J.O. Combs Regular Board Meeting 7/14/2021

001it um just um okay we're staying away [Music] okay at least i sent a text and i don't have your cell phone in my number oh my phone you need to do that so you can send it to me yeah i am so sorry i'm just like i only have wyman i don't know after that you better hurry up hey you made it with 48 seconds to scan because that clock is a little hey that clock is a little slow yeah yeah you know i wonder are we supposed to go by that clock even though it's wrong because it's a good question because i go by myself we should bring it up to him yeah like after the meeting or something because all right you guys mike's gonna be hot shelley that clock no that

002one is accurate yeah i may be coming we started the meeting without you before okay we are going to start this meeting at six o'clock six o'clock baby um call to order at six uh i need a motion to adopt the agenda i move to adopt the agenda second all in favor aye aye aye aye motion carries four to zero mr mr um ray will not be with us today his um he's has some family things come up so i'll go ahead and do the pledge i pledge allegiance indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay we have approval of the meeting minutes we have um for the june 9th meeting the board retreat for june 22nd and then the proposed budget meeting for i mean june 21st and the proposed uh for the budget

003meeting for june 21st i moved to approve the minutes for the regular board meeting on june the 9th i second hold on do we have to do each of them individually i would probably do each of them because they're listed individually i would do three motions okay um so we have bob and then lisa um all in favor aye aye aye motion carries four to zero so the retreat i move to approve the board retreat meeting minutes from june the 21st a second all in favor all right aye motion carries four to zero uh the budget hearing i moved to uh to approve the minutes for the proposed budget hearing on june the 21st a second all in favor aye aye aye motion carries 4-0 lisa i'm so proud of you okay um baby steps

004baby i know baby steps we got that second in there though okay um superintendent report thank you madam president a couple different things uh right out of the gate just to note that attached to the agenda is the asba event calendar i know we had a conversation i think at one of the board evaluations about making sure that everybody's aware of those events that are taking place throughout the year with asba so this calendar is reflective of july 1 to june 30 and just has a variety of different events that you can attend and it's linked into the board meeting so if there's anything that you see that you want to attend for example we know that that is the county meetings i believe it's being held in october uh not sure that they have

005selected where but pinal county will be in october they go through the entire state going to the different counties you can at least start to put stuff on your calendar if that's something that you want to attend sorry does it say in there where the um pineal county one is no they haven't this they have not decided we put in for it i let them know we'd be willing to host it because i think two years ago when they had it we had suggested that we'd be the next year oh yeah that'd be great if they came here yeah so then we're gonna have to travel i know but i don't know if uh they'll make their decision to let us know here in a little bit okay uh one of the first events they

006have just so you know is the law conference uh and so that registration is open so please let mr costa know if if it's something you want to go go to the pre-conference is wednesday the 8th of september and then the conference is actually thursday and friday the 9th and 10th can you email us those like okay thank you and uh it's it's at the jw merritt camelback inn mr ray will be attending the 11th i believe because he's our delegate assembly and that's on saturday the 11th uh i'll just be attending the 9th and the 10th i won't be going to the pre-conference but if it's something you want to go to just let us know do you want to thank kayla fulmer and the marketing department we've got several things that have come

007out in just the last little bit um we have our annual report first annual report that's been out we'll have some hard copies that should be here by the start of school we have virtual school tours that were just released today that should be going up on our website and and there for the for people to see what the schools are all about and we also did a video about combs and we want to show that one some people have seen that some people haven't but we want to go ahead and give it a show we're going to show it quite a bit to a lot of different places we think it reflects the district uh very well um and so we want to go ahead and show that so we'll show it now and

008then we'll move on with our report every child deserves the very best education every day and when you work with that is your focus and your center you can't go wrong [Music] every day combs is putting kids at the center of learning by giving them that voice and that choice we're doing things like flexible seating we're using data to drive our instructions and students are behind the wheel of the decision making with things like learning walls and helping break down standards with their teachers what we're trying to do is create student-centered classrooms that really personalize the the learning environment for our kids when you personalize learning environments and give them options and choice then we think we're getting them prepared for the next phase of their educational career really that's about making sure that they

009have characteristics that are going to be needed by kids to be successful in school the most rewarding part of my job is when students get excited about their learning i love those lightbulb moments that go off when they've achieved their goals i can see it on their whole face their big bright smile makes me happy i think homes is a premier district because we're always putting our students needs first we're looking at their strengths and their weaknesses you know helping them to master the content that we're teaching what makes me so proud is that i'm a product of this community i live in this community i work in this community and i have two combs high school graduates what makes combs the best place for kids is the experiences that they will get while they're

010with us we have award-winning music programs championship sports teams and the other thing is that we're all family here there's no such thing as a stranger in the comb school district we just have some of the greatest teachers and admin that really want kids to succeed you know whether it is going to college or maybe it's you know you're dealt with high school and you want to go straight to the workforce i think at homes 2 we also not only teach academics but we teach social and emotional growth and i think that's very important with the development of children and i think that we work in a district that puts students first if you choose combs you'll get to be part of a family a family of dedicated people that care about you and care

011about your kids and your family if you choose combs you'll get a vibrant community that's growing that has solid values that cares about the educational process of their kids if you choose combs you're going to go ahead and get dedicated highly qualified teachers that want to work with your children every single day if you choose combs you will in fact get a nationally recognized school district that's on the cutting edge of what it takes to prepare our kids for the next generation you'll get all that in a caring loving environment that focuses on your child and make sure that your child is the center of everything you do very good [Applause] and i think it's critical when we take a look at not only that but if you take a look at the those tours

012and the annual report that um it's been said by lots of people lots of times you you move through your successes way too quick you dwell on negativity but you move through positivity very very quickly um and i think that our ability to celebrate who we are and what we what we do is is absolutely critical in a very very competitive arena that we are in in public education and this whole marketing plan through kate kayla's leadership has been about making sure that we do market the successes that we have and it allows for us to to make sure that when people see us they recognize that we are a nationally recognized district and maybe their perceptions of who we are and what we are is different this is critical in lots of different arenas

013but but in one little one uh we do have a the board approved the stipend that would be given in the spring for increased student enrollment we believe these three uh forms that we're pushing out will help in that arena to help our staff uh so that more people want to come and we are seeing positive returns so again thank you to kayla and her team and and everybody that participated uh i will tell you that the messaging is is very unique in all of these but especially that one we just saw nobody knew what anybody was going to say those all those interviews were done independently of each other and questions were just asked and people just spoke from the heart and so it's nice to see that you get a consistent message even

014though it was not planned that way and so turned out to be outstanding so we appreciate that very nice miss boomer yes very good you you didn't even really look that old or anything in there i know you looked good caleb made you look good usually that the the camera takes years off your life so you know that one's and adds weight so thank you i want to have you guys i know i'm getting beat up up here i do want dr duplicious to come up uh present this award that we received we talked about it last month but the district has received the platinum award from healthy arizona wellness program i'll give it to you right here and this is just an award that recognizes businesses making efforts to positively affect the health and

015well-being of their employees their families in the community through evidence-based work site health initiatives and promising programs a lot you heard a little bit on on that last video that talks about social emotional learning about mental health mental awareness uh that applies for staff as well as it is for for students and the well the wellness committee has worked fairly hard over the last i think it's four years to continue to get this award and the platinum is the highest award we can get we've kind of moved up from from silver gold platinum type thing over the last three years so congratulations dr plississon we appreciate the wellness committee let's see um i'd like to just move on into staff recognition we got a couple different staff recognitions we'd like to do okay the first

016one uh we we're starting coming out of last year we're starting the uh combs blue apple recognition awards uh what we did for those of you that are new is as we chose the apple obviously that's uh signifies public education and and when people do something special in public education or a way to thank them kids bring teachers an apple and so we decided to go ahead and and use that as a way to recognize staff uh the difference is we're gonna color blue that represents our district so it's just our way to recognize those individuals uh throughout the year uh from the different schools and different departments because it is the um uh the summer we will go ahead and start with the district office so we'd like to recognize two individuals in the

