001judge's officers so that clock is just a little slow so i've got one minute before the official start time but before i call the meeting to order just for those of you who may not be aware our board president shelly hargis's husband had a very severe accident and he's recovering but we don't know how long that's going to take so for the oh short term maybe long term we're not quite sure in the future shelley will be on hiatus and i will be taking over and running the meetings in her place so uh we hope you all you know send your thoughts and well wishes out to shelly and her husband okay we have 20 seconds he all right so i'm going to call the meeting to order at 6 00 p.m and in addition
002to the two of us who are here we have two other board members online lisa carr and chad mcleod are online so that gives us four so we do have enough for a quorum um i'd like to entertain a motion to adopt the agenda i move to a job adopt the agenda okay and i need a second i second it okay lisa okay thank you all in favor aye aye did we get the fourth one we got the fourth one okay and it passes four to zero okay please everyone stand for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay um i need a motion to approve the minutes from
003the last board meeting on september the 8th i moved to approve the meetings the the meeting minutes okay need a second i second it okay lisa seconds all in favor aye aye aye did we get the fourth one chad his mic is off this mic is off all right all right okay for right now he's good okay so it's approved four to zero um next we have the superintendent's report thank you mr delano a couple different things just a reminder to all the board members that wednesday the 20th uh next wednesday is the asba county meeting it will be a virtual meeting so if you're interested in going to the meeting uh let mr costa know we'll get you signed up there is an election for new county director for pinal county uh the current
004county director steve johnson uh from the florence board so if you're interested in going and or if you're interested in serving uh the county director serves on the asba board of directors um during the meeting itself you would just indicate your interest in in being a county director and the county director really represents the county on asba's board of directors they have a number of individuals on there from the all the counties in the state plus some other caucuses so it does require a commitment to go to a variety of the meetings throughout the year so i would just caution you on that last month i talked to you about the community of acts vaccine pop-up events that we were having with safeway unfortunately due to there was some people that showed up but it
005was not an overwhelming number on two different occasions they just indicated it wasn't feasible for them to continue so although we had some schedule in october november december those have been cancelled there's still plenty of opportunities for a community to get vaccines if they so desire within the community at the safeway or doctor's offices or whatever but we'll no longer be doing it we do continue to have the testing center uh at the high school however they have reduced their hours because there's not as great a demand as there was before um and so we just have that situation in terms of enrollment pattern is staying pretty strong from what we've had up up to this point uh in comparison last year we are up about 485 kids a lot of that is the lower
006grades coming back and and you can see the numbers uh fluctuating a little bit and our online and our new alternative school for the uh high school are are uh providing some some good numbers right now we have 49 kids or as of last friday we had 49 kids in the alternative school to high school and another 176 kids online so those help help us out you also have a breakdown by grade level and by the schools and by the cohort and all the patterns are holding from previously i want to let you know and recognize the business services department we were notified uh just recently that we were again recognized for the 2020 comprehensive annual financial report the district was recognized by the government finance officers association for certificate of achievement for excellence and
007finance reporting this is eighth year in a row that department has received this rating and in essence what it tells our community is that we're being we are following all rules and regulations when it comes to uh our budgets and so uh again everybody in the business department's done a great job and i know it was primarily into carl's watch but appreciate everything julie's doing to continue that i also want to let you know about our chamber orchestra and concert orchestra they were at a competition recently and received a rating of excellent um this only second time in history of school that the group has received a rating higher than good so i know uh they were very very excited about how they did uh it was just a overall uh great trip for them
008to the to the performance and in talking with the um judges um they just indicated that they were very very close to superior ratings so so that's nice to hear i've also listed a number of different um events coming up over the next over the next month and i'll just let you look at it next part the good part what we try to do on a regular basis at our meetings is recognize a variety of different employee groups and what we try to do is could i just interrupt for a second sure i just wanted to before you get to that recognition give a shout out to the business services department because since i've been on the board and it's now i think my i don't know seventh or eighth year they've had this uh
009recognition and it's goes for the leadership but also for all the employees in the district in the business services department and being a former accountant i know what it takes to get that kind of a rating and the kind of excellence that they need to demonstrate so i just want to say kudos to the business department thank you what we try to do each month is recognize our different employees there are a variety of different national days national weeks national months by different employee groups we can't recognize every single individual that that is part of these recognitions but what we try to do is bring representative individuals from uh the schools or the departments uh and call them up and and present them with a certificate really of appreciation for the job they do they're
010representing the rest of the people uh within their job description and so we'd like to recognize several different groups of of uh people uh because of when our board meetings fall sometimes it's after the fact so the first group we'd like to call up as our national custodians are exceeds amer custodians for national custodians day which was october 2nd and what i will do is call the people up and then read a little something about them so representing uh cta adrian nava now who's here some people are working so they may or may not be present ellsworth ricocio okay harman dominic's uh spizzano all right [Applause] ranch dana jewel [Applause] simon simmington michael ayala [Applause] the middle school david cameron and the high school annette gardoni really uh october 2nd is national custodial workers recognition
011they set aside to show appreciation of men and women who keep our schools across the nation running smoothly they're they're the work behind the scenes that many people don't see uh but they and they're often unappreciated for the hard days work they put in especially if we take a look at everything that's been going on with covet and everything else they've gone the extra mile to to make sure our facilities are clean and well maintained uh extra spray down of of high touch areas and all the things you need to do with coved they do it quietly like i said behind the scenes but everybody notices especially if one's missing and things aren't quite the way they're supposed to and we just want to say on that special day to thank them for everything they
012do for our community and for our schools because we couldn't operate without you so thank you so very much for everything dude we appreciate it very much thank you let's see the next group we have which was uh october 6 is national coaches day so we want some representative coaches to come on up and then i'll read something about them from the middle school and we're talking coaches we're talking athletic coaches there's the term coaches use a lot of different ways nowadays but from cms thomas chavez who does both baseball and basketball kyle leptic who does wrestling mitchell hood uh also wrestling [Music] jessica overall with volleyball [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] jessica overall with volleyball and cassie olsen with girl soccer at the high school we have ed allen with volleyball [Music] linda collins with cheer
013steve larsen with golf [Music] again cassie with uh soccer and rick searles with baseball and for those you may not been aware back in 1972 president richard nixon issued a proclamation naming october 6 is national coaches day and it's for across the country for every community a coach organizes teams plans practice and training motivates players to strive to be the best that they can be but more importantly than anything else having been a coach myself they put in endless hours to work with the kids in our community they do it for very low pay more and more sometimes with a lot of stress and pressure because they don't perform in some people's eyes and who's get playing time but at the end of the day what they're doing more than anything else is demonstrating how
014much they care about the kids and their ability to go out work with their kid the kids and make the kids better and everything they do is just critical for the success we talk about comprehensive schools and this is an important part of what a comprehensive school is about you have some people up here that have been doing it for a lot a lot of years and their thing our thanks for what they do for our kids we can't extend it enough to just say you know having been on a coach sitting on buses and going on long bus rides and all those kind of things it is a labor of love so thank you very much for all you do for our kids we very much appreciate it and then we have another group
015of individuals we'd like to recognize if you're not aware this month is national principles month so i'd like to call the principal so that we can go ahead and recognize them at cta ms shannon schaffner at ellsworth miss santa dunker they don't know i'm doing this so they're all surprised at harman miss angie buchen [Music] at ranch miss sue cruz at simonton masseu pascal at cms miss laura ridge at the high school mr chris fairby and at the alternative school and and online school dr pat goolsbee and what i'll just say for for principles month um those you that may not be in education on a daily basis there is no tougher job in america today uh to run a comprehensive school and do what you need to do especially nowadays with all the competing
016situations you can block me you don't i don't have to be in the picture that's okay thank you very much um there is not a tougher job trying to trying to balance what the community wants the varying needs the very needs of kids and your staff the different types of staff that you have truly you don't know how much leadership matters until you don't have leadership and to see the job that these people have done the amount of hours that they've put in quietly again behind the scenes very similar to a lot of people in our our district but to try to do everything with covert we're talking about 18 months you're talking about weekend work you're talking about the emails never stop the text messages never stop they're out answering them they're trying to
017solve the problem right now we have a shortage of of staff members in any number of different areas and how do we how do we make sure that we have enough teachers for every classroom every single day and what do we need to do to when we have bus drivers or we don't have bus drivers when we have a trip for kids and how do we give an experience for kids it's close to near normal compared to what it's been these people do a herculean effort every single day you know three 12 months a year and so again from the bottom of my heart for these people thank you so much for the job they do your leadership is so very necessary in today's society so thank you for everything you do appreciate it thank
018you everyone [Applause] and that's my report for today all right thank you next do we have student of the month no we have a first of school recognition so we'll ask ms cruz to come up to recognize ranch elementary and some of the stuff that's going on at ranch elementary good evening mr president there it is good evening mr president or acting mr president not sure exactly what to say but thank you members of the board audience thank you for allowing ranch elementary to present this evening unfortunately three of our little darlings didn't make it tonight they were invited multiple phone calls of reminders but there must be something going on out there but nevertheless they're not here but i do have the teacher that's running the program tonight we wanted to recognize our el
