001Mrs Burnett president will have Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of America Institute a republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all we'll take a moment of silence thank you and at this time is their board member statements yes ma'am um I was able to attend water day at Estrella Vista this past month and I want to give a huge round of applause to one Estrella Vista for hosting all the fourth graders in the entire district oh I'm running it through those students came off the bus they knew exactly where they were going to go they worked they the every school did amazing it was great to see the city of Avondale there U of A was there teaching all the kids about water
002conservation and I was just really impressed in how quickly and efficiently the kids were knew exactly where to go they did their job they moved to the next rotation and it seemed like they're just a new bus about every hour coming dropping off more kids and another bus leaving and you could still see a straight all the other kids in Estrella Vista were working they weren't disrupting anything so a huge shout out to all of our fourth grade teachers and it was just amazing I was like so happy to be there all right thank you Kathy I had the opportunity to attend fine arts's District honors Vancouver that was his right day after the board meeting I know what I thought it was before um I also did want to wish everyone a Happy uh
003National Women's History Month I'm wearing a shirt I don't know if anybody could see it says women belong in all places where decisions are being made and also just wanted to um thank my colleagues for everything that they do thank you any anything else I can't remember what I did so I'm pretty sure I did something though but it's one of those days so there we go all right with that um Dr Freeman I'll turn it over to you for the superintendents report thank you madam president members of the board good evening everyone Buenas Tardis I feel now like I should be thanking some women too but it wasn't in my prepared remarks I know like you guys do you know this that 90 of all Health Care decisions in America are made by women
004even though you're only half the population lucky for us um welcome back uh from spring break I hope everybody had an opportunity to rest and recharge and students are ready to take full advantage of their academic Civic and experiential learning opportunities in the fourth quarter finish the year strong with all of the assessment and everything we have going on we had an exceptional digital learning day last month and um last month I guess last quarter and this is an ongoing initiative led by the alliance for excellence in education to engage students and Empower Educators through effective use of digital tools this day is also a celebration to thank Our Community Partners and our voters for supporting our Capital override the event kicked off with a welcome reception introductions and student demonstrations from our Littleton online
005and fine arts academies we were excited to welcome Governor Katie Hobbs who took a few minutes to address the audience and got a picture with the kids um and um she was just so nice to have here and so appreciative um following the welcome guests and staff were divided into three bus tour groups and visited um two schools each they heard um well we heard a lot of positive feedback from partners and one of our guests later said it was a wonderful wonderful day and so we'd like to thank Miss Araceli Vazquez for coordinating the event extending the invitation to the governor's office as well as all the staff who supported the event thank you to miss southneck Miss Barnett Mr Cisneros and Miss Contreras who were there and all of our special guests for
006attending and the welcome and the tours it meant a lot to our staff and to our students to have everybody there at the beginning of the month most the schools in the U.S celebrated the joys of reading and ours was no exception during read Across America week or Dr Seuss's birthday all of our schools had special activities I was happy to accept invitations to read at a couple of our campuses and um the Trace Rios Pumas uh who were caught reading received tickets to enter into a weekly drawing for Scholastic Book Fair gift card uh three student winners were announced and celebrated every Friday young Pumas wrote about their favorite book and what they would tell their parents if the Cat in the Hat and Thing One and Thing Two came over to their house
007Quentin STEM Academy celebrated with spirit week and students were able to dress up as a fairy tale character comic book character or someone from a biography and they hosted a special guest readers throughout the week including some amazing fourth and sixth grade students visiting other classrooms and reading to younger sharks the student council at Littleton stem planned several activities including the literacy week with opportunities to dress as your favorite character or a genre and featuring guest readers from Valley of the Sun United Way Firebirds reading buddies created many books to share and placed them on the reading tree that was displayed in the caffeinasium at the Fine Arts Academy they had a Dr Seuss inspired week on the last day students and staff dressed up as their favorite storybook character um the Scholastic Book Fair
008was held during the week in the library and was transformed into a jungle of books the Falcons enjoyed exploring their new environment while hunting for books to read at Estrella Vista STEM Academy the Hawks participated in a fun spirit week and a bullet for decorating contest to encourage reading they also partnered with Valley Sun United a way to help welcome guest readers and promote the love of reading at Country Place Leadership Academy students earned raffle passes for trying something new trying to answer tough questions or just being positive in classrooms invited a variety of readers the student action team hosted read Across America night which included book giveaways prizes from local businesses fun activities snacks and even some student performances then at the Collier Business Academy student Academy students enjoyed buddy reading with other grade
009level Partners a book reading and popcorn party and a book inspired door decorating contest Collier is hosting a cafe themed Community literacy night coming up this Thursday and participants will choose to join a grade level themed activities in their classrooms and the community is warmly invited our Littleton Online Academy enjoyed a book character themed spirit week and students enjoyed reading together with buddies in breakout rooms I just have to add on digital learning day the kids from the online Academy really impress people um with the things that they were doing and talking about the the learning that was going on there we hosted the Littleton School District 2023 honors concert that member Cisneros mentioned at Fine Arts Academy at the end of last month and students from band programs across the district came together to
010Showcase their hard work with a well-performed program the honors band students had the opportunity to work with band directors from La Jolla Community High School and West Point High School and they were both guest conductors at the concert so the kids got A Sneak Peek into High School band our students did well at the West Side impact science and engineering Fair again this year 49 projects from nine participating school districts were there Littleton students received first place in grades three four science competition with the bowling bottle project and first place in K2 engineering with make a boat special thanks go to Jennifer Gerber who facilitated the fair and it's a task that takes a lot of time and effort she did a great job and received a lot of compliments from the other school districts
011fourth grade students at Estrella Vista STEM Academy participated not just in water day but NASCAR fun Festival I think it was on the last Friday before break sponsored by the NASCAR foundation and Phoenix Raceway it was an exclusive event invited only our 109 fourth graders along with their teach teachers and chaperones students enjoyed racing themes events and their heads were fitted for bike helmets and they met and got signatures from Nascar drivers I don't know if you guys saw the pictures on Facebook they were darling students and staff were inspired to learn that Estrella Vista STEM Academy would receive a fifteen thousand dollar donation for their work at the school and each of the students would be receiving their own bicycle that's really big wow and so a special thanks to Phoenix Raceway into NASCAR
012the office of English language acquisition services at the department of Ed conducted the El program monitoring doing site visits at three of our schools 16 areas are monitored in the monitoring cycle and all 16 of those had zero findings of course there's a few recommendations but there was no action required this is an exceptionally positive report by completing the cycle without findings which rarely happens um the report made was made more exceptional by the fact Ade insisted on doing the work the very same week we returned from winter break so our staff had to work over the break to be ready and I'd like to congratulate the team and we really need to extend our thanks to the teachers and staff who were involved in helping to assure and maintain High Fidelity to the expectations
013for our El program I'd also like to thank all the other sites and departments that worked alongside a curriculum instruction Department to help assure that the language development growth of all of our students in Littleton is on track and progressing our human resources Department's been working hard to meet Staffing challenges of our schools this year with an acute Statewide and national teacher and staff shortage a recent report cited teacher openings at 25 on average across Arizona with the percent of teachers not fully certified climbing to 44 percent this is Arizona's new differentiated Staffing model um that I've been talking to people about and filling positions with more teachers in training because there's too few highly skilled teachers who want those jobs Littleton shortage is only a fraction of those averages so we're doing well compared
014to the state but we've had some positions unfilled for most of the year next year we're going to be looking at strategically differentiating position assignments and importing Talent from around the globe so families in our communities deserve having the best teachers possible in front of our students contracts for teachers and professional staff for next year have gone out 77 percent of teachers committed to returning Littleton in time to earn the early signing incentive that's four percent higher than the year before the window for teachers to return their contracts closed yesterday 4 30 PM with 83 percent of those contracts accepted that's up one percent from a year ago Estrella Vista seems to be getting mentioned a lot tonight they led the school sites by returning 95 of their contracts um we also received another administrator
015contract this week and later in the evening We'll be asking members to consider another Esser incentive to recognize all of our employees who continue to return to service year after year in these challenging times we've had a great third season for softball and boys soccer there's six softball teams with two coaches and about 12 to 14 players there's six boys soccer teams with two coaches and um they have per team they have 15 or 16 players you might remember our athletic coordinator provided you an update in a recent meeting told you about activate the application process for registration and we've had reports the process is much easier for our families we also heard appreciation for the supply wagons that were that were purchased for each School sport team so they can transport their equipment we
016wouldn't want to end up like Grand Canyon basketball players in Denver with the um and so job postings for this season of season four already started and we anticipate High participation in closing I'd like to thank Carmen Gomez and our Quentin PTA for Their donation of close to eight hundred dollars to help pay for field trip transportation and that's all I have thank you Dr Freeman and it deserves repeating I know I speak on behalf of the board we want to thank everyone that was involved in the El program monitoring it's not easy to do that and it's not easy to ever get anything in any of those auditing things so the fact that we just had a few mod recommendations speaks volumes it's a tough tough thing to get so definitely definitely please let