017district office one would represent the support staff and the other certified staff so for the support staff if i could have liz chavez come up please liz is in her second year with combs and she's kind of the face of what's taking place uh with synergy questions uh and with everything going on with our online registration so she's constantly out there working with the front office as well as our community to help move through a myriad of issues and and schedule changes she's gotten to the point where she's done such a great job and knows what takes place and what needs to take place that they actually call her the goat of the team for those who don't know goat that means the greatest of all time so she's being recognized as as doing an

018outstanding job in the district and we thank you very much liz for everything you've done for the second one um not sure if she knows that she's coming up that was purposeful but we would like dorsey mid out to please come up um dorsey we've had a whole bunch of training that's taking place and i know it's a team effort with the instructional coaches and the content coaches but dorsey has just done an amazing job demonstrating leadership to um get this training underway uh we just had a little tidbit of it with the new teachers on new teacher orientation uh today but what she's gonna do on on monday and tuesday and what our team's going to do on monday and tuesday of next week is is as i've said on several occasions second to

019none in any district i've ever been in in most districts and it is through her leadership her kindness or caring about what we do her true desire to make sure that we make a difference in your lives as teachers that she's able to do this and so we just wanted to take a moment to say thank you dorsey great job we appreciate [Applause] it now we also have a group of people in the audience that are brand new to our district who are trying to figure out what's the best way to do it wasn't sure how many people are going to show up but because of the groups that are there we're going to ask you to please come over here to the side and line up yes you get to be a star and

020what we'd ask you to do is is come up to the podium there we'll get it going and just introduce yourself and what you're going to do in the district your job that way the board can get a face with with the name as we move through with some activity so please come on over and we will have you introduce yourself single file line up no touching no pushing you can do it you can do it though okay i'm madison browning i'm at ranch elementary and i'm teaching fourth grade all right welcome welcome thank you [Applause] hi i'm colton christensen i'll be teaching fourth grade at ranch elementary ranchers i am tiffany guerra and i will be teaching kindergarten at ranch oh wow welcome [Applause] i'm hannah pugh i'll be teaching second grade at ranch

021elementary welcome thank you hi i'm ashley lynn and i'll be teaching ninth and 10th grade english [Music] [Applause] hi my name is krista moak i will be teaching sixth grade at ranch nice hello i'm maylie claire and i'll be technology at simonton and harvard nice yes good job hello i'm rebecca bendel and i'll be teaching sixth grade at simmington elementary welcome hi i'm monica sperry and i'm also teaching sixth grade at simonton what a team there hello i'm jennifer lewis and i'm teaching visual arts at combs high school nice good welcome hello i'm dominique bono and i'll be teaching eighth grade english at combs middle good school hi i'm cassie newman i'll be seventh grade language arts at combs middle school nice hi i'm tracy weaver and i'll be the instructional coach at the high

022school hello i'm demi frazier and i'll be teaching 10th and 11th grade english at the high school nice welcome hello i'm noah noelle parker i'm at combs high school doing inclusion english wonderful thank you hello i'm jessica dodie and i'm going to be the social worker at the high school oh hi i'm rachel riebold i'm the school counselor at the high school hi i'm jessica maloney and i'll be the new instructional coach at cta i'm michelle sheldon i'll be one of two new counselors at cta hey michelle hi i'm emma stephanie and i'll be in charge of student activities welcome hi my name is karen finn and i am the buyer for the district office for them great wonderful michelle sheldon i guess this is the only way we get mr sheldon to our meeting

023that's right nice i like that and we just want to take the moment we've we've done it a couple times and we'll do it again is just to welcome you to our family uh this is representative there are others i think it's approximately 60 maybe 65 total um just a way to welcome us welcome them to our district uh we are part of family so getting to know faces and names together becomes important these members of the board up here do a lot of positive things for you as employees and so we want to make sure they have a chance to to see who you are and hopefully you'll have a chance to combine whether it's to get an award or give a presentation for something you're doing in in your school or in your

024programs that's what it's all about so again thank you so very much for joining our family we're truly blessed to have you with us and we can't wait for uh an amazing year that's going to come up so thank you very much i apologize i usually come to your guys's like welcome to the new teacher i just got back from colorado last night so i do apologize for not being there so but i want to congratulate everyone for being here on a night when the suns are playing correct right i know although you guys are going to get to leave if you want the rest of them have to stay i was saying they're selling what i'm saying would you please be quiet so we can move to 6 30. how much longer i'm just

025choosing so you want to go ahead yep you're going to tell them they can go you can oh okay you know what we have a yeah you guys if if you guys wanna you you're more than welcome to stay because it's highly entertaining yes however if you want to go um please go but it's only because the suns are playing right because nope that did not include you we have to be here you're staying that's all [Laughter] no i don't think so no they're fine i'm not going to make a move um okay public comments no all right no none moving on consent agenda any questions on the consent agenda if no questions i'll take a motion i move to accept the consent agenda as presented i second woo all in favor motion carries four

026to zero so we have an action item our first action item discussion consideration of approval adoption of the um fiscal year 21 22 district expenditure budget and you're going to be with us for a couple of these right a couple agenda items okay madam president members of the board dr wyman the remaining members of the audience we are here to talk about the adoption of the 2122 district expenditure budget i believe we have a powerpoint that they're going to pull up for me i promise it's short they've given me the power oh that's nice well that's what they said i did turn it on do they have the power oh no that's okay we'll get our technology guys to just move the screen for me maybe okay tonight as we talked about we do need

027to adopt the annual expenditure budget arizona revised statute 15 905 detects that we must adopt this by july 15th so we're in one day early the proposed budget hearing which we are required to hold um was done i apologize the slide says july 21st it was june 21st so we did made our hearing um once the adoption is approved we will go ahead and get this posted on the ade website okay this is just a reminder as miss slovicky indicated on june 21st the proposed budget was not fully updated because the legislative was still in session we did do the base level and we did do the support level in the proposed budget that gave us an mno budget of roughly 27 million eight hundred and eighty thousand seventy two and capital of two million

028six hundred and eleven thousand eight hundred and eighty four thousand dollars now what we do know at this point is the group b the additional factors have been approved and that is the group b weighting that will increase from point zero zero three to point zero nine three our m d s c a s c and s i d s c will also increase from five point eight three three to five point nine eight eight they have also added a new group weight which is for our gifted students of 0.007 taking a really quick look these revisions cannot be made at this time because we have to adopt the budget as it was proposed these will be presented to you with these new updates on the september 15th meeting or prior to that meeting but

029just a little quick fyi just taking in the factor of the first two items we're looking at an increase in our budget of a roughly 192 thousand dollars almost 193 thousand dollars with just those increases that we did receive perfect okay all right bob you got questions i do not scroll it back to the second slide scroll back to the second slide i don't have my microphone on sorry um i'm sorry the one after to the base support level right there transportation so i was on a webinar with asba um this morning and they had talked about the base level increasing above the numbers that are shown there did you get any information on that i think it was 44 42 something that's probably included including the treat your compensation this 43 930 uh yeah

03093 43.90 does not include that teacher compensation all right thank you any questions he's our numbers dude he's i already know and that's quite all right the number with the cheaper teacher compensation was four thousand four hundred forty five dollars and fifty three cents that was it okay look at you all right all right so no there's no other questions we'll take a motion okay i move to approve the adoption of the fiscal year 2021 2022 district expenditure budget as presented second all in favor aye aye aye motion carries four to zero discussion and consideration to authorize expenditures of money in excess of mno fund uh subsection for fy if fiscal year 21 as probably supposed to be 22 right yes ma'am yeah twenty one two twenty one twenty one all right so what we