019program which is our english learner program oh maybe we have somebody in nope not yet i was hoping they were showing up but if you're as old as i am the program has had many names you may have known it as esl english second language you may have known it as el english language learners well now it's basically the same program but it's el english learners so i have miss michelle rhodes here who is our instructor for that program she is on yep come on up michelle she is on our campus half of the day and the other half of the day she is at harman elementary doing the el program she has a very high caseload of about 50 some students right now that she's working with so the students just keep on coming
020in and we keep testing them and putting them into our english program english learner program so i'm going to turn it over to michelle as she gives you a little bit of background and also going over what the kids were going to share with you tonight thank you i have had the great honor to work in joe combs for two years now in 2019 the state of arizona adopted new el standards called elp standards which is english language proficiency standards the goal is to get our children as proficient in language as we possibly can we focus on reading writing listening and speaking skills to get the children to get to a proficiency level in our class we focus every day on how we can present our information is it orally is it written are we
021reading our facts we use lexia as which is the great program right now that was offered every monday and i support them and how they need to improve a lot of times my students are much lower grade wise than their peers but they love the activities they love being able to interact with the program so on mondays we support that all the way we show them their certificates we put them on their goal charts so that they understand that they are making progress on thursdays we do a program called reading a to z in reading a to z it is a program that allows children to experience science and social studies at very low level of reading it can read the stories to them or they can read it and work on the comprehension however
022they feel they can we do vocabulary quite a bit so that a lot of my students just don't know what that thing is and it has a lot of visual aids we also work with interacting with each other using complete sentences making sure that they're clear that they understand that they're not any different however their cultures are very important and we make sure that they're represented and presented in a regular fashion so that they feel confident and comfortable going into the classroom the classroom is a very important part right now in our new program in 2019 as the state adopted those new standards they also put out new recommendations as far as how to have the children come in sued indicated that it has been many different manifestations over the years it is currently a
023two hour program every day our children in the el program get two hours of instruction they get one hour integrated instruction within their gen ed classrooms their teachers are a huge part of their learning their peers are a huge part of their learning and for that one hour of time a day they use those elp standards to help boost their own curriculum where are they are they basic learners are they intermediate and almost ready to just soar with the rest of their peers or are they pre-emergent and need a lot more assistance then for the other hour of the day they come and see me almost 50 of them 50 some come and see me for very very intense targeted instruction we look at where are those children that one child those three children where
024are their needs being met and we make sure that we focus on those daily so that is where we are with our els program at both branch and harmon and i know the staff at ellsworth and all the other schools are doing all the same all right [Applause] michelle first off i would like to give you the apple award for being such a great instructor to these kids as you can see the kids love this lady they love her a lot she's right on their level she talks to them she guides them she gives them confidence builds them up gives them the strengths that they need and so i have to say thank you from the bottom of my heart for all you do for our el kids so stay up here you're not done
025yet i don't know i have a flower so you're not done yet don't leave you know me if you're going to go out you might as well go all the way so here's a certificate for you so you can hang up in your office that says certificate of appreciation has been recognized for being an outstanding educator very nice i would like to recognize two other people this evening that have made a big difference in the lives of the students at ranch elementary not just the students but also also the staff so if i could have namisha tajani come on up please [Applause] namisha is the academic coach at ranch elementary she's like my right-handed woman i'm telling you we have our minds we just sit down and we start pondering and sometimes we think exactly
026alike and we're like well what can we do for the students what is in the best interest of our students how can we get our teachers to turn something around and do it in the positive most inviting way possible because students and staff well i should say staff they're overwhelmed they're they're overworked right now there's a lot going on but we just keep pushing forward because we know it's what's in the best interest of the students so i want to say namisha thank you for all you do you are the hardest worker i have ever ever worked with you are just right there you cover the tracks you make me think you make me go beyond my expectations for myself because you are like well what about this well what about that what can we
027do next what can we do and it's like hold it time out take a little break for just a minute but she is fabulous and i want to thank her so very much so i have a golden apple for her the blue apple i guess i have a blue apple for you they're heavy so hang on to it and i have a flower for you and one more so don't leave and a certificate to hang in your office thank you so much you're the best [Applause] so all of these come as a surprise because i didn't tell any of them why they were invited to come tonight next i would like madison browning to please come up to the podium [Applause] i know she's limping today believe it or not she was playing with her
028students uh we were playing sharks and minnows at pe and my shoe fell off and i dislocated my big toe yes so injuries on the job but here she is so madison this is her first year at ranch elementary fourth grade teacher fabulous i mean fabulous teacher what what a still when i borrowed her when i took her from another school because she just fit the mold and i'm telling you what this lady has walked into ranch learned a little bit about modern teacher and she is right there she is all about rotations she's all about sops which are standard operating procedures she got a vision and a code going and she just hit the road and she keeps saying am i doing it right am i doing it right and i'm like you are
029doing fabulous the kids are in rotations they're learning individually what they need to be learning so i want to say thank you madison for being part of our team and i just i i can't wait to see what your kids are going to do this year they are really going to soar high definitely [Applause] thank you ladies i have the boxes also up here for you for your um blue apple award thank you all right thank you ms cruz [Applause] so next we'll have the student of the month and we'll go ahead and dr blitz has come on up thank you mr interim president board members online and present dr wyman thank you i i at every board meeting i thank you for the opportunity to be here and to be able to celebrate these
030fine students i also tell you that it's the best part of my day and i'm very sincere by that i'd like to ask madden hastings to come up from the combs center for success we will have crystal bailey from combs high school attend our next month's meeting unfortunately she can't be here this evening could i have tristan blackfeather from combs middle school come on up look at everybody there you go love it tristan is a hard-working student who is always on top of turning in his work he's honest about the work he has completed and works well with others he goes beyond above and beyond with asking his teachers for help and is always wanting to complete his work if i have to ask kristen to complete his work he's always genuine about how much
031he's done and that was from mrs radke also mrs guzman said that tristan is a great student to have in class he's always on time to class and greets me very friendly in a respectful manner he does a great job participating in class discussions he will volunteer to help out when needed tristan we're all proud of you congratulations [Applause] could i have ignacio baca come up from combs traditional academy how are you good come on over here turn around and smile everybody this is ignacio ignacio is an exemplary student and a true example of trustworthiness he is honest in his efforts to do his best and when he makes a mistake he's quick to admit it and make the necessary corrections by the way that's the sign of a good leader just you know that
032he models integrity in the classroom and in other places on campus and he can be counted on to do the right thing even when an adult is not present ignacio shows a true sincere concern for others and conducts himself in a manner that's worthy of respect ignacio is a true example of trustworthiness congratulations ignacio bacca good job could i have allison kota come up from harmon there you are there's that smile can you turn around smile at everybody you're awesome this is allison allison is trustworthy trustworthiness is a quality of a person or a thing that inspires reliability she demonstrates this character trait every day in class by continually being on task and helping her peers when needed alison is not only trustworthy she's also responsible fair and most of all kind she demonstrates these
033traits every day by being an active learner and shows perseverance in her learning she is always attentive in class participates and works hard she is an excellent example of a trustworthy student congratulations allison [Applause] could i have isabella or coming up from ranch they say that right [Applause] that's right you did tell me that the ranch elementary team would like to nominate her for student of the month she is known for her characteristic trait of trustworthiness she's kind she's fair and she's honest whether it's in the classroom or on the playground she's always doing the right thing when no one is watching she's a big help to myself and other students around school that's mrs browning by the way saying that she's always finding new ways to help other people and she's a valued member
034of our classroom they are all very extremely proud of you congratulations [Applause] and could i have savannah richie from symington come up you got a crowd here tonight it's awesome savannah is an amazing student she was chosen for this character trait because she's trustworthy and because she's always honest when adults ask her questions about any given situation additionally her classmates and friends know they can trust her as an honest friend it's excellent savannah will let me know and that's mrs soto we'll let mrs soto know that she isn't quite done with her assignments and needs a little bit more time i can trust her to complete her assignments while applying 100 percent of herself in her work savannah is a pleasure to have in class and at symington congratulations savannah richie thank you this is
035a great time for parents uh to be able to take pictures of your children and congratulations to you all right so we're just going to take a few minutes just to pause so pictures family pictures can be taken and if you'd like to leave after the pictures feel free if you'd like to stay feel free so we'll just take a couple of minute pause did we miss one oh yes you can yeah they're they're awfully heavy they're hard knocked out we were close no wonder you couldn't find it no i'm like i saw you looking through i'm thinking what happened oh that's okay congratulations thank you we were warm earlier now i'm like that was feeling more comfortable again if he's out there okay so we're going to start to uh reconvene the meeting so
036if everyone who's staying could please take a seat okay so why don't we get started again uh next on the agenda is governing board member reports does anyone on the governing board have a report um i did attend the uh um annual uh i can't remember what it's called legislative delegate as well again thank you on september 11th we got through the entire agenda that was a new record we typically get through about maybe half but it was uh enjoyable to go and we did get the opportunity to participate in the legislative process so it was a good experience appreciate you helping us out with that thank you any any other reports from uh research ad okay so i have just a short one um asba is sponsoring a four-part uh budget seminar through the
037first three parts are a webinar and the last part is to be presented at the asb annual meeting in december the first webinar was this afternoon from four to five so i was a participant in that and you know i can't get away from anything having to do with numbers so um as much it was boring for most people i found it kind of interesting but there was really nothing to report except that it just gives background information on how school district budgets are built that's my report do we have any public comments no we don't no public comments okay uh next is the consent agenda and the consent agenda is just a way to group together things that are more mundane and commonplace into one large vote but we're certainly able to pull out