017everyone know all of your staff it is greatly appreciated and I do think we understand how hard that is so congratulations and I just shout out to Estrella Vista 95 of your contracts you must be doing something fantastic so appreciate it as well so with that we're going to turn it over to miss vanderwater to talk about the program showcase president Reyes members of the governing board Dr Freeman I am honored to present to you our program showcase for this evening tonight Mrs uh Kathy Sylvester principal of Fine Arts Academy will showcase their signature school's Focus through highlighting the school's Mission Vision Community Partnerships Arts integration learning initiatives and several exciting performing and visual arts experiences for our students and families additionally Fine Arts will showcase their kids at Hope student of the month 8th
018grader Elijah Lopez and recognize a dedicated volunteer Joy Galvin we are pleased to welcome Mrs Kathy Sylvester good evening president Reyes members of the governing board Dr Freeman executive team and members of the Littleton Community my name is Kathy Sylvester and I am the principal of the Fine Arts Academy thank you for this opportunity to showcase our wonderful School at the Fine Arts Academy our mission is to provide rigorous and relevant learning experiences that engage Empower and inspire all students to reach their Highest Potential while expressing their unique artistic talents our vision is to empower all students to explore their passions while engaging in academic and artistic expression to maximize their potential in becoming lifelong learners Arts integration is a focus at the Fine Arts Academy our teachers receive professional development on how to incorporate
019different forms of the Arts into their lessons tapping into their students creative side when this happens our students are able to make deeper connections with the standard curriculum as they use their imagination to express themselves as shown here the first picture is of students using the Three Little Pigs to interview characters from the story The Next picture is of students using their presentation skills and the last is of students using elements of voice expression to write a Haiku poem foreign Stewart's eighth grade adaptation science project using the properties of 3D Visual Arts her students created their own birds or plants in an Arts integration project demonstrating their understanding of how genetic variations occur in Offspring through the inheritance of traits or mutations changing the way an organism adapts to a specific environment after Mrs Stewart's
020students completed their adaptation Creations they gave a short presentation of their plant or bird furthering incorporating the Arts by using their presentation skills to explain their models demonstrating their understanding of how natural selection may lead to increases or decreases of specific traits in populations over time according to one eighth grade student his experience with the project was that he needed to create his bird with a functioning beak so it could eat and that it also needed to remind him of his grandma's bird that was always chirping and very colorful at the Fine Arts Academy Our Community Partnerships include Artsonia the Kennedy Center sounds Academy the ubu project westmec and West Valley Arts Council sounds Academy is a non-profit music organization that provides Fine Arts students the opportunity to learn how to play string instruments and
021guitar Artsonia is an online gallery for Student Art before portfolios here is fourth grade Falcon Melanie who won artist of the week for the week of February 11th the ubu project is a Performing Arts Outreach organization that empowers students through sonnet and music and finally through the West Valley Arts Council Cheryl Mertz and her Artful teaching provides our teachers professional development on Arts integration strategies such as Tableau storytelling and character interviews at the Fine Arts Academy our students have an opportunity to be involved in ballet for glorico and dance this year our ballet for lowerco students performed in a Dios de los Muertos celebration at the Goodyear Farms historic district and our dance students performed in a charity event in Peoria and as cheerleaders at a Phoenix Suns game for our musically talented students we
022offer band Mariachi strings and guitar artistic students participate in our early morning Art Club and those students with the dramatic Flair can showcase their talents by acting in a play or working behind the scenes and actually on the scenes in stagecraft this year's performance of The Mysterious case of the mysterious case was a Smash Hit we also have several levels of choir at the Fine Arts Academy for students to sing and show off their vocal abilities recently our Advanced choir performed the national anthem at a Phoenix Suns home game at the Fine Arts Academy we like to say it's a great day to be a falcon every day thank you very much we appreciate it video [Music] laughs [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign thank you
023looks like you're having a lot of fun and learning so that's right [Music] we are going to recognize a kid at Hope in a volunteer as well thank you sorry are kids at Hope is Elijah Lopez is it oh sorry do I do Joy first I apologize thank you hi I'm Malaysia I'm Kida hope for respecting other people and focusing on my work and helping others who may need help my I want to thank my Aces who are my mom and dad and Friends uh they pushed me to do my best and work hard and I really like need that and I thank them for that and I want to thank Fine Arts for giving me kid I hope you didn't think we were going to let you get away sitting in the back did
024you we saw you congratulations thank you very much good job well I thought you guys look so great because do you want to sit here it's a new pedicure from 8 to 10. congratulations [Applause] I don't even hear anything about it hi Joy Galvin is Fine Arts Academy volunteer of the month but joy is been our volunteer for many years she is always available she helps out in the morning with our students she helps with the book fair she helps with PTSA she has helped out doing lunch duty cafeteria Duty she comes every time we have a collection for just down day we are so lucky and so appreciative to have joy Galvin as the Fine Arts Academy volunteer of the month foreign miles congratulations [Applause] does that conclude the vote thank you my understanding
025is there is no call to the public is that correct all right so we will move on to item nine the consent agenda is there any items the board wishes to have pulled from the consent agenda hearing none I'll take a motion to approve uh or disapprove the agenda I'll move that we approve the consent agenda I'll second during a first and a second uh uh all in favor aye hearing no names emotional pass 10. um at this time we'll turn it over to Mr French yeah that's a big drink of water thank you president Reyes members of the governing board Dr Freeman and Littleton Community this evening I'd like to share information about the FY 2122 annual Financial audit fars-15914 requires any governing board of a school district that has adopted an expenditure budget
026of two million or more for the maintenance and operation fund shall contract for an annual financial statement audit in addition any entity that exceeds 750 000 or more in federal assistance at which we did must be reviewed by a single audit as dictated by OMB circular a133 in the spring of 2021 the Arizona legislature passed legislation that required the governing board publicly accept these audits through a roll call vote the school district must also upload these files to the Arizona Department of Education and provide them to the county superintendent's office both the financial statement audit and the single audit are performed each year by an independent audit firm we use the firm heinfeld meeting company the audits where we we are reviewing tonight are for fiscal year beginning July 1st 2021 and ending June 30th
0272022. we have three parts to review of this audit the annual comprehensive financial report also known as the acfr the single audit and the usfr compliance review this annual comprehensive financial report is for the fiscal year ending June 30th 2022. the acfr is a set of financial statements that comprise the financial report of the district and compile and complies with the accounting requirements published by the governmental Accounting Standards Board the most descriptive portion of the acfr are on pages 19 to 28 and this is the Management's discussion and Analysis also called the mdna these documents should be attached to the item so you're welcome to open them up and follow along with me or look at them at your convenience the MDMA is a narrative overview of the financial activities of the district for fiscal
028year 20 21 and 22. this section reviews the financial highlights of the year following that on pages 32 to 64 the actual financial statements and the narrative notes to those financial statements and then beginning on page 127 is the statistical section where Financial Trends revenue and debt capacity can be evaluated as well as demographic and economic information that report on the environment of our district to help make comparisons with other school districts the acfr is also the document that is that the district uses and submits to be considered for financial reporting awards for the past 15 consecutive years Littleton es Elementary School District has received both the certificate of excellence in financial reporting as awarded by the International asbo Association and the certificate of achievement for excellence in financial reporting as awarded by the government
029Financial finance Officers Association as quoted by a letter of notice from the gfoa the certificate of achievement is the highest form of recognition in the area of governmental accounting and financial reporting and as its attainment represents a significant accomplishment by a government and its management turning to the single audit reporting package I recommend reviewing page nine this is where you'll find a summary of the type of report issued any non-compliance or weakness revealed as as well as specific federal funds reviewed for both financial statements and federal Awards the district was found to have no significant deficiencies identified and no material weaknesses regarding compliance we are just notifying you that there's nothing attached to our documents to reference the audit itself we just have the slide presentation I apologize for that I'll make sure that you
030get copies of these thank you um makes it hard for you to follow along doesn't it [Laughter] referencing page 99 um okay so in addition there were no instances of material non-compliance identified the type of Auditor's reports is listed as unmodified and Auditors issues an unmodified opinion when the financial statements give a true and Fair View and the organization has operated in accordance with all applicable financial reporting requirements as you will also see later on this page is where Littleton Elementary School District was identified as a low risk Oddity the financial or the specific Federal fund that was reviewed for this fiscal year was Title One the last report that we will review this evening is the usfr compliance questionnaire to assist the office of the auditor general in determining whether a district has attained
031an acceptable degree of compliance with the requirements of the usfr um the audit firm must complete the usfr compliance questionnaire once the usfr questionnaire is completed it reveals any areas of deficiency as indicated just a moment ago the audit states that there were no material non-compliance items identified therefore the number of deficiencies for this particular audit was minuscule and degree and are still well below the average for the district as well as Statewide heimfilmich audited districts the usfr compliance questionnaire is a 30 30 page document of 18 sections with a total of 170 questions and are written so that a positive response is desired though through the completion of the usfr questionnaire the audit firm identified two sections with an overall total of five notes for this fiscal year these items are identified as a
032no to the questionnaire usfr deficiencies as noted on the last slide Littleton was given five notes from 170 questions this slide you're looking at now shows the average school district annual deficiencies recorded for heinfeld and meech clients as you can see in comparison to previous years Littleton continues to be well below average findings for district Statewide who's in 2021 average was 14 deficiencies I'd really like to acknowledge um all the staff that the part that was part of this audit and involved in the audit on an annual basis is not only staff from the business office but also staff from the I.T Food Service The Welcome Center and HR that have a huge role in littleton's audit success sorry um I will get copies of the reports discussed here tonight they um and attach them
