001okay bye hey is he back to roping yet sorry i just say that because i know i know ropers i'm not i'm just asking i'm not poking the bear i'm just saying that um like i don't i know guys i mean people rope until they okay and it's not me oh okay i'm going to call the meeting to order at six o'clock i need a motion to adopt the agenda i move to a jobs agenda i'll second all in favor aye aye aye you're on guys hi one more chad i'm here chad okay i got a motion from four to zero we'll get back to him all right thank you guys for attending um today's meeting we do have two of our revenue board members online so we'll be it'll be challenging let's go ahead
002and do the uh pledge of [Music] it allegiance one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay we have board minutes let's see yeah approval of the uh meeting minutes i moved to approve the minutes from the previous meeting as presented second all in favor aye aye aye i got an eye okay motion carries five to zero um all right so we will move into superintendent report thank you mr president um a couple things uh just a reminder that asba does have board operations and leadership training that's known as boltz training uh it's been adjusted a little bit i think they're now the tucson trip uh got moved by the tucson training got moved up here and they pushed it back out a little bit but if it is something that you're
003interested in attending uh just let mrs costano will get you signed up uh just uh over a couple overall uh impressions on enrollment uh in comparison to december we're about the same i think we're up maybe six or seven kids after two days i haven't looked at it for this week uh it's a little bit less than what it was last year at this time but if you recall last year at this time we we had a little bit of an influx uh at christmas after christmas coming back to the district just by the way kobe uh worked out so so you see 342 is a difference between the two and and prior to that we were running about 400 and that's just the influx of of kids that came back last year um midway
004through the year due to covet um the other piece that's in there for the first time you'll see that our alternative school for the middle school we have seven students as our alternative middle school um uh students there and that's the first time you've seen that other than that everything's been pretty much the same um in terms of in terms of numbers let's see a couple things going on i want to let you know that right before christmas the sports medicine program at the high school is recognized by the national athletic trainers association as a safe sports school what they need to do to get that award is to create a positive athletic health care administrative system provide and coordinate pre-participation physical exams promote safe and appropriate practices and competition facilities plan for selection fit
005for function and proper maintenance of athletic equipment provide a permanent appropriate equipped area to evaluate treat injured athletes develop injury and illness prevention strategies including protocols for environmental conditions provide and facilitate in an injury intervention create and rehearse venue specific emergency action plans provide or facilitate psychosocial consults consultation and nutritional counseling and education and then be sure that athletes and parents are educated about potential benefits and risk of the sports as well we'll get a banner but more importantly we're the only school district or only high school in the state that receive this award uh depending on and looking at past history um one or two schools in the state are all that receiving it on an annual basis so it's a pretty prestigious award it speaks uh very highly of mr nelson in the
006job he's doing it at the high school so and that's a very that's a very good program that's taking place up there we also had the combs ffa did their first district competition uh in december they'll have some other ones coming up in the spring uh did fantastic the ag mechanics team placed first the livestock judging team uh also was first and the horse evaluation team was third um uh this is just the first uh competition there are other competitions that will be coming up uh and then this uh this week uh the e4t conference is a conference at asu poly that kind of is for area high school kids so queen creek ourselves ala ben franklin and it's a chance to kind of work on uh possible career paths as juniors and uh we
007sent over 200 students that which was more than any other school uh schools that that went and they they had a chance to go through different breakout sessions and learn about different careers and and resume writing and all those kind of things that you need as part of as part of uh choosing careers and then they had a chance to go in and talk to different vendors and also they had post-secondary schools there that they could talk about you know what happens in the future there's your junior so a little bit of planning prior to your senior year uh and i didn't want to uh give out a shout out to mr scrogum i talked to uh uh chris clark who's the executive of the queen creek chamber and this was put on primarily by
008the queen creek chamber this morning at an event i was at and he just uh sung mr chris grogan's praise that he knows that when we're involved and john's involved that everything gets done and taken care of without hesitation in the right way and and very much a positive reflection on our district and on our school and so i do want to shout out to john and thank him for for everything he's done with that because it's a pretty good job and then just a reminder i know that all the kids in the audience will be just massively disappointed but this monday we won't have school because we have civil rights day uh and then we will have obviously our next board meeting in february uh next thing i have each month what we try
009to do is recognize different employee groups or individuals in the school district and january has been recognized as for school boards for national school boards i would say uh if you're not aware the three people up here and the two people on the on the phone um we pay them handsomely which is they get no money whatsoever so it's really easy on the budget um yeah there you go snickers um but they do take on a lot of challenges every uh every month and they they take a look at what's best for the school district and what's best for the kids we're in a time right now that there's a lot of complex issues out there there's a lot of different things happening with school boards recently and yet you have people that are willing
010to volunteer it's a four-year term there's some people that think they want to volunteer for school board and they get elected and then after the first school board meeting they think they have their agenda done and then someone says yeah now you have the rest of the three and a half years to go and it's like it's how long and so it's it's a significant commitment uh trying to understand the complexities of very complex system-like schools many people in the audience may be used to running businesses given all the rules and regulations that school districts have it's not quite the same as running a business it's much more complex and to come on board and try to learn all that takes quite a bit of time and their efforts and the amount of information they