031got here this is an item that is brought to the board each year it basically says that we cannot uh that you will allow us to exceed any subsection as proposed or as indicated in the adopted budget however we will not exceed the maximum of the general budget limit that was proposed in the budget you're going to adopt tonight that's under asr um 15.905 g okay any questions no questions it's a good idea okay and i appreciate it not need a motion i move that the governing board authorized the expenditure of monies budgeted within the mno section of the budget for any subsection within the section in excess of amounts specified in the budget for fiscal year 2021-22 as presented nice segment all in favor aye hi all right i'm sure will i scare you

032there for a minute um motion carries four to zero all right discussion and consideration of approval of qualified evaluators for the j.o combs unified school district for 2122. yeah state statute requires the board approves uh qualified evaluators every year that would then go in to do the evaluations of the certified staff and so this is just that agenda item so i'd recommend approval as presented no question okay nobody has any questions on that no you have a question oh there he is i was like i didn't see somebody there okay i don't have any questions then i moved that uh that the board approved the 2122 joe comes unified school district qualified evaluators as presented all second all in favor aye aye aye motion carries four to zero all right um discussion and consideration for

033approval to waive the liquidated damage second for certified teacher contracts and administrative contracts yeah i'll go ahead and um uh present the information but i know this was the request from mr mcleod so you may want to add some additional information just for background information we do have a liquidated damage clause in contracts for certified staff it's a thousand dollars for administrative staff it's as policy or regulation currently reads the dollar mount is used to help fill the position uh and it is up to the board to actually do any waving it's not at the purview of the of the superintendent uh right now you have liquidated damage clauses and about probably 50 percent of the school districts around the state you may see you may see that number increase as we have a more

034severe teacher shortage and the impact it has in terms of people leaving contracts and placing districts in difficult positions so the question that comes up is when would we ever uh make a recommendation to the board to wave at this point in time the only time that i'm aware of that the district's ever made and i can speak to two in in my time is if there is a very very unique situation we had a legal situation in one case and we had an unfortunate uh situation with a spouse passing and it's those kind of unique situations that we would bring it but otherwise we will hold steady to this uh i know that the the question was can there be more flexibility and when we bring that forward and i think that's really the

035point that's up for discussion tonight it shows as a motion to approve but that's only because of the context within which mr mcleod asked in this particular situation there would have to be a motion and a second and then a vote to make that change if there is no motion or there and no second then effectively this agenda item would die for lack of a of emotion so that's kind of the structure that we'd have to go uh with and and uh i will say this much the one issue that we do have is um with liquidated damages we had a teacher walk on thursday of last week and we had a teacher walk last night and that's a day and a half before their their reporting and so in some ways the discussion may

036be is the liquidated damages high enough and do we do do we need to make modifications that speak to uh maybe a lower amount up through the end of june the middle of june in a higher amount after a specific date because obviously we're we're now in a situation in the case of the one individual it's a high school teacher we have 180 kids 170 kids that we're now scrambling to find a teacher um but i think mr mcleod was more about the flexibility for employees that have been loyal and get to us and and and how do we move forward with that so i'll leave it to you to explain and then we can have a discussion okay so i think i mean the reason i want to bring it up is it just

037uh just in my experience through the years as well just it seems like i and and and i know the way the wording is here uh just so you guys know i mean i'm not i'm not opposed to the liquidated damages as part of the contract and i think it's in place in my years as a principal as well it was necessary tool it's helpful it can be persuasive it can be it can discourage somebody from maybe leaving you in a lurch which is really the purpose of it and yet even with that in place like dr wyman said even even with this in place it doesn't necessarily prevent people from from making that choice right because we're basically giving employees an opportunity to say you know i i recognize that if i leave and

038break my contract there is a penalty involved and and i and and so they they have to weigh that into their considerations um i just believe that that it would be nice if there could be a little more flexibility in the execution of that for example in situations where a teacher or an administrator a principal for example if they were are to leave but it's not necessarily in a situation that's going to leave us in a lurch that's not necessarily uh you know that's we still have plenty of time to find a replacement or things like that uh they've been a great employee they've been fantastic we've appreciated their service to still execute that clause when somebody has been faithful and loyal to the district especially um i think that that's unnecessary and it's one

039way of kind of hey thanks for your service but kicking the pants on the way out even though you were a great employee you still have to pay us because you because you're leaving um i just kind of think that it'd be nice if there was some discretion there i've just worked in other places where there was a little more discretion they had you know we had this in place but there was a little more uh flexibility and and i think dr wyman actually explained it pretty well there that but that's kind of what i've been thinking is is there a way that we can make that so there's more a little more discretion so it doesn't have to be an automatic it's just always applied across the board no matter what unless those really

040really unique situations where you know husband passed away or something really crazy i i think it could be i think it can be waved a little more often than that for even just for the sake of grace and compassion so here's the it's always in our um consent agenda that so-and-so is leaving and this is liquidated damages i guess if you felt uh reading through the consent agenda if you felt that we needed to discuss that then you would have to bring that up that would be something we have to do every time you realize i mean that's something that you would have to go through and say oh well i want to bring this up or whatever but that's in our consent agenda it's gonna be i feel like it's kind of a dicey

041situation um i feel like if one we we did it for one the next time it comes up if we didn't do it i think that we would be probably have a good lawsuit on our hands well see that and it never came up in in other places where i've worked in part because these are individual situations it's private and you know interaction between that person and the district or you know the organization and um it's nobody's business really whether it's applied or not it's not usually broadcasted or displayed but if it if it's put in if the language is put in properly there's no there's no room for litigation if if it's up to the discretion if the application of it is up to the discretion of administration or the board or whatever it

042would have to be up to us right right now right you know right now i can bring the recommendation forward but you have to make the decision because it is part of the termination of the employee um it's it will be a public record i mean it may be in the consent agenda under personnel but it would be and and the two situations that we had it was in there and and there was a recommendation within the consent agenda for that um the one thing i would ask if you go down that path is is we're gonna it may not happen tonight but we're gonna need to have a little bit more conversation about about what you really what the board would like as to say tell me that which you believe is valid for

043a recommendation versus that which you believe is not valid because because i do have the concern that that ms hargis expressed that it'll be every single meeting because it's going to get very very subjective i know it could occur right now because we did those two unique situations but given what they were i don't have a problem defending that if we don't have that kind of unique situation then i do think it becomes extremely difficult but again so what i think will happen is you will end up hearing these on a regular basis for perspective if if it's a thousand dollars and i know in some cases a little bit more but but you're talking about somewhere in a neighborhood of 32 33 individuals in the last year that we this is applied to and

044so therefore you will be dealing with this on a regular basis because it will apply to 32 or 33 people which which is a significant number so we just you'll just have to be very very careful if you decide to go down this path and try and define that so i know why i'm what's the rationale for me to bring person a versus person b right now i think i have a pretty good handle on it because of the severity of the nature of it but consistently in my career um uh we have we have said no um in other districts i've been in anywhere there's been liquidated damages the general rule is no unless it's very severe so that's just my perspective bob do you have anything uh yeah i'd like to take a

045little different point of view the employee who leaves is breaking a contract they've signed it in goodwill and good faith we've offered it that way they are breaking the contract and the penalties for breaking the contract are stated very clearly so it's not like it's not known up front but the further point is that it leaves our poor hr department in a lurch when you think of all the people that we greeted and welcomed to the district and the ones that couldn't make it and all the hard work that they had to do to advertise publicize interview probably by phone get letters of recommendation interview in person maybe see how they perform in mock situations all that time and effort is then wasted for the person who leaves and they have to do all that

046again to hire a new person but generally no no i'd like to finish and what i'm saying is that it is not fair to put them in that situation when they are doing a tough job finding qualified teachers and administrators in the tight situation that we're in and if we eliminate that policy or weaken the policy we are telling people it's okay to break a contract if you get 5 000 more in queen creek it's okay to break a contract if you if your husband or wife gets a promotion and one spouse wants to stay home and raise the kids i don't think we should go there and i am totally against changing the policy okay all right lisa i tend to go towards the the perspective of if we were to change it it