038anything that anyone has a question about to talk about on the consent agenda so is there anything anyone on the board would like to pull out and discuss separately on the consent agenda i took a look at it i do not have any questions on it neither do i uh chad or lisa great so then i'd like to entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda yeah i moved to present the consensus consent agenda as proposed okay we need a second high second at least a second okay so all in favor please say aye aye aye all four okay it carries four to nothing next i'll just move down here so now we're into action and items and discussion items and the first item is discussion and consideration of approval of the 2021 j.o combs
039unified school district annual financial report ms clark members of the board dr wyman members of the remaining audience action item 8.1 is the annual financial report and the school level reporting it's the arizona statute 15904 i know you guys enjoy me telling you all these statute numbers um it requires us to prepare the annual financial report and submit it i apologize if we can get this turn there we go um asks us to prepare and submit a governing board approved financial report no later than october 15th to ade what this slide shows you is what our budget was last year for just the maintenance and operations funds that we receive from the state and how much our expenditures were the nice thing is i can tell you that we were down 2.2 percent in our
040expenditures from the prior year that's actually pretty interesting when you look at we actually increased our salaries and benefits to our staff by more than three percent the offset came from the purchase services and our supplies which were down and some of that is attributable to the esser funds where we were able to relocate some of those in the approved allocations this is information found on page two of the afr just a further breakdown so that you know again on page two of the afr salaries and benefits attributed to 85 percent of our overall spending so what the state is providing us we are getting that into the hands of our teachers and our staff purchase services contributed to about 3 million supplies were about 680 000 and other others usually are fees that we
041might have to pay for something we showed that 69 and a half percent of a m o budget went to our regular ed students almost 25 went to our special education students just under 5 to transportation and then under one percent to our k-3 reading program specifically of course mno is not our only spending that we receive there are other funds such as our classroom site fund those expenditures are on page three of the afr which are over 2.2 million dollars 100 percent of that goes into the salaries and benefits of the staff of the teachers the unrestricted capital outlay that's uh populated on page four of the afr shows that we had a million over a million one in spending i can tell you that 71 percent of that went to chromebooks and instructional
042software that's benefiting our students and our teachers eight percent contributed to additional instructional aids that is helping our students and 21 percent went to the facilities in construction to help make sure our buildings are looking great the next program is the federal and state projects this is a variety of funds this could be our esser funds title funds idea cte various grants of that nature if you review that page you may notice that some of those show negative amounts that's simply because some of these programs do run until september 30th and we're just waiting on reimbursements to come back in but that's not unusual the other category or the other funds that you see that's 2.9 million that can be a variety of funds that we have such as tax credit contributions donations funds that
043were expended out of our auxiliary operations or our student activities accounts our bond proceeds we are going to be talking about that in the information item 9.3 but just a quick overview the bold or the darker line shows you what our proceeds are on the three different bonds that we have out the high the lighter blue the top bar shows you what we've spent and you can see than each of the different bonds we've spent almost all of those funds and again i'll go those in more detail in information item 9.3 one of the things i want to point out is the school level reporting those were uploaded onto the agenda item the school level reporting is merely the district's afr that i've just covered and but it's broken down by sight this is a
044requirement that started a few years back by president obama under the every student succeeds act our allocations are consistent with what we've done in the past meaning that we've allocated expenditures to the sites based on the student counts the square footage the meals that were served staff ftes or ridership but we did make sure that those remained consistent as we did in the prior year so that our reporting to the state is consistent year after year the other item that i'd like to point out is our food services they did a really great job serving over 520 000 meals and snacks their beginning balance was 763 thousand dollars just over with the revenue and their expenditures they actually brought in more money reduced their spending and they're going to be carrying forward a little bit
045higher balance than they did in the prior year that is a quick summary of our annual financial report in school level reporting are there any questions about the report than what i will mention well actually i just have a question and a comment you talk about the 85 percent for salaries and benefits and that's exactly what today's uh webinar said that most school districts are in the 80 to 85 range so we're we're right there and the three bonds that you were talking about those are the bonds that was approved in the 2016 election those are just sales of the bonds at different periods of time correct that's the 2017 18 and 19 bonds thank you the only thing that i will mention is that this board or the afr must be governing board approved
046with signatures since we don't have a quorum on site i'll be loading that up to docusign and i'll be sending that out if you could please look at that first thing in the morning so that i can meet the requirement of loading to ade by the 15th 15th is friday just roll on the same page okay send me a text i did have a comment from yes we have a comment chad i said thank you for such well-prepared reports thank you okay any other comments or questions okay then i entertain a motion to uh approve the annual financial report i move to approve the 2020 2021 annual financial report as presented okay in a second a second second by lisa all in favor did we get chad as well okay so it's eyes have it
047four to zero thank you yeah oh yeah actually don't get done with me i have action 8.2 for you we have the uh fiscal year 2020 capital plan yes sir in accordance with arizona revised statute 15-20-41-b agenda item 8.2 presents the fy 22 capital plan to the governing board for approval and submission to the arizona school facilities board the capital plan identifies projected october 1 2021 enrollment our adm projections for the next 10 years and residential development information within our boundaries this information becomes the basis for the eligibility analysis for the funding of new schools in the future with the assistance of arcadis capacity projections for the k-5 6-8 and 9-12 schools are attached to the agenda item for your review the attachments consider current enrollment new homes projected new enrollment and all of this
048is compared to our building capacity and our minimum adequacy capacity limits to estimate what when our capacity will be reached please note that when i say k568 those are sfb requirements although our facilities are not in that we did edit the numbers so that we could comply with the standard of reporting the projections show that based on our eight enrollment we will reach capacity in fy 26 and our 912 will reach capacity in fy27 now that being said we know our area is going to continue to grow we are going to be working with applied economics to work on an updated demographic and enrollment study to ensure that we stay informed and can bring the information to you with what our future projections are and also so that we are accurately reporting to sfb in
049timely manner so that we can make sure we get our buildings online are there any questions about the capital plan okay any questions by any of the board members no questions none all right good thank you then we need a uh motion to approve the capital plan i moved to approve the capital plan as presented and a second high second thank you lisa okay so we have a second all in favor please say aye chad two okay so all four of us four to zero in favor uh next is item 8.3 discussion and consideration to rescind the policies as part of policy advisory 707 12 to 7 15. uh what we have here is you remember last two months you did first and second reading for all the policies related to statutes that changed as
050a result of last legislative session one of the questions that came up coming out of the state budget was lawsuits against the state for what they did in terms of the state budget the law says you have to have a single subject matter and it must be incorporated in the title of the bill and there was any number of agenda or any number of items within the budget that more than likely had nothing to do with the budget itself in the state the two examples and the first lawsuit which has been ruled on by uh school groups would be uh mass mandates and mass and vaccine mandates uh nothing really related to budget there but they were put in along with a lot of other things the judge ruled and although it was ruled in
051in maricopa county uh the superior court judge catherine cooper ruled that there's parts of the house bill 28 98 which was the budget bill are unconstitutional and void therefore all that was not all it was some of the things that were approved the last two board meetings you now have to rescind asba has decided to take the tactic of they will rescind stuff if this gets changed on appeal by a higher court then we'll come back to first and the second read now for rescinding you only need one read whereas if you don't adopt you have to do a first read and a second read so yeah effectively in uh sections 712 through 715 are specific policies that have to have language removed from them uh because of of the judge's ruling and uh 700
052is an entire policy if some some districts had not got to adopt them yet but since we had we will just strike all of 700 completely and so it will no longer be in the policy manual so i would recommend rescinding these policies uh given the the judge's uh uh ruling questions about that question so dr wyman just for clarification the judge ruled not on the substance but on the process is that correct yes my knowledge is on the process that that that they did not follow what you're supposed to put in the in the budget bill and the single subject matter uh there are the the lawsuit brought by the uh i'll just say school plaintiffs uh there was a couple different groups focused specifically on on the burb the brb that makes up
053a portion of the the budget that only impacted schools there's a second lawsuit out that on the on the budget that's more related to towns cities and towns and so there may be another ruling that per se wouldn't affect us but may solidify this judge's ruling i'm sure that in both both cases those will be appealed if it if it goes against what um the legislature should be the legislature has been doing this for years um and it's just kind of the notion of scope creep it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and the impact this year became more politicized than maybe previous years and so what may have been approved with the winking or not so to speak people said enough's enough this year and so that's why there's two lawsuits this is just
054the lawsuit related to school districts but there is a second lawsuit out there that i'm not sure when they're ruling on okay all right thank you any other questions comments all right then i'll entertain a motion i move to rescind um policies seven hundred and seven twelve through seven fifteen okay in a second i second it thank you lisa okay any uh other comments no so all in favor say aye hi hi hi we got all four okay and it passes four to nothing okay next is item 8.4 consideration and discussion of approval and acceptance of real property donation of land by the wales ranch llp yes this is the item that i had last week or last month that they that the royals ranch llps that we postponed uh this is a situation where
055there's new development going in north of comes road between kenworthy and schniff given that as well as the where farms property that's the south of of combs ranch we've been working with them for several months now about rooftop fees and land donation for a possible school based on construction initially they had donated a piece of land that would be probably about the midpoint of that particular development and they had asked if they could potentially move it to a different location so initially we said yes their concern was to then pull it off the agenda so they can figure that out our concern with the land uh is it would be located close to where there's a uh a deep pit uh quarry pit from i think the original uh gravel uh that they were pulling