011get from us as we try to explain what's taking place it's much more than just showing up once a month to meeting and so as january being a school board recognition month we wanted to take a moment and thank them for what they do for our staff for a community for our kids we have uh what's called the blue apple awards in this district as yes so so we got a special blue apple for each of you to say thank you for everything you've you've done yeah we don't need to get up you don't need to get up and take a picture thank you even though kayla's not here we'll still get a picture so if we get on the board [Applause] this is exciting right this is so awesome thank you so much yes
012thank you [Applause] yeah it is oh yeah thank you that's my report for today very nice okay we have um school and staff recognition mrs schaffner from cta if you come up please good evening madam president members of the board dr wyman and members of the audience i'm so excited to talk about cta i'm a new principal to your district but it's been super exciting to be a part of the community and the family we have lots of people here to talk about some programs that we have on campus so first i just want to get right to it and i'm sorry if we take a lot of time so be prepared so first up i'd like to introduce lisa allison and erica gonzalez they are our two kinder teachers and they are going to
013talk about some of the program that they put together to help some of our kindergartners you know we got a lot of preschoolers in that didn't get a chance to attend preschool or struggled and so they decided on their own a program that they wanted to put together so i'm going to let them talk super quick all right good evening everybody i'm lisa allison and i teach kindergarten at cta along with erica gonzalez and before the school year started we had talked about maybe starting some sort of club for our kindergartners we often work with kids after school to help them get caught up or tutor them for those who needed but we wanted to provide something that would be available for all of our kindergartners we decided to put together our reading enrichment club
014for that we it's not like your typical club like nhs or student council because we only offered it to kindergarten this year because of covid and it was our first time doing it and we wanted to see what kind of attendance we would get we just offered it to the kinders this year but we are looking to hopefully be able to maybe include first or second graders in the future we started it back in september and just ended right before christmas break and we're just trying to decide what we're going to do for the rest of the year if we want to start it back up or if we want to work with those kids who might need a little extra help and we actually got half of our kindergartners to attend which was about
01522 kids and it uh we did it every tuesday until four o'clock after school so ms gonzalez is going to share a little bit about what that looked like so good evening and everybody um like miss allison had said we did want to try to give our students the kindergartners something to look forward to you know everybody else all the older grades that get you know some fun stuff so that's what we wanted was to make this fun for them so it wasn't anything to help them with their reading but it was just to help them love reading and be able to get a book and not just have it read to them or them read it but really look into the book and what is the book made out of so we did concentrate
016on characters and settings and you know the plot what could we do to make this story different that kind of thing and then we always incorporated some kind of activity for the kids to do after we read and talked about the book so it was just a way for them to dive deeper into the book instead of just reading it and see what the words were nice hang on just a second so they're always there really early really late so here's to get you some coffee have you seen them i made some salsa with your peppers and there's also a gift card in there for you guys to buy some books for your kindergartners she's always buying a skit i'm not crazy you're welcome we appreciate your support oh you bet they're not talking it
017up enough they really work hard with those kinders to really bring them some opportunities and it's been really great for them so thank you guys for doing that i appreciate it next up i'm going to have mrs heath come forward and she's got two of her students from nehs that are going to talk a little bit about what they're doing on campus for their program so come on i have emma butler and abby butler they're going to talk a little bit about um they're going to talk a little bit about what they've been doing on campus as well to um support our campus see i was smart i brought somebody else to talk so i'll give you just a little background on nehs my name is sherry heath and i teach sixth grade at cta
018and nhs was established in 1921 for high schools and it was a nationwide program including territories that lie outside the united states continental area it was based on four pillars that's i have to get these right service scholarship leadership and character and so they have to go through kind of a rigorous sorting through process to be able to qualify for the club um it started with nhs which was in the high schools and then it went to njhs which is in the junior high which we have a chapter here in our district and then finally trickled down to nehs national elementary honor society um the students are required to do several uh not several hours of community service volunteer hours some nothing you can get paid for so if you babysit your brother and sister
019and get paid you don't get any hours for that um but then they can they accumulate those hours throughout the year and then at the end we celebrate those hours and where they've uh where they've served other areas in their community whether that's church or school or uh at uh out just out in the community all right so i'm gonna let them tell you what we've done in the past it's a little bit tougher with covid because you can't get out there and really do a lot of community service um however we've been very creative with that and i tell you things that we've done in the past and things that we are doing this year so abigail hello my name is abigail butler and i'm the president of our nhs club this year the
020club is open to 5th and 6th graders currently we have 12 members nhs stands for national elementary honor society students have to go through an application process which includes writing an essay explaining why they would be a good candidate and get recommendations from three of their teachers you must also maintain all a's and b's and be good role models we do activities that benefit our school and community prior to covid we had sponsored activities for our school and families like carnivals and dances since covid we have focused on our students and staff last year we made ornaments for the staff honored our principal and counselor with posters and encouraging notes we held the virtual talent show the telethon which raised over 800 dollars for school chromebooks we also wrote letters to veterans and made posters