047becomes much more subjective and i don't know who made this comment but when we when we decided to not follow through with the liquidated damages with the two other individuals this year which was very rare um even at that time it did cross my mind of is this really equitable how is this equitable and so i am definitely in i agree with much of what you've said and i also think that the more subjective we become the more challenging it's going to be to make those decisions and it does open us up to a variety of challenges that i don't know if that's really the path we want to go down so i would have to say that i would definitely agree that we need to leave it the way it is i think it's

048much more equitable it's fair and truthfully when you look across the valley on and you look at our liquidated damages i think they're very reasonable you got something else yeah yeah um so uh no i appreciate what you guys say and i well you guys know how much i respect you guys and i and i understand i i think those are legitimate concerns and um i appreciate that and i can see where you're coming from and and um just i'll just make a couple points and then we can go ahead and move forward because i can see that you know it's not going to change but um the one was just a couple of things just one is i i do know that in a situation i i realize that it's going to be a

049little more subjective and in this particular circumstance um for me i i actually think it's a reasonable place in which to have some subjectivity and so i'm more comfortable with the subjectivity and that that would be created which is why that doesn't bother me as much and then the other thing is you know when we talk about some of those situations um you know you bring up a good point especially if we're left in a lurch but really being left in a lurch is usually kind of a it's not as common it's not as like what we talked about here there was a couple of things you know being left like this week or in the you know couple weeks before school that's being left in a lurch but you know as an administrator for

050years you know hiring people every year was a common thing anyway i mean you're always hiring people and you're and that that whole process is is part of the process and so um and so i recognize you know there's always going to be the hiring i don't know if the liquidated damages as part of the contract has any direct relation to the fact that there's so many people you know needing to be hired or not hired each year like the number of people who are hired this year and then the only other thing was my other question is just you know even with our liquidated damages in place and even though i've told you before i mean i do recognize and i think it's not a bad thing to have but but even with those

051in place i you know i wonder has has it really prevented very many people from leaving you know we talk about you know the number of people who've left and knowing like you say bob they know they know what the damages are but they've left anyways um and that's why i think what leads dr wyman to say well maybe we don't even have it high enough you know maybe it's not a big enough threat i don't think it's to to prevent them like hey you it might prevent them but it also that money goes towards rehiring so i mean there's a lot that goes into that and an administrator signs their contract and so if they if they decided if they were like oh i'm gonna try to look for another job okay cool so

052then it would have opened up a long time ago we had it would have had big a bigger pool so i feel like like they the the longer you wait timing makes a difference yeah right so i think that i don't think that that was a bad thing yeah you so i just think that well in the one situation yeah i know but i'm just i'm just saying that when you do it early that's why we have your contracts out the teachers administrators district employees whatever that gives us time to the people that are starting to make those moves right yeah no but i think the other thing to keep in mind that that the the the difficulty of the situation i mean we're talking right now the start of the school year uh if

053we want to use an administrator if they're if they were to go ahead and get another opportunity and leave at christmas time it does create a heck of a problem if we get a teacher that leaves at the quarter if we get a teacher that leaves in february and so it's it's not just this time we've we had several i mean we had 30 plus people last year and many of them left in the middle of the year and all of a sudden we're now scrambling and that's where we got into the substitute issues and all that so it creates a hardship not just at this point we have a couple examples for this point but i will tell you last year you probably would mark 25 of the 30 people were probably people that

054left us after the school year started and we were in a position where we had to figure out how to fill it and that that creates the issue and and i i agree that that that's being left in alerts that's exactly why perhaps you'd want to have something that in place but yet even with it in place we had 25 people leave us after the school year started last year so either all right that wasn't a dissuasive enough um situation so anyways that was i i just was you know you know i know it's worded here that you know to whether to actually have it or not um i've never actually been of the opinion that we should not have it at all um you just wanted to be more subjective i just was wondering

055if there was a way that we could if we needed to reword policy or we would contract in such a way that we would feel comfortable so that we could be a little more subjective in this area that was right and and as an agenda item i had to write it in a way that there was a motion but the board has the option to modify whatever's up here whatever motion so we can still modify to keep and make the adjustment for uh to be more subjective but as a title i think you have to be careful we want to we want to go ahead and change the liquidated damage and make it more subjective it's probably not a great title so you can still make that adjustment we kind of sit up here and

056we have to make these decisions yes we do know some of our employees on a personal basis or we know some of them better than others so you you almost like have your heart in the ones that you know and you and you can feel for them but what about the ones we have no we we really don't have a a connection with so i think that opens us up to even more subject well yeah and but and if and if we had and if we were to create some sort of criteria like dr wyman suggested um it would it would help guide that a little bit and it could be a little more subjective and even somebody who who you know if they if they were gave us enough notice and if it wasn't

057going to throw us into alert you know what whatever the parameters were that we chose to do so my suggestion was really just whether or not we there was a possibility to look into that i see what you're saying i agree with i mean i i i understand and respect your guy's point of view on that um i just think that this is one i mean my perspective is i think we could be a little more subjective on that um but if that's not what the board you know majority of the board is going to want i understand that so um you know the other the only other thing i'll put out there is you know dr wyman also point out that you know half of the school districts in the state have something like

058this in place but that means half of the district doesn't i mean half the districts in the state don't even have anything like this they there's districts that don't have like data damages no because it depends on depends on where you're at and what your situation is and and why you chose to to move forward with that so there's any number of unique situations where a district may not feel it's in their best interest uh to have the liquidated damages and so yeah it's not a it's not an across-the-board automatic in some cases it might even make the district look good to not have that because it should demonstrate some trust and faith in the employees that we're not we're not worried about trying to make you afraid to leave i would not be surprised

059if the number increases just because as the shortage of teachers increases then the ability to lose somebody and replace them at the uh at any time during the year makes it harder so wouldn't be surprised if it increases but as of right now it's it's still about a 50 50 proposition and and quite frankly it could be related to whether it's the philosophy of the administration of the philosophy of the board lots of different boards have different philosophies about things and you may have a a group of individuals that have the same philosophy as chad does which is fine and so therefore they've said no thank you we don't want to put that in you may have others that say no we think we need to and so again you're talking about independent boards within

060communities that make their own decisions based on on what their community is all about chad i just want to say i appreciate you bringing this up because i think it's worthy of discussion but um i want to go back to something dr wyman said and something kind of alluded to i am more in favor of instead of having flat liquidated damages having a tiered the more you leave us in a lurch the more you got to pay for leaving us in a lurch so um i'm wondering i think that's a reasonable idea i'm wondering what kind of a um of a study group or what kind of a process do we need to engage in if we want to explore that that would probably be something that we would throw into maybe ccc this year

061and that we would have it uh prior to the release of uh contracts and that's in favor of that way people know what it is they're signing for that's a good idea all right so yeah we can put that on a later agenda right if ccc came up with a recommendation we'd move it forward as part of that either part of the contract the change to the contract or that so with this agenda item you probably need to call for a motion and if there's a motion then it does can i say one more thing for your call for emotion oh you need to hurry up i am i am no i'm just going to say so just serve as knows as the motion lays as to whether or not the choice is whether to

062still have liquidated damages or not i do think we still need to have it i would just like further discussion about some way that potentially we could find a way to revise that a little bit in the way we approach it so as it states here of course i will be in favor so go ahead and pretty much all right so do you want to make the motion then you're just taunting me now okay well bob can make it now you're just being mean i don't want to make a motion oh okay i want to leave things the way they are no no you have to tell them to make the motions on what's there okay so i move to not approve waiving liquidated damages clause in certain certified contracts as presented i second so

063you're not taunted i'm in favor hi motion carries four to zero right now i didn't hear did you vote he did i'm sorry yeah four to zero um so we will put that on uh after you're going to take it to cccc we'll take it to ccc and then we'll we'll see whether it actually comes on i mean it how it how it's moved forward we'll see because you don't necessarily approve all the changes to every single contract right so we'll i'm not quite sure what it'll play out with but i'll i'll promise you that it'll go to ccc for a discussion item i would love that i think that would be it all right wonderful thank you that sounds good thank you for listening to me discussion and consideration for approval of the covford