056out of there and the only concern was that we had to make sure there was a safety issue there because obviously uh that might attract young kids uh to it uh they went ahead and had several meetings in in in their conversations uh their decision was to go ahead and move it back to the original place so we're back to exactly the same spot we were last month uh what this says is there'll be a donation of land and when we do a donation of land then instead of the 850 dollars per hour rooftop fee it becomes 550 so that'll be the rooftop fee uh we did have a conversation i spoke with um uh mrs hargis to get a little bit of uh background of what we've done in in this community when it
057comes to naming uh schools and their request has been that the new school when it's built uh uh would be named after uh the landowner mr jim i think his name is james jimbo wales and we've agreed to that so you'll see that in there so when you approve this just know that the naming rights are already there what's the final name of the school and all that i don't know but obviously it'll be in his name so is it jim wales elementary or is it his full name or what we'll work with the family to to uh respectfully uh uh honor uh his legacy in our community when we get to that point so i would recommend approval uh as presented okay any uh questions or comments from the board are we gonna remember
058that when it comes time to build the school yes yes and based on that well we will make sure we will make sure we would remember that yeah i mean what if you're gone and we're all gone i mean no way it will be cast in everything we do trust me we'll remember we'll start putting stuff on actually what we'll do just so you know because the land because the donation we know where the land is um we'll just put a note of it new elementary school parentheses um wales elementary and then that'll be a reminder we will not forget this okay any questions from our online members no no all right then i'll entertain a motion all right i moved to approve the acceptance of the real property donation of land by wales ranch
059llp as presented okay in a second i second okay we have a second all those in favor please say aye aye hi we got all the eyes okay so all four of us so it passes four to nothing next is item 8-5 discussion discussion and consideration for approval for the proposed aspa by-law change you know this is a bylaw change that the the asba's been working on for any number of years uh their other bylaws indicate what they have to get for a vote and so it's always a lot of times this this particular item is not approved not because there's not uh the positive votes for it but they have to meet internally within their structure uh two-thirds vote of all uh asba board member boards and so it's if if you don't get
060all the boards taking action then you may not meet uh that reflection it's really just to take the hispanic native american indian caucus and split it into two different caucuses so that on the asba board of directors right now the way they have it set up is a hispanic representative sits for one term and then a native american uh representative sits the second term this would be versus the black caucus which has an individual that sits constantly so they're just trying to divide up into two caucuses independently therefore each would take a seat on the asba board of directors and that would just add one additional person to the board of directors it is a consistent uh request and approval by asba's board of directors however they handle that that measure and so what the
061purpose of this uh particular agenda item today is is for the board to decide whether they're in support of this by-law or not in support of the spy law and that will give me the specific direction i can vote online deanna can a board member can but i've just put it down as you tell me the direction you want in terms of a vote and then i'll go online and vote yes or no based on whatever the board says so that's kind of what this whole agenda item's about so basically it's adding a seat to the to the board yeah questions or comments about this agenda item no any anything from our online folks no all right then i'd like to entertain a motion i move to approve the change to the asb asba bylaws
062as presented in a second hi second thank you lisa okay all in favor please say aye aye hi hi and we have chad okay so it passes four to zero okay next item item 8.8.6 discussion and consideration of approval of retention stipend if you remember when you approved the budget for this year uh we had several different stipends within the budget um uh that we're gonna move forward with uh this is using esther funds this is directly what essers was just described or decided to do which was to help retain attract and retain uh employees and so we said we would go with a one percent stipend for all eligible employees those eligible employees would be those employees that were working with us at the end of last year and who came back and are
063working for us as of september end of september this year and so uh this is just an approval of of those individuals and the amount they will get so i would recommend approval as presented questions or comments no no anything from our online folks nothing okay then i'll entertain a motion please all right i moved to approve the one-time retention stipend for all staff as presented in a second i second thank you okay all in favor please say aye aye aye all four okay it passes four to zero next is item 8-0 8.7 discussion and consideration of approval of the jail homes unified school district hearing officer list for 2122. this is a list of individuals that if we were to have a student that were involved in a situation where they may be long-term
064suspended long-term suspended or expelled they would hear the the case we have not had that in my three years here but uh this provides us the uh the most flexibility if something should happen where we want to move forward with that we have a number of different um practices in place that hopefully uh we'll keep this at a minimum uh the individuals that are on this list for the most part you'll see myself and dr deplicis uh in the district more than likely wouldn't use them but i put them on again because you don't know all the different situations that may occur everybody else with the exception of ben hufford is trained through the trust and the discipline in the hearing officer practice mr hufford is actually an attorney and i just put him in
065there because there are certain situations that are contentious enough and may involve legal situations where i think it's in the best interest to have an attorney that's been approved and so i just include him in the list and then we would use mr hufford if we had one of those situations so i'd recommend approval as presented questions comments no anything from our folks online nothing okay so i'll entertain a motion please i move to approve the list of hearing officers for student disciplinary hearings for 21 22 as presented and a second i second okay we have a motion and a second all in favor please say aye aye all four okay it passes four to nothing uh next is item 8.8 discussion and consideration of approval of paper education as a sole source provider for
066online tutoring for school year twenty twenty one twenty two and i'll ask mr cox to come up and explain what we're doing with this mr president board members and my posse out here got to keep them got to keep them engaged i'm very excited to bring this uh yeah i know what they're doing what are they doing we're very excited to bring this to you tonight as you know with the with the pandemic the last couple of years sorry my asthma is acting up a little bit tonight uh we we have identified a need for some support for our students and we recognize that while our teachers work very hard it's not possible for them to be 24 7 available for students when they have when they have issues about a month ago mr berkshire
067and i were at a east valley curriculum meeting and gilbert unified was talking about a a group that they were working with called paper and really what paper is is it's a 24 7 tutoring service that we would purchase that would be available to students these are certified teachers who've gone through the process now that paper puts them through their content area experts students can get support in four languages they have teachers at in every grade subject available and they are there's a process that they vet these folks and they make sure that they have content expertise it is not a video chat it is is an online chat where they students can go on they can type in their question and they get a tutor who appears on the other end what i like
068most about this product is they don't give the answers to the kids it's really a socratic method where they ask questions of the students to guide them through several weeks ago myself and dr wyman and dorsey and marcus along with mrs ridge and and mr farabee were given a demonstration of this product and it was very impressive to watch the tutors the the gentleman that was doing went on as a student and then he asked a series of questions and they asked a series of questions back and they guided him through this process to arrive at the point where he had an understanding of what it was that he needed he needed support with and so we think this will be great opportunity and the best piece of this is our teachers don't have to
069do anything uh we will roll this out to parents and to the community we will make them aware there are short training modules of about five to ten minutes each that our teachers can go through and familiarize themselves with this uh and be able to use it but it doesn't require the teachers to do anything other than to guide the students to this website then the great thing is for the teachers if they take the time to do the the tutorials and they learn this then they get in they get a real-time report of the students that are going online they can see the questions they're asking they can see the issues they were having and they can see the response of how the guide the guiding that took place they can then choose to
070use this to have a conversation with a student the next day to make sure that they got the support and the help that they needed they can also go back and look at the topics that were being discussed to see if there's some re-teaching that they need to do there are all kinds of processes that are available really in looking at this i didn't see any downside to to what we would be providing our students and we really think this would be an opportunity for them to get help again as i said 24 7. they will give us reports that tell us the the most used time of the day with the districts that they're currently working with there's a lot of work on the weekends there are kids who are going on late at
071night because they forgot they had to do their homework or they didn't understand and they can reach out and they can find somebody that's willing to assist them so i we really think this is an excellent tool that our students can utilize and again it's not putting anything else on the plate of our teachers they can utilize the information that's coming to them but they don't really have to do any planning or anything with that so with that i'll entertain any questions that you have questions or comments yeah is there any data about how often students might use this they were able to they could give us the data they they track the number of hours that kids are using they can actually see what students are on there so they were able to provide
072because it was from other districts they were a little cautious about giving us actual student data but they could tell us the percent and the numbers and things like that that were on there they'll give us that as well mr ray they'll provide us with what students are on there how often they're using it what times a day what subjects uh what questions all of that so how how long is this for how does it start when does it end we're looking to start in october right that right now it's a one-year plan this is eligible to be uh paid for through essers and so what we wanted to do before we did a long-term commitment was take a look look at quite frankly the question you asked is is where they gave us the
073data that show i don't remember off top my head but the chose districts did it but that's another district so depending on how they sold it their numbers may be bigger a little for any number of different reasons so we wanted to commit for this year see how it works see if the kids are utilizing it we really want to do a hard sell so to speak um and then uh once we see the data we will decide in the spring whether we're looking to extend this beyond uh uh the one year it's not even a one year commitment but the beyond the nine nine month commitment this could be something quite frankly during summer school the kids could use it so we did three through 12 just so everybody knows because it is a
074type in chat type conversation and so absent kindergarten first and second not being able to do that um we we chose not to go down to that level because it really becomes an apparent issue of trying to type in for the kids so initially we'll go 3 12 we'll assess it we may come back next year with another recommendation to either keep it or not keep it and we may come back with a recommendation to say what site we initially thought maybe 6 12 but the more we talked to him and communicated we felt 312 was probably the the best way for to help our kids so what what is our hope i mean i i think it's a good idea but i'm a little worried that i mean what if you know we get