021for them this year we held a fundraiser called boograms students could send letters to their friends and nahs would deliver them we used some of the proceeds to purchase a pine tree for our school garden and bird feeders emma will tell you more about that my name is emma butler and i have been in nehs for two years we meet weekly and have a lot of fun this year our focus has been on our school on our school garden we have worked hard on creating a space for each grade level we painted the planters our school colors and did lots of weeding raking and rearranging one meeting we tried to make stepping stones but that didn't work out too well we made signs for each grades area and prepared their planters we also purchased bird
022blocks and feeders and supporting are supporting quite a few birds this winter this week we'll be scheduling grade level tours so students can start planning their spring planting next year we plan on starting a com posing program most of our sixth grade members plan on applying for njhs national juniors honor society when they come to the middle school next year so we can continue to contribute to our community thank you they're both very involved in school and so i might have played some trickery just in case you're wondering um so um mrs heath if you'll come up a little closer mrs is not only just one of our sixth grade teachers she one of her partner in sixth grade was out on leave and she had to jump in and help with the sub she
023does nehs she does the garden club we had some staff out during our veterans day celebration and she jumped in to help with that she's always super excited on campus every morning when the buses come in she's like buses are all in have a great day um so i wanted to make sure and honor you this month with a blue apple award i'm not going to take it out oh okay but i wanted to make sure and honor you with that because i i appreciate what you're doing very much you're always there no matter what um and you guys mentioned you guys have your gardening stuff so here's a couple of gardening tools um and a gift card for you guys to get some more stuff for your garden and some other things that you're
024doing thank you yeah it will break so don't drop that i'll try anyway [Applause] at sunshine club oh she makes sure everybody gets something for their birthday if they're dealing with a difficult situation like she is there all the time making sure and a lot of times she does that out of her own pocket so i really appreciate when she does that um even though i know she's spinning a lot next up i'd like mrs tapia she is our library assistant part-time and recently took on our part-time para position we lost a special ed teacher and we needed support for our students receiving special ed services we kept kind of scrambling around going what are we going to do what are we going to do and we thought oh the one that helps everybody let's
025ask her so come on up she um decided to take that position she doesn't want to talk she thinks she's here to present as well but she's not um she took that position on and she comes in every day we don't cry after six she's always happy it doesn't matter what time i text her she always goes i got this it doesn't matter where i put her doesn't matter what i do she always says i'll do whatever you need me to do just tell me where you need me to go so she misses out on library quite a bit for our poor kids but i will tell you that she just has always just got such a great attitude she's always super bubbly she's always super helpful so you don't have to speak tonight but
026she is doing a lot of help with our sped students by making sure that they get some services in the meantime and collaborating with the teachers to do that so this is your blue apple award you're very welcome tricked her husband into doing it too but he didn't make it so some office supplies some gift cards for you to be able to get some more stuff to help you out as well so i just wanted to say thank you so much you're very welcome so you don't have to speak yes [Laughter] i know i should she i told her you can just stand behind me and i'll just say the word you want me to say um but she really does she works really hard um so along with that trickery if i could have
027miss shauna skrogham come up [Applause] so shawna and i always john is a cta member by the way he is a knight with us sean is my admin assistant a lot of times people will say well it's because you guys work together every day no we really think we were siblings from other parents we're just not sure when i came on to cta shauna did nothing but accept me 100 she met me at the interview process she was kind polite she took me in she taught me a lot of things about what was happening at cta she challenges me sometimes to think about other things like sure you don't want to think about it this way she 100 percent has the back of our campus she supports me and every day she what do you
028need me to do she jumps in and helps with kovic she jumps in and helps with finding subs she jumps she just jumps in a hundred percent and she supports our staff she supports our kids just to talk to all the parents um and i think that she's always thought you know i just want to make sure that you're okay doing what you're doing and i'm like nope i've got this you just send those people my way and i'll talk to whoever you need me to talk to happy angry sad it doesn't matter um so this was just a way for me to to say thank you to you we don't cry after 6 p.m on our campus um so here's your blue apple glass of work don't break it it's very fragile so make
029sure i have your plan um there's your little plant she's a so delicious kind of freak a little bit um we try not to eat out a lot john but we do uh we try really hard um but i gotta get you some stuff so that you can have some fun and enjoy things that you deserve you're very welcome you can kill me tomorrow she's she's she's tad bit nosy so she's always like what's going on what are you doing why do i gotta go what's happening why do i i just need you to help me so on behalf of our campus i'd like to thank you for letting us honor our campus they are amazing staff and i love being a part of it so thank you very much [Applause] okay miss tuffy and
030i had some a lot of uh good conversations in the parking lot at pre-kinder [Laughter] um okay so we're over a student of the month dr buses madam president board members dr wyman again thank you for this opportunity as i say every time i'm up here this is the best part of my day and i sincerely mean that partly because of the great students that we have but also because i get to see my colleagues which i don't get to see a lot of times during the day so thank you could i have abigail wall come up from combs center of success we will celebrate abigail at a later date could i have kaylie compa come up from combs high school right over here kaylee was nominated by mrs goodrich and she said that she
031kaylee is the fccla president and she is one of the most caring students i have ever met she always tries to make sure people are included and feels good about and feels good about themselves as an example is when we went to conference and even though she was a senior and had a lot of friends at the conference she made sure our freshman students were not alone and she felt and tried to include them at all times kaylee is kind and shows her caring and paying attention to other people's needs congratulations kaylee could i have david sokovia pina come up from the middle school okay we will celebrate him next time could i have audrey castillo come up from cones traditional academy she was nominated by mrs kepp when i think about a character trait