06419 mitigation plan for the 2021 21-22 school year and i would ask that you guys open up the one the first one the 19 the kova 19 21-22 planning document this is this is the district's uh plan that will go up on the website there's uh the american rescue plan requires that we put something on on the district website in a manner that is understandable by i'll just say the general public there's a second uh attachment that is is what ad requires the two are relatively speaking linked what i would just say with with this particular um plan is that it demonstrates what's occurring at this point in time uh if we get over to the the high transmission the red we've just kind of summarized at the bottom what that means when we're going

065to say that we're going to put it into i'll read it real quickly strict implementation of mitigation strategies per adhs school guidelines i will let you know that the american rescue plan does require that we bring this forward if there's any changes i think it's every six weeks if i remember correctly 12 weeks six weeks or if there's any changes i will just say that i believe that there may be some political changes here in the very short period of time so don't be surprised if something may come back to you in august but that's the way the plan is supposed to work so even though we have a plan up here just note there are still moving parts to this plan it is still political in nature what we've tried to do with this

066plan is provide you and the district with as much flexibility as we possibly can within all these moving parts it does change a little bit now that we have a not to get too political but we have a republican governor and a democratic president and so therefore you may not have the two groups on the same page relative to what you do or don't do and it now potentially has impacts on do you get esther's funds do you not get us refunds what the cdc do what does adhs do we've tried to follow adhs so that we're consistent which what's currently out there but there there are some political uh uh things that are moving uh i'm not saying more because they're just popping at five o'clock this afternoon and i haven't had a chance

067to figure out what's going on uh one we look at it again for the most part in the blue yellow and orange we would react as we currently are reacting in our schools while we get up into red the gist of it is out there as if that we're implementing or admitted if we're open and implementing our mitigation plan for like a better term with fidelity then that means we would continue with the same plan therefore and what that plan would be is to go back to basically what we did last year relative to any number of different uh issues that are out there the one that it's real simple we currently would allow volunteers to come into our schools if it gets too above red then we would not allow volunteers to come into

068our school and so there's those kind of mitigation plans because that's what we did last year we said hey we're now in a red situation we do not want uh people in our system that may be uh providing uh or bringing in the uh the pandemic more so i can answer any specific questions at the bottom we tell you what what the criteria is again that's off of adhs the second criteria is a new one so i'm not totally sure to be honest i haven't researched it how they determine it even trying to look on adh's adhs website they do have a chart but they really don't explain what it is but it will tell you what what where where the county is on those two it's not at the zip code level and so

069we then have the issue at the county level not the zip code level i do have a question um i'm looking at the high transmission rate category for masks in the asba website this morning they said as part of the budget that was approving all the associated bills schools may not require face masks right and they said they said that very strongly so um how does that jive with what we may feel would be a safety concern for people to wear safe face masks at this point in time and that's the reason why may is up there at this point in time it is state statute and state statute says you cannot require it right so therefore we would not require it um again this is some of the modification again there could be changes

070um even as we speak and and maybe if we just do the delta variant as they talk to administrative team leadership team uh there's concerns in some states because the the vaccination rate is at 35 percent and therefore there's a concern that the delta variant may spike just for your own knowledge level right now in pinal county our vaccination rates at 35 and so therefore you may have a situation if you were to explode this thing that six months from now irrespective of the law that's there there may be a move to change the law so that's why we put may that gives us the most flexibility obviously we have to comply with the law and if the law says no then we won't make that requirement all right that makes sense any other questions

071all right i'll take a motion i moved to approve the update to the district's 2000 2021 2022 coven 19 mitigation plan as presented a second all in favor aye aye aye motion carries supported zero discussion and information regarding 21 22 school year governing board self-evaluation uh the last couple years you guys have used the asba online board evaluation instrument and as of the last evaluation you were not satisfied with that instrument so i'm just making a recommendation that everybody very clearly states that we want to go back to the instrument that's in the policy manual not the instrument that that was being used in the past and so that's all this is for you guys to clarify that so we're aware of what's going on so we can participate in the pilot is that what

072we're talking about no this is the this is the board evaluation so this is the one that everybody concerned that there was 37 right and so this is just for that the superintendency my evaluation is still we're going to look at that instrument and go from there wait wait so what does this do for us then so this means that we don't have to do the evaluation we did last time remember 75 like ridiculous questions yeah we don't want to do that yeah that we're going back to what we had before right and it's what you have is you have what's in the policy manual i misunderstood this one okay we're all on board now we all understand the thing okay so um any questions okay i'll take a motion and chad why don't you

073go ahead and i would like to thank you i moved to approve the use of the governing board's evaluation instrument in the district policy manual for the 2021 year as presented i second all in favor aye aye motion carries four to zero so now we have some discussion items um discussion and information on the district el a supplement novels uh this one just very very quickly this was uh coming out of some concerns raised by parents uh at the beginning of or sometime last year i can't remember the end of the semester beginning the semester uh what happened is uh both at the middle school and high school staff met uh took a look and said okay what where are the different uh novels where should they be you will see that in some cases

074if it's highlighted yellow those are ones that are for whole class that everybody does it all the others are choice and so there is no one novel that if a parent objects their child would have to do other than the ones that are in yellow and those are pretty standard and i'm going to guess i'll say generally speaking don't have necessarily a lot of a lot of concerns on the choice ones the teachers met especially at the high school and specifically change some language within notification to parents of the content of some of this material to make sure that if there is a particular novel that may have some controversial content in it that they have changed up the the language to the parents to make sure that they are fully aware that they may

075want to look at the syllabus they may want to take a review of the book to see if the language or the content is something that they don't want their child to be exposed to then they could they can move it out the actual color purple has been moved to an ap level class at junior and senior level it is still a choice novel so therefore even at the ap level for the junior and senior level if a parent does not want their child to read that then they do not have to read that there are other options i think there's two or three options at each choice level excuse me three or four options at each choice level and so they would go ahead and get that so this just kind of gives you

076a summary of the books and where they're at these have all been approved at least on two different occasions by the board uh all we're doing is is in the case of the color purple modifying it to older kids uh and again uh it's still up to parents as to whether they think it's appropriate so will there be some sort of like um permission slip or something like that yeah the the the i don't know that there's a permission slip chris may know but i do know that there's a there is an email that goes out that they have put out in more detail to make sure that the parents are aware of the of the content um and so i don't know if they sign off on that or they have to sign off

077i mean chris if you show us a movie that's more like pg-13 oh not you know that's not pg turn we do have to sign as the parents we have to say right and i believe they had the sign last time if i'm correct i think the issue was did the information that was presented provide enough information for a parent to understand the nature of the of the content and so they've gone back to write it to to make sure that they understand that there may be content that they find offensive so i don't think it was the signature it was whether people believed that there was enough information there number one or number two quite frankly that at the age group that the the book was being presented was that appropriate ninth tenth grade

078versus eleventh twelfth grade um and so both of those have been have been corrected in this in this response to parental concerns i think i think the work's been i think it works fantastic i think it was appropriately done and i want to thank the the people who put that together the la teachers and as an old ela teacher myself i know this is a lot of work and uh but looking at it things are well placed it's this is a great this is a fantastic list and i think our new approach is fantastic as well could i ask excuse me for some clarification i've been looking at the two lists going back and forth and i'm trying to figure out what's the difference between the two i know just from the well the size

079of the file there's four lists i know they're at the bottom right and they're real the the real issue out there was really one novel that was modified so there's not a whole lot of other adjustment within the novels there was a novel color purple that was the issue other than that there was a belief that they would be the same so there's not a lot of adjustment in there the second portion of it is just the communication that the teacher will send to the parents i understand all that that's not my question i have two attached lists they're both called approved literature list for combs high school oh did i and there's one that's 165 kilometers there's one that's 175. i'm wondering what's the difference between the two i think they're the same from

