes three to nothing okay could all stand for the pledge I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for
049it stands na God indivisible withy and justice for all okay let's see we need to look at the uh regular board meeting for February 14th and have that approved so someone would make a motion is it the recommended actions that yes so I recomend I recommend I recommend that the governing board approve the meeting agenda as presented no not the agenda the minutes under 61 it's number 61 I got it recommend that the governing board approve the February 14th yes 2014 regular meeting minutes as presented second I'll second okay in favor I I I opposed passes three nothing item 6.2 approval of the uh minutes from the first executive session uh prior to the February 14th meeting we need a motion to approve I'll make a motion to approve um the governing Bo the minutes
050for the first executive session on February 14 2024 as presented Second Jason seconds okay all in favor say I I I opposed passes three to nothing and then 6.3 approval of the second executive session that occurred after the meeting of February the 14th I'll make a motion to approve the minutes from the second ex executive session on February 14th 2024 is presented I'll second second thank you all in favor I I opposed okay it passes three to nothing okay uh we're down to item number seven superintendent report in celebrations thank you number of things happening even though we're coming off two week spring break there's still a lot of of uh things that have happened right before the break and uh uh during the break uh big celebration at ranch ranch was named one of
051thir 37 a plus schools uh of excellence in the district so it is is from the Arizona Education Foundation it's very uh lengthy uh process a lot of hard work was done uh in that uh putting that uh application together then they come out with a visit uh some of our other schools will be looking forward to moving forward uh to do that in the future um we also uh Hosea Graham was named coach of the year not only for the East Sky Region but also the Arizona Republic all Arizona coach of the year uh for the job he did with the basketball team this year so we're pleased to see him get that recognition along with Logan tuckfield who received uh from all Arizona uh from the Republic the all Arizona team honorable mention
052um so that was uh another good thing for the basketball team uh modern we went to the modern learning conference right before spring break and we did receive uh recognition there Kelly Bond was the finalist as is an instructional co uh coach of the year at that uh uh event and then we were recognized uh with the Infinity Ward which uh recognizes dedication to Foster modern learning environment that actively involves all Educators in the ongoing development of innovative teaching uh methods um and that uh uh that that network has about approximately 100 110 uh school districts across the country in it so it's a prestigious award uh so especially within that area recognize and thank the CIA Department under Dr fountain's leadership and the and the coaches uh that in many cases is the work
053that we've done with uh with our our professional development was a way to recognize that high school has had a lot of success the dance and coral uh groups uh won a variety of different activities in the last little bit the host of students uh earned third place uh and going to the state level and they are in third place in the regional competition for mental health promotion campaign uh boys basketball went to first round of playoffs uh five from the wrestling team made it to the state tournament the esport team finished second uh one of our seniors Alex aario uh signed to play with AO a university next year over in Surprise um so that was exciting uh congratulations to Harmon student Solomon rashed he finished third in the panal County Spelling be uh
054Jess Ferman math teacher about the High School uh received the 2023 2024 recipient of the copper Apple award for teaching in secondary mathematics that's the highest award most prestigious award that is given to uh secondary math teachers uh she received that right before um The Break um we also had some state qualifiers for FFA uh the HR department did a very successful first annual Wellness event uh 25 vendors participated we had uh a variety of different uh uh Wellness activities that took place uh on February 28th uh we will build off of that um in this report you'll also see uh the media coverage that we've received quite a bit over the over the month um the um CTA Mrs schner is working with Peterson Orthodontics to host a free community event April 5th with
055the goal of uniting the community I believe it's a late afternoon early evening event uh there'll be more information coming out uh uh from that samon had a plan our love our school day with Central Christian Church coming up Armon is working with uh the Boy Scouts uh troop uh 357 pack 735 to work on cleaning up uh and beautifying the campus the middle school had U uh five students qualify for the annual uh Civics B um and two students finished in the top five uh flag football team uh finished the season in top 10 made the playoffs um Ellsworth is uh getting ready toh take the stage uh with the third grade students uh pres in a presentation on the day uh the canyon the Crayons Quit excuse me a very hungry Cal pill
056for the first graders our robotics team is uh competed in a competition first Arizona Valley Regional end in the tournament 19th Place out of 42 teams again I think it shows as much as anything just the depth of things that are available in our district uh com Center for sucess Success had three more students that finished their cour work and and will end up graduating early they'll go through the uh through the uh ceremony in May but that brings up the number of graduates to to 31 uh students there and they also had their PE peer leadership class raise mental health awareness by giving presentations to the other students so a lot of positive things happening in the district uh as we move forward into the spring very good thank you okay uh next we're
057going to have school and staff recognition we'll have Miss shofner come up first and do CTA and then we'll do the recog nition it is good evening members of the board Dr Wyman amazing colleagues my staff all this amazing Community we are excited at CTA to show you oh I like it um a quick little video just to highlight some things um and we'll talk a little bit about after that [Music] um one of the reasons that we used that video as a highlight was we really wanted to show what are some of the things that we do at CTA to kind of bring the community together and build that culture um and really highlight time with our families um putting together events uh really working yes we are very proud of our a from
058the Department of Education and one of the things that really I feel like brings that opportunity is to partner with our fellow elementary schools our Middle School CCS the high school to to really bring that choice you know we had a great presentation before to really talk about what that looks like and having that choice at CTA brings an opportunity for our parents to really decide do we want to stay within that district and have that opportunity as well as what are some Innovative things that we can do so one of the things we did get to go to Pennsylvania and it was super fun so I brought two of my teachers to come and talk a little bit about how CTA is taking that Innovation and trying to really push the needle on letting
059go of direct instruction um and really trying to set up those classrooms for um a modern learning environment so I'm going to have Mrs Rosen bomb and Mrs laass come up and they're going to just share with you a little bit about what they've done in their classroom um and kind of where they see going forward so a little this thing going on um so I'm just going to talk about um how learning is in my classroom so first we do a lot of reviewing with our class vision and class code that helps with a lot of the students um ensuring that they have that culture and that buy in and that ownership in their classroom they're really good about understanding the rules with our code and they're really good about hey you're not following
060that code right now you need to make sure you're doing that so that's really important at a second grade level that they're really understanding that and they're able to do that at such a young age is know the right from the wrong and being able to enforce that within themselves so that's really cool I like that um when we start a new standard we unpack the standard so I'll write it on chart paper since we're second grade we're still young and so I write the standard and we go through and the kids tell me what is the verb what is the action what is the noun what is it that we're looking for in our standard then they go through and they tell me their success criteria I help them guide through with guiding questions
061because some of them are a little bit more difficult but they tell me what does the standard mean what does a three look like how do I know I'm proficient what does a two look like what do I know that I need to work on for developing and what is a one something like I'm emerging and I have a lot of things I need to work on so and they let and it lets them know and there's a visual on the wall so that way they know they can work from here and move up in order to understand their standard we also have pre-tests on with our standards so when they do start their learning plans they know where they are starting and it lets them know where they can work towards we talk a
062lot about growth mindset and you may not be at a three right now because you're learning it but that's okay it's we're not there yet we talk a lot about that and that's really important at a young age that they do understand that they do have a lot of growth and they're not going to get it the first time and that failure is okay because it's a chance for them to keep learning and learning and learning and get better it's all about that growth with them and also um one thing that I do want to work on is the advanced learning plans because they are second grade knowing that difference of a one a two and a three so they're working really hard on doing that and we're practicing and we actually started working on
063an advanced learning PL this is going to be something new so I think they're going to really enjoy liking the difference in um doing okay I'm going to start here but I'm going to work towards this or maybe I'm going to start here and I'm going to work towards this one so that way they know where they're moving forward to on their um standards we also um do a lot of daily five which is a lot of their choice time and so when we're doing that um I like to um incorporate or I want to incorporate more station rotation with it and I know that's a big part of the U modern learning is understanding you know I have more choice and we want to I want to expand it to a longer period instead
064of just this time that we have so that way I'm more consistent in getting with all of my students and not just okay these are the ones that struggle a little bit so I want to work with them but I want to make sure that I am um doing a lot of enrichment with my higher students so everybody's getting a full impact and growing as much as they can and also lastly I do um we do the data folders which is very common um with our modern learning and we look at them about weekly for a second grader and so in them they look through what is our road maps for the quarters they have a road map of visual and they track their progress so at this standard I'm here at the beginning with
065my pre-test but now at the end with my post test this is where I am so they can see this is where I started but this is where I went so that was um that's really good um we also um track our quarterly phonograms because we do phonograms on our campus and it's kind of very similar to foundations and we track those quarterly so the students can see at the beginning of the year this is where I am but then quarter one this is how much I've grown and then Quarter Two quarter three and then at the end of the year so our goal is to get higher in their um bar graphs and so it's really important to let them have a visual so they can see that as well um and we have
066also writing samples in our um data folders and so that's really important for them to see at the beginning of the year I only wrote two sentences middle of the year I was able to write five sentences and now I can write seven or eight sentences and try to make a full paragraph and so that's a lot of fun for them to see and to show their parents at conferences the progression in their writing as well and that'll definitely help them in third grade when they have to take their tests and things like that um one thing I do want to add to my data folders for sure next year is because we have the new math program try to incorporate more of the data tracking for the math and so that's something new that