032of respect audrey castillo immediately comes to mind audrey honors the rules of our school and classroom and is always working towards helping us reach our class vision she's polite and courteous and respectful and respects all the differences of others she's careful with student property and other items that friends may borrow of hers or of others when a conflict or a misunderstanding arises she's empathetic and tries to view things from the perspective of other parties involved she exemplifies the characteristic of respect in every aspect and mrs kepp is so proud to nominate you as a student of the month congratulations audrey could i have aiden perry come up from combs judicial academy [Applause] so for those of you turn around for those of you that were wondering why there's two this week it's because last week
033last time last month i apologize aidan couldn't make it so we're celebrating aiden tonight aidan is the most kind-hearted caring young man i know according to mrs nino he is sensitive to others emotions and genuinely cares if they are upset he gives kind and encouraging words to help friends through tough situation and he cares with his whole heart my opinion you're going to make a great teacher someday congratulations could i have anthony sanchez come up from ellsworth could i have all of her graves come up from harmon elementary okay he was nominated by the second grade team oliver is an amazing student he goes above and beyond showing the respect trait everywhere he is we are happy to have oliver as part of the second grade and we look forward to great things in the
034future with oliver congratulations oliver [Applause] could i have haley thatcher come up from ranch i love the hat love the hat my son has one too so when i was asked to think of a student this was by mrs hardo when i was asked to think of a student who showed the characteristics of respect mr thatcher immediately came to mind he's amazing and kind-hearted young man and he always treats others with respect uses good manners and is considerate of others feelings he is courteous and polite to everyone and he respects values and the feelings and thoughts of others he is always asking if he can make me and others and consistently help me and others and consistently demonstrates respect to adults and his peers congratulations haley and finally could i have mason lucas come up
035from symington oh i take that back we found out that mason was not going to be here tonight so that's our students of the month thank you we'll take some pictures we'll take a couple pictures real quick and then we'll continue on with the board meeting parents it's a great opportunity for you to take pictures and you don't have to stay for the rest of the meeting unless you feel like you want to is okay [Music] huh laugh or cry take your pick it's all good [Music] that was part of the problem and then the other one the lettering was tiny you what [Music] oh my god [Music] yeah i i couldn't help myself i kept looking out there and i wanted to go get a picture of it show up shelley i look out
036as i'm taking pictures i said board meetings got me like is that not the cutest thing you've ever seen in your life is what is he noticing okay we're going to go ahead and get started with the rest of this meeting so we can uh get on home so um do we have any um governing board updates anybody want to update on anything anything they've done no i i attended a uh combs clay crusher uh [Laughter] meet that was fun so my son's on there but anyway they did good um any them too do we have lisa chad nothing i have nothing okay public comments we don't have any oh interesting um okay so we have any um questions comments on the consent agenda no okay well then i will take a motion as presented
037on the mic now i move to approve the consent agenda as presented second all in favor look at you two motion carries five to zero look at that i'm all excited um okay so we have action items eight point 8.1 discussion and consideration of approval of a purchase of the 184 passenger bus and 214 mini buses now go ahead and introduce this and then if you have any questions for mr anderson he's there we're just looking uh we have uh in the 2016 bond uh there's still dollars that are available as we've taken a look at some of the issues we have with transportation uh we're looking to see if we get a couple more buses i know there's a number of buses bought uh the the first time around um but they're still dollars
038available uh what we're looking at with the minibuses is uh and especially if you start to like it look at the next couple years uh our uh sports teams as an example will be relatively speaking fairly close in the in the league with poston beauty eastmark ac h and chandler and and close trips alas and when we don't have enough buses we have to go ahead and go commercial and that is extremely expensive we've had some situations this year especially at the middle school where we're we're paying it for a significant amount of dollars to basically transport kids two miles uh and back and so we think this would be a good use of dollars to to go ahead and be able to transport kids you don't need a cdl license uh many of the
039rural communities this is the way they get kids around and coaches as an example could drive or anybody that that works for us could drive and so that's why we're recommending two of those at the same time we also run into situations with uh the lack of drivers and so trying to get another big bus might be able to help consolidate if we need to consolidate we would not look at these getting these buses for i mean would order them now but they probably would be coming in we hope it will be by the beginning of the year new year meaning july uh it just depends on supply chain issues and stuff like that so we'll look to pay for a chunk of this out of the bond money and then the differential will be
040out of daa for capital purchases i don't know if there's anything you need to talk with mr anderson he's talked with joan about this and so we're ready to move forward i think it's a great idea all right um no further questions i'll take a motion okay i moved to approve the purchase of one 84 passenger bus and two 14 passenger minibuses utilizing mojave contracts as presented second all in favor motion carries five to zero i'm liking you guys on top of this all right um 8.2 um discussion consideration for approval of additional qualified evaluator for combs unified school district for the 2122. yes the board's required to prove all uh all qualified evaluators we bring you the majority of them at the beginning of the year uh mitchell hood is doing some work up