080what i put them side by side they look like the same list though that's why i was just confused that seemed to be two identical lists now and i apologize because i believe my error was it's my error that one of them should have been the i i uploaded the same files meaning to upload the middle school file okay so the middle school file did not get uploaded and that's what should have been so the second one should have been middle school and the first one should have been high school or vice versa maybe you can just say you can't yeah i will send them to you thanks okay all right next discussion item um student achievement 2021 district state testing results and this is the request for information on student achievement on a monthly

081basis so i'll ask mr berkshire to make a presentation i'm going to try to do this really fast thank you all right good evening president second board dr wyman uh i'm here to talk uh craig can you pull up the um pdf the one on the right the board student achievement presentation thank you and i'll need you to thank you page up for me so if you can go up to the next one uh so i'm here to talk about first i'm just going to give a brief overview of our comprehensive assessment system and then present our state achievement results so go up so we've put together a comprehensive assessment system that's the other attachment in there when i come up here and talk about data these are going to be the areas that i'm

082going to try to focus on so today we're really going to focus on that district state end of the year summative section um thank you and so um there are some key questions in that um attached document that that really apply to the the state end of the year summative is what we're looking at showing that retained learning meets our district expectations are we covering the standards with appropriate breadth and depth how are our grade levels and content performing in regards to the standards and do we need to identify resources to provide more curricular support so that's really going to be the focus today generally when i come up you'll see we'll we'll probably talk more about those last two than those top three just because um the the first two really that's where the

083power of assessment is it's in the classroom it's it's when you get closer to the student but again that's also not the easiest data for me to be able to present because it's in the classroom level right um but with illuminate we do believe that we're going to be able to to provide some good data for you from that area as well so now let's move up so state assessment update um ad sent out an email recently um azm2 uh for grades three through eight um the state averaged at 74 percent tested as a district we tested 91 percent of our third through eighth grade wonderful that's a compliment to our principals out there and all the work that they did and their teachers did in encouraging kids to come in and test that we're

084online azela uh 94 statewide completed we were at 89 percent uh we had about 16 virtual kids mainly at the secondary level that we just couldn't get them in um to test that either the parents weren't available to drive them or they they had other jobs and that kind of thing i know one of our kids was an evit kid and they only went to ebit in person and they didn't attend school virtually and they had no way to get to school in order for us to test them and and for our purposes for this this last year we're not penalized for that are we there is no a through f accountability but they couldn't get to school um okay makes no sense we there's no they threw up accountability this year um but ade

085is collecting all of this data and part of that and so it will the the azm results will be publicly available so so even though there's no accountability side of it right it's going to be out there for the public to see so that's the reason why it's really key for me for for you to understand we tested 91 of our kids districts around the state 74 average there were about 10 000 students per grade that were missing for acm 2. so when you look at our results and when you look at neighboring districts results you have to take a very skeptical eye as to who was tested uh we know anecdotally that kids that were virtual around the country were primarily your at-risk populations so english learners uh free reduced lunch kids um those

086groups don't generally are probably not going to be included in a lot of the numbers but the good news is our numbers are our numbers are a little bit more accurate i mean our goal is 95 because that's the federal standard um so i think guess getting to 91 is pretty impressive yes it is and please note although there is no letter grades there is 66 million dollars in results based funding that will be allocated to those schools that scored highest on there the rich schools um so even though they're not going to put a letter grade there's going to be any number districts are going to get a boatload of money this year wow coming up in 2020 in the spring of 2022 there is going to be a new assessment it's called aasa

087for grades three through eight and then grades nine and eleven ninth grade they'll take the act aspire and eleventh grade will take the act in the spring and then grades five eight and eleven will take azsci in 2022 you'll notice that in this presentation there is no information on science this past spring the science test was a field test so the state got all that information but they're not sharing any of it with us it was really to make sure that the items and the item types and all of that were are usable so go ahead and flip up so on this chart you'll see uh this is our so azmerit is what we've been administering for the last um five six years uh this year we went to azm2 so i actually should have

088taken off the azmerit but you can see how we did compared to the state average here it's not as encouraging as i'd like it to be go ahead and flip up so here actually i do have a celebration one of the nice things to see on this is in comparing our azmerit scores to the azm2 in which they are very they're pretty much the same test the only difference between azmerit and azm is the percentage of questions that were written by state representatives versus the testing company the azm has more questions written by our educators and fewer written by the testing company the other difference is azm is a 10th grade test whereas azmerit had end of course tests at the secondary level but in ela 10th grade and of course is the same thing

089as testing all of our 10th graders so the celebration here is if you look at our 10th grade ela we had that this is the highest we've scored since the very first year that azmerit um went out with 30 of our kids passing this year which was equivalent to 2015. ninth grade i left in to give you some perspective but we didn't test ninth graders this year um so just to kind of give you an idea of where they were and thinking about next year go and move up so looking at cohorts um this you'll see that there is a jump in the colors and that's because we don't have testing results from last year because we didn't test last year um ninth grade there's a black box down there in 2021 again because we

090didn't test ninth grade so another celebration here is looking at our fifth grade our students that were in that fifth grade cohort they went from 37 passing in third grade to 42 passing in fifth grade so something positive there with our with our cohort data next slide is our math proficiency something you need to understand with math is that in easy merit eighth graders again azmerit was an end of course test so in 2015 eighth graders took that were in algebra one took both the eighth grade test and algebra one then the state changed the rules and allowed us to choose and so our eighth grade honors kids that were in algebra one from 2016 through 19 they took the algebra one end of course assessment and they weren't part of the eighth grade numbers

091this year our eighth graders took the eighth grade assessment so um and then tenth grade again end of course assessment so when you look at the high school numbers you had results for algebra 1 you had results for geometry and results for algebra 2. now this year the 10th grade test was a combination of geometry and algebra standards primarily geometry but there was some algebra included in there as well and in fact they set the cut score based on the geometry results from azmerit so when you look at this i think that just remember that 8th and 10th grade are going to be a little bit different from previous years because of who is tested and who's included in the testing and something that chris pointed out to me is with our 10th graders again

092geometry and algebra 1 primarily are honors kids in 10th grade they're taking algebra 2 that year right so they had geometry the previous year so celebration here though you look at our fifth and sixth grade numbers we exceeded the state average so still low but we still we did better than the state average so that's a great celebration right there next slide um so again 2015 was the last time we tested all 8th graders on the 8th grade standards so when you look at that 8th grade number it's a good comparison would be 2015 to 2021 because 16 17 18 19 didn't have our honors kids included and then 10th grade you're looking at geometry passing percentage from 2015 to 19 and then our the the current year this year go ahead and move up

093here's our cohort data for math again remember the the jumping colors is due to the fact that we didn't have a test last year and then a zelda reassessment uh we had ell students this past year we reclassified 19 of them uh which is about a reclassification rate of about 13 percent not where we want it to be this is the first year of the new model where we are required to have students in one hour of sci targeted instruction and then one hour of integrated english instruction with a an actual english class at the high school in the middle school because of the lateness in in us being able to hire uh for those positions we actually had six fifths contracts um but amazingly enough this year is we had our highest passing percentages

094at both the middle school and the high school compared to previous years um ellsworth we weren't able to hire an sei teacher until mid-year and so we expect those numbers to be much better this year because we're starting the ground we were fully staffed in our sei staff and so we're excited to see what happens this year with those students so any questions um yeah now that we have this data of how we've performed in the past how can we use this to get better in the future we haven't had a chance to really sit down as a team to talk about the the data um but it will what will happen is we've got to work with our principals um one of the some of the things that we've already put in place we

095know that we need some additional supports related to english and math so at k8 level i've we've used title 1 and title 4 funds to purchase lexia core5 and powerup which is a evidence-based supplemental online reading instruction an instructional program i will say i had we had four students that on the move on reading law that we were required to to retain because they scored so low on the inc on the reading component of the third grade reading test three of them enrolled in summer school two of those three showed enough growth and progress to be promoted and our primary english instruction in summer school was using lexia those kids were required to be on lexie at least 30 minutes a day in summer school i had one of those students who was scoring minimally