067we're going to work on and try to inate for next [Applause] year hello my name is winter Fred um Laos I teach fifth grade this is my first year ever teaching fifth grade I actually did the math I thought I'd only been teaching for 12 years but turns out it's been 20 not sure how that happened this is the first year I've ever taught fifth grade I've always been a first and a second it's hard um I came from a District that we did incorporate a lot of the modern um learning into the classroom so it was a pretty easy thing for me to do um the first thing I did was just have lots of different places to sit lots of different elevations I took the legs off of the tables the desks and
068I called them creating crafting tables and then students can sit on the floor and they can work on them um I also have some tall tables uh we bought some bar St ones and they're very nice I have one student who's very tall he's taller than me um I really like to use the curriculum but I like to use it kind of maybe in an un unexpected way I get away from that direct instruction I give the kids the lessons I asked them to explore the lesson and then I come back and I I asked them about that a lot of that's just me acting like I don't know what the book is when I actually really do and I just try to get them to teach me what they just figured out um in
069this fourth quarter I'm experimenting with the idea with their new math program that maybe we could have a component where kids could go further and kids could hang back if they needed to and so right now I'm currently working in three topics but kids that are going faster can go faster and kids that are going slower can sit in that topic and really get Mastery and they know that 80% is Mastery on topic test 70% is passing and they're very very U mindful of that and they're very clear you need to um give me back that quiz I need to practice a little bit more and I feel like that's that's half the battle thank you so we are going to make you sit for just a minute and hear us um you know I
070came at CTA I'd been teaching for years um and I had been an administrator and I came into this ship and I watched people running the ship very well um they were guiding the ship they were problem solving in the ship they were plugging holes in the ship um taking turns steering the ship um they might have been on Tik Tok I'm not sure I don't know um but they really were taking CTA and and owning it and taking responsibility for what was happening on the campus so these two have been amazing on the campus so I appreciate them coming today and um you can stay or you can up to you um so we also have to give out uh some blue apples and um I think about my time at CTA and what
071it's been like um it was it was a challenge when I got there our philosophies had to align our perspectives had to align our behaviors had to get used to each other um our communication had to change so um tonight we have a photo um Mr Adrien Nava could not join us this evening um he is our lead he's our lead on the campus for the facilities and he's been there for several years um when I say that Adrien takes over that campus and he runs things for kids he doesn't just do the custodial work he comes up with ideas for kids puts games together at lunch gives out tickets at lunch for kids so that they can earn fun prizes um he tries to do a lot of uplifting with the kids um he
072participates with them at lunch she gets involved in activities that they're doing he will he jumps between us and CCS so he oversees both of those campuses so he is just all over the place he's pretty shy um very shy um but he has been an intrical piece at our campus so Adrien was um who we honored tonight as for um one of our blue apples so congratulations Adrien uh your families aren't here for no reason uh you can come on up shayin shayin has been at CTA for 11 years this your 11th year yeah it's your 11th year if you didn't know uh one of my hardest nuts to crack we've had pretty honest conversations about where our hearts are in education and we talk a lot about where are we really right where
073where are we as Educators really and and are we in the right place we want to be and shayen was always somebody who made me think differently she would always ask questions that I may not have been prepared to answer she has a wealth of knowledge about CTA and I didn't forget you guys are here she knows CTA inside and out she's been through several administrators um she's involved in student council she's been on our campus leadership team she is one of the biggest Partners in her team and they partner well together and watching our relationship personally and professionally grow these last three years um I knew the moment that I hit that spot I knew the moment that she and I were kind of in that connection because change isn't easy and you have
074a new leader who wants to do things differently um wants to get you off the ship you don't need to lead the ship right um she will help anybody on the campus she will volunteer to help kids out she sees the best in kids I mean you heard her she knows those kids inside and out she's a huge partner for me to call on she was excited in Pennsylvania she's excited to see CTA move forward because we talk about that Traditional Academy and where's it going right how do we offer you parents um opportunities your neighbors your friends that are looking for new kinds of Camp things on the campus um so shayin is one of the bright stars on the campus to really just help make the campus function every day she'll jump in
075and do Flag Ceremony we do our flag ceremony together every day um they put on events for the kids the stuco runs all kinds of stuff for them to do spirit days things like that so for that I want to highlight shayin and give you that blue [Applause] [Music] [Applause] apples ask she might be a little blunt he's amazing thank you appreciate it we're almost there don't worry kids it's your turn next miss laass your parents didn't show up for no reason either yeah you got to get up uh she's no lie this is her first year doing fifth grade Winnie showed up to our campus two years ago I'll never forget my interview with Winnie yeah your kids and husband are here over here come on let's get more embarrassed you thought they showed
076up to hear the budget and all that other stuff yeah that's exactly why they're here do that stuff all the time they do um Winnie was raw she was bold and blunt with her words she was here's who I am here's what I can bring to the table at your campus here's the history I have here's the experience I have I hope you want to ride this ride with me and I was like okay I will so um Winnie definitely she dives into Data in ways that I can't even understand numbers she wants her kids to Excel and be independent and that's a struggle for our kids just so you know it's a struggle even in fifth grade for them to go I have to do what do that by myself I just come to
077you when I'm ready yeah any questions no not yet she's Innovative in the classroom she thinks of ways to go outside that box of what we live in as teachers she works well with our other team members and she told me you're one I'm not going to say anything then you're two came around she said okay I'm going speak now I'mma say things um I know that when I turn around these two have my back she's she's there to make sure that her kids are successful she has a way of doing her craft and it may not agree with everybody but I know her best intentions are always to do what's right for kids and when she makes a mistake she owns that and when I ask her to step out come face to face
078with a parent for me a few times she knows what that challenge is like for her and she does it she's like I'm uncomfortable but I'm going to try doing something different and I'm going to see how it goes so I appreciate that she's always thinking how can I do something different and grow even after how many years something um so I appreciate everything she does on our campus she's she's taken fifth grade by a storm and is knocking it out of the park so I appreciate everything you have done only had two today so thank you for your time um CTA has a Chipotle night tonight so if you are hungry after the board meeting 4 to 8:00 at Chipotle right here you can go April 5th 5 to 7:30 CTA is um co-sponsoring
079or hosting with uh Dr Peterson to have a community event for Santan not a j Colmes just isolated it's a community event for Santan Valley he wants to bring the community together and allow them to uh meet each other see who's in the neighborhood what organizations do you have that we can see activities for parents and kids food trucks free did I say it was free free parking will be your only thing our campus cross the street wherever you can get to so thank you very much I appreciate it we also want to take a moment this time also to recognize some other staff members and so during spring break from March 3rd through 9th was school social worker week and the theme was Pearls of Wisdom so I'm going to call some people up
080um if Mr Beach is going to give the the certificates to them and then I I'll say a couple things about them if we could go ahead and have uh Janelle uh steenbergen come in up from the high school okay Loren schindeldecker from the Middle School Aaron Gomez there Tanya [Applause] Thompson and Haley [Applause] settle Colmes is very lucky uh if you're not aware uh all of our schools have both counselors and social workers uh coming out of um covid and some of the things that uh many students were going through uh social workers have been dispensable working with our kids helping our kids uh move through issues uh as they have made the transition out of Co and in back into the schools um there's a lot more going on in the world today
081than uh probably in some of our uh some of us as when we went to school and to have social workers there to help families to have social workers there to help kids to have social workers there to help the school adjust uh and make uh uh make a difference in their lives is what these people do every single day and we thank them for what they do for our kids because they make a positive difference in their lives um and it's skilled uh that these kids will be able to use uh the rest of their life uh to make sure it's positive so thank you so very much for everything you [Applause] do okay uh next is volunteer recognition yes we'd like to have Miss Jennifer Francisco come up Jennifer is a devel Vel
082mment director of the Matthews Crossing Food Bank she's dedicated to ensuring all families in the Colmes school district have a warm meal at the end of the day every week Ma Matthew's Crossing feeds over a 100 families across the district by providing weekend food packages snacks for classrooms and emergency food pantries through her continuous communication and support of our needs Jennifer has proven to be an essential part of our Colmes Community she's passionate about her job tenacious and filled with compassion for those in need it is our privilege to thank and recognize Jennifer Francisco with blue Apple volunteer of the month to Matthews Crossing Food [Applause] Bank okay next we have student of the month Dr dupes thank you Mr President members of the board colleagues in leadership family family members and students as I
083say every time I'm up here this is the best part of my day and I appreciate the opportunity could I have Alina August henan come up from com Center for Success there we go all right August has a commitment to persistence achievement and responsibility August has demonstrated a a dedication to finishing her classes asking for help when needed and a focus on early graduation she goes above and beyond helping others around campus congratulations August on a job well done could I have Dominic Sanchez come up from Colmes High School could I have Steven rigs Hollowell come up from hes Middle [Applause] School could I have Nicholas Dominguez from com's Traditional [Applause] Academy CTA chose Nicholas Dominguez for the student of the month because he is a great example of what responsibility in the classroom looks
084like Nicholas is always all about making sure his work is done first and is willing to put in extra work needed to get things done or to get himself caught up or to be able to participate in discussions he is almost always doing what is asked of him the first time we are very proud of his extra effort and I'd like to congratulate you young man and also compliment you on your glasses because I also have green in my glasses congratulations good job let give him a [Applause] round did I have Shay Richardson come up from [Applause] Ellsworth sheay has become a student who has truly invested in the responsibility of her learning she has made great strides in how she spends her time in class and always ensures that she does the best work