041at the high school uh to help out and has gone through the qualified evaluator training and so as we did last year with mr hill we're just bringing him since he's completed the training uh through i think it was asa or it's either asa or arizona department of bad uh during the fall we're bringing them forward for approval today so i'd recommend approval as presented any questions on that no no all right i'll take a motion i'll move to approve the 2021-2022 j.o combs unified school district qualified evaluators including now mitchell hood as presented second all in favor aye aye aye motion carries five to zero eight point three discussion review of the annual comprehensive financial report and single audit for fiscal year end june of 21. good evening madam president members of the board
042dr wyman remaining members of the audience um our auditors brought here actually yeah they're pretty good our auditors clifton larson allen has completed the fy21 financial audit that is the annual comprehensive financial report the single audit report package and the usfr compliance questionnaire which we provided to you for your review these items are brought to you each year and as a discussion item but in february of 2021 arizona revised statute 15 914 was amended and now includes section h that indicates school district governing boards shall publicly accept all audits and compliance questionnaires by a roll call vote the annual comprehensive financial report is a narrative overview and an analysis of the financial activities of the district in conformity with general accepted accounting principles or gaap the single audit reporting package is a report of internal
043controls over financial reporting and compliance and other matters based on an audit of financial statements performance in accordance with government auditing the single audit package noted three items for the com district for last year the first one was a reference of internal control of annual financial statements this notation has been in the last few audits and is regarding gap review the second item the auditors noted that the energy savings agreement was not included in the fy 20 annual comprehensive financial report and made the appropriate adjustments and notation in this year's audit findings and the third item was some capital item listings and depreciations required correction i've discussed each of these items with the auditors and i feel comfortable that each of these will be resolved when we review again in the fy 22 school year
044the final item that was provided was the uniform system of financial records or usfr compliance questionnaire this report assists the auditor of the off sorry the office of the auditor general in determining whether a district has attained an acceptable degree of compliance and internal controls the few items that were noted as above were the capital assets financial reporting and also attendance with your acceptance tonight all final reports will be sent to all required party parties and posted appropriately hard copies will be provided to you as soon as they are printed and clifton larson allen is working right now do you have any questions big document i know i would just like to make a comment that the three material weaknesses in the audit and financial reports are very minor and i know you've you're taking
045care of them and you know we can't expect people to be perfect but there was nothing um that shouldn't have happened it was just just you know human mistakes so that was very good and then on the uniform system of financial records compliance questionnaire if i went through it i think there were 67 to 72 categories i looked through that believe it or not and only having three no's that were very minor is also very commendable so i want to thank you and your team for the good job they did on that thank you i'll make sure the team knows now we have to do a roll call vote on this yes ma'am any other questions no no okay so we'll start with uh bob we need to make a motion first right yes okay
046so i would move to accept the annual comprehensive financial report single audit and the usfr compliance questionnaire for fiscal year ending june 2021 as presented second okay so we'll start our roll call bob hi steve hi uh let's see lisa i chad i and myself shelly i okay motion carries five to zero do you pronounce that usfr or you suffer i do have a friend that calls it the russian chronicles [Laughter] i'm gonna tell you what steve you are on a roll tonight like he's got these one-liners like you wouldn't believe um i know you're missing it um discussion and possible consideration of action oh to approve the board organization this is the fun time we all love it so we get to decide we get to re-organize and decide who will be the president
047and the clerk for this next year since there was a train that came through here just a few minutes ago just note that under statute you do not have to do this this year the only time you legally have to do it is uh after an election and so therefore you can go through the process and if it's going to end up with the same results as we have right now we can dispense with motion one motion two motion three motion four motion five motion six and just keep the board uh how the board is constituted as it is so just know that legally you you do not have to do this agenda item if you do not want to if at the end of the day you're going to be exactly the same as
048you are right now so can we have a discussion first yep yeah that's how i have the discussion and if you're not going to do it then you can go from there okay go ahead steve what are your thoughts i think we should keep things the same and why because right now we just need consistency what about the budget what do you mean but we don't have to change our names oh yeah that's right and we don't have to change it was all about that that's right wouldn't want to put that extra expense out there right um bob i think shelley's doing a great job i would like to keep her as board president and i would be happy to serve again as clerk okay i'm good do i need to move to keep it
049the same wait wait we got two more what do you think chad i'd like to keep things the way they are it's working really good and i think uh i think it works well okay lisa do you have any thoughts i just think consistency is the way to go you get the way it is okay all right so you could just go ahead and table this item then and then we just continue with what we're doing all right i moved to table item 8.4 second okay where do i think well okay all in favor all right hold on um steve all in favor aye hi i motion carries five to zero all right that was pretty painless okay um discussion item 9.1 discussion and information on student achievement winter benchmark results marcus good evening madam
050president good to see you back here members of the board dr wyman i am here to give you an update on our winter benchmarks um so we're going to be looking at our third through eighth grade middle of the year benchmark results in our ninth through twelfth grade second quarter benchmark results uh just a reminder that we are looking at our district's standards-based benchmark area of our comprehensive assessment system so for us at the district level and even for our site leadership we're really looking at is the retained learning aligned with the state standards do we have gaps in our curriculum do we need to look at structural or instructional changes to our curriculum also for teachers because of the nature of these types of assessments it's really important that they're looking at the kinds