033to the item Dr Freeman I need to get those now so we can vote on those or yeah so Dr Freeman it's a roll call vote it's not they're not accepting they're not approving the audit they're um accepting roll call vote results but I'd be happy to get them attached as for sure yeah it's all right with you with you and again tell me we're not if we're not approving it what are we taking a roll call on um the legislature back in 2021 made this as a rule that school boards had to roll call vote so that they are ensuring that school that the management team is disclosing the information that was done oh okay so we I got so we do need to see it I I think we've technically reviewed it right
034to review it right yeah and um wasn't buried or anything like that that's fine we can try and get them while we're here and come back to it is that okay I mean yeah files are all an electronic folder somewhere so we just need to retrieve it yeah so at this point we'll just uh uh move item 10 further down the agenda I think yeah the point of privilege for the president if we can reconsider it for Action before we adjourn I think that's that's acceptable so we appreciate that we'll move forward it looks like third you're moving on to number 11. the recognition Madam president members of the governing board this item is re um has to do with the Esser the Esser funds that we are provided from the federal government as well
035as the uh asking the governing board to approve an essay retention amount for staff for next fiscal year the district has provided an Essa retention amount to staff for the last two years is in recap FY 22 the district provided a one thousand dollar retention stipend as well as a 1.25 percent of the employee's salary and this fiscal year this District provided a 700 retention statement and a 450 dollar contract signing incentive Administration would like to continue providing funds to staff through the asset allocation Administration has determined the district is able to pay a retention stipend to returning employees of two thousand dollars to be split into two payments one in August and one in February of next fiscal year from the amount received from the sr-3 grant the retention statement is estimated to cost
036a district approximately 1.2 million dollars as her funds are scheduled to expire in on September 30th of 2024 and any funds left unspent would be required to be returned to the federal government it is the district's intention to pay a retention stipend for FY 2324 into two payments and determine a possible retention amount to be paid again in August of 24 before funds expire this would allow Administration to review and revise the Esser plan and ensure all funds are expended in their entirety prior to expiration currently the district has approximately two million dollars available to be spent on retention over the next two fiscal years so Madam president this is an action item we are asking the board to approve um the retention stipend of two thousand dollars to all returning staff based on their
037FTE okay is there questions I said a question um how much Sr funds do we have left to spend was it two was it two million just for the teachers Madam president member of cincinnatios is two million dollars that is currently unallocated or unencumbered for other projects no Amy so I just wanted to clarify it's two thousand for all returning staff regardless of position or wait okay yes that's my understanding it would be a higher percent if I'm a lower income wage earner okay that's that's good okay any other questions if not I'll hear a motion I move that the governing board approved the dish approve the district to pay a one-time Essa retention stipend of two thousand dollars to all returning staff based on staff FTE I second having a motion in a second
038uh all in favor aye any opposed hearing none emotional pass thank you Mr French it's your lucky day you're up next again thank you appreciate that Madam president um Madam president in January um the governor released her budget which included the following items it repealed the esa expansion it added three percent base level uh increase it also increased it added uh Capital inflation which was going to be 10.9 million dollars of additional assistance added 332 million dollars for real building renewal grants Statewide 127 million for schools already under construction and 13 million dollars to provide free and reduced lunches at school in low-income areas however the budget was quickly dismissed by the legislature in a continuation budget was proposed and sent to the governor's office this budget did not include any of the above mentioned
039items and only provided school districts with a two percent increased increase to the base support level level which is required by law this budget was vetoed by the governor which has set up a quote-unquote showdown at the Capitol this is not expected to be a quick process and the legislation's legislative session will likely go until June 30th with this in mind the administration is determining the best course of action for providing raises to staff next year without knowing what the legislative appropriation will be it is important to keep the increased cost of benefits utilities inflation and for materials and supplies as well as the raises to a level that would be supported by the maintenance and operations budget Administration is discussing ways of passing the majority of the inflationary increase onto employees and what that
040would mean for current programs in the district over the course of the next couple of months Administration will be developing scenarios including a possible tiered raise uh system to provide staff with the amount based on the known two percent um and a percentage of anything above just like we did last fiscal year if you remember last year um we were certain that we were fairly certain that legislative legislature was going to give us a two percent and then we asked the governing board to provide raises above and the beyond that based on what they were providing to us um we would like to bring that back to the board in the coming months once we know more about how the legislative process is unfolding this is just a discussion item and we wanted to give
041the board an update on what we were thinking about doing with raises and provide you um the ability to ask any questions that you have about the process about the budget or raises for next fiscal year any since this is discussion is there any questions or anything else you'd like provided on this since we're going to be bringing it back hearing hearing none amen yeah maybe uh Madam president members of the board maybe if I can help stimulate the thinking a little bit so um inflation in I think the Phoenix area is said to be down now under seven percent closer to six percent so um what you can see is a two percent increase once again you know would be three years in a row where the percent increase to the base funding level
042is below the percentage of inflation so that two percent um in Mr French's paragraph you can see that employee benefits is up way more than two percent um inflationary costs are up more than two percent and um you know I all people need to do is look at the price of eggs right so um I think SRP and APS are both putting in for rate increases so two two percent is is um not a good number for us because what happens is all the other costs are eating into it significantly if the governor's budget adds three percent um you know we would probably be able to give more than a three percent increase uh last year we put in a 75 percent trigger um the increase in employee related expenses which is our share of
043benefits for matching asrs and FICA and all those things ate up all but a few percent of that in inflation ate up the rest so we estimated that pretty well um the in this case we don't know that we could put together a 75 percent trigger on in addition to the base obviously if there was addition to the district additional Assistance or some other funds that would take a lot of pressure off um the mno fund so part of the reason we're bringing this forward is right now we're not thinking that even a simple trigger is going to have enough predictive effort for us to assure that whatever we put into the salary schedule for compensation will be able to maintain over time over future years so in the past when the state was cutting
044funding we did a combination of Base percent raises and one-time money and those kind of things and so we certainly don't have this figured out but part of the reason to have this item on the agenda today is if you have any thoughts concerns or wishes in a more perfect world to share those with the management team and we can try to put together some scenarios you know scenario one two three ABC or something like that to give you a little meet to debate in a future meeting other or I mean we can try to come up with them on our own but um uh coming up with something that's going to be objectionable to the board and putting staff time and effort into that kind of thing we don't really want to do so
045not that people have solidly formed ideas or anything but it would be helpful to the management team if if people have thoughts about it to share it here and then I would imagine it'll take more than one meeting to narrow in on what's going to work and of course it'd be great if the legislature could start compromising and working together to help us plan but we're not really counting on that this spring okay so we'll open it up is there or if you need more time some of these are just you gotta sit and think about it right so I'll open it up I just have two things if I can one is I would ask that Mr French bring back to the board I'm gonna use the word Surplus because I don't know what
046else to use but I need to understand where the budget is right I mean I see it and I know it but I yes I need to know what that looks like because that sometimes dictates you know where it's one-time monies right maybe we can give you a one-time money and and that's sustainable right because the other concern is being sustainable we're a pretty fiscal conservative district and it's served us well in tough times I'm not sure everyone's agrees or disagree but we've had some really tough years and we didn't give the raises we wanted but we were able to weather and keep what we had and sometimes that's what it boils down to so if you could bring back and let us know what the carry forward will be that and then what one-time
047monies could we give and what that would look like I think for me that would be helpful and then if you propose something other than one-time money say I don't know what you call it a cost of living whatever you're talking about in terms of what Dr Freeman's you know just to me it's cost of living right whatever that looks like that and then is that sustainable right because that's my but can we sustain that in in really tough times so that stuff I think we all would like to see um I don't know if there's anything else you want to see I yeah I would kind of repeat exactly what Kathy said um I am always in support of giving our staff all of our staff as much as we can in compensation while
048staying and you know financially sound and providing everything we need for our students and if that has to be a one-time payout instead of increasing their salaries because we don't know if we can sustain in their salaries I'm okay with that as long as we're giving them as much as we can any other comments hearing none the other thing as do you know when you'll bring it back because honestly if I'm a teacher I want to know what that is the sooner the better because sometimes where we like to know it or say it it makes decisions and where people go and what they do so you'll have an idea like when that will come back Madam president um that's why we wanted to start this discussion tonight the plan is I think it's it's
049on the next board meeting to discuss again so I appreciate the feedback and we'll go back and build the scenarios and bring back some more information for next time oh yes sir um so I know we're going to bring it back when are how long do our door staff members have for their contracts is it will their contracts like to turn them in before our next board meeting or will it be after president members Cisneros um I believe we broke out contracts into multiple groups I can have Dr hate answer that question for you if you like um yes the contracts are broken into two groups depending on the amount of time that the employees were mandated by Statute to sign the contracts so as Dr Freeman reported this evening we have those final numbers
050in from teachers um I imagine what present race is getting at is teachers do want to know but we do have a long-standing history here of honoring our word and giving employees all of the compensation that is available to us and so um with that being said all of the teachers who have contracts issued they were due yesterday sometimes based on this information or the hope that something will come a few will ask for the resignations to be rescinded but not a lot but that answers your question thank you Madam president Mr since and members of the board so last year um you you might remember we didn't know what the trigger amount was going to be until the year was over and so the way that works operationally is an addendum to the contract