085she is learning that the responsibility of the rise code is much more than just the little things it includes sheay is learning how to be responsible for her own understanding of lessons and how to ask for help when it's needed very proud of her and how far she has come this year and we know she will do great things in the world ahead congratulations Shay could I have Emma Gara come up from [Applause] Harmon Emma shows the character trait of respon responsibility because she consistently completes assignments on time participates in class activities and seeks help when needed Emma also maintains a clean workspace and follows schoolwide rules and guidelines Emma's behavior in and out of the classroom demonstrates her commitment to learning respect for her classmates and understanding the accountability of her actions Emma is
086a great leader for her peers to follow overall Emma is responsible in all forms of society and greatly deserves this award congratulations [Applause] Emma could I have Elliot tuggy come up from Ranch Elementary you ready all right another great pair of glasses this is the night for glasses go ahead and turn around and look at everybody good job this is Elliot Elliot you were not nominated by uh Miss Kupa Mrs Kupa said the following I think of Elliot a lot I appreciate how he's always ready and prepared he listens to his teachers and takes care of his materials he is not only responsible but considerate of others he's quick to help and to make sure others know what they're doing and what needs to be done he is able to correct himself when he makes
087a mistake and is quick to apologize and is very honest I truly admire how responsible Elliott is congratulations Elliot and finally could I have Violet Jones Come From [Applause] Simington this is your moment Viet okay this is from Mr Slater the second grade teacher at Simington I'm very proud to nominate Violet Jones as Simington Elementary student of the month for March our school's core value of responsibility is consistently displayed through Violet's work ethic and compassion Violet not only only completes her work at the very best of her ability but she also uses the time to help fellow students complete theirs as well her strong character is evidenced by her Relentless positive attitud ude and belief that she can solve any problem no matter the difficulty lastly Violet was selected by her classmates to the student
088council to serve the students of her own school by volunteering her time to plan events and create projects to increase morale and excitement for learning viet's humble leadership by example and responsible decision making makes her a very deserving recipient of this Ward congratulations Violet that concludes our students of the month we'll now take a little bit of a break for pictures and then we'll continue with the rest of the board meeting thank you e con do something put your heart I do I'm sure they I do I'm sure they all right I think it's time for for us to reconvene so thank you all for uh for here um next is um governing board to Shelly or Jason anything to report nope not at this time I don't no no okay thank you uh do
089we have any public comments no we don't have no public comments okay so next on the agenda is item seven I'm sorry uh 9.1 item nine n action item is the approval of the consent agenda do does anyone have any questions on any of the items on the consent agenda I don't because I have I have two actually uh the first one would be item 9.10 and uh this item shows the building renewal Grant and it shows two different po numbers but the exact same dollar amount and I'm wondering is it one grand or two and is it just okay do two different sites that makes sense but there's one total dollar amount per site okay that's what I wasn't sure it is it's Roofing uh issues at two of our sites though that the
090sfob will be taking care of okay I just found it interesting that it was the same dollar amount but now I understand thank you and the other one would be um 9913 overnight and out of state travel and just to get the record straight I'd like that first travel Document going to Tucson to reflect that the ratio should be one to eight and not two to eight because there's two chaperon and 16 students so it' be a 1 to eight ratio and those are the two things I had about the about the uh consent agenda anything else and I'll take a motion to approve the consent agenda I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented second second Jason thank you all in favor I I opposed passes three to nothing down to
091item 10.1 cons discussion and consideration to approve the estimate of excess capacity for open enrollment acceptance for the 2425 school year this was discussed at the last meeting this is required by state law um based on what we talked about last meeting I would recommend uh uh approval um as presented and more than willing to take any questions questions no I don't have any questions no okay a motion to approve I motion to approve the estimate of excess capacity of open enroll acceptance for the 2425 school year as presented I'll second okay thank you all in favor say I I I oppos okay it passes three to nothing item 10.2 discussion and consideration of approval of community use of District facilities fee schedules for 2025 again discussed last month a couple minor things I will
092tell you uh this is a District uh uh facility fee schedule recommended there are changes the changes were uh determined by an analysis of other districts uh primarily the analysis was AJ Queen Creek Florence and ourselves um and so I shared something with you this morning and so I know there's may be a question or two but absent those questions um recommend approval uh either as presented or with the modifications that might be discussed okay so in terms of modifications yes I I had a I I looked it over and I think the last time that we raised any fees was has been not yeah five years so I'm thinking at this point that we probably need to look into raising some of our fees if if it's just to uh to match other District
093um or if we're higher than some districts leave it I don't know what are your guys' feelings on on that it I it doesn't hurt I mean I guess they're going to pay more but that does help us with uh the use of our facilities and right I mean I think that I mean our costs have gone up obviously uh just the economy in general I guess it's I don't think it's going to be a lot compared comparatively like for each person to rent however I think that by the end of the year we probably will receive a significant amount of funds maybe I don't know that's just my feeling and we can we can get you what those what those numbers will be based on what you guys say I mean it'll be an
094estimate based on what was done in in the P you know what was done in the past years um for clarifications because we're requesting a number of raises you're you're talking about raising some of the ones that were even below our neighbors and getting up to at least at the same level of our neighbors okay so if we approve now there's nothing that says we can't come back and make adjustments to it at another date the issue is uh we will go ahead and have um we already have people um that rent our our facility especially the CPAC um a year out uh and so once we commit to them with a contract that says this is the facility um so I recommend that we just do it once a year otherwise there's disparity in
095terms of who gets approval to what um but again this would be in line with our neighbor um and uh would be anything that's marked in yellow would be a represent an increase um uh for that and and make adjustments uh uh to bring sou uh I think there's about 10 others that would go up slightly um uh to to line with QC um and so I I have those uh down and so the motion would be approve the uh increases with the modifications that uh Mrs harus uh recommended and in that case we don't have to bring it back again we'll just move forward with those changes starting I mean it'll go out to people starting tomorrow for next year so if somebody's rent at our facility and in April or May of this
096year they're not going to pay the increase it'll be July first forward does that sound okay with you to uh yeah that's make that motion that way okay so shelle wanted you make that motion so I'll make a motion to approve the community use of the district facility fees schedules for the 2425 with the modifications discussed with uh is that okay second okay all in favor I I opposed passes three nothing item 10.3 discussion and consideration of approval of changes to policy recommendations from asba policy advisory 763 to 786 and this is the second reading right so this is again uh this is for approval it was presented last month these are just changes uh through Arizona school boards really some cleanup language uh related to changes in in statute or just the way they
097uh take a look at uh the policies and so I would recommend approval as presented any questions no I went through them and they look to be just you know cleaning up language and stuff like that questions no no no questions then I'll take a motion motion to approve the recommended change of the district policies as presented in asba policy advisor 3 763-786-3591 and benefit rates for the 2425 school year our current provider cyos Health Arizona recently held a board meeting and approved a 7% increase for all medical health care plans for the 2425 school year as we are within the first two years of our association we received the chyos board designated increase with the district absorbing the full increase for employee only coverage the projected budget impact will be $135,300 for the upcoming
098school year the plan changes first one would be that the IRS has required the high deductible Health Plan deductible to be increased from 1500 to 1600 for individuals and 3,200 for families the out-of-pocket deductible would increase 3200 to 6,400 that's the IRS requirement those employees who have elected the dental plan will see a slight increase the Delta Dental plan it will be a 3% increase TDA Dental will be a 4% increase with the Delta Dental rate increase posterior composits and third cleanings for qualified medical conditions will now be included with that there will be no changes to our vision uh plans so those will continue as they are our basic life and accid Dental death and dismemberment benefits will be administered by chyos in lie of American Fidelity starting next year our current plan provides
099for full-time employees to receive one and a half times their salary up to $50,000 in coverage with administrators receiving $150,000 CA coverage with the move to chyos the plan provides for all full-time employees to receive a full benefit of $50,000 and administrators of $200,000 approximately 110 employees will receive increased benefits with 300 maintaining their current levels while saving the district $ 23,5 18192 the 29 employees who have elected prepaid legal coverage you get a discount of $50 a month um the health savings account employer funded m will increase $3 um with this new adjustment um from $43 to $46 we will continue with utilizing American Fidelity for all of our other ancillary Insurance options at no rate changes whatsoever looking to the future we anticipate another increase of 7% to the medical premiums in the
1002526 school year starting in the 2627 Year we will begin to receive a rate that is based on our adjust Ed own average loss over the threeyear look back period the benefits comparison has been attached to the agenda item for you to review and I just do you have any questions questions was this was this um increase was that like was that told to us UPF front that it would happen every year we knew that there would be a board adjusted rate every single year and we knew that we would get the flat adjusted rate for that I happen to know another District that is with this firm and theirs was 8% because it was based on their individual look back period because they've been there so we knew whatever the rate increase would be
101would be whatever the board had deemed for that year for their entire platform so yes we did know we know that that's the we'll also receive that next year and then we'll be based off of what our historical averages are but we would anticipate increased rates as a general rule Ru in the future uh it just may with our our uh employee base which tends to be younger and not as many situations it might only be a two or three or 4% instead of a 7% but we would still anticipate a rate increase just just because what's happening within the industry other questions I have a question on the prepaid legal how many employees take advantage of that thought she said 29 there's two different plans and a total of 29 employees participate okay and