075100 hours right i mean that when you're working that out that's a pretty expensive bill for for tutoring and i'll speak first then bruce if you have something i think our hope more than anything else is uh beyond the pandemic if we can make this thing work the way we need to the the issue of homework help for kids is a constant issue and so if we have them that they have access to do homework i'm going to give you a different example that we were shown and bruce didn't speak about kids can turn in a paper that they've written and they will get comments back on that paper they can turn on that paper four or five times before it's due so we see this as a usage outside of school quite frankly although
076we're not designing it this way if i was a kid in class and i was doing independent work and the teacher was working with two or three students up at the desk and and couldn't get to him a kid could go on real quickly and ask a question in the middle of class uh doing independent work and get answers so we think there's multiple ways that it can be used uh you're right it's a big it's a a big ticket item uh we're using uh esther's dollars uh because those are one-time funds rather than building into what would be mno operational expenses uh and we're gonna truthfully we're gonna have to wait and see we think it has merit because there's always the question and has been not just in combs and all the districts
077i have been in of how do we get kids help it's in three languages so if we have families that are struggling with spanish we had an el presentation earlier tonight um the the family can the parents can see the conversation in spanish it happens to be a canadian company so your other language is french because of canada and then they do mandarin chinese but it just gives a chance for us to reach our kids that are that may be struggling with concepts and uh uh need some help because of the of the pandemic but truthfully uh mr ray you're correct we're going to push it like crazy but we have no way to valid or indicate what the number is going to be right now i can give you some some reports uh throughout
078the year to see how we're doing it i'd be more than happy to do that but we're going to do a fairly active campaign beginning at the end you know beginning next two weeks to when we launch it in october and then see how it how it goes we we debated this the question you're asking but we felt it was in the best interest of kids to give it a shot and and see if we can really get this thing pushed out and i would say mr ray that the data that they showed us from the districts that are using it it is it is significant usage that they're seeing and they had districts of all sizes some are size some much larger but they were seen hundreds of hours a week in those districts
079where kids were logging online and going in and getting help and support so is there any did they perhaps get a cost per hour for some of those by chance i mean i'm just i mean i think it's a great idea right i think it's a super great idea i i think it's a wonderful idea i just we can i'm just very worried that i mean 127 000 is a lot of money and is there a way to get it you know you know from now to you know mid-may rather than a whole year and then say how does this work from now to mid-may because if we're over the summer i get summer school but right i'm pretty sure i'm pretty sure that the time right it's going to be using the summer is
080very pretty but for clarification i don't know that i did a good job with that for clarification this is through june 30. it is not what was though so it's not for an entire year right right and the pricing and it's and that makes it even more pricey right but the pricing is actually better pricing because we're working if i'm correct in in conjunction with gilbert and chandler who are also moving forward with it so the pricing is based on a fairly large uh group block of people so but the data they'll give us is strictly for us yes oh yes yes no there the the pricing was just the pricing is is agreeable matter of fact i think any many number districts in the east valley if they were to call and decide to
081do this and talk to them they would probably give them the same same pricing because it's in east valley but the data will come to us because the kids are going to have to log in strictly from our data correct so we won't be getting anything but just our own data nope it's just our kid will have their own log in and they'll be able to go in right and so be our kids logged in through every single sign-on of what they're currently already using so i mean i'm just is there a way to get out if we're not using using it well that's a lot of right it's a lot what we'll do is is review the contract before it's signed our attorneys will review it i'm sure there's an out clause uh all
082contracts have an op clause my guess is and i'm this is a guess on my part but just my experience working with contracts you're either going to have a 30 day or 60 day notice for for uh opting out of a contract before the contracts uh complete so if we have that 30 60 day option uh then we would if if we had one kid sign up in the next three months then we would look to to opt out of that again our our hope with everybody is to is to to really push this as a program that is beneficial to our students so is there an opt-out clause though i have a pending your approval then or not approval there's no contract yet to be looked at because pending your approval or or not
083approval once i get the contract it'll be reviewed by our attorney and uh if you want to make a motion that says we approve pending uh an opt-out provision in the contract that's fine uh and then we'll look at the contract and review it and uh i'll be able to give you an answer to that i i would say very candidly we're not meeting the needs of our students right now with with with the amount of students that are needing support and so i'm very concerned that we we get caught up in the idea of it's expensive but we don't have anything to replace it if we don't provide support so right i get that but i know this is not the only way that we can meet a new student there are lots of
084other programs that we can meet meet that need with that those folks have have their pricing is not a whole lot different from what we're seeing here right but we don't have any anything to compare it to right i have i have one i have one to look at nothing else okay right so i and i i completely agree that kids need help that we're not meeting the needs of our student this is one way we've been presented one way and i think it's a good way but i also think i mean there are other ways that might not be as expensive as this and i that's all i don't have any personal issues with the company or anybody here you know i just i know that there are more there's more than one way
085to get kids support i just am very worried that if we don't and i'd like to say that hey if one student uses it and they got the help was it worth it well i would say it was worth it that the student got the help but that's still i think that's a lot of money to with no other options to look at to compare it to i think they're i think it's a lot i mean i don't know if anybody besides me has that same thought maybe it's just me i don't know well let's have any thoughts right i have a couple comments here from lisa she first of all wanted to know is it um mandatory for the students it would be an optional for students to use it right she also wants
086to know if uh what kind of campaign are we going to press forward to let the parents know how important it is well i've already been help them yeah i've already been working with miss kayla on that and we've we've started uh drafting some uh information that we would get out we would depend on that it would be helpful and certainly depend on teachers to make sure that they push this in their classrooms as well and i'd like to point out that as we're talking about personalized learning in the classroom and our students are working in in groups this would be an opportunity for teachers to have those students go on there and get support as they're working with other groups so that uh so that there's lots of support for kids at different times
087during the day this is a 24 7 program within the process at any time within the packet i gave you i apologize because i don't know the site i know there was i didn't load up the two case studies so i don't know the size of the particular district i think it's fairly large district but the individual here if you look at the pages with almost almost three three thousand eight hundred students have used the service again and said against ten thousand kids against twenty thousand kids that against thirty thousand kids i don't have that data but just to give you perspective over nine thousand online live tutoring sessions have taken place over four thousand essays have been reviewed and given feedback over 1200 tutoring sessions have taken place on saturday and sunday over five
088thousand tutoring sessions have taken place beyond normal school hours and so the most area that the students are getting the most help is math again this is just one district again i don't have the size there so but but it gives you some perspective of if it's rolled out correctly that there's a chance to to to make a difference uh with it and and that's what we're we're hoping to mirror uh with within this um within this piece anything else lisa further lisa further said that her concern is not so much for the program or the money as much as the exception or execution of the program she feels she would be more comfortable if there was a clause an opt-out clause to cancel after a month or two if you didn't see the results
089you were hoping again i don't think there's going to be an opt-out clause after a month what i believe through most contracts uh is there's a a a 30-day notice or a 60 don't notice that would be for any kind i mean if i rent a house i don't just get a walk away on on july 1st without notice i have to give 30 days so i will take a look at that if you make the motion that says we need to have a 30 day or 60 day opt out clause uh and then i will make sure that in our communication with the contract that that is reflected in the contract if it's not reflected in the contract then based on your depending on how your motion is i'm hearing something from from two
090people um then we would go ahead and not sign the contract and we bring it back for further discussion if the contract has that then then we have it we can monitor it and see how it goes anything else from lisa or from chad uh lisa said she would vote for that then okay i have nothing from chad yeah so i have a specific request if we're gonna be asked to look at something you know of this magnitude of this importance i know that this company right paper education i'm sure they're an excellent excellent company i think it would be important to present more than one thing you know more than one option and say you know here's here's option a here's option b here's option c you know here's why we recommend option a
091i mean i would feel extremely i would feel much more comfortable with with that than this and again i i am sure that um people are not looking at me in the most positive way right now but i just i mean yeah i just think it's important i mean you know and i think one of the things that my apologies for not bringing this up is i'm looking at the screen here uh at this point in time it is being procured as a sole source and so as a sole source and there's a social sole source letter in the agenda item the services there are provided are not readily available in other other sources and so as a sole source provider they're providing something that's not available in other places uh and so uh the
092districts that in this state that are going forward are all moving on sole source too and so the conversation would be is there another product that's available that does that and to our knowledge and based on the conversation we've had there isn't so that is why it's coming forward to you as a sole source right but what i'm saying is there's also there's other source there's other companies that provide uh something similar-ish you know i mean yeah no i understand that for learning and i understand that kind of thing okay uh i do have two questions one are there any subjects that it does not support that that we would wanted to and is there a way i know we're going to get reports about the usage of our students is there a way to
093get student feedback on how they feel about it and whether it was beneficial for them and beneficial in a timely fashion as well so i think that would be an important information to have okay great okay so i think we're ready for a motion but it might not be the one that's presented here that's fine well i'd like to get okay i would like to get a like a monthly report of what is happening with it right and then a projected cost for what this might be for you know upcoming years so that we can you know make a more informed decision okay as the year goes on so maybe this is the the greatest thing right so for clarity though just um i would ask that the first report be december because obviously if