051um I think it was last month in February we reviewed contract language with the board so what's happened is because the legislature continues to do this instead of finishing in 100 days or you know we know when they're going to sign you die and then we can hurry up and crunch some numbers and bring them to you in May there used to actually be a teacher contract window in statute that we all had to follow they got rid of that because it got in the way of them deciding what the budget so it used to be had to offer contracts had to be back for teachers by May 15th so we needed to know the budget by May 15th and so since they didn't do the budget they got rid of the teacher contract window
052uh now um when we did contracts um Dr hayde brought to you um what one of the things that we do all the time is we look at Esser incentives from other District when contracts are going out from other districts all of those kind of things the real Market that we compete with regionally is other public school districts not so much Charters or private schools or those kind of things so the contract has built into it the ability to amend the contract if there's a if there's a significant change in state funding so two percent plus three percent would allow us to do contract addendums and unfortunately people have kind of gotten used to it as a way of life because the legislature does this all of the time so the contract that went out
053to teachers that they signed in return guarantees their wage won't go down and that what additional monies we get the board will work to apply that to their wage and so it it really works out to be a multi-step process so you have a contract with Provisions in the language for the board to do an addendum to increase the amount and then the addendum goes out and um all of that requires the legislature to give us a known number in the meantime it's it goes into effect in steps like that a progression so the same thing's true for the other contracts and I think the last thing to go out is wage statements and those will be the same thing as that rate can be amended if there's a if there's an increase possible to
054the hourly classified support staff as well information can you if you know also tell us what surrounding districts are considering because that's our competition I mean not always but it is so if we kind of know if they're thinking a given two or three or four it helps us kind of know where we need to be you know we definitely don't want to be on the low end I'm not sure we can afford the high end but we want to be right in the middle of the pack so surrounding districts and then when you look at one-time money so if you look at one-time monies because we know if we can afford it that's good right and then if we could give I'm going to use the word merit whatever you want to call it
055people that you know okay Longevity if that's what you call it so longevity could we give a one-time monies and still be sustainable by giving it maybe a one percent or two percent but that would be sustainable right does that make sense yeah combination of the two because that way you know if we said we're going to give you a one percent but we're going to give you X as one time it is all income however you look at it so if you could bring those back those would be good things for us to review Madam president I'll definitely bring those back we have been trying to gather um certain District information and um it's kind of all over the board we have a couple that you know are saying well we're going to do
056this we're going to do that we have a couple of districts that received um much more extra money than we did based on their you know their Title One population and we've heard you know ten thousand dollars and you know so that's not something that the district would be able to do basically trying to match this up to our population I mean that would be the only Fairway right we can't compete with some but whatever looks equal to us would be great I think more people will be telling us right now right people that quiet because they want to hang on to their teachers I get that all right thank you anything else from the board no all right thank you yeah thank you all yep right we'll move on to we're going to get
057rid of you sir are you sad Mr French we're leaving you so we're going on to Dr hayde thank you madam president members of the board I get uh my first item to be exciting so um there's no action required for this but I would like to announce the new principle for Lake in prep Dr Nicole derazo uh requested to open the new school and the superintendent has approved this request so um Dr Nicole durazo will move from the principal highly successful principal as you've heard about this evening at Australia Vista STEM Academy to be considered for the principal ship at the Lakin Prep Academy that you might see the slide up here just a few things before we welcome her up to speak about her own accomplishments she has been a servant leader with
058over 25 years of experience and she's been with us on the Estrella Vista campus since 2019. she's won several Awards including we're currently anxiously in awaiting if she uh wins the Maricopa County exemplary principal finalist she's a finalist if she wins the award like Dr Cagle did last year she was a rodale aspiring principal she's won the Excellence in education recipient and she won the leadership award from Argosy University when she completed her doctorate and so we're excited to put a new Leader's face with Lakin prep and we would like to invite Dr durazo up to say a few words [Applause] governing board president Reyes members of the board Dr Freeman and Littleton community I am honored to be selected as the principal of Lakin Prep Academy it is a unique and special experience to
059open a new school and one that I will not take lightly I will be relentless in my pursuit to build a safe positive School Community built on strong relationships with staff students and most importantly families I look forward to building our signature school program of international Baccalaureate IB that is an accelerated learning model focused on 10 key components of a successful learner inquirers knowledgeable thinkers communicators principled open-minded caring Risk Takers balanced and reflective all traits that I believe in and practice every day I'm also excited to partner with the Spanish Embassy for our dual language immersion program we begin to the Future staff students and families of lake and prep I am beyond excited to work collaboratively with all of you as we build an amazing Learning Community together focused on student achievement parents I
060value your voice and decision making and will solicit your input and feedback I look forward to meeting all of you as we begin the planning process thank you for this opportunity let's go Laken well thank you very much well first of all thank you I'm sure Estrella Vista is going to be very sad and they will miss your strength so we know you'll carry that strength to Lincoln and we look forward to that Venture I understand you have a family or multiple family members well come on up me come on up it's fine come on up we're gonna we're gonna applaud you to because you won't be seeing much of her we're just letting you know that they're used to that this is my husband Andy and my oldest son Tanner very nice to meet
061you and uh thank you for sharing her with our school we appreciate it so congratulations [Applause] yeah there you go thank you we know that was informational only so we will now move uh to number 14 which is yours as well Dr hate thank you madam president members of the board tonight's item which piggybacks on to Mr French's item of compensation is broken into four parts salary schedules stipend and addenda incentives and then job descriptions duties and grades so the first item I'd like to look at this evening is the salary schedule which is part a and I'm going to ask Mr Barrel to bring up the certified salaries uh the certified placement schedule see I've already gotten my words changing so the work that's being brought to you this evening is based on feedback
062from internal and external stakeholders and represents an effort to be better communicators in a highly competitive educational Market this evening I have two placement schedules to share the first one is the certified placement one we're attempting to shift the process for for salary and wage placement from an inward to an outward facing one we're not changing the practice of how we establish a wage for an employee but rather allowing prospective employees to estimate for themselves what their salary or wage might be while the old system of the ranges for positions solved our issue of having a traditional lock step salary schedule where raises were established percentages over time as you stayed with the district we moved to one that had a minimum and a maximum but that often created different problems for us including confusion
063about placement of new hires and compression within the staff so I'd like to walk through this schedule with you to show how someone from the outside might calculate it but first I'd like to say that this new placement schedule accomplishes four things as the human resources staff worked through this this is friendly to a prospective employee it clearly outlines the criteria that we've always used to determine salary placement it provides an Avenue to continue our differentiated Staffing and compensation due to our use of teachers in the pipeline rather than fully certified ones and most importantly it honors current employees with similar years of experience in education which dispels the rumor that if you leave and come back to the district you get paid more the human resources department ran several test cases using candidates in
064the queue we actually are have new teachers to hire and candidates that have been hired over the years and with each case the salary or wage amount closely matched our current practice one change in the structure of the schedule is the inclusion of classroom site fund of monies in the schedule most other districts include the amount in their schedule which creates a misconception that Littleton pays much less than the competition so over the years we've considered the fact that we separate the classroom site fund money outside of the base pay amount to be more transparent if those monies were not going to continue through it was a voter approved and it's changed a little bit over the years but we're actually being penalized now because people want to look at something and see it and
065not do a lot of adding even though there's some addition and math problems here so we're going to test your knowledge a little bit this placement schedule includes sixty six hundred dollars from the classroom site fund which would be an increase from the 5420 that's currently in the bi-weekly checks of certified staff Mr French and I work together to look at carry forward and the amount allocated from the jlbc which comes out the first of March and are comfortable saying that we can maintain this base increase of sixty six hundred dollars as you can see the schedule takes into account educational attainment years of experience and certifications which are becoming more and more important it also highlights additional compensation opportunities based on hard to fill assignments and Specialty certificates that are in high need due
066to requirements by the state state or scarcity of candidates a good example of this is that several years ago the state required all certificate of people to have an SEI endorsement on their certificate which are El Learners are supposed to have a teacher with this endorsement they remove that requirement but still kept of the certificate but still kept the requirement for us to have a teacher with that endorsement on their certificate to be in compliance so this is just one of the areas so um that we needed to address so I'd like to go over um the bottom the well I'll go from start to from the beginning to the end the top to the bottom sorry Jim so we have cell points with base salaries and so to determine placement you look at education
067and you see where you're lined up if you have a master's plus 30 you start out on step 11. okay then you add experience if you have no experience you don't get to add anything if you have 1 to 15 years of experience you get one point per year so if I had 15 years I'd add 15 and 11 I get 26 hoping my math is correct then for each additional endorsement or approved area this is just on placement so you only get this one time you add a point so if you have 26 and you have an SEI endorsement then you would go to line 27 and that's a contract amount of 60 677 dollars then we have an area and we this is also a stipend piece but these are the hard to