102have they ever had the opportunity to collect as a result of any claims not not that I'm aware of but we can look into that for you no I'm just just curious if you knew that that's not a big deal yeah okay anything else how how is this um if we were to stay what I'm just wondering if it was we were to say where we were last time before with the other company that we were with before um um would we still see the 7% raise we would have seen a dramatically higher rate okay all right okay yeah right yeah other questions all right then I'll take a motion please I'll motion to approve the employee insurance and Benefit Plan rates for 20242 as presented I'll second yeah all in favor I opposed it
103passes three to nothing I know I know all right item 11.1 discussion and information of student achievement the March report Dr Fountain you resemble him yep all right good evening members of the board Dr Wyman Miss wner and our esteamed colleagues we have a few updates for you this month from curriculum instruction um starting with some uh student data from Miss hyim uh we're going to share with you a deep dive that we've taken into some of our usage data we're looking very carefully at our programming to ensure that it's both meeting our students needs academically as well as we're getting the appropriate usage um to be good stewards of those funds so she's going to share with you some of that usage uh miss deab or Miss Scott will have some information to share
104with you uh about some instructional rounds we've done uh with some guests from the high school to share with you some really great work they've been doing uh and then Mr shum is going to share with you about the mock interview process so those are our updates for tonight I'll turn it over first to miss hyam all right thank you um members of the board Dr wein our community here I'm excited to share with you some of our supplemental programs this evening make sure my clickers go in here so we're going to talk about three programs we utilize in the district tonight um two are math related and one is um Ela related the first one here is DreamBox this is a new program that we adopted this school year um it aligns directly to
105our new math adoption as well which um is in vision and currently right now our students um in our third through eth grade are primarily the ones who use this program we have um piloted it piloted it a little bit with a few students um that are younger than that so right now about 70% of our students are logging in at least weekly to the platform and completing at least um two lessons each week um and our staff we had over um 30 staff members logging in in the last month as well into that platform to see how our students are performing when we look at the data um there are um some definite uptrends so that first graph there is going to show you um in all usage all of our students are growing
106that are using the program so average usage for all levels is about half a grade level so that 0 five indicates half a grade level um we're currently you know 3/4 of the way through the year so um any usage is getting us that growth students that are utilizing the program for Five Lessons a week or more um are have seen so far a 1.4 um grade level increase so they've already made over a Year's growth in this three qus of a year that we have completed um if they're utilizing anywhere in between that 2 to five range they're kind of right on par with where we are in the school year at 7 um and then if they're utilizing it less um than two lessons per week or completing less than two lessons a
107week we are seeing that they are growing but um obviously at a slower rate so our highest grades that are growing right now um first grade where we're kind of piloting it with a few kiddos and third grade which is really nice to see in third grade they've already made that 0. n or almost a Year's growth and we're not done with the year yet so um currently we have a three-year contract in place for um DreamBox and so we will be able to utilize it for the next two years at no additional cost for us we have um purchased um enough licenses for all of our students currently um and with our purchase come some professional development so we were able to utilize one of those on November 14th with our leadership team um
108and our instructional coaches um they were able to get some more insight into the platform and um looking at how it can be used in the classroom as well as the data um and we have some more sessions that are available to us and we also have the Popin PD so teachers can go on to their website and log in at any time and get support in anything that they might need the other program we utilize in math um primarily for our K2 students is St Math and so um when that dream boox component was added our teachers really wanted to stay in with the ST Math in the primary grade so that was done this year um so the data is presented a little differently here but students are average number of students logging
109in or logins per week is 600 um they've completed over 700,000 minutes in the program and over 500,000 puzzles so this is tracked not in lessons in Puzzles puzzles can take anywhere from a couple of minutes to maybe 10 or so um minutes so students are working through that um when we look at progress over the year that Journey progress is really their progress on their grade level U material and so they have progressed about 20% of that grade level material so far um and then the teachers also have the ability to assign content to them it could be in grade level could be out of grade level um and so right now we are at about a 24% um increase in um student performance on those assigned tasks so of all those logins it
110averages out to about 23 minutes per week and the students that are in there are completing around 16 puzzles a week um when they get stuck on those puzzles it gives the teachers an alert so they can go in and um remediate and help those students progress through and you can see there at the bottom uh Simington and Ranch are utilizing the program that the most currently um this is a year-to-year contract that we have in place with stmath um so if we renew it for next year then we would um get an estimated 250 licenses per every elementary site um and they also provide professional learning opportunities with that and um also on demand opportunities for teachers to utilize with that as well um for ELA we've been utilizing the Lexia program there are
111a couple different components to the Lexia program in K5 um it's called Lexia Core um core five excuse me and power up Lexia power up for our middle school students um primarily right now we have about 74% in the K5 core logging in um across the across the district and in the Middle School the PowerUp we have a 90% um login rate and so most of that is at the middle school um obviously because they have the most kids in that rate but um we are also seeing um use at ccs and in our elementary buildings in sixth grade um we also have the Lexia English component which is for our elll Learners we have 162 students that are utilizing that program currently so again when we look at the program there is an average
112211% gain that we have seen so far in students who have utilized the program um so if you just generally look beginning of the the year 73% of our students in that grade category were below grade level material um currently in the middle of March we had 52% um and then as you can see those other categories have increased as well so um our upper category of above grade level that purple color we went from 4% of our students being there to now we have 133% of our students there one of the um components of Lexia is that it is utilized um for approximately 120 Minutes uh a week so that is a large time commitment um for our students the PowerUp is divided a little bit differently into three different areas of students so
113we have word study grammar and comprehension and I will apologize there is a typo on here um there's an average growth or increase of 21% um in this uh grade level span as well our word use our word study has incre or excuse me at 8% of the beginning of the year our students were below now we only have 34% in that category the next two areas are a little bit of where our typo happened we um increased not decreased and I know that's what that that looks like so 61% of our students in the grammar area were below grade level now 45 um 38% in comprehension now 19 so students who are utilizing the program are seeing some positive outcomes in our Lexia English program we are are seeing that students are completing an
114average of one skill um if they're utilizing the program for anywhere less than 30 minutes a week and if they're utilizing it more then they're doubling that they're able to progress a little bit faster through their skills and then progress faster um through their units so we have an average of 15 units completed by all the users who have less than that 30 minute usage per week and the students who are using it more are up to a 61% average unit completion so making progress there as well um Lexia is a one-year contract that is renewable each year we have purchased it through next year with some of our Title One and our atsi funding there are um Popin PD availability through us through the website so again teachers can go get support at any
115time with any of the areas of the program that they might need and we did bring someone in on the 14th um for training for leadership and instructional coaches as well this past school year so as we look forward into next year one of the things um we're talking about with um our staff and our coaching staff and in our department are really evaluating the resources that we have and how we are using them and what is getting us the best results um making decisions as to what to move forward with and really hoping to scale some of that usage that we are seeing those good gains happening in in some of those programs so those would be some of our next steps what questions might you have about our supplemental programs um did you
116have any Targets for students to achieve you know without seeing any results right at the beginning of the program and how are you measuring against those targets so I might have to defer as I started in October and some of those things were already in place but when we met with the company recently so DreamBox for example recommends about Five Lessons a week to see the most growth and that correlates whoops with what we're seeing in our data so our students who are hitting that five level less than a week have already made a year and a half worth of growth um so far this school year so um and then with Lexia it's that two hours a week or 120 Minutes that's a little bit harder um to achieve and so um having conversations
117surrounding what can that look like how do we support in in getting some of the higher usage because even if our students are using it a smaller percentage of time we are seeing gains um I would say too that Lexi and DreamBox even though they seem similar in their programming are a little bit different in nature where um when Lexia was first brought in there was a heavy focus on the minutes used which is great um but we weren't seeing as much growth as we wanted to from that because a big component of Lexia is what the teachers do with that data in small group instruction so that's been more of the focus with Lexia um on the DreamBox side of things the program runs itself a little bit more and so definitely I think
118the data speaks for itself our Focus moving in the next year this was implementation year you expect a little bit of that um is to make sure that we're getting more in that 90 to 100% range of usage we're still sitting in that 70 to 80% range which is decent for a first year um but we would like to see that be a little bit higher um of course we're always interested to see how that correlates in Alliance with our aasa data um I will tell you that initially at the launch of the year in particular uh coms traditional was one of our biggest users in DreamBox and if we to bring back the first round of um our mimic data they had some of the most phenomenal growth on the first round of mimic
119so really interested to see what happens with those foundational skills that have been built at CTA and those mathematical practices so um to answer your question more directly of where we wanted to be um about where we are we're a little lagging um in terms of usage it's just a good reminder for us that we've got to make this a part of our regular data conversations to look at that usage to make sure it's really happening thank you so when you talk about the growth that you're saying is that growth from the program reporting it or do you have another outside Source you're using to show that there's actual growth yeah so because I think the program will tell you they're showing growth I just my my reason and I've not used diamond box I've