051of items that are being asked of students and really having those conversations at the site level about does the level of our instruction meet the level of how we're measuring them and now finally we want to we try to emphasize that this is not a grade and we shouldn't be grading students on that um so mastery is set at 75 or higher on these assessments so i want to make sure that you remember that as we're looking at this is that we're looking for when when you see the the the scores that um if they are proficient that means they scored a 75 percent at least third through eighth grade benchmarks they're comprehensive they're standards-based assessments that are aligned to the the new state assessment they're pre-built by illuminate they're technology enhanced it's online our
052window was from november 29th through december 17th and we assessed in ela and math so this first chart you're going to see is our third through eighth grade ela benchmark proficiency this is the percentage of students that were at or above mastery so again this is the percentage of students that scored above a 75 percent remember these are comprehensive meaning that they are end of the year assessments um and so we're measuring mid mid-year mastery of what we hope that we'll be mastering at the end of the year um so you can see a lot of our grade levels in ela there was an uh increase in the students proficient we've got a couple of blips out there with eighth grade and fifth grade this is the average percent correct um because we're measuring proficiency
053based on percentage correct on the test if i feel it's important for you to see what the actual average percent correct on each of the assessments was so when you look at that proficiency you can kind of get an idea of where our kids are and how close they are to that 75 mark get go ahead would it be fair to say that when we're looking at the middle of the year since it's halfway through what they should have been taught we're looking for somewhere around 50 percent is that a way to look at this it i would look at it more like beginning of the year was without any instruction at all so that's where they started so ideally yes we should see some uh i would love to see that they've made half
054of what they needed to do to get to 100 was the way i would i would put it okay so if third grade they started out at 35 so um 65 percentage points to get to 100 so if they had increased if we'd increased by about 32 and a half i would have been ecstatic so looking at it from that point of view the third grade didn't make as much progress as i would like yes and then this next chart um we have a a with an illuminate a report that we can run that that shows growth and so the way that [Music] growth is measured is we are looking at its formula so it takes the the pre-test score subtracts that from the post test score so the middle of the year and then
055that divides that by 100 minus the pre-test so so we're getting a percentage number um so kind of expected if it's for high growth we're looking for a number between 66 and 100 percent typical growth is about 41 to 65 percent moderate is 30 to 40. low is less than 30 and then you can also go negative your post test could be less than your pre-test so what you're seeing here for me anything to the left what as i'm looking at it anything from low to high is good at this point in time um by the end of the year when when i do this we'll be comparing it from pretest to the end of the year test i hope that we'll see the majority of our numbers in the typical or the high growth
056area the negative is the area that that concerns me the most because that means that our kids went backwards and do we have any idea how much of that is as a result of loss of learning due to covid i don't i would have to go in and i'd have to know which students were out and for how long and have to do a correlation and unfortunately i don't have access to that i'd have to do some work on that so third through eighth grade math positive here we went from zero to at least one in almost all of our grade levels again with math we have to remember that again i'm looking at a 75 percent or greater is proficiency ela all of those standards the way they work i'm working with them from
057kindergarten all the way up through 12th grade the same standards pretty much just more complex and scaffolded math these are brand new concepts and skills that kids learn in each grade level they don't spiral quite to the extent that that ela does so when we look at this it's not quite as surprising because a lot of the material that kids are working with are new and they're still working with material that they may not have ever seen before on these benchmarks here with the the average percent correct you can see against improvement for the most part in the average percent correct overall and then here's our growth numbers and again they look to me they look better than than what we did with the ela except for sixth grade that's the one that that is
058the most troubling out of all of these and then we see the same thing with our sixth grade math scores usually on on state assessments uh there's a lot of new stuff with math in sixth grade and it it's hard for kids ninth through eleventh grade though for high school we are assessing the uh priority standards and some supporting standards that that carry over from quarter to quarter of the quarter so this is a different assessment than what we're doing with our third through uh eighth graders um so it's an end of quarter standard space assessment we are creating this one rather than using a pre-built because they don't have one for high school pre-built again the window is the same window november 29th through december 17th for ela we're testing 9th 10th and 11th
059graders but in 11th grade we're not doing advanced placement because advanced placement has a different curriculum basically than what our state standards are so 9th and 10th grade you see honors kids embedded 11th grade those honors kids get pulled out because they're taking ap for math algebra 1 geometry and algebra 2 which is typically our freshman sophomore junior level course so here 9th grade ela we had the same percentage of kids passing the benchmark as we did in first quarter 10th grade we saw a significant decrease in number percentage of kids um that passing the the second quarter benchmark and then 11th grade we saw a good increase from six percent to 12 12 passing and again that passing is a 75 percent or higher average percent correct so we did see a decrease even
060though the the percent passing was the same in ninth grade we saw a decrease in the percent average percent correct 10th grade again we saw a decrease in the percent passing but they were pretty close in their average percent correct and then 11th grade again we saw a good increase in that average percent correct math not a whole lot of improvement between first quarter and second quarter except in algebra two we saw a few more kids passing and then the average percent correct pretty much stayed about the same in both algebra 1 and geometry with a little bit of an increase in algebra 2. so some next steps tomorrow our district level curriculum team is going to be meeting to we've got a three-hour block of time where we're going to dive into to these