094we roll it out october 31st when we have a meeting november 10th so right we'll give monthly reports as part of the um as part of the board agenda starting in december because according to this it looks like it it begins on october the 25th right so we're looking because we didn't know whether you're going to approve or not and then we have to get it rolled up we've got to work with all the different entities technology and some of those just to make sure we have everything we need i think we have another question chad says i'm fine with the original proposal for one year and then decide we will likely need more time than a couple months to see if it is good okay well what i'll do is is in fairness to
095the board we'll provide monthly reports starting december then the board can decide the relative merits of whatever the monthly reports are this is not looking good or this is looking good and so um uh yeah with the opt out provision if that's what the motion is then we would you guys will assess it as we as we bring it forward as an agenda item and then whichever board members want to discuss whatever they want to discuss then then we'll take direction at that point in time okay so if there's one more okay chad says it'll take a couple of months just to get the word out probably well right i mean i i'm worried about an opt out i mean i just wonder if that's an option but i mean they may not make it
096go but right again i believe that i have not in my career i've not seen a contract that's been signed that does not have an opt-out provision uh prior to the end of the the term of the contract all right okay so would you like to make a motion to include what your recommendation is because no i'll make a motion i think we need to do it as a as presented but i'm just okay because as presented does not say anything about an opt-out clause no right no i was asking i was asking if there was and i you know i mean i think it's important but i also just you know i mean in the future i really think it would be very important to i know this is a sole source i mean
097there's nothing like it but there still are other things out there but as a board just because i have something on agenda that says as presented as a board you have the authority to go ahead and make the motion however you want to make the motion so if you if you would like to make a motion that indicates acceptance of this of this uh agenda item with the following provisions a monthly report and a uh an opt-out provision in the contract then that's fine to make that as a motion and then we would go ahead and come comply with that with that motion based on if it's a if it's passed by the board so there's nothing wrong with changing the motion based on what you guys feel comfortable with if you feel comfortable with
098as presented that's great but if there's something that you feel uh we need to do more of or or we need to clarify in a board or an emotion you have the authority to do that right but is the company going to say we're not going to give you a contract but but i think i think the issue that we have with any company with any vendor is is this is what we need from you if the answer is no then maybe we're not going to do business with you i think what we have to do as for our fiduciary responsibility is to step forward and say this is what the conditions that we need if they believe that's not workable then we may be at an impasse where we either have to come up
099with a different solution we have to talk to them and i have to bring it back to you in november let's say because they have a different they want to do it handle it differently or they agree that they'll go ahead and give us the provision that they want but but i think that's the same in any contract and the more the the higher the cost for the contract the more it is critical that that everybody is comfortable with whatever we're going to sign and if the company doesn't want to do business with us then i guess we don't do business with the company um my guess is that um uh we'll be able to work something out if it's not exactly what i think you guys are asking me to do tonight then i'll
100bring her back in november if we can work something out it won't be the first time that we've had a conversation with a company that says okay sorry guys we got to do this different and won't be the last time and if they want our business then they're going to do that if they have a fundamental philosophical basis within their organization that says we don't do that then i guess we don't do business with them and we'll look for other other resources but that's typical of the conversation with companies and i don't have a problem with whole having that conversation with this company did you have deandra do you have i think i am going to make the motion then and see if i can capture all the comments that have gone on i moved
101to approve paper education as a provider of online tutoring for the 21 21-22 school year with two provisions two additional provisions besides what's presented number one that you we get monthly reports on usage by our students and number two that at the midpoint of the contract there can be a an escape clause if the services are not being used to our satisfaction does that meet the requirements for clarification are we talking about an escape clause or were you just talking about in a normal contract you have a specific number of days that you can give them notice that you'd like to like let's know so the escape clause is a little bit different you're saying that there needs to be a 30-year 60-day notice that allows us to remember ourselves from the contract that's correct
102if we're not satisfied with what's happening at the halfway point there needs to be it's not even at the halfway point i would just say as long as the clause is there if at any point in time someone says we're not satisfied with this then you just give them the 30-day notice and when the 30 days is up then you walk away from the contract okay all right so let's present it as dr wyman stated so now with all of that do we have a second second thank you okay so now uh let's vote on this all in favor of the motion as modified please say aye aye aye aye four eyes okay it took a while to get there okay so that completes that section of the agenda now on to item 9.1 discussion
103and information on student achievement fall benchmark results marcus good evening members of the board dr wyman i'm here today to do my monthly update on student achievement data so this month we're going to be looking at our beginning of the year benchmark at the third through eighth grade level uh our ninth through twelfth grade first quarter benchmark results and then our fast track reading screening results some things again talking about comprehensive assessment system we're looking at that district standards-based benchmark level uh some key points to think about for for uh when we talk about district benchmarks they are of high utility to us at the district level um and really what we're looking at is is the retained learning aligned with the state standards so so it's learning that the students have done is that
104aligned to the state standards do we have gaps in our curriculum do we need to look at structural structural or instructional changes related to our curriculum in terms of teachers the value to teachers with this really goes down to standards literacy teachers looking at at the assessment and the results and the items on the assessment and does their understanding of the standards align with how those standards are being assessed and measured and one of the other key points is we want to make very clear that these district benchmarks are not a student grade they don't go into the grade book they're not part of a student's grade this is a temperature check to see where our kids are and again of that high utility at the district level one of the things about using dna
105is it's different from galileo galileo provided we would submit our standards and and numbers to galileo about two months ahead of time they would put together an assessment that was normed and so when we got results back that normed assessment basically said this percentage uh the here's a scale score anything above this scale score is going to be proficient anything below is not going to be proficient much like um our state achievement tests dna doesn't norm our tests so we have to determine a proficiency band basically so our test results come back as percentage scores so at the district level we've identified that anything above a 75 percent uh score would be proficient that would be mastery anything below 75 percent would not be mastery and we'd use the the arizona state um proficiency bands
106to to to align to that so 90 to 100 is highly proficient 75 to 90 is proficient uh 60 to 75 would be partially proficient and then anything less than a 60 would be minimally proficient this is a something that at the end of the year we definitely plan on looking at our student performance on our benchmarks comparing that to their performance on state achievement tests how well do those proficiency bands align to student performance and we'll make adjustments moving forward as we go forward our third through eighth grade beginning of the year benchmarks these are comprehensive standards-based assessments that are aligned to the new state test aasa they're pre-built so dna illuminate works with inspect and they they review the state testing they look at the released assessment items and then they build a
107mimic around that it's a comprehensive meaning that it's looking at end of the year mastery of all standards versus looking at specific targeted standards they'll take this one three times over the course of the year beginning of the year middle of the year and then right before state testing it's technology enhanced so it's an online administration there's not a paper and pencil test meaning that they're going to be using items that are highlighting asking them to draw a drop down menu move things around all sorts of different technology enhanced ways of looking at an item beyond just multiple choice the window for the administration of this was july 26 through august 27th and it was just in ela and math so when you look at the results i want you to remember that mastery as
108we've defined it is 75 or higher beginning of the year on end of the year standards so here's our ela results so you can see that very few of our students are showing proficiency that's the reason why you have that second column that shows the average percent correct so you can kind of get gauge as to how close we were to that 75 percent on average again we expect this number to go up as kids actually are taught those skills um but at this point in time at the beginning of the year this gives us a snapshot which kids are actually already there and and those kids we definitely need to be doing something different with and then the remainder of our kids what do they need for math uh the difference between math and
109ela language arts those standards are pretty much the same from third grade all the way up through 12th grade they just get more complex as they get older and so if i'm reading in fifth grade i'm still continuing to use those same skills in sixth seventh and eighth grade so when you look at those results this isn't surprising that i'm seeing some kids proficient in ela math on the other hand doesn't have that same their their concrete in skills and there is some spiral to those but the reality is i'm learning a new skill pretty much every day in math and so these scores really are not surprising at all at this point in time 9th or 11th grade is a little bit different um we administered these at the end of first quarter we'll
110administer another one at the end of second another one at the end of third quarter these are actually built by us at the district level uh they don't have a mimic for our state standards that illuminate has created and we want to ensure that we are still focusing on our state standards when we're assessing our our curriculum rather than a ct so it's built by us it's an end of the quarter standard space assessment on priority and sporting standards have been identified at the district level the math was a project that we worked with teachers multiple years ago we continued to use those math curriculum maps that were developed ela is aligned to our my perspectives resource which is a comprehensive again standards-based very excellent resource and we align the units to the standards that
111that are prioritized in those units again it was technology enhanced so it was online no paper and pencil the window for the for this one was september 7th through the 24th we only assess 9th through 11th grade we don't do advanced placement classes because their curriculum is different than what we're assessing and then for math algebra 1 geometry and algebra 2. we don't do 12th grade just because there aren't enough items at the 12th grade level to really give us a good ide to put together a robust set of assessments so these are on standards that should have been taught over the course of the first quarter um again you've got the average percent correct and the proficiency i can tell you that we've already started working with the high school on these results we