120used stmath and I would not use it it's a horrible program in my view it's a horrible program it doesn't connect it doesn't translate in my mind and having used it myself and seeing schools stop using it because it just just doesn't translate over so I don't know what the others are like but sure I would my recommendation would be is you think you're looking at the data from these different programs they're trying to put on the bells and whistles and a nice little ribbon they're going to say your kids are showing growth we better know that our kids are showing growth that's that's that would be my recommendation um I would say that um in most regards I would agree with that statement that's why um previously we were using ST Math across the
121board um that changed this year um we pulled ST Math away from those upper grades in particular um ST math is more con really good move to do that I think St maath is more conceptual in nature so it's there are some advantages for our youngest Learners who are just exploring the thought Concepts um but for our our older uh Learners who are more into the concrete elements uh we found DreamBox to be a much better program um much more research based and so that's why we had made that shift this year um we are having that conversation now as we look at next year um in terms of what that looks like for K2 um the initial request from our teaching staff was that they liked stmath for the younger Learners um but as
122Miss ham shared we do have some capacity within the number of licenses we have to consider moving that down into some of the younger grades as well if as we're using our our our adopted curriculum right for Combs is it actually helping the curriculum and then also bringing up is it helping us towards showing um State Testing knowledge that we need to have as well so we we have we have to be mindful that because any teacher just saying oh my kids are doing ST Math and they're relying on that I think they're going to find themselves disappointed at the end so I would just as far as our students and just as long as the teachers know I mean that it can help certain kids but if we over rely on it I think
123it's gonna be not good understood and I would tell you that that was one of the um that was one of the components in the adoption process for the math Core Curriculum um was the dream box and our adopted curriculum of Envision um they work collaboratively together and so that was one of the one of the pieces that the committee decided in that process uh was that it gave us a a tighter connection between the the Intervention Program cool I guess and I'll just add quickly to that too so like in DreamBox you have the ability to assign that grade level material and kids can work on filling those gaps that they might have simultaneously so we can really work on that um that exact question actually was brought up by our coaching staff just
124this week when we were talking to them about the programs too so something we're going to look further into um a lot of the programs uh are working on those foundational skills so sometimes take a little longer to translate into grade level skills but definitely something we are taking a look at for sure yeah I'm sure those teachers just from an instructional coach perspective as well those teachers are so so many things they're managing yeah you can say hey my kids have been on the program for how many minutes this number of rate of students in my class but unfortunately we got to take a minute and say is this actually helping if it's not then sometimes you have to reevaluate what's happening it sounds like you're already having that discussion so that's yeah that
125makes me happy I would say absolutely those are the the exact conversations we had on Tuesday and we'll continue to have um particularly like you said as we move into the next year and looking at budgets and what is really going to help us the most so definitely we'll continue with that um and lastly I just wanted to um Talk quickly about our Civics information so some really great things happen happening with Civics so the Civics requirement to graduate is um that everyone has to pass that test be before they um are able to graduate So currently if you're in 11th or 12th grade you need a 60% to pass um and our eth nth 10th graders need to have a 70% or higher to pass our eighth graders took that test for the first
126time in February and we had an 89% passing rate so very um successful with that I know the Middle School worked really hard on that and um supporting that they had lots of kids that scored 100% um and then very yes very big celebration um and the high school I think will appreciate having less kids to to catch with that test as they move up um and the other celebration really is that so far every 12th grader who's needed to take it has taken it and passed so we are 100% there um and they're working really hard at the high school and at ccs to make that happen um the test is 100 questions we did break it down into five sections so if students are struggling to pass they don't have to retake all
127100 question questions they can retake parts of the test so I think that's made it a little easier for some of our kids so um very successful with the Civic test um this year and we'll continue with that next year do you have any questions surrounding that okay sounds wonderful I will pass it off to miss Scott thank you or Scott good evening members of the board Dr Wyman and Community I'm very excited today to talk to you about our comes High School instructional rounds and I'd actually like to bring over Mrs Tanya loftes who is the comes High School principal and also Tracy who is Weaver who is our instructional coach at the high school and they'll be able to talk to you a little bit more about what we went through on that
128day for our instructional rounds I know we I've talked before to the governing board regarding what our purposes around the instructional rounds and that's really looking at that alignment again with our what are our content standards what are our learning Tas asks how do they align and are we teaching and providing that level of rigor for our students to ensure that we are increasing that student achievement across the board so I'm GNA give it over to Tracy to talk about what our schedule look like and our focus and then Miss Tanya is going to talk about our Collective efficacy in the next level of work don't give me that good evening um I would like to say that since I've been here in the Colmes district for the last three years we have done instructional
129rounds at the high school um this year we kind of amped it up and are doing an all day rotation so we take almost all of our teachers in an hour um with eight other um teachers and go into about four classrooms they get to see what we're seeing what we've been seeing over the last couple of years there and we hear and listen to what they see which is actually what we were seeing that we need to focus more on high questioning skills as well as engagement strategies excuse me um and we would debrief with them talk about it and then take everything that we heard from our teachers both from October and January and roll them into our site PD for on the Wednesdays help helping with those um effective PLC times um
130engagement strategies questioning skills and ensuring that our rigor is aligned to the standards um to build student achievement in every classroom and then all the teachers that went on these rounds also were able to see what other teachers were doing and say o I like that I'm going to take it back to my classroom and so we've got more teachers talking to each other thank you nice good evening um with Collective efficacy instructional rounds has helped to Foster and generate a shared commitment to best instructional practices and also glean from our teachers the ability as Tracy had sh said to identify whom those are on their own campus that they can utilize to support them as they expand and learn in their own instructional practices and who to call upon to to help and support
131that as well with that Collective efficacy there's a commitment by all the staff to make sure that we're working towards that vision for our campus which is academic achievement that is encouraged supported and expected for all of our students as well as our staff when we say all from the principal perspective and the instructional leader on our campus that comes for a from a vantage point of our students are expected to have a growth mindset and improve and gener greater skills in within themselves that same is expected from our staff that they grow their instructional practices we have already bet myself and Tracy to plan out our PL our next PL which is going to focus on what both Administration as well as teachers has seen as an area that we need to improve upon
132those questioning strategies as well as active student engagement something that else that came out of instructional rounds that was not necessarily expected was teachers to say hey we really appreciate and like learning from one another and sharing in our PL together so with that what Tracy and I are working on to develop for our next instructional rounds or not instructional rounds sorry for our next P is for it to be a train the trainer model which is also something a tool an instructional an active engagement strategy that they can use in their own classroom with their students so doing that train the trainer model they will learn from from one another in a jigsaw manner which oh by the way is another active engagement instructional strategy that they can Implement in their classroom so they're
133going to get to learn from one another as well as participate in active engagement strategies that they could maybe even take away and utilize in their classroom I am super excited about our next PL and I really appreciate the commitment that our staff I don't know if they know they've done it the the commment that our staff has made to one another because they're supporting and encouraging one another just as well as they support and encourage and expect from their own students [Applause] thanks sorry I forgot to pass it on to you that's okay I got to bring it all the way down here thanks Tanya um and our next steps I'm really excited we're working with uh Mrs Ridge for um comes Middle School we're going to be doing that same model all day
134at comes middle school and then at Harmon the one of the big pieces and Dr Fountain myself Christine Jennifer we really excited about with instructional rounds is that we're also going to bring in that student voice so we're going to incorporate with our next instructional rounds I can't wait to present for you guys on that piece because we're going to include our students in those rounds and we really want to see and hear what they say about what they're seeing within that classrooms and what it works best for them for their learning so we're very excited about that piece thank you ladies any questions on this part no thank you thank you great thank you all right our next piece our supports for our new teachers just kind of a run through of where we
135started and um where we're at currently and kind of next steps also within this so within our induction program for all of our new teachers to uh Combs we've had three professional learning sessions already based off of the needs assessment that they all completed those were we did our first one was on classroom management our second one was on um some of that uh mental health Wellness piece Stress Management all of those pieces that uh they wanted some help with with our new teachers and then our third was instructional delivery and new instructional strategies and they were able to role model and um practice those within that setting then um our within the induction program also our teachers have had the opportunity to observe other teachers on their campuses and also I know we talked
136about this before that we're giving teachers now that opportunity to also observe other campuses too so that they have twofold on their own campus and then veteran teachers also on other campuses and then any additional supports provided by the instructional coach through coaching Cycles through setting those goals through working one-on-one with with our instructional coaches so to ensure that they're getting all the needs that they need especially for our new teachers so that they're prepared for our students the mentor program mentors are provided for our first and second year teachers it require our requirement is that they meet with the mentees for a minimum of a half hour a week um and we did a survey and the survey showed that all of our participants one of the main reasons they really enjoy having that