068fill and the specialty certificates that are highly marketable so we added them at the bottom here for people if this is the only sheet they find it gives them a good idea as to where they would be placed so the hard to fill assignments are in the specialty certificates self-contained special ed we are looking to increase that from 3 000 to 3 500. we are continually finding that we are having to go to contracted services to get our certified special ed teachers and the 500 is minimal compared to the contract Services amount and we're looking to see if our idea Grant can cover this but the idea Grant does cover the offset between the contracted some of the offset between the contracted service amount and what we would pay our own teacher the same goes
069for the LD resource room that has gone up to twenty eight hundred dollars to match the gifted classroom which is twenty eight hundred dollars in a prior schedule we had that divided into two thousand dollars for the classroom and 800 for the certificate but that is would be the same we added a thousand dollars so if you serve in a reading interventionist role you would get a stipend of a thousand dollars we were short one interventionist all year this year Middle grades are very difficult to find always have been in the past we have paid an additional stipend of a thousand that's not changed to math or science but this year we've added in that if you teach in grades six seven or eight and you are appropriately certified you will get a thousand dollars
070for doing that if you teach math or science in that in those grades you get the other thousand so it's anywhere from a thousand to two thousand we excuse me now we have always had a stipend to try to attract registered nurses to serve in our health offices we have increasingly had difficulty finding these so this is listed as RN or BSN which carries a license associated with that would receive five thousand dollars on top of the base amount a behavior certified analyst is 2000 that hasn't changed National certification which there are several National certifications that we have recognized that hasn't changed at forty eight hundred there are three certificates at the bottom Early Childhood Pre-K to three for your approved area you'll get an extra 800. that was also a requirement that the state
071put on us at one time but has um taken it away but it's still a really good idea for that foundations of Early Childhood to be attached to the teacher talked a little bit about the SEI endorsement there are three certificate endorse approved areas that suffice to be able to teach an El student that's a bilingual and ESL or an SEI endorsement we're continually seeing people not have those on their certificates so we are we've had bilingual on but we added back in ESL or SEI for those purposes and the last is a reading endorsement all of our interventionists must have one but there are other classroom teachers that have them and they're helpful as we are tackling reading and math continually so that is the overview I would love to hear some questions remember
072social Nick so I look at this and I just say okay if I were to come teach at Littleton what would I get because that would help me visualize it yeah so here's my question if I have 14 years or 16 years experience I only go 13 points um member social Nick now if you read it line by line so years 1 through 15 is one point per year but anything over 15 you get two for ones so at 16 you won't get a point but at 17 you'd get one additional point because it says one point per two years over ten yes that's where I'm confused yes oh thank you that's mistake it should be over 15. okay that's where I was confused because I'm like then I'm just going to tell you I
073have 15 years no no this is this is one of those where you look and look and look and people look and it's so thank you this is why it's information and we will have that corrected thank you so much any other questions any I have some and I wrote mine so let me just read them okay okay so when I get to how many how many in our district right now or do you know how many is in and and I'm going to call sell points that's this whole thing to me I can't imagine who's going to master this and complete it because it's a process so I hope there's some automated system I do like that it's transparent and fair so no everyone will know based on some logic where they're placed I
074I think that's very important versus saying you're coming in I'm going to put you at midpoint that's always a little iffy right so I like the transparency how many of our teachers are at cell point 40. um president Reyes excuse me I have a little uh cough so I am on the cough drops tonight but um I can actually bring that back to you what we did we probably uh did 20 test cases to see if an incoming person with the same level of experience in education would match someone that's currently on staff I did not do a comparison to sell points I just simply looked at the bottom dollar right but I can look there are no sell points I think that it's an important paradigm shift to make this is a placement schedule
075right so once you get placed then if you give a one percent raise and it's on top 500 that's your new wage this is strictly placement this is strictly placement so the the test that they ran was let's just say you've been here 11 years and you have a master's degree if we were going to hire you today with 11 years and a master's degree on this placement schedule is that close to what you're making now and the answer is yes is it going to be exactly the same because it depends on if you got one percent one year five and a half percent the next year and the sequence that you got those percents and all that so there's no there's no after placement cell to match but the test on this was if
076we use this would we be bringing people in at wildly different numbers than if they left and came back to you know next year that it would still be comparable so that's the hard thing is we were all used to having these salary schedules for years and years and years there's not a cell to match but there's a test that if we were going to hire you today would your wage go up or down because of this schedule and I think it's not exact but it's close I would just wonder if he brings I mean if I've been here 15 years and let's say I'm on whatever a sell Point 32 okay and just because I would have to be placed somewhere you're going to place existing employees in this or am I not being
077placed in this as an existing employee no president Reyes so this is our new coming in yeah and then whatever action the board takes whatever percentage or amount that that you vote to put on the base is then voted on that action as then calculated upon the current contract salary amounts and they're issued an amended contract on top of that so there's not a min max any longer that was the this placement schedule used to be inward facing only HR looked at that even though we had the same rules this is to go out and outward facing piece so that it would be more transparent I have a lot more so I'm going to go ahead and let Amy ask okay my next question would be actually I have a few let's say I come
078to you with a contract and I have an endorsement that I don't want to use it's just there I've earned it and I'm not planning to have students using that endorsement are we still giving them the point for that member social Nick they get the point upon higher just one time so if you have special ed on your certificate right you get a point upon hire but you won't get paid the stipend either the 3500 the 2800 all right and then the next question because I in my past District was on they Incorporated one of these as I was there if I am a current employee and I feel like I might make more going on this do we have a way for them to say hey can we re-look at what I'm currently making
079and compare it to this so member social Nick there are lots of times that people because the old way people had a very difficult uh time and the longer you're here if you get the one percent there were times got a half a percent then there was a differentiated rate if you were here longer you got this percent so we will go through and review all of that and of course if it's wildly different I can take that forward to the superintendent and we can bring that forward but we're always the door is always open for people to come in and review their placements yeah wage Equity concerns come up all the time yes sir so this will be published on our our website and so when someone is looking to become a teacher here
080do they sit down with our hiring staff and do they figure out their salary with them or do they do this separately and then they come to you that's a really great question because in the past that they would want to make appointments with us and really the time it takes for them to fill out the application and do all the groundwork they want to know if it's worth their while right and so that was one of the emphasis of us creating this this placement schedule so that if we're out recruiting this is a one-pager we can hand we can go through that they can see it and they're like you know what I'm already making 84 000 at my district I can't afford to come over to you we're like okay thank you very
081much you know maybe if you retire and want to come back and this will be the place for you a great place to work um and then yes it would be on our website so that anyone could log on on NC and then also as our principals Have Been instrumental in recruiting across years this helps them um persuade people when they meet a teacher at coffee or something like that as you're standing in Starbucks or whatever hey you know we can tell me about yourself and they'll have a better idea of where that goes instead of having to call HR in the past people would text me hey I'm talking to this person if they have this and this you know what will they get and I can give them a range so it's a
082tool yes so how did you come up with a 490 difference in each step what made 490 that's a great question as well so what we did is we looked at a couple other districts um cell separation some you could not make any Rhyme or Reason out of some were 250 dollars some were uh 500 some were you know a percent so I took the current in-house placement schedule which was indexed and then I matched that closely because one are processes to match right we didn't want everything to go oh my gosh this is so different um and now if I leave and come back I'll be making something more so our percentage pretty much matched to just about 490 dollars and so we just took the base number and converted that and then gave
083additional points in the determination of placement based on education that separates those columns and that's how we came up with the math so what happens I'm hired in and I'm you know got all this endorsement and I hire in it um cell Point 40 right so now I'm I'm hired in at 67 and I get that's a base I'm clear on that and I've got and that to get that I had all this experience and my endorsements and all of that right but I'm a teacher who've been here longevity whatever that means to you and I'm I'm at 65. that's my concern um we have something like that currently in our organization and it's a nightmare because you're rooting out sometimes longevity not not because you want to you don't know how so is there
084a method if you have enough once you look back and you see and you do all that if I'm a longevity employee is there a consideration to move uh I don't know what you're on a minimum I know you said to do but is there a how do I ever make more money here if I'm at a highly qualified level got all my endorsements I don't ever want to be stuck if you're ready if you're moving a range by if we give raises three percent do you move that by three so that there's always continued growth yes so right yeah okay president Reyes right this is placement and placement I'm just concerned placement and and right existing are budding so in the past I've had to come back several times and say we had x
085amount of people hit the top of the range and we need to expand that okay what would happen is people would see the top of that range this happened in all employee groups and say well I'm gonna I want that right and we're like that's not for you we don't Place anybody up to that point and so this you could possibly be hired in at sixty seven thousand forty seven dollars but an employee with your same level of experience and everything could be significantly higher because we won't need to be concerned about the the max anymore because they're placed all of our employees have been placed that you've approved in them in the past so if you vote a half a percent or a two percent raise we go back and apply that so you
086adjust it accordingly just strictly on salary yes ma'am okay oh yeah that's that's all I was just more curious about the 490 I find that interesting it was uh actually uh when the HR staff went through they go this is so easy like good job like how did you get that I'm like um it was sort of one of those work backwards method draw a picture use all the problem solving skills but um all of our test cases worked and we will continue to do more between now and the April meeting um just so you're aware be interesting to see it in motion that's where you'll learn where it's really working and what flaws you need to to clear out right but interesting I like the transparency of it um I do like like one