096proficient on the star reading assessment who was proficient at the end of summer school so i i believe lexia is going to be have a huge impact um and hope that we can continue to fund it moving forward over future years because i think it's going to provide a strong base for our kids as they move up into the secondary level st math is what we purchased for math um anecdotally when i was meeting with their their rep at the end of the year another superintendent from another district shared that their kids have been using lexia for the last four years and they saw their third grade results 20 percentage points higher than the state average um and that's those kids have been using it since kindergarten so it's a very concept-based program it's game

097based kids love it and and so we're excited about putting those into place we think illuminate's also going to to provide some support again we purchased illuminate because it's easy for our teachers to use and it has multiple tools for our teachers to use and the the biggest bang for our buck that we'll get with assessment is at the classroom level closest to the learning and so if our teachers are using illuminate and they're providing students with strong feedback and good feedback i believe that will also have a huge impact on student learning moving forward good thank you any other questions thank you thank you thank you so much for preparing that okay 9.3 um let's see discussion information on the combs unified district student discipline process i'm going to go ahead and just kind

098of summarize uh in totality what takes place without opening up all of the different policies i put the different policies there for you so that that you're able to understand what we're doing is we're just following policy and law uh and then we will open up the discipline matrix in just a second the bottom one but but the gist of it is it's just like whatever everything else in the states you have to follow due process you have to follow due process in the sense that if an incident occurs uh the administrator has to go ahead and do an investigation uh usually there's a write-up from an individual who witnessed it could be a teacher it could be the administrator it could be uh custodian uh you go ahead and take a look to figure

099out what's going on you may call in one kid they may say did it investigation stops no i didn't do it johnny did it i'm calling johnny i didn't do it harry did it so pretty soon you could have three or four or five kids that you're you're taking a look at at the end of the day you figure out what occurred i know there's always some concerns from parents when their child is being disciplined that we didn't get the true story of what really happened i'll just go on my own experience is when you talk to enough people you can weed through the little nuances where they try to spin the story to make themselves look good but the truth comes out within the holistic approach from all the all the kids based on

100that story then you go ahead and level the discipline uh the matrix and the second that we look at gives us the range for which we would go ahead and and uh impose discipline we run all the way from a counseling session that says please don't do that again type thing all the way up to expulsion i will tell you that if we get into suspensions above 10 days which should be a long-term suspension expulsion technical definition is forever although nothing's forever anymore because there's enough appeal processes out there then it becomes much more uh driven by specific statutes as to what you need to do to do due process and when it comes to expulsion the board is responsible for expulsion we're just making a recommendation on the long-term suspension the board would make

101excuse me the administration would make a recommendation to me about uh long-term suspension if it's 10 days or less that suspension is at the purview of the administrator it is a decision they can make i cannot go in and unilaterally change that decision it is what it is when we go ahead and have a matrix if we could pull up that bottom one that says the discipline matrix first of all on the left side all the rules and the definitions of the rules were created by a committee probably a decade ago it was to be quite honest primarily dominated by law enforcement there was not necessarily a ton of [Music] school officials on there so you'll see some of those definitions especially for the like cheating or lying in some cases they actually took the

102definition straight out of webster's dictionary because they didn't know how to deal with it because that's not what they deal with on a daily basis then meanwhile when you get into some of the other ones that are lost especially if you get into the sexual content you will see a definition that's taken straight out of uh out of statute it starts to freak out a kindergarten parent when they see this definition and it talks specifically to uh what would be uh some of the sexual uh content so it has its issues but it is what all districts in the state use and so the definitional piece and where they're categorized is is consistent across the state you then get into the minimum maximum range for what the consequence could be so when you look at

103ours you could say my that seems like a big range you're going to go all the way from a conference to a short-term suspension or a long-term suspension well this is because this this particular matrix will look different than let's say tempe unions because tempe union is just dealing with high school kids so what a ninth grade high school kid's going to do when violating a rule and what a 12th grade high school kid's going to do is probably not really different so you're going to come up with a much tighter range we're sitting here saying with these definitions what do you do with a kindergarten kid all the way to a high school kid and what occurs in kindergarten versus a high school depending on the situation you could go ahead and have a

104big range you're going to really adios a kid right out of the gate when the way it occurred at the kindergarten level might not quite be the same we'll just use a little fight okay what's a fight between two little kids on the playground versus one that kids are dragging people through the classrooms and looking for people and blood flowing and a whole bit you will see on many of these there are certain things that we have to report to ade and there's certain things that we have to report to both ade and the state and the local police and that's just again dictated by that ac safe committee that came up with this and so that that process what we try to do with this matrix we have a discipline handbook that all administrators

105have we like to communicate between the sites the best as we can for situations so that we're being as consistent as possible um but i will tell you there's two things out there just like if all of us in here could be outside and see an accident and the police could come up and ask us what happened in the accident and there's a chance we'd all give a slightly different version of what occurred so when you ask people to look at a case or a situation and come up with what occurred and what's the consequence we all look through the lens that we have i've been in a high school district temp union where you had seven high schools and the number of suspensions were directly related to the philosophical basis of the principles that

106were run on the schools not good or bad it just is the way it is so we have to keep that in mind that everybody's going to look at this through a different lens the other piece that's out there and this is a gross generalization but i'll make it purposely is when you look at it at parents as a general rule they probably don't believe their kid's going to be in trouble so from the outside looking in we don't believe you are stringent enough in the application of consequences for rules and those kids the bad kids get away with too much when it's their child you are overzealous with the application of consequences for the rules and they are good kids and you probably shouldn't be giving them that much because it's just the first

107time they did it and it's just not fair back to the liquidated damages issue is we're looking here for consistency i've said we don't legislate good fighting and we don't legislate bad fighting if i got two little kids who can't fight through a wet paper bag with a hole in it you might end up giving a very similar consequence to two kids that are pugilists and in the golden gloves program and so you want you want to go ahead and take a look at that because it's hard from the outside to see what's going on and if your child's involved there is a perception of times for something that's going on but you may not understand the whole story best example two kids get in a fight one kid gets 10 days one kid gets

108a long-term suspension that's not fair why did you give one kid a long-term suspension the other kid 10 days well did you know that the kid that was a long-term suspension it was his third fight so maybe the reason they got a higher consequence has more to do with the history it's no different than going into the courts why does somebody get one consequence and someone else for the same thing gets something different because the judge is looking at a whole bunch of information and there may be mitigating circumstance for why it's different if you're on the outside looking in you do not understand that therefore you do not think it's fair when in fact it is probably fair we're just not going to be able to tell you all the nuances of what took

109place within that particular situation and therefore you're gonna have to trust us that's very hard if it's your child and i've had my own kids who got themselves in trouble when they were in school and i didn't necessarily agree with everything that was done uh at the school level but that's just the nature of the beast so i give you that bigger picture we could go into the nuances and the details most of the expulsions and the long-term suspensions are just related to those particular rules that are very very egregious the last thing i'll close with is there was a new law this year passed which effectively says that you cannot suspend a kid under seven years old and if you're going to suspend anyone between i'll just say kindergarten and fourth grade is the

110range there's any number of steps that you have to take take before you suspend them if it is involving uh drugs weapons those kind of things you can get to a suspension if it is more of a kid that is a pistol and has been in a pistol all year long and you've about had it up to here um that's not gonna necessarily be enough uh room to to remove a child from our school system or any other school system in the state that is not reflective in this documentation it is reflective in the handbook that the administrators have i anticipate that asba will give us policies for the next board meeting that will reflect those changes in law because they're working on them as we speak we just haven't got them yet but we've

111already put them into the into the handbook so that then we've talked with the administration about it and so now it's just a matter of moving it forward so that's kind of a summary overview more than happy to answer questions or talk about anything or the if you have a specific question of a principle any questions or comments i appreciate all the work to put that together um you know part of that was because of a question i had raised earlier um and so i appreciate all that work you put into it um i think what what what needs the like you said the the the perception from the outside coming looking in is is sometimes not accurate from parents or from the community but it is important that both our teachers in my opinion