061and have a discussion at the district level i have meetings scheduled with our site leadership and coaches to to dive in and start pulling this apart elementary will be february 1st after our leadership meeting middle school is going to be january 28th and the high school we're meeting with them on january 21st i've also shared with the principals what's known as the collaborative learning cycle and which is a way to look at data basically it says when we're we're diving into data and having a collaborative discussion around data we want to start with activating and engaging those people working with the data so first of all you don't show them any data and you try to pull out any assumptions biases predictions ahead of time before they start diving in and talking about it so
062you can have a conversation about those things that we have control over those things that we don't have control over and how might those influence what we actually are going to look at that second piece then is explore and discover so at that point in time you're trying to de-personalize the data they're looking at it but we're really look asking questions about what patterns or trends do you see what pops out to you rather than how did you do and then the last stage of that collaborative learning cycle is the organize and integrate stage which is we've taken these observations we've been able to pull out those things that we assumed or have a bias about related to the testing and all of that and now we're really diving in what's the root cause of
063what's happening so i've identified this is a pattern what does that mean and how what what can we what's causing that pattern to happen and then how do we take action once we've identified the root cause so i've shared that with principals as i work with those sites we'll go through that cycle with them to model it but we really wanted them to start having those conversations with their sites as well and gave them that support our content coaches are working with our site plc teams they continue to do that and again our district pl days continue to focus on providing support for staff on that standards literacy and transparency for students so any questions do we have enough professional development days and time left in order to make whatever course corrections need to be
064made and get that out so that people can start implementing them state testing is april um so time is limited um our challenge really with time is that there's lots of other demands on time so as you saw the the dates that i've set up that i've got a large team trying to come together and and trying to work with their calendar to because they are working with sites on a lot of that work so those were dates there the site was available as well as our district level team was available i look at this as it's a long term process we are this is our first experience with illuminate it's not our first experience with data but what we're trying to do is is develop a data literate culture and and that's not going
065to be a we're not going to see immediate impact but the more that we are able to do that do this work and dive in and and really train our leadership on how to do this work with their staff long term i believe it will have a significant impact any other questions can i ask a couple questions sure um i know it's hard since you can't see me and so you can't you can't read my body language or my face and i know that's hard when you're standing where you're standing because you're having to report something that i know you're you're uh you know it's it's tough to talk about these kind of numbers and i understand that um uh just a couple quick questions um so when we say priority standards uh could you
066explain what what do we mean by priority standards priority standard is there's a process that we go through to identify what a priority standard is um but they are standards that have leverage they have um there's a whole set of criteria and you just put me on the spot and i'm going to forget them all for math we use the work of larry ainsworth um in terms of curriculum mapping and identifying that priority standard so when we're working with a team they pull it apart they identify and then one of the the criteria in the domain so say measurement and data is um no at least half uh half of the standards have to be priority um and you can't have more than that um that can be priority because when teachers sit down and
067talk they talk about every single one of these standards is important everyone has to be taught and they all have to be given the same weight and the reality is if we did that we would need a whole lot more time than 180 days to get through them so priority standards really identifying which ones are the critical ones that have to be taught that transcend not just the content but also have connections to other content areas again we're also looking at state assessment and what's important for state assessment national assessments that kind of thing so uh that's i can give you some more detail about the criteria that we use but that's essentially what a priority standard is they're like the fence posts supporting standards are like the the crossbars on the fence uh so
068the priority students hold it up but you need those supporting standards in order to actually have your fence uh and keep that structure together yeah no that that's good i i was just curious where what because you know and i i get opportunities to talk to lots of different schools lots of different school districts and uh people call priority standards different things or they define it differently um just one thought the one thing about the arizona end of year assessment is that there is a blueprint that has been created where the the state has kind of said which uh you know which standards or which club what percentage of the test is going to be coming from a particular cluster i i would i would think that um it would probably be a good idea
069to to take a look at those blueprints and let that help guide our decision of what becomes the priority standards in our curriculum that the blueprints definitely are part of that conversation when we identify the priority standards but there are also some other criteria that we look at when we're identifying because the way that the blueprints are set up they're not standard specific they as you said they're cluster specific um so so for reading for literature there's there's uh dorsey helped me out nine standards for reading for literature i got it right um there are nine standards for reading for literature not all nine of those standards are going to be priority um and and but for the state they'll tell us that 30 of an assessment will be on reading for literature they won't
070dive down to a specific standard so we have to then take that and balance that out as to which of those standards really have to be emphasized while not discounting the other standards right i get one two three four six are the most important of those standards i i the um the other question i had was about illuminate and the assessment we have when we um when when we i i was trying to remember when we talked about getting illuminate and what we were going to do with illuminate um wasn't one of the fact one one of the the features of the pro of the platform or program was that we could if we wanted to create some of those benchmark assessments ourselves as as opposed to just using the canned questions that come along