087of the things we see right now because remember in the old schedule every step was two and a half percent they were equal increments right today we don't know if we're getting one percent or five percent from the legislature so let's just say that somebody got their master's degree so now they're at the Master's Degree column and we give five percent so they move over a column and get a five percent raise the next year one of their friends gets theirs master's degree but we only give one percent they moved over in a one percent year and the other person moved over in a five percent year but they both have master's degrees and four years of experience so because you've shifted the year one raise was bigger than the other it could improve your
088salary history even though your years and your degrees are the same the year you got your degree could impact your wage and so we just keep building on that so that that means now they're not in the same cell anymore even though they have the same education in the same years because we don't give equal increments of raises every year it all kind of starts to unravel and that's the problem but we always have Equity issues where somebody comes in and says well I have the same degree and I've been here the same amount of time but my paycheck's not the same we have to go back and look at those and see if there's a reason that's true or there's a mistake that explains that's true and if it's a mistake we corrected and
089if it's a reason we explain it well it should stop compression right it should help with some of those compression issues that you see in in those type of ranges but again the test will be to implement it and watch over time to see if it does work what the intention but yeah you know I don't I don't know I I really have to see it in motion and I need to know where your staff is placed right now and that's why I'm curious where our current I'm more worried about our current staff as far as feeling that this is it's fair and Equitable because I know how it feels to be a longevity employee and be overlooked and not get nothing that is just absolutely crazy to me because you lose you know a
090good tenure you lose experience you lose that that craft and so I don't want that to be in this and we will not um have that cap out situation based on this placement and that's good that's all I but it's an interesting I'll be curious to watch it and see how it moves through it Mr Barrel if you can pull up the second attachment on this item the support staff schedule matches the certified design and also the design schedule from talson Union High School District who is our toughest competitor so what you see tonight addresses the increased minimum wage and the competition within the market so we've always had an indexed placement schedule the compression that occurs and the inflation that that um we are facing in the public and private sector has really torn
091apart all of our historic work on our placement schedules our wage ranges and our pay grades so part of this I'm going to talk about the schedule now and the pay grades I'll talk about in the last section of my item this evening so with the increased minimum wage you'll notice in the top left hand corner pay grade one Step One is 1385 and that is minimum wage so what we did is we indexed based on the current minimum wage it has three percent between the pay grades and five percent between each step the old placement schedule had one and a half percent between the pay grades and two percent between steps because that was typically what we were seeing on inflation is two percent two percent two percent all that stuff that we would
092love to make it fit on any particular cell and match it up over the days like when we had to walk uphill in the snow and both ways and all that so over the course of time with increases to the minimum wage our pay grades became bunched together one of the things in developing this was to adjust the pay grades and that work as I said will be in a different chart one of our challenges in hiring classified staff was the posted ranges and the misconception that new employees would be hired at the top of their range based on their experience so over about three years everybody who we would call to give a salary to at first it was everyone wanted twenty dollars and then it was like I want 22.50 this year it's
093been 25 everybody wants 25 dollars and we're like okay we go through and we explain we honor our current staff this is the position this is where we're hiring that type of thing that doesn't really matter if you want 25 an hour so we applied the same concept so um this placement schedules a lot allows prospective employees to see the actual wage that would be offered and again most importantly honors our current employees we did the exact same exercise that we did with teachers the new placement schedule also accomplishes the same things that the certified placement schedule does it's friendly to prospective employees it clearly outlines the criteria that we've always used to determine salary placement and most importantly it honors current employees with similar years of experience in education which again dispels the rumor
094that if you leave and come back to the district you get paid more um and so with this um we put a little footnote and we understand we may have to do some additional wording but you however you add things up you cannot get more than five points so everyone starts in the first column you can get to the fifth placement column through any combination of experience or years of service or specialized skill and so um if if this makes sense or I would welcome this same type of conversation that we just had with the certified schedule questions I'm just going to be honest I'm lost here okay um so for example if I had an associate's degree and I had seven years experience where am I falling on this so let's say you were
095at pay grade one just because it's the top chart and easy to read so you which degree did you say you just said yes okay so then with the associates you move over to column two and you have seven years of experience you get two more points so you would be in column four so I would call and offer you the job to step one right okay there it so the second sheet is in the last item and when we marry that up okay it will make more sense okay that's where I was confused yes I'm like um you're like what grade what this so so that is um the thing and then that keeps us from their calling and they are pay grade one and want 25 an hour well they know that we're
096not going to offer that because this is our placement schedule okay okay I was just confused with the going right going across or going down and that threw me yeah as soon as you see the second one tell me if it makes sense okay you know job description position pay grade chart so we had one of those and everybody every job had a grade which is it was either a three or a nine or a yeah it makes sense now that you said play grade because then it's like came I remember that from previous years now I just didn't when I first looked at this yeah in my effort to break it apart I made it more confusing so I apologize so these placement schedules are drafts and they'll be coming back to the board
097for Action in April they're going to LEAP next week which is a Littleton employee advisory partnership and they could have some additions or feedback based on that which I will be sharing with you we also have other salary schedules that I would like to apply this methodology to it took quite a long time to do this but we have three other schedules that I anticipate bringing back to you at that time same type of thing we have methodology question so I'm trying to understand I understand how to go across and what paid grade you're on I get that what I'm struggling is how did when you go across you know it's anywhere from you know 69 cents three dollars and seven I can't quite get the method to figuring out how the value was determined
098to move me not pay grade but Lumia crossed how did you determine like so if I am I worth I have a BS I get two points right I'm on a pay grade one let me make that simple and it's 14.54. that other to move me to a three it's worth you know 69 cents or whatever how do you how do you figure that how did you put a value on Associates BS the Masters um president Reyes actually I combined our our old method of placement with the talson unions schedule oh this one it's combined and our old percentage between steps was two percent and so we would give um two steps for an associate's degree four steps for a bachelor's degree and six for a master's and so that would it's not quite five
099percent but close to that that's correct okay um Jim if we can go to Part B there's an attachment called the stipend and then the schedule um we looked at a few of these on the teacher or the certified placement schedule there are some minimal changes recommended on this and some of the stipends listed as I said is on the placement schedule on the other piece so we had had some differentiated coaching stipends based on school start times and now that we're moving from three to two we looked at that the athletic coordinator that coaches or that manages all the teams and all the things I know that Miss vanderwater could attest they work really hard for all of their money but it's we increased them from 800 to 900 per season that's only ever
100one person um the content or related service leads those are eight hundred dollars per quarter that is unchanged as I said we went from three start times to two so we took the two highest stipends and Associated those with the early and now late start schools the after school club per season that's only ever at one school and so that remained at 800. The Guiding Coalition member is an additional piece we are working with the principals to develop the exact qualifications for this it's going to be paid out of the classroom site fund so it's not a hit to the m o budget it will be an opportunity for our experienced certified veteran teachers to earn some additional money for serving on teams and so more the the specifics will come back the next time
101but I thought it was important to put this out here as we're teasing a little bit our teachers who have signed contracts right the high performance teaching assignment is a thousand dollars this again will have some stipulations but it will most likely serve as the incentive I'll use Miss Oceanic as an example because I think many years ago she was made to go to science from a fourth grade classroom and so this that would be an example of some a carrot for instead of you going I'll go but next year I'm quitting right um the academic achievement goals this is the achievement portion from the classroom site fund it's always in the plan that you review and look at in May last year the leap committee talked about aligning the achievement goals with the superintendent's
102goals which you looked at in December for him and were working to align all of that with the school's iaps and the achievement for the teachers that actually went down from 38 to 3600 and that 200 was moved over into their bi-weekly checks we are battling a bit with this as some districts because there are no stipulations on the classroom site fund they put it all in the base but we have always been concerned with achievement felt it was important to honor the Traditions that we've had here additional work days that was two hundred dollars and it had been that way for a long time it was at one time the average of the beginning teacher salary so the new average is 245 dollars those additional days are 99 of the time paid out of
103title funds so that also won't be an issue for mno budget um the contract signing incentive you heard about that earlier the teacher recruitment we've had this in place for a long time trying to compensate people for recruiting for us West Side teacher impact of the year is the same teacher on special assignment for their additional days worked is the same the certified hourly rate of pay we condensed two portions there used to be four lines one was we called it sit and get ours so you weren't actually teaching but you were attending professional development or something like that and it was pretty low and we really don't get teachers to bite at that their time is more valuable so we change this to additional work outside of the contract at twenty six dollars an
104hour if you're teaching adults and leading PD that still differentiated at 32 an hour and then our Essa rate is 52 an hour which the board approved last year and that is our summer school we've based that off of we called it the governor's money last year there's some more associated with that and so that amount once the Esser fund is gone will drop off the schedule unless we find some amazing pot of money to increase the normal hour to 52. any questions that you have about this piece okay the next piece is this incentive programs there's one proposed Edition but I thought since we had new members for the board on the board that we would go over um some of the pieces that we've used for incentives um that the board has passed