137Mentor was really for that pedagogic and emotional support someone to talk with every week to run through hey I had this situation come up how would you handle it if this comes up how would you handle it um or if they needed some of that additional instructional supports not only do they have their Mentor teacher there but that instructional coach and within that they observe two teachers and then also the mentors go in and observe the new teacher and give them some specific feedback and one of the areas that we really try to focus on this year is ensuring that our mentors are coming from the same grade level so if it's a new second grade teacher then their Mentor is a second grade teacher to Pro to provide that specific support if they're a
138biology teacher then it's a biology teacher within their Department providing that specific support so again they're getting that content level support grade level support alongside any of the other pieces and components that they need and then our instructional rounds where we've participated in instructional rounds we'll continue that and then the um I did have a separate at debrief with the induction program and what I asked from them was what are some of the pieces that you Incorporated and I have to tell you two stories I we had one one of our International teachers when you first went into that classroom they were all in rows and it was very much a traditional setting and after um some of the instructional rounds that uh they were able to participate in now their room is in groups
139we walked in I was doing a walkth through and uh they were doing think pair share it was phenomenal and those were straight from that instructional delivery piece and that person had actually written a lesson plan that I looked over that aligned directly with that and when I was able to observe that within that classroom so it just makes me really happy and then lastly we're going to show a little video I just click on it let's try yes well as an international teacher the induction program and professional learning sessions have greatly helped me as I navigate the challenges as a new teacher especially by providing me with valuable support and guidance so the very first one is I do we do you do and with the help of this it is very easy for
140me to engage these students uh in their learning teaching learning process and the second one which helped me a lot thought is a peer tutoring because nowadays the students are very comfortable to teach each other so when we give them the opportunity for the only for the 10 minutes then they gain the things like sooner and the third one is the activity Based Teaching learning process and uh in this 10 minutes when they perform any activity or maybe sometimes 20 minutes that depending upon the length of the activity so they learn in a better way through the activity through the induction program I have learned these actually so it's a great help to me it helped me better understand the hasht forward goals of the district which include nurturing culture Innovation purposeful learning and assessment
141it is a culture that encourages positive relationships new approaches and authentic learning experience I feel like the induction induction program and the professional learning opportunities that we get here as a new teacher really helps me connect with other new teachers um a a lot of us are going through the same experiences and have the same challenges so being able to relate to each other and share those experiences and ideas and strategies to overcome those um it really helps you feel like you're not alone and also reaches that confidence of okay I can do this I'm not the only one going through it so through these um learning sessions I have gained um Essential Knowledge um skills and resources that have helped me more to become prepared and equipped to the demands of teaching we really
142work hard and uh we really work harmoniously inside the classroom and helped me to connect more especially that I have gained um knowledge and you know understanding about the culture especially that I am uh I'm not an American so um I've gained insights about their perspective especially in we are sharing about the the education educational system in our country and here in the US that give me the motivation here that give me the encouragement I am surrounded with amazing people amazing um principal Miss Cheryl and um my staff members they always offer the advice when we uh are in trouble or we are new or the system is new for us so their advises are always help us a lot so all my colleagues my staff members are excellent here they are very supportive it
143um I believe I was trying to do the math I believe this is our sixth or seventh year we even did it uh the year that we shut down for covid we happen to get it in the day before spring break and then if you remember we didn't come back after spring break so we were able to get that event in and then the following year uh we did a a virtual model so we tried to keep this consistent uh year to year and we're grateful for um the participation of our our local community to help us and help our students so this year um I want to point out that I'm going to fill some white space with some words but I want you to pay close attention to the pictures because the pictures
144truly say it all right um we had over 300 interviews conducted in in one day uh they were our second and third year CTE students we also invited the first year medical assisting and nursing assistant students they're all Juniors and we felt that that was an important uh point in their um academic uh uh career to also be involved in that so again 300 interviews probably 280 of those were organic meaning that um there were a few repeats in there some students took uh more than one interview based on how many programs they were in um but uh several several students were able to gain this experience uh we hit a new high with our volunteers we had 50 volunteers from 35 different organizations in the area yeah that's that's huge um in fact it's
145the first year that I've had a waiting list and I had a couple that um signed up but they signed up a little too late and we put them on a waiting list uh so we were we were ecstatic about that typically I have to borrow from leadership to fill in some spots to to interview and from the board and from the board yes thank you and uh this year we just had to do it for one class period because we had so many students in third period and we we put all the uh leadership in a room and had them interview a group of kids there as well so uh just just a wonderful activity for everybody involved um and then we had some extra support we had uh uru AO who is um
146new to our area uh they provided U the hospitality room for our adult volunteers uh Costco with the help of shanana uh provided uh funds to provide uh what I call student nourishment uh it's the first time we've been able to do that for our students and then we had an organization come in called job path and job path really works with those 18 and older uh from everything from building a resume to um uh locating jobs uh and helping them with placement and so forth so uh we set up a room and had all our students visit with job path so that when they get to that point their senior year um they know who they can contact if they need that kind of assistance so always trying to up our game uh we
147also had all of our students were required to submit a resume so every CTE student provided one and then um our goal is to send those rums out to some of our volunteers who said they would um evaluate those those resumés so a lot was happening um we do a an an exit survey for all of our students when they're done with the experience and uh we find that the majority of our students and when I say majority I would say 99% of our students find the experience to be very beneficial IAL many of them come in very nervous some outright scared and they leave with a smile on their face and maybe that smile is a smile of relief I don't know but it is a fact that they come out and they've learned
148something from the experience and so I just pulled a couple of direct quotes from U the exit survey uh from our um from our students and you can see that um if our students are gaining this kind of understanding and knowledge and experience from uh their their mock interviews and they're taking that into the real world then uh we feel that we're doing a good job of of helping them prepare um I want to make a comment about uh the growth that we've made just as a school at Colmes we have some interviewers who have been around probably since day one since we started doing these and some of them have commented how much better our students have become at interviewing and I obviously a lot of that goes to um our teachers we just
149like we take our student data um we take the data from our exit interview and share that with the teachers and so that the teachers can better understand uh from a a students point of view and the volunteers point of view because we we survey them as well as to what they are seeing and what they are experiencing and then our teachers can take that to to adapt and modify their instruction when it comes to interviews and I think that's a big part of why we've seen the improvement with uh with our students over the years but again if you look at the pictures um that really says it all um you can probably um place an emotion on each of those students as they are sitting with an adult uh but uh for the
150most part you see students that are confident and in many cases comfortable sitting across the table from an adult that they don't know being asked questions that they didn't know were coming uh and be able to carefully articulate and share their skills and their abilities with those individuals as I mentioned we also survey our um our volunteers and uh the survey helps me as the coordinator of the event on how to better organize uh the experience for those involved uh then we also interview or survey them as far as what they feel uh the students uh benefited from areas that maybe they see that um consistently needs work on our campus and areas that they feel that we've done well in and so I've just pull again some quotes directly from uh that exit survey
151for our interviewers um I will tell you that every interviewer walks out with a smile on their face they love this experience they love to uh sit across from our students um I shared in years past how it for some adults it renews their faith in our youth um they they our youth sometimes get a really bad wrap and um uh sometimes it's because our youth aren't in an environment where they can share some of their skills and abilities and their passions and their goals and so this is an environment where they can do that and those adults get to hear those things um so we we again are are just um uh overly uh joyful about everything that has happened with this this event it's it's uh one of my favorite so I did
152want to put this up this just gives you an example of how many different organizations jumped in to help out with this and some of that came from our leadership who reached out to folks that they knew um a lot of these folks came from the different events that that either I attend or uh Dr Wyman attends with Queen Creek and Santan Valley uh and different areas and we we recruit from that database uh they don't know it's coming sometimes but we we do we reach out and invite them uh but you can see we have such a a wide array of everything from churches to to large businesses our interviewers we had everything from orthopedic surgeons to um uh small business owners it was just it's just an amazing event so um again very
153happy for the event we're looking forward to it again next year any questions I don't have a question but I do have a comment um I don't know if you ever have anybody follow up with you on on their the students that actually went to a real interview however my daughter three years has been out uh went to her first formal interview and they said she was an astounding interview oh wow so yeah and she went through that interview process well she's an astounding person so you that's right but they said she was impressive so yeah very good very good and and I would say this to John I I don't know if the person's reached out I had someone reach out to us from a very large District to the west of us that
154had heard about this and seeing all the stuff on social media and everything that we put out and and was very impressed with what we're doing and was trying to model their District off what we're doing and so they had reached out and i' passed her name on to John I don't know if she's reached out I can talk afterwards but but it's large district and so it's very impressive what John's doing that we have now other districts reaching out to us to say what can we learn from you and we have a high school principal who when she first came in asked if we could do this for all of our our students we're gonna get there one day yeah so good we can do this okay thank you very much you're welcome thank