112had our content coaches meeting with both the ela and math teams today at the high school to discuss they just got these results last week so they're they're now diving into to look at those pieces this is our math then the last piece that i'm going to share with you is our reading screening results we don't have the math screening or the sel screening results at this point in time because we just finished those and i didn't have the the math ready in time to get this to the board so i'll bring the math and the sel later the the reading screening this is basically identifying students that are at risk of not being able to read or meet those benchmark skills so there are two different formats that we screen kids in one is
113a curriculum-based measure which is basically their specific probes that are measuring specific skills that students children should be able to do and then there's computer adaptive testing which is the cat and that basically means that i will start out at grade level answering a question if i answer it incorrectly the the computer is going to adapt and ask me a less complex question if i get it correct they're going to ask me a more complex and the idea is each time i answer a question i start out with a broad range and i'm narrowing that range as i'm answering questions to get to an accurate picture of where their general reading ability is so kindergarten and first grade they take a test called early reading in kindergarten they're looking at the very beginning they were
114looking at concepts of print onset sounds letter names and letter sounds in first grade they're looking at word segmenting nonsense words sight words 150 and then sentence reading that the results on k1 early reading and then two three cbm reading those are what we report to the state for the move onward reading legislation cbm reading is a fluency test basically students read three passages they have a minute for each passage we're looking at their accuracy and how many words they can read in a minute and then a reading is a general reading test that's a computer adaptive test and then four through 12 they do one they're both online auto reading is an automaticity test it's basically looking at select reading skills including recognizing letter names and sounds decoding identifying the correct spelling word synonyms
115detecting difference in word meanings uh very quick test to look at that automat how automatic are kids in terms of recognizing those things and then the a reading which is a general reading test so in kindergarten first grade this is what we report to the state uh 30 of our kids in kindergarten and first grade are uh where they need to be uh they they are what's considered to be low risk so about 75 70 of our kids are at some kind of risk either some risk or or high risk um again remember that these are specific probes um and the score that you're seeing here is composite of those four probes put together kindergarten is pretty much right where we normally are with dibbles at this point in time that first grade score that
116is lower than our normal double score but again it does not surprise me because we had a lot of kindergartners that we didn't know where they were that have come back to us as first graders so they didn't have that kindergarten experience but now they're here for first grade [Music] second and third grade what gets reported to the state is the cbm reading score those two scores right there are comparable to what our kids have done in second and third grade previously using dibbles and then this is our fourth through twelfth grade beginning of the year results uh remember that auto reading is that automaticity um it allows kids to attack tac basically that text without having to spend a lot of time processing and then that a reading is just that general reading ability
117again those numbers are the percent of kids that are at benchmark or above so for us in terms of next steps district cia review and analysis of the data we've already started diving in and spending some time pulling this apart one of the things that we've started to think looking at is that automaticity piece especially with math when we start looking at some of our sites and our high school numbers realizing that we may need to be going back and looking at things that help kids process those math skills in a mental way without using a device that impact their ability to to do higher level math once they hit algebra one in in geometry and algebra two site-based data follow-up with principals and coaches so i go out and meet with the principal coach
118we've also done some work with our coaching team in looking at the items and kind of items that are being used so that they can then provide that guidance on their campus related to the screening results so that site mtss which is multi-tiered system and supports meetings to determine intervention and progress monitoring needs we just did the training with all of our staff on progress monitoring within vast bridge so that'll start asap and looking at our kids and and monitoring uh those high-risk kids and then our content coaches as i mentioned today they've been went to the high school worked with math and ela and other they've also been working with our site at the elementary level data teams to deconstruct those standards align their instruction to that assessment and then again our district pl
119days continue to focus on providing support for staff on standards literacy and transparency for students so any questions okay good work guys our game plan with these tools are solid it's excellent that we're using the data to drive our instructional decision making keep up the great work and thanks again for preparing these updates it is wonderful thank you chad um i have a question when you're presenting things by the grade level i assume you also have it broken down to each individual school i do i can provide that if you i don't know i don't want that but i'm saying if you see one school with very high results in another school very low maybe you know what is the school with the high results doing that maybe is different than the school with the
120lower results so i can tell you just like as an example the the automaticity related to math um cta which uses saxon which on a daily basis requires kids to engage in mental math and math fluency so there's a daily basically time test that you're doing with students and we know that time test has a negative connotation but there are other things that we could be doing related to mental math cta scores are higher than our other elementaries sixth grade i have 70 of our kids that are at benchmark or better better on that automaticity side um so it that that right there is something that we talked about that we can work with our sites on how do you develop that mental math using our resources that our elementary sites have the other thing
121i noticed with 9 through 11th algebra 1 geometry and algebra 2 percent proficiency well i wouldn't expect people to be proficient if they haven't gone through the course yet if they're only at the first quarter oh so you do oh so those were for what they should have learned up to that point so i know cindy met with the math team today and there were a lot of bajas as they were talking for some of those that what the high school is finding is that the kids are coming in behind and so they are spending time trying to catch them up and so some of those standards that we assess they haven't taught yet um and that's okay that's information for us to know and and those are our expected learning but we also know
122that if there is a reason for me to have to if i'm assessing kids formatively and i'm realizing kids aren't where they need to be and i need to go back and and the whole entire class has to to dive in more then we want to make sure we're given that permission as well all right thank you any other questions all right thank you very much just gotta find where i am here hang on a sec okay okay i think we're up to uh 9.2 discussion information on utility savings as part of the energy savings performance contract yeah this is uh uh what we did with uh all the work that we did last year the 17 million dollar 12 of the 17 million dollars that we did to up improve our schools what you'll
123take a look at is verity that is mid-state they've gone through a name change so when you see verity versus uh mid-state um uh that's who we're talking about here and so you made the request a couple different things we're gonna backtrack just a little bit because some of the data that we're gonna we're not gonna be able to present some of the data right away that that you were asking for and i just want to go back uh and and we worked with vergie on this particular uh powerpoint they were gonna have someone here that could uh be here some speaking for provergy and some of the data that they have see do we have this as a presentation not in the screen set yeah it is so he's downloading so what do we
124need to do to just move it through yeah i know but i'm not good at hand gestures so i know a single hand gesture very well but other than that single hand gesture i don't know other hand gestures okay go to the next slide okay so we'll take a look at some of the construction updates some of the stuff that we did uh they're required by law for measurement verification i'll explain what that means as we move forward with that and then there's actually three phases that we'll talk about um and we'll get into the implementation savings and what uh what that really uh what that really means and then and then what that applies for the next phase so you can go ahead and move to the next one so again just as a
125reminder with these conservation projects first of all they are governed by statute 15 to 1301 um and the money saved on energy and operating costs can pay for the building improvements so if you remember that was a lease that we took approximately 11 or 12 million dollars uh that would be paid off over a 15-year span uh based on the savings that would be generated the savings that were guaranteed if the project fails to reduce cost is guaranteed they use the term mid-state in here but it's actually very g pays the difference and so uh going into this process the annual savings is projected to be seven hundred thousand dollars a year uh uh and the the payment amount is in the neighborhood of six hundred thousand to start with uh so you're gonna go
126ahead and see that so the way the process worked is they did an audit of our entire district to see what what projects would meet uh state statute uh they then came up with a rough order of magnitude or rom that was the meeting we had i think it was february of 19 i might have my dates off a little bit or 20 maybe february 20. then they go ahead and do the implementation they put in all the construction put everything in place that's in for implementation and then we go ahead and work on the guarantee so we go to the next slide just real quick summary i'm not going to go through all this but you can see if you remember we did primarily a lot of lighting throughout the district hvac at three
127sites uh solar array at all sites and we can talk about the solar a little bit uh new controls and building systems that would be fmx system was installed and there's some efficiency uh measures so those are the those are the work and i think the key piece and all this all that work was done with no tax increase this was done under uh this program which is highly beneficial for school districts go ahead go to the next slide so this becomes a critical piece when we talk about measure measurement and verification and per the the agreement they will be coming on an annual basis to talk to us about what the savings are because it is based on weather and what was the weather like in 17 versus 18 versus 19 they use a
128three-year average of of what the baseline is and compare against the three-year average they don't necessarily go month-to-month type thing because you may have had a hot september and 18 versus a cooler september right now and so you have a baseline period which is what they started with from the beginning uh the implement implementation period the key piece for that is uh the work was being done essentially from june 20 to uh to june 21. we were seeing benefits of the work as it was being done and so if we went ahead and went through the high school and changed out all the lighting in high school in september of last year well then obviously we start to see the benefits of the savings from the change out of the light bulbs throughout the uh
129throughout the whole year even though it doesn't count per se towards the measurement and verification because construction is still ongoing and the way the the contracts in the law reads is you got to have all the work done before you start the the comparison against the uh the three-year baseline period but so at this point because it's june of 21 we have essentially three months is all we have but we're going to give you some data on what's occurred as part of the year-long implementation plan and then the performance period would be june 23 21 through june 22 and that merit measurement and verification piece that they're required to come to us they would come to us next june july whenever whatever it is and talk about what are you seeing what are we seeing
130with it i will tell you that their initial discussions with us based on what we've done so far is they have no concerns at this point in time uh that we'll be meeting it again we'll see over the years that may change over the year i will tell you as i think you may remember but if not uh they haven't had it very often but they've had a couple times where they've had to pay the guarantee so it's not like they hit it perfect every single time but but uh we're that's where we're at with it next next slide please and so this is what you can see over the year in terms of the savings just based the percentage savings just based on the implementation period so you are seeing we started out in