105for employee groups in the past so you heard me talk about on the stipended into schedule the 3 600 for the three achievement goals those are under review by leap and you will hear more about those specific things when you look at the classroom site fund plan I don't remember how many years ago but to show support for support staff and administrators who don't get that same opportunity to earn the thirty six hundred dollars based on achievement the board passed a one-time student team achievement recognition one time a year for non-teaching staff so our school letter grades are calculated to determine a GPA just like in school this year ours was 3.0 and then the GPA is multiplied by a half a percent of each qualifying employees base salary that has been um a check
106that has been distributed at the same time at the beginning of each school year for all employees and it has become a popular thing and so we appreciate that opportunity to do that the proposed attendance incentive for bus drivers this employee group requires a specialized license in their absences cause an extreme hardship to the transportation department so our coordinator Thelma whitback worked with her Department to collaborate collaboratively develop the criteria that you see here so any driver who uses no more than 16 hours there's some there's some debate about this so our drivers work a split shift they have morning runs and afternoon runs and in the middle of the day it's not just lunch they actually have a set amount of time off so they can't miss any more than the equivalent of two
107full work days or four sets of routes per quarter and they would be eligible to receive a 250 attendance incentive so that equates to a thousand dollars a year we would pay that at the semester at the end of each quarter like we do teachers for their classroom overage or for their splits and fills and we would um propose that we start this in January they've worked on it for quite some time we'd like to Pilot it and see how that works out but you won't take action on this tonight it'll come before you in April but I'd love to hear any feedback that you have about this is there questions on it um I do have a question about that just for clarification um so with regard to it being 16 hours to leave
108or or less um let's see that they surpassed that is it then like you know I guess the question I'm asking is if I am a bus driver and for whatever reason I've already reached that 16 hours a child is sick or I'm not well what is my incentive not to miss more hours so I guess like my question is is there a way in which that if they do you know reach that cap that there's still some type of incentive for them to continue to come because if I'm already reached 16 hours then I may as well reach 24 or 48 you know with the incentive member Barnett this is always a question that comes up we used to do an attendance incentive for teachers in our classroom site fund plan basically nothing keeps
109them except that holding people to the values of the district but the quarters basically nine weeks and so at the end of that time they get a start over so that's our thought s yes do you have a question it's not so much a question is it's just a comment that I know that we've heard um I've heard going to a lot of asba events and stuff that we're all struggling for bus drivers and Dr Freeman we've talked about it here as well so I'm glad that you guys are thinking of ways to possibly encourage our bus drivers to come to work if they can obviously we don't want them to come if they can't but if this incentivized them I'm all for it I'd not necessarily have that take I'm never hurt I've never
110seen in most organizations not schools where I get paid to come to work so it's an interesting concept to me I get why you're why you have to do something but I mean really an attendance incentive um just I mean think about it that that's just I I'm I'm incentivizing you to be here every day and I'm assuming when you can't there's medical issues or other things to me this would need a second look if there is attendance issues that are not I'm going to use the word excused that's a different conversation right to give you money to be here to me I mean why wouldn't we do this to the to the maintenance why wouldn't we do this to janitorial why wouldn't we do this to others if we're going to do it for
111bus drivers so Madam President we had this exact conversation in the executive team and part of this is because um if if a bus driver doesn't come I cannot assign Mrs Garrison to go drive that no I understand any other position in the district I can't she always wants to mop floors or answer the phones you know if I'm a heavy mechanic and I need to work on a bus and the bus is broken down can I find someone to fix the bus probably not readily and quickly no but we could call a vendor and and use it I I understand I just I have a hard time when it comes to paying people to be here because most reasons are FMLA protected right you sometimes children you need to stay home I get all
112that but because there must be an issue with people missing that's why this is here that's what's in my head this came before us because there's an issue with bus drivers not showing up or we're too short of bus drivers one or the other um we we are too short of bus drivers that is number one it's also an opportunity for people who schedule their time off when they can like for a doctor's visit or something like that at a different time because we're looking at wage competition severely between Towson Union High School is going to get their drivers 3.95 cents an hour increase this year and so this is an opportunity for our drivers to gain a little bit based on their management of their time and I yeah and I totally understand because
113I have heard you say the same thing when we had the attendance piece in for yeah I mean I'm not changing my position to incentivize people to come to work mind-boggling but thank you I appreciate the the understanding so no more questions on that okay thank you I'm Mr Vera we have the last slide this might be the longest item I've ever had um so these this is part two Mrs Oceanic so here are family groups that we've always had there are no new job descriptions on here with the exception that you'll see next time the library clerk we're going to change that to a distribution Clerk uh bring the job description before you because there are several things that that position does with the increase in technology and different things they don't just check
114in and out books and they're actually not a certified librarian and so we would like to make that clear in our job description for multiple reasons as we battle the legislature on some of those issues so that will come before you and then the health aid job description it's not a change in title but this position was created to hire paraprofessionals during the highly qualified days that did not have they did not pass their exam or have the appropriate hours yet and so they were placed into this position to assist in our special education classrooms with non-instructional duties and then moved into paraprofessionals we utilize this position when we were no longer able to hire RNs or LPNs to staff our health offices and we had always been able to do that until about five
115years ago and then we had a onesie Tuesday type of thing and now it's becoming more so the changing grade and the additional pieces to the job description will allow us to attract um people in school that are working to become nurses or CNAs or EMTs even and puts us a little bit more competitively so I did a crosswalk which probably will make no sense because if I said Okay a went to a 16 is that like half or a quarter or this remember we re-indexed our entire schedule looked at three things where our current employees are where our market value competition is and where we're having difficulty hiring so for example one of our administrative assistants we did five rounds we made 10 offers months without the position filled because they wanted the Magic
11625 an hour and we just filled that position last week and so this addresses some of those things it still honors where our employees are and allows remember we don't have a cap anymore a Max this Justice is this is simply a placement schedule and a piece that goes along with sheet 1 from item a questions on that I don't have a question I have a comment if you told me I'm going from a grade 22 to a 15 we're having a conversation yes and we will I think there's going to communication it should be a lot of communication just because to me it feels bad right and so any because you've been hammered that you agreed 20 and that gets you to X so I understand why but I can see people leaving here
117because they just don't understand it so you know I think you're gonna have a lot of calls a lot of questions um because people will see we've already tied to grades to position right and when you're a grade 20 you've worked your way to grade 20 and now to tell me I'm a grade 16 it feels funny right so it but if you show me I'm making the same pay yes and that would be the key so I'm more concerned about what how employees will see this versus what it really does madam president what if we put the base pay cell next to the 22 the old 22 and the base pay cell next to the 16. yeah so it's a Apples to Apples comparison for dollars versus just showing me a grade yes I
118think that's a great job that but we have access to all the documents and know how to use them and maybe everybody else could yeah I think that would totally calm my fear I'm not getting you know paid taken away I'm still a grade 16 and making X I'm okay with with no Max anymore yes and that would be a seller right so yeah I think that's a good idea just put salaries and then probably won't have that many calls um I appreciate all the feedback um if you have any other questions of course we'd love to hear them and we will bring this back for you in April um and thank you for your time thanks for hanging that cough drop in there not swallowing it or choking I was I was a little
119worried about you um all right um oh so I guess if we want to try and go back to item 10 I understand uh audit findings and cappers in our information now to look at is that correct and so Mr French if you do you have anything to add while we look at this Madam president it is in your attachments now I'd be happy to go through it again so you can walk through it with me um if not or if you can give us a few minutes to look through it that would be helpful so if we wanted I mean if we can take a look at the um well just hit the highlights I don't think images so Pages 19 to 19 through 28 is the management discussion and Analysis that's going to
120be um the highlight of this document um Pages 32 through 64 are financial statements and um can you reference what document is it our document saying yeah the acfr 22 yes okay we have that one open Okay um so on pages 19 to 28 it's it's um that section is called the mdna that's the narrative overview of the financial activities of the district for the fiscal year okay wait I don't I just look at page 19. okay I'm looking at 19 this is mine it says governing board page 22. thank you we got it thanks we're just our numerical system is different I got it thank you so this goes over financial highlights for the fiscal year overview of financial statements correct yeah I apologize so that section of the the acfr is the mdna
121um there's another section in this document Pages 32 through 64 which are the actual financial statements and then beginning on page 127 is the statistical section has demographic and economic information that allows you to compare us to other districts beginning on page 127 I'm not sure what she did is but it's 127 of the report president Reyes this is the document that we attach with um to the two organizations that we receive our financial reporting Awards with companies yes 127 yeah clear as mud right who audits our audit so we um we do a request for proposal for our audit firm heinfeld meech does this audit correct this audit is also uploaded to the auditor General's office as well as the Maricopa County School superintendent's office course yeah laughs and of course I understand yeah
122Madam president if if it um results in a significant deficiency it means process is broke down somewhere or there are um uh something of note that the Auditors had decided that this was something that we needed to take action on that list also goes to the auditor general and we're required to to submit an action plan in situations like that that would remedy that significant deficiency where where would I find where our budget is for the year remember Cisneros um that is not this document our budget is um attached to ade's website um it's also I believe on our website this is a document that records expenditures not budgeted expenditures so we we provide a budget and then this goes and provides actual expenditures for the fiscal year as well as assets that the district