155you okay next on the agenda is item 11.2 to discussion and information on peer model preschool program tuition Dr Corey you want to come up J there she is hiding in the [Music] back didn't you know you didn't you know you were on no just what a welcome surprise just explain just explain it's going to come back back for a vote next at the next uh agenda the peer tutoring peer model preschooler modeling so in the preschool we have um with the disability students we have four spots in each classroom four in the morning and four in the afternoon and what we do is allow students this a helps with inclusion and bringing in model peers for those students with disabilities to see model peers it also provides the service to families they've had a
156concern that their child had a disability and when they were evaluated it was found that they did not qualify however they are welcome to come in and we then service their students in the program with the kids um they don't receive direct sped services but they are they benefit from the parah the aid and the preschool programming then so it's an opportunity for the community members and we offer it at a discounted rate in comparison to the community ed program of young of Kinder and what we'll be coming forward next month is a request to increase the amount to be in line with our neighboring districts again you might want to take a look at it it's what we've tried to do when we've done increasing any of our programs is is because they're all
157over the place in many cases um and so try to find something that we think's Middle Ground uh just like with the earlier one today if you believe our numbers too low and and you go up then let us know and we'll make adjustments before we come with the final thing in in April in April so you can look at those numbers then we just trying to figure out what we think's best for our community but if you have different views on it please let us know and the increase hasn't happened for five years so it's it's du okay good job for short notice sure I just wait all right thank you next item 11.3 discussion and information regarding the Ranch Elementary principal position Dr dupes members of the board Dr Wyman Miss Judy and
158also colleagues in the room this one's a really hard one for me you know I've done a lot of hiring in my 23 years of administration work um and it's a hard one because of my appreciation and my love and my um the hard work that Sue Has has done all of these years here at Ranch but also for the many years that I've known Sue prior to coming on board at comes so um this one's a tough one for me but as you know Sue Cruz let's give her a round of applause Sue is retiring from The District in June and so this decision was to move forward with the process the purpose of this agenda item is to provide information and an update on the hiring process for the position we posted the
159position in early February and received 10 applications these applications then um were reviewed and were paper screened and uh two internal candidates and eight external candidates all of them uh were reviewed and uh a pool then was brought together of employees from across the district as well as from the site um these applicants were interviewed through through our normal process that we use here in the district that we've used since I've been here and prior to being here uh and scored on their performance those were collected and then these four candidates were recommended for a second interview that was conducted by Dr Wyman and myself we have three candidates that have invited uh to a community Forum that's going to take place on April 3rd at 6: pm at Ranch Elementary cafeteria now some people
160may not understand why we started so early but it was needed the applicant pool for administrators starts early than later which is the normal applicant pool for teachers and for other staff members so we did start early um and we continued that process through the break all candidates were communicated to as far as uh the schedule for the actual process that we're going through because uh we were bringing this to the board this evening the information regarding public form will be pushed out tomorrow we've started that process today Miss Deb Mertens over at um Ranch has that information as of today and we'll be pushing that information out to the public forum we felt like this was one where we needed to have more time to make sure that we had parent representation student representation
161if they wanted to attend and staff rep representation at the event so that event will be taking place as I mentioned April 3rd at 6 p.m. now normally what we do for the public forum is we have three subgroups prior where the candidates rotate through and then they come into the um gymnasium whatever we're calling it now uh for the 6m public forum and they're asked questions by a moderator it's myself and those questions will be asked and all candidates will be given the same opportunity to answer the questions this proves as well because we um learn a lot about the candidates so from the beginning of the process it's interviewing skills presentation skills those were both pieces of the first interview the second interview uh with Dr Wyman and myself is a more candid
162straightforward interview where we're asking them the same questions to try to find out more about them and their personality and then the public forum is a opportunity for us to see the uh candidates in action to see how they um integrate with themselves and then with the public and we feel like this process is appropriate and has been a process that we've used throughout um our systems here so that's my report glad to answer any questions you might have and just very quickly doc uh uh be normally be myself the board president that would be one of the Committees and Mr Ray is not going to be able to be president at that portion of it and so if we have a volunteer of one of the three of you uh to be part of
163that just let me know next couple days and we can go ahead and and set that up it would probably be about what they going to be at 4:45 yeah the 430 um committees will start at 4 and then move through those three committees yeah so if if you're if one of you available just let me know the same date yeah on the same day it goes from four four o'clock to are you be here rounds my calendar yeah I think I'll be here look at your calendar just let me know okay I'll let you know not it thank you I'll let you know thank you thank you okay moving on 11.4 discussion and information on the 2324 District student enrollment numbers so again this is just any questions coming out of the report that
164was provided to you earlier a couple things I would uh note um just uh as a result of of some things that we've talked about between myself and the board as well as the presentation this uh this afternoon uh from Mr Brammer uh we talked uh probably in December January I can't remember now about exit interviews for parents um and we will begin that with this new with this new quarter I appreciate kayn work that's done to get uh QR codes and a and a a program available those have been shipped out to the sites um uh we will try to recapture we've lost some uh uh some kids over the break and capture from those parents um but I have to work with principles to make sure we have the process down um and
165so we will we will start to review that data uh one of things we did notice of those parents that or those families that left us um uh over the break uh there was uh at least three families that left us that went to homeschool and so when Mr Brammer was talking about the vouchers I've talked with several parents uh in this case the the parents have been talking to are don't necessarily take the voucher uh because they would like their kids to participate in some activity we have and so a homeschool student can be homeschooled and and participate either in sports or one class with us and and then couple families I've talked to really enjoy that portion so they have purposely not taken the voucher because I explained to them if you take
166the voucher you're now a private school kid and you can't necessarily do it but they're indicating that in their Network there's a lot of communication about you need to take the voucher why aren't you taking the voucher and so I think the more that information gets out the more the competition increases because as it is I believe the last couple years through panal County uh we have about 400 students that are homeschooled and at least 400 students that have signed up through panell county is homeschooling and so uh uh with that voucher money we may start to see that number uh modify on us uh just a little bit and not necessarily in a positive way so I just wanted to bring those up but I'll answer any questions you have on that I I
167have one question and I don't I'm just throwing this out here and I don't don't necessarily say it has to happen on the exit interview is there any way that we could put on there if like how long that they've been going to our schools so if somebody has been going to our schools since they're kindergarten and now they're in sixth grade and they're leaving like that's a lot different and it says a lot more than if somebody was here for a year and they came from one school now they're hopping to another school th th the ones that have been here for a very long time and then are leaving for um a reason that those ones are the ones that concern me I guess so I don't know how if that's even possible
168I mean it's possible I think two ways whether we modified this the survey or the other piece is obviously we know who the people are that are leaving us and we can look at our data to see so either way we can capture the data when we look at the analysis uh we'll do it on a monthly basis uh of the kids we have a uh Judy runs a a report on a monthly basis and anyway say which kids have left us from this time to this time and so our ability to pull you know once we get those names then to pull those out and figure out where they're from we can definitely do that I know it's a little bit more work and I hate to give everybody more work however I think
169it gives us a little bit more insight on who's who's leaving and why all right anything else for that item all right then item 11.5 discussion and information on the 2425 Joes Unified School District budget okay so I'll go ahead and uh just I just want to bring bring you a little bit of an overview of of where we're at with the budget process um we're working uh with uh both leadership and CCC on this in some ways this is set in the table so as we come back in April and possibly in May but hopefully in April uh decisions haven't been made per se but given the magnitude of the situation we're in um we also need to be moving on some things so um the process that we're using again the most important
170part of any budget in the state of Arizona it's got to be balanced um so we don't print money like the federal government uh and so we have to balance the budget uh before we move forward uh that balanced budget will come to you guys in July so there is still some guesswork uh based on when the state budget's going to come out they have not started the discussion on the state budget just yet uh The jlbc Joint legislative budget committee did put out their um budget estimates for the previous month today or yesterday um and so those numbers are usually the numbers that that starts to push the legislature into looking at the budget uh there uh they've got an increase in tax dollars coming in and and so they're a little bit better
171than they thought they were but overall for the course of the year they're still down as the state in terms of of tax revenues and and where the projections are for their for their budget so they're still on target to be uh in the neighborhood of six or 700 million short of where they thought they would be um our biggest issue will be student enrollment we'll talk about that obviously with what Mr brambert uh presented at five o'clock um that's the that's the key issue uh your build budget off the number of kids you have and so what number are we going to get to and then we'd like to meet uh staff and board priorities in terms of things that we need to we're shooting for targets uh we looked at priority areas from
172the CCC I'm not going to go through each of these but I gave a definition but this was the areas that that CCC uh put as a priority we did the same process with leadership and Leadership came up with in many cases very similar there are some nuances between uh CCC and Leadership but it's probably just by the nature of who's in the room talking about it but you'll see that a lot of the stuff is the same student uh retention recruitment attendance was was big for both groups St staff retention recruitment attendance was big for both both groups so there's a lot of similarities between the the leadership and the CCC um we're now starting to work on uh the next part we have not had this conversation yet with uh CCC there's a