131june of 20 where we were just starting the projects and on various months you're seeing a pretty consistent savings in some months better than others maybe just related to any number of different conditions uh you do have that that uh the baseline piece and again we they use 17 18 16 17 18 19 uh in some ways because of the the covert piece gets a little bit screwy and they were doing the analysis before covert really hit and the improvement was made before we shut down schools or any of that kind of stuff or the agreements were made before we shut down any schools but you can see that when you take a look at at what they're looking at they're seeing a fair amount of savings you're starting to see something in may where
132the savings looks to be a little bit greater and i think that's because that's when we're finishing all of the solar projects coming on board so you're seeing early on savings with lighting you start to see it bump up a little bit and that's probably indicative of some of the hvac that was put in place and and additional buildings coming on board with uh with water savings and or or light savings and then also it was probably i think december or january last year where we started to see the solar coming on board and so that's where you're starting to see some of these gains next slide this shows you some of the solar production you'll see in some cases expected versus actual if you look at the middle school example they're not quite on
133that's to be expected in the implementation of solar because you got to work the bugs out of the out of the system as it puts in they are are getting what for the most part now what we expect please note uh i know the question i brought it up will we ever get solar on the parking lot out here in the in the d.o and the answer is more than likely no because of the way solar works uh you do not want to over produce solar in this state because the buyback on the overproduced energy is pennies on the dollar and so when they went ahead and did the rough order of magnitude right at the beginning all they did was project for us to do about 60 percent of what could be the total
134solar that we could capture because that way it left the latitude to not over produce there are several districts when they did the original solar stuff going back to early 2000s where uh they over produced and what they were selling back to the grid was that pennies on the dollar and actually was a a negative drain on the um on the school district's budget and so when we move forward with this the question might be where did you put it and why did you put it where you put it it's because they priced out at 60 of what we could produce so that we didn't get in a situation where we overproduced and we had to sell back to the grid at a negative uh situation so uh if we look at this in the
135next couple months you will see more than likely actual production equal to or above now that they've gotten all the the solar projects done and they've been able to balance them so to speak with what they're supposed to do well actually when you look at it right now it's not too bad except for cta right which is the only one that really is far off right right it's not looking bad at all no no they're working on that next slide let's see so at this point time they're still working on water savings but we have 225 000 in electrical savings 18 000 in solar and 2 000 over 2 000 in rebates so we get the rebates for when the solar stuff came on board we have a very extensive uh fmx program uh that
136we will bring to you at a future time to show that you can get into as far deep in the weeds as you want to in terms of what solar is taking place uh we have a couple things where we're looking at putting some kiosks in our schools that talk about uh healthy buildings and what's happening relative to covet but we're also going to link it to some of the slides in the excuse me not fmx but orchestrate and the orchestrate program can tell you exactly you can go to any site any building and see what their savings is to date against uh uh against the baseline but but we have to get a little more data before we we do that next slide uh and this gives you a little bit of what orchestrate
137is uh and so we'll do quarterly updates throughout the performance period and you can see that that screenshot that they have of the 46 49 is part of what's in orchestrate uh we're also looking at futures at future stuff uh within the systems that we have to see if there's other projects that are available in the future fresh air intake and demand control ventilation just to address some additional concerns we won't do any of these and come to you guys with a with an energy performance contracting unless it meets the the letter of the law in terms of giving us the savings that we say savings that we have and i think the last slide if i'm correct is then really just any questions that we may have i'll do the best i can or
138bob can do the best we can to answer uh given that this is coming from verity but uh we've had a significant number of conversations with them so we think we can answer all the questions but just note you might go above my pay grade and we may have to get you an answer at another time well i just want to thank you i mean that's the kind of update i was looking for and i know that long term we're going to have more data coming our way so that that's fine okay okay any other questions okay all right uh 9.3 information and discussion on the capital bond expense report ms cook members of the board thank you for having me back again um today we're going to talk about the bond capital plan once
139again this is an arizona revised statute it's 15-481 and 15-491 that requires school districts with an override and a bond to present the information to the public in regards between i'm sorry between september 1st and october 31st regarding how we spent the funds in the physical year this is a quick summary that shows you based on what the pamphlet was that was issued out what our budget was for each bond and what was expended for each of the different series with our bonds being the 2017 2018 and 2019 it also provides you a total for the series of expenditures last year our expenditures for the three bonds was just over a million dollars so most of these expenditures were actually done previously you can see that based on all of our expenditures for the different
140items we still have a balance of roughly two million three hundred eighty one thousand it's a little bit to spend i was not here when the bonds started but when i looked at everything i thought it was important that we go back and we look at what that 34 million dollars has bought and provided to the school district you're talking the combs performing arts center the district office the warehouse and transportation buildings the field house at the combs high school and tennis courts middle schools basketball courts bus lanes at combs traditional academy concrete repairs classroom technology and copiers custodial equipment security cameras the comb high school gym floor was renovated and you also brought buses to the district that's a lot and when i looked at it and i've looked at how much you had
141spent i thought it was important that we go back and not only look at what do we do last year what is what are the benefits these bonds have brought to the school and this is being utilized by the students so this is just a quick reminder this past year what we did use the funds for were fencing and classroom renovations at combs traditional high school or i'm sorry combs traditional academy shayna's word i'm throwing high school students at her the renovations at the combs online center for success various indoor and outdoor furniture and equipment upgrades that were taken throughout the district additional chromebook purchases which is benefiting our students marching band uniforms for the combs high school and if i got the picture correct off the internet those are the the uniforms that you
142purchased the illuminate software for our students instruction we did weatherization and roofing throughout the district and we also purchased two new microbuses for transportation so once again all of the proceeds from the bonds are benefiting the students and the staff and the community of the combs district were there any questions about what we spent or where the furnitures further expenditures are going so the uh two point whatever million that's still available to spend do we have a plan for that yet since i'm fairly new i'm familiarizing myself with those bonds and one of my main goals this year is to sit down with dr wyman and look at the different categories that we have left determining what the variance is and where we need to make sure that those are expended in accordance with the
143pamphlet that was published to the community the other thing that we're looking at the the one nuance you have to spend the bond money by a certain amount of time so it's not unlimited time that you have it but the influx of the esther's dollars now changed things a little bit so it now becomes very similar to the 17 million we we worked on in the past year how do we leverage and maximize all the dollars and all the different funding sources are available us to us to get the most bang for our buck so to speak and so we'll end up doing that same thing but with the essers dollars it does it does start to slide things in so you may see some things that some people might say that's interesting that you're
144choosing to do that well the reason we're choosing to do that because between the 17 million we spent last year and some of the essers dollars that we're spending it probably frees up some capacity that maybe wasn't anticipated two three four years ago and we'll go ahead and take some things that that we can do to even further upgrade our uh our sites i'll give an example right now we're talking about uh including uh new uh marquis at all of our at all of our schools that are uh linked together so we can get a constant constant message out could we normally have bought that more than likely no but now when you're you're saying we're going to get uh additional dollars for more computers like we did through the rate funding you don't have
145to pick up those those costs if you can go ahead and pick up something else the wrestlers escaping me right now all of a sudden you freed up capacity that wasn't there so we're trying to look as broad-based as we can and leverage the dollars to the best of our ability to make sure that number one all the sites and all the departments get something but maybe we can pick on some things that were probably down further down the priority list but now we have more dollars available uh that we can go ahead and raise them up on the priority list so we'll bring those to you you'll start to see them at the next couple you know four or five board meetings as we're as we're moving forward uh we're looking at some things
146i'm going to give you an example something that we're looking at we know both harman and simonton have an issue with water retention in the middle of their campuses uh and so we believe that with the funds available we'll be able to come up with a system it may not happen until this summer that we can make sure that we don't have standing water sitting in the middle of the campus especially this time of year or at least the last few months could could bring mosquitoes and so how do we get rid of that again might have been a little lower on the priority list because of other things but now it's it's moved up and so those are the kinds of things we're looking at what are our real problem areas and how can
147we address those issues what's our beautification situation i know we've gotten beaten up quite a bit in the community with weeds and stuff at some of our schools can we put different dg in front of some of the schools bigger rock and not the smaller rock we don't know because we're just investigating it but we're looking at trying to take a look at what people have complained about and see how it fits in and again those would have been much lower level priorities and we probably wouldn't got them but with the new dollars i think we can leverage them uh in a creative way like we did last time uh to maximize what we're doing so we will be bringing that forward to you in in the near future all right good thank you any
148other questions comments on this item all right thank you all right 9.4 discussion and information on changes to policy i haq career transition to work education the first reading yeah this is just the first reading so um really it's just changing the the um uh career work uh uh internship experiences from 120 hours to nine to sixty hours uh take a look at it and if you have any questions you can talk to mr scrogum or myself uh between now and the second read second read will come in november and then it will go into into our policy manual at that point in time comments questions no okay um item 10.1 request for future future agenda items any input from any of the board members no all right then i think that completes the agenda
149so i will make a motion to adjourn at 803. do i have a second second okay in favor aye aye we're out of here marcus i'm asking chad hold on he had a question