071with illuminate correct that's what we're doing at the high school level at the elementary level the third through eighth grade because they have those mimics those have been gone through a process of them that they basically just turned the azmerit assessment that they've had that they've been able to evaluate and in terms of validity and reliability and translated that into aasa because they're the exact same test um at the high school level because uh we've moved away from a state assessment to a national assessment they don't have an act mimic as part of theirs and again because we want to focus on state standards we believe that if our students are successful with our state standards they will be successful with any national assessment that's the reason why at this high school level we're creating
072our own but we believe that the for for us at the district level and for our staff working with that mimic provides us with good data that we can then compare to other districts that are using the same same tool and and give us good information on how our students will perform on the state assessment okay yeah i know it's uh i i just think that if we you know those kind of tools whether it's galileo or illuminate whatever the tool is that that we're using in this case i remember when you were talking about when we decided to go with illuminate there was certain reasons why it was uh going to be good and i think sort of a lot of the tools that you've talked about um and and that's and that's awesome
073and i love that that you're using that tool and that we were thoughtful about selecting it as you as you get with your your groups to sit down and talk about and kind of break this down and look at it i just i would just encourage you to um you know like you said look at those blueprints and then maybe take a look at um what uh sorry take a look at the blueprints but also take a look at the possibility of looking at our curriculum map and making sure that that those benchmark assessments are actually helping us to know how the teachers did on the things that they actually taught um i know sometimes when they do these mimics and this cycle through a lot of the questions cover things that the teachers have
074not even taught yet um and and we say you know because by the end of the year we want to see how they're going to do by the end of the year i've just found that there's there's a lot more information and data that's helpful for instructional purposes and achievement purposes if if some of those benchmark assessments or short cycle assessments are based on the the exact you know the the precise standards that the teachers have been teaching and then that way it helps us to better understand how how well the kids are doing on the things that they're being taught sometimes these numbers are a little deceiving when we talk about things from illuminate or galileo things like that when they keep doing cumulative tests all the way through you know a lot of
075the questions are things that kids have not even seen yet um whereas if if like you said you're doing for the high school if the if we get in and use that illuminate as a tool a tool to to look at and have it be an assessment of our standards or of our priority standards according to our curriculum map i think that would be a helpful way just as a suggestion i think that would be a helpful way to for your team to start talking about how to help get data that will be helpful for the teachers and their instruction um it'll because it'll be more clear which of the of what they're teaching what what has been sinking in and what has not and i don't disagree i was actually out of sight today
076and and we were having that conversation the the power of illuminate is at the formative level and so you talk about short cycle assessment that's being done by the teachers at the site level and within their plcs and by the teachers and that's where um looking at how we're assessing how these items are measuring kids and having that conversation at the plc level that's really where the power of these district level benchmarks are for for teachers for us at the district level this is just providing us with data as to a 10 000 foot view and that's the purpose of those benchmarks at the district level at the site and at the teacher it's really using illuminate in a formative way and and checking in on kids learning at the moment and at the summative
077at the unit level um and so helping our staff to understand that these items and these questions are good questions and they are measuring student understanding at a much deeper level than galileo ever did or any tests that a teacher could write themselves and using that to inform their instruction that's where the power of illuminate is and that's where we'll have true change in terms of our instruction is when we see that culture change as well yeah no i agree and i you know i've just seen through the years that one of the things that helps with achievement the most is well two factors right the the quality of the teaching in the classroom and whether or not you know the how we you know how they structure the the curriculum what standards we call
078priority the the order and sequence in which that's done so i i know that we have awesome teachers and i know that the teachers with the hashtag forward teachers are learning a lot of great methodology the classrooms are well organized they've got some great things in there there's great things happening in the classrooms and so uh i don't i i just want to commend all the teachers and the principals that the hashtag forward and the way that things are going as far as on the quality of the instruction part i think we have some good instruction taking place the second aspect of that or the second part of that is just to make sure that we're that we're covering the right things so that our students are as well prepared as possible for the assessment
079that they're going to be given at the end of the year um i know that seems like that's what we would always be doing but sometimes it's not that simple and it's not that straightforward so yeah so i think that whatever you guys are gonna do and work on that just you're doing a good job we support you and uh want you to to know that because i know this is kind of a hard thing that to present this stuff to us and you're doing you're doing great job thank you very much any other questions okay we'll move on thank you thank you we'll move on to uh future agenda items you guys have any uh future agenda items that you would like to yes i have one uh term i might um i know
080with the legislature reconvening there's going to be a lot of discussion about the aggregated expenditure limit so if we could just have an update on any any movement in order to us not fall off the cliff in april that would be welcome news i'll make sure i put it in our super dennis report next month um maybe uh not maybe what about an update on that tutoring oh online we have we we have that on the list so we put it in there i'd like to you know just see how that's going yeah get some real hard numbers of what how that's being used anything else okay nope all right um i will make a motion to adjourn second all in favor aye aye aye motion carries five to zero at 7 13. thanks deanna
081thanks