173meeting tomorrow afternoon when we look to say how are we going to build the budget here's the key numbers so there are four options up there um are all of those options realistic not necessarily especially in light of the the presentation at five o'clock um but one option is to say uh we're going to just do flat no growth so we'll build a budget right off the numbers that we have on the 100th day of today I can tell you that based on birth rate um we are already down 50 kids from where we are if we just take every number and roll them up so that you see option two we'll do a 50 two kid loss and that's by rolling up every grade level so kindergarten first first to second Etc and then
174because of the declining birth rate take five students deducted from each School in kindergarten and that would go ahead and be a be a budget we would build off a negative 1.4 uh student loss which is 52.4 five ADM the next area we could do is do Trend data which is what Mr ramt was talking about and we would build that and the trend data that he's suggesting for next year is negative 2.9% student uh loss which is 10864 ADM and then option four could be greater than two negative -2.9 leadership's discussion was a consensus of option number three and so we were doing a lot of work off option three we'll talk with um uh CCC tomorrow uh you guys can give opinions either in a few minutes or uh talk to me privately
175about where you sit on this um but again there has to be a rationale for why we're choosing what we're choosing it's just not trying to throw a plug number at it uh it's trying to figure out best guess obviously if we were to build off of option three on Trend data and we were to stabilize our capture rate we would actually see a growth so you would see a swing in the opposite direction but we won't know that until we get into August so again at this point we're leaning at option three but there may be other discussions and Direction given that that may change that um these are some recommended areas um that potentially be picked up within the budget uh the salary increase of 1.9% that is reflective of the same increase
176that went to um uh to the support staff uh this uh in January and so we would look to go 1.9% uh that cost if you apply it across the um all the employees that didn't get the increase in January is about $350,000 we also have to anticipate what's the January 25th increase or excuse me January 25 in increase because we know the minimum wage increase we're anticipating about a 35 C increase but we would hope to get some information next month or two that would give us a better uh understanding uh that could be roughly a $75,000 increase for the rest of the year so if we give the increase in January 25 it would get us through the end of the year now there are ways to make changes to that um but
177for right now we wanted to go on the high end if we decide to give the raise to less people then obviously that's less money uh we are talking about a student grow grow stiping we've done that the last couple years we want to hit that one hard again and that would be really is a way to talk to our staff about trying to stabilize the capture rate retain the kids that we currently have in the system as well as attract new ones and so if there's a growth uh that the district gets then we'll get current year funding on that growth and so next spring March we'd be able to give a one or two perc uh stien it's not buried into their salary schedule it's not guaranteed past one year but it's a
178way to incentivize people to to make sure that we're retaining kids and everybody's working together to retain kids uh Julie talked about the health insurance increase so that that that number is in there uh the reality is we will look at to pick up most of the the the U numbers of or the amount of money that we need to take care of the issue through staff reduction we're down a number of students uh at this point in time it will be through attrition not termination so no employees going to get laid off uh there positions that are based on people that are leaving we've looked at the student numbers as an example for next year and we're making adjustments according accordingly we're also looking at the supply budget reduction I will tell you that
179a 10 to 20% cut to the supply budget uh is going to be impactful I have looked at every open poo with Julie um I will tell you this and I've looked at several other things there's not like there's waste in this District I know that's simple for people on the outside to look and say there's all this waste but when you look at what people are are buying there people are buying things that we need we need gas for for buses it's it's just a reality and so when we look at the reduction uh that's going to have an impact because you're talking if you're in the in the uh 10 to 20 uh percent range you're talking 150 to $300,000 so it's not insignificant we are also looking at student attendance Solutions and
180we're going to come back to you with uh some meetings in April at the April board meeting and the May board meeting there's a a piece called the instructional time model itm from ad that may help us uh take care or help with student attendance uh those kids are absent there's ways that they can potentially make up the work and they're not counted as absent uh we're still looking at the numbers to see how significant that is uh we also look at possibly an attendance officer and then also uh instituting a campaign about the importance of attendance if we could go ahead and reduce our student attendance uh number of kids missing school that most people think of ADM as the number of kids you have on Mother's Day but you actually for every day
181that the kids's in school you get so much money if a kid's not in school and they're absent then you lose money that that day so you want to to take a look at that we're looking at utility savings and we adjust set points review one the unoccupied begins and ends uh can we start the unoccupied mode quicker uh and not turn on quite as fast can we do additional four day weeks during breaks to have one less day where we're not running uh we can move the the utility set points uh to unocc mode for the full day so when we're on summer break a matter of fact our schedule for this summer is to add an extra couple weeks in the four day week to try and squeeze out just a little bit
182more savings we're looking at increasing District Revenue that was part of the rental fees that we talked about this morning that's part of the drout recovery program uh with grad Solutions we're going to be looking at increasing potentially athletic fees um are some of the ideas we're talking about we want to see if classroom site fund and the school Improvement f F which is 020 that some of the raises to uh certified staff can use those funds I'm not sure they can uh it's pretty tight um but we're looking at that we want to look at all salary schedules including stiens and six fifth contracts uh outside uh individuals we pay uh we we contract with with outside agencies to see if there's savings there want to take a look at what we do with
183our daa funding District dival assistance and then are there other ways to decrease operational EXP expenses uh we will talk with CCC and Leadership so there may be other ideas but I just want to give you an idea so that if you start to see things in April and May that you have an idea of where they're coming from um uh this is not I can't stress enough the importance of the notion of stabilizing the capture rate you're getting to the point where it's getting very very difficult um based on the amount of money that was cut out of this year's budget and then potentially next year's budget and if we look at another year after that it's it's getting very very difficult in terms of where we can go to to get the savings
184we need the summary we're anticipating right now with all these numbers in if you make the addition we're going to need to find $2.1 million a little short of $2.2 million and so we're looking at the budget shortfall based on numbers we're anticipating from the state so everybody's on the same page we will be we believe we will get 2% increase from the state based on the way the law reads and so we that means the base supp level money you get per student will be increased by 2% we juli plug those numbers into anticipated numbers that we have if we roll everybody forward and so we believe if we Trend data as student loss of 108 ADM I know it's 108.5 to but it just rounded there for about one 1.9 short if we
185do the certified admin raises exempt staff that's 350 the 25 January 25 support increase would be 75 and the health insurance increase so when you look at all that if my math is correct it gets you to 21 million so that's the shortfall that we're facing and that's what we'll be working at over the next month uh or so to uh uh address um we will get there uh because if you remember on the very first slide what did I say we had to do no matter what B budget so it's not a case of if we're going to get there the question is when we're going to get there and and we will get there now part of what we'll do just in case there's questions on the agenda for uh staff we did
186uh you did approve the staff list uh there may be some minor changes uh since that list has been developed we have received a couple more resignations um but those staff contracts they are rep reflective of this year's B this year's staff amount or contract amount not next year's uh will'll go out to staff on Monday uh certified and classified staff have 15 days to get it back I believe that's roughly April 8th that may be off a day or two uh that's per state statute for certified staff administrators have 30 days for State Statute so that means they would come back on the 25th of April um and uh uh then we would go ahead and do an addendum depending on what the increase is so the fact that you approved uh salary or
187contracts to go out you have not approved any increases is at this point in time this is exactly if I'm getting the contract with the same amount I'm making this year type thing and so there's no increase we say 350 if worst case scenario my gosh we couldn't do anything we couldn't find enough money then you might not give raise if you do had to give a raise then you're going to give the 350 uh and that'll be an addendum that will go to the staff and this is the same way we've operated since I've been in this district is that we give them the contracts and then we come back with a addendum or amendment to their contract with the dollar amount for what the increase would be um between the number of of
188uh people that have already indicated they're leaving back to that's why we believe even with this list uh that we will not uh we will not be in a position that we be laying anybody off we will we will reduce a position by someone who's planning on leaving anyway and and that way we don't have to harm any anybody to the best of our ability is that straight across the board like all sites and district office it's yes to the extent possible it's all sites and district office we're still working on those um some places may have more or less example if you have if you lost more students and it's about uh the number of kids in the class um we build it off off of the student uh teacher ratios um you might
189end up getting deeper cut because you had more kids leave um than another than another place um but in some cases some of this has already taken place this year so we're actually going to combo you have to understand that to to solve the budget problem we had to solve in December we uh reduced out a number of vacants uh vacant positions anyway so in the case of Transportation uh they we reduced uh seven to 10 bus driver positions already that's part of the mix as we move forward so so there's a combination whatever we've done this uh in December as well as whatever we're going to propose to do for next year so so when you take a look at it um you're probably going to see uh 40 plus positions that have been
190eliminated again nobody's been laid off because either nobody was in the position or the positions already left but but you're going to see 40 40 plus in terms of FTE that have been reduced um we're trying to be very surgical in what we do uh we're trying to take a look at that what funding areas are are present to address issues um but at the end of the day we have to balance the budget and so um uh we're going to get there but I just wanted to provide you an overview so as we move forward you're aware things coming forward so I'll take any questions if you have any thanks for the good news all right yeah okay U that concludes all the 11 Point items number 12 request for future agenda items any
191requests I hear music Jason sh that means that it's over supposed to be wrap this up I don't have any future agenda items all right then I move that we adjourn at 803 I second all in favor I okay we are adjourned I'm I did at 803 and shelle second