112it's important that both the teachers and the principals are equipped with the tools that they need and have the support that they need in order to take the action necessary to to protect the learning environment in the classrooms and to make sure that learning can take place and that disruptions uh are not tolerated and that you know we can make sure that the learning environment stays the way it needs to be we can be compassionate we can i i'm glad that there's some flexibility in there and um it's interesting that was good information thank you for letting me know you know after years of doing very the same thing myself uh interesting that the state has put some of those restrictions in place at those grade levels but um so just you know that was

113a question i had asked for us to kind of review that and make sure that we were kind of clear on what what our current policies were and then from there if you know if we ever felt like we needed to look at any of those um then that would be my my my thing was just to make sure that if there's any way in which we can help support the teachers and particularly the principles more uh so that their hands are not tied and instead are able to make sure that they can do what they need to do to protect the learning environment that's all i was asking for so if those things are being are taking place then that makes me happy okay all right discussion information on administrative contracts i think this

114is for a bigger conversation if i know what mr mccloud was asking for but this was the starting point which is coming out of the increase in vacation days what are what are the benefits that could come to administration as we talked about the collapsing of the distance between uh salary schedules for teachers versus salary schedules for administrators but the question was asked to start the conversation relative to administrative contracts and so what i've just provided for you here is how every employee in the district is on a specific day-long number of days contract so teachers uh depending on how you want to calculate it we could go around around mulberry bush about different pieces that go into it but whether it's 184 200 days because you add in holidays they have a number of

115days if you're on a work calendar for nine months as a classified individual or 10 months as a classified individual 11 months as classified individual they'll have a specific calendar 200 days 210 days 215 days for administration or any 12-month employee it's simple you got 261 262-day contracts that's just related to the nuance of the calendar in terms of when your weekends fall and so you just do simple math is 52 weeks with two days on a weekend take away from the number of days in the total year that's going to give you your contract at 261 or 262. so that's what the contract is you then on to that contract have the automatic days that people get off on 12-month contracts due to holidays and so those are established in policy so whether it's

116memorial day fourth of july veterans day etc those are placed in so obviously of the 261 and you're going to take out i believe it's about 14 days that could be off one it could be 11 or 13 or could be 15. you take those days out then you also have the opportunity on the vacation days so you'll take those vacation days out now on the vacation days not everybody will use their vacation days every single year so you might have someone that that has more vacation days that they take on a given year than somebody else that just becomes a personal preference or what's going on but that's where you get the days for the contract in terms of additional benefits for administrative staff the fine line i brought the additional days for vacation

117purposefully this year because i think the the 20 was a little low in comparison other districts but i think there's a point in time where giving vacation days for the sake of giving vacation days is ludicrous because if i can't spend the 25 days giving me 33 days doesn't do me diddly squat because i'm not gonna be able to spend them now if you're going to pay me out for those days barry's from district or district administration or board to board then it may be worthwhile to advance those if you're not going to pay me out then don't give me days i can't use because then it's it's it's really a slap in my face but so what do we have is a conversation of how we give benefits to administration in the old days

118you could give benefits of of insurance for your family but with obamacare that got removed so it's getting harder and harder to figure out what you can do to give an additional benefit to to an administration without just increasing the salary schedule which always gets everybody in a tizzy because why did administration get a 15 raise and everybody else got a five percent raise so it is something that we're going to have to really continue to talk about and figure it out um but just know once you get the 260-day two-day contract there's not a lot of room to move and there's not a lot of options that are out there there are a couple i can bring to you but but again know that it's it's getting more difficult uh as we squeeze down

119what's what's available to administration i assume that you're talking about this in your leadership at some point we we did when we talked like things that they would like yeah we did that as part of the budget and so we had an initial conversation this year that's where we came up with the additional vacation days and we'll continue to have conversations in future budgets for where we go it could be part of ccc too um again it's just a a bit of brainstorming to to what you get to uh at each time i think i think just speaking for myself totally open um to thinking outside the box so if you guys got something i i suggest you lay it out there and where i think of that we're pretty much open we we feel

120that uh you guys are great and we'd like to to keep you and keep you happy i agree i think um maybe one of the first steps you know talking about that and thank you for that background again that was an answer uh or to a question i had posed um i i do i think it is open i hope that we do talk about this some more i recognize that because of the way it's set up that there are those limitations but you know talk about ludicrous to me what's ludicrous is to think to ourselves when we talk about our teachers and we talk about how many days of work as the premise you know school days and how many days of work and how many days beyond school days do we want teachers

121to work but then go to our administrators and and just take a general calendar of the year only take off the weekends and say okay then we start with 262 days under the premise or i mean i mean the essential premise of that is okay we're going to start with as if you're going to work every single day minus weekends of the entire year and then but then we'll take a few days here and a few days there and as you kind of chip away from days but you're starting from almost a ridiculous number of days to begin with in my opinion and so that's where i think if we're gonna you know maybe look at it then perhaps know what's going i mean that's where you see those gaps right or the lack of

122a gap because you have administrators who have been teachers and they worked a teacher's schedule and they got teacher pay which wasn't always the best but then they move into administration they get a little more pay but the amount of responsibility the amount of headache and now all of a sudden the amount of days required that they have to work just leaps tremendously and that is not compensate or doesn't doesn't commensurate or compensate oh man i was an english teacher too anyway it's you know it's i think that's where we start to find that feeling for administrators where okay i i do have an increase in pay but i'm now required i mean according to our numbers here i mean you're talking about telling administrators or district personnel as well that you have to work

12360 more days than the teachers well if that is their pay you know reflecting 60 more days of work than the teachers and that's a that's a lot you know that's a lot of days maybe one of the best things that we could do to help compensate administrators is to say or encourage people to be administrators is to say look you're going to get paid more you might have to work a little bit more than you know you're gonna have to work a little bit more than teachers and your your responsibility increases and all these things are gonna increase and your pay is going to compensate you for that but not all of a sudden you got to work you know that the only cautionary tale i would tell you with and i think bruce

124and cherry we've been around the longest bob um that the time frame that was available in the past and what used to be summer and what's available now there's not a problem with reducing the number of days last time i checked nobody's reduced the expectation level for what you're supposed to accomplish in the days that you're supposed to be doing the work that you're doing and so i think the problematic issue is is you can go ahead and reduce my days but if i have something i have to do then i'm probably going to have to come in on the days i'm not supposed to be in because at the end of the day if i have 66 teachers that show up for for a new teacher orientation or i have this or i have

125that there's not an expectation that i can say yeah well thank you but i took a couple days extra days off because i'm only going to work 235 days instead of 260 days so i think we have to have that dialogue because there's an expectation level for what we need to deliver and as it is no different than teachers we keep taking talking about you got to take someone off somebody's plate but but for all the work in the legislature it seems like they don't take off the administrative plate they add to the administrative plate with another mandated report another mandate to this another mandated that and so the problematic portion to it is and so then i work less days but the days i work are now 15 hour days instead of uh eight

126hour days i'm not so sure i want to do that piece either so i just caution you on that piece because because i haven't quite figured out to reduce my days but nobody reduces my workload i still got a problem on my hands that may be true but i i think i think administrators would figure out a way to get their work done if they even in fewer number of days of work a year for the same amount of pay i think they'll get it done but anyways no i think it's good that we have that discussion if if that's possible that's why i brought it up is for us to have that discussion well i like i said i assume that you guys are talking about this in leadership and at some point um

127hopefully your ideas will trickle up to us [Laughter] and we'll be willing to listen to anything i hope that you have the admission hopefully the administrators can be part of that discussion as well yeah right that's leadership okay yeah they're in that one good okay so future agenda items does anybody have anything for a future agenda item all right so i'm gonna make a motion to adjourn at uh 7 37 second all in favor all right motion carries for i motion carries four to zero thanks for hanging out guys make sure you don't leave until you sign the adopted budget so that we can upload that and move it forward