123has and District holds our debt position so budget is more of where we think we're going to spend the money this is where the money went at the end of the year you can also look in simply back in simply for when we've had budget remember scenarios will bring back a final revised budget in may as well I will ask the board to let me know when you're sufficiently every Beauty if you need more time just let me know where you're at okay luckily I provided the biggest document first so the other ones are going to be easy to look at Jim is there any chance we can go to the single audit reporting package and I believe that is the Littleton ESD sa22 for the governing board and if we can go to page
124nine and that's going to be keep going Jim right here that's the last page in your on the um in the packet of information so if you take a look at at this page you'll see the auditor's report was unmodified there were no significant deficiencies and no material weaknesses identified there was no non-compliance materials noted um if we scroll down a little bit you'll see that title one was the fund that they audited as well as that the we as a not a t qualified as a low risk Oddity so that's really the the Crux of this uh single audit and Madam president if we want to review the the compliance questionnaire we can if not um that's the that's the 170 questions that they asked us that we had five areas that they noted
125as areas of correction the one where the state average was 14 correct okay I move that the government board except the 2022 audits issued on December 27 2022 for fiscal year 2021-2022. I'll second thank you I have a first and a second I have a motion to approve uh or disapprove the item please oh yeah we do have to have a roll call correct okay so roll call on that Mrs Reyes yes Mrs sashinek yes Mr saniceros yes Mrs Barnett yes 15 is where we left off all right this is a discussion item and um just looks like I'm giving the discussion so basically this is um for the board to review um I believe each board member received a documentation is that correct Dr Freeman on the spending Trend data for travel for professional
126development I'm sorry madam president members of the board so the the work that the board secretary did with um trying to establish an understanding of what the history of the board expenses has been was a six year look back which is her tenure and then there's an attachment um on item 15 called governance team PD and so if members open that that's the summary and um and so essentially um we we broke your professional development into in-state expenses and out-of-state expenses so in-state events include delegate assembly uh law pre-conference law conference County meetings annual pre-conference annual conference bolts all of those things that generally are associated with those School boards Association right the out of state were the national school boards Association expenses so the average amount spent per year going back in the six
127year look back was um 706 dollars per member that was 118. then the average board member participation was 5.5 events in the six year look back per year the annual budget was four thousand dollars per year including all the members and staff with an adjustment for the pandemic and inflation um we've adjusted that this year to five thousand dollars so part of the six year look back problem was it included a lot of coveted years right right so um the budget amount that's been spent this year so far is uh 3 900 with um a little over a thousand left over in unexpended budgets so for instance some of the things that might occur this year still would be if people went to the summer Leadership Institute in Flagstaff I think is in June would
128fall in this fiscal year and so again as um uh Mr French was saying when member Cisneros brought it up is that that's a budget amount um if it for instance was five thousand and five dollars it doesn't break the bank it's a guideline for spending right right so um then out of state the six-year look back um the average amount spent was 1882 per member that was 314 again the same thing not a lot of travel because of covid so the 818 for budgeting purposes rounded to two thousand dollars right and so that would be true for the last six years participation was 0.83 and that's because board members didn't really travel nationally for all but one of those years so participation is rounded up to one so instead of 1882 and 0.83 it's
129one person and two thousand dollars that simplifies things for ease of conversation so the out-of-state travel for board members two thousand a year adjustment for the pandemic is again a 25 percent increase to twenty five hundred dollars per year this year and so that would make the total 2 000 carried forward in 2500 or a total in your out-of-state travel budget this year of forty five hundred dollars so that amount available per member went up from 333 to 417. for the adjustment for this year um now what you know what that number comes from is the pattern of the board only traveling every five or six years so if you wanted to travel let's say every three years instead of six that would be twice as often would be twice as much budget so um
130you can allocate however much you want to allocate to that but so um the scenario would be at the very bottom thing here before you were at two thousand dollars on average if it would have been four thousand dollars you could have gone to two meetings in six years instead of one right the way that would work would be um the accumulated budget would have been twenty four thousand with ten thousand spent to go to San Diego carry forward of 14 plus 4 000 this year is actually six hundred and sixty seven dollars per member um uh the budget then would have been eighteen thousand instead of forty five hundred so however you um budget you're out of state depends on how often how many people want to go if you were going to do
131it every year for everybody that would be six times as much if you wanted to do every three years it would be twice as much so it's just simply a matter of how much you want to put toward that and then I think to president reyes's Point um the board's always been pretty conservative so if um even even doubling it's not a huge amount of money to change it from what we were saying before is twelve thousand to twenty four thousand isn't going to mean you can't hire a teacher but if you want to change it 24 to 48 or to 96 now you're now you're talking about positions so there there wouldn't be a problem with increasing the allocation if people wanted to attend more often but in the past um what the board
132had done is deferred a couple years and then gone as a group and then they can discuss things that they saw during the day go to different breakout sessions you know get together at the end of the day over dinner or whatever and talk about what they learned which happened quite a bit the last time people went so um it's completely up to you but that's that's been the pattern and the reason the budget is where it's at is just because of past practice of the board with covid some of some of the actual years is is really just not practical to measure to right because you couldn't travel you couldn't do any of those things so this conversation is really just discussion around you know what the budget should look like for out of
133in-state is not too expensive right a lot of those are put on and they're minimal cost and so this is really if you wanted to travel out of state what were you thinking about how many times to travel out of state and what kind of budget were you thinking about as a board would we want to allocate in our you know kind of as our guideline so that's what this discussion is about thoughts so we know there was a a a a meeting I think it was Florida is that right Marcus Florida and so getting to Florida from here is obviously expensive just because of distance if nothing else doesn't mean you shouldn't go if that's something you're but keep in mind if we all went to Florida and we all stayed in a hotel
134and we all paid the conference that's probably a little bit of significant money uh and then if we wanted to do that three times during the year and that is not that we can it's just money to consider where does it come from because what we take out of this comes from somewhere so I I just ask that we'd be conservative and yet continue our education that's critical as well right to continue to know what's out there what trends and uh so with it I'm open whatever the board thinks is discussion we should have it now so we can kind of put some pencil to paper and get our budget straightened out so people will know what we have to spend in terms of what conferences they want to pick to go you're always welcome
135to go to anything but once the money is spent actually then you would be we would ask that you would look at paying for it out of your pocket if it's that important once our budget's set Madam president I I would also add that um these most of these conferences have like an early bird registration rate and then if you're late you have a late registration fee in addition the there's a lot of times a conference Hotel rate that if you get in early you get a better rate than if you decide to go late same thing for airfare so you know in keeping with that conservative approach we've always planned well in advance I think um you know we were approving a trick this trip um this summer for some staff to present and
136we'll probably bring one next month for sometime in October so that if we get if we plan way out in front we can travel way more efficiently than if it's on short notice so um but part of that is if you establish budgets like we do in the spring for next year everybody knows either you're traveling twice as often or half as many people are going more often or however you want to do it so what what's thoughts I mean really if you're going to travel anywhere out of state you're talking probably I mean I could be wrong minimum three thousand four thousand dollars just to get an airfare a hotel and a conference yeah I'm not really I'm just trying to say if you wanted to travel out of state what are you looking
137at in general and it's at least I remember when we traveled to San Diego that alone was what thirty five hundred dollars and that's been a long time ago so you're you're out of state travel is just with cost of airfare is just crazy so what's your thoughts any any thoughts at all Marcus um so some of my thoughts is it first of all thank you it's it's nice to see the trends that of what the board is typically spent um I know as me and Rachel as a new board member it's um it's nice to know our budget now and it's nice to have a discussion um I know this is all one budget as all of us sharing one budget um this is just an idea I had if each member had their
138own budget like if each member had a certain money that was allocated that's what I was thinking if we want 20 000 or whatever we said then we would each take a piece of that right yeah and then you could choose what's important to you um and then we would do that that was my thought as well is just set a dollar limit and then each of us divide that up by the number of board members is that yeah that was my initial thoughts um whatever whatever amount that we all thought was not going to take away from any well let's just throw out five thousand because I traveling out of state 5000 is really not too unrealistic so if we did 5 000 I'll look to the finance or Dr Freeman what what does
139that do to hiring a staff member or what does that look like well I mean right now what we would estimate you know probably three to four thousand dollars a trip right and and right now you go once every five or six years so what if we wanted to go once a year yeah well so I mean what we've been doing saying I think it was 417 or something I don't have it open in front of me but it lets us say it was 500 a year for um out of state travel to get to 3 000 it would take six years right so if you if you wanted to go everybody wanted to go every year essentially you're setting aside the amount of so round numbers you're at 500 now okay just for ease
140of conversation if you wanted to get to 3 500 um to get to Florida that's seven times as much so right now you have 500 times 500 times 5 is 2500 right a year if you wanted all to go you're gonna do instead of 500 times 5 you're going to do 3 500 times 5. so um you have your calculator going there right yep it's a 17 500 instead of two thousand five hundred did I do that right yes sir so um so that's an increase of 15 000 a year right no I I understand that yes sir what I'm asking is what does it for I'm just going to say 20 000 just because of simple math does that a year right that's giving us a piece what does that do to the budget
141in terms of is it taking away from something that's you know like a teacher position well we just saw the starting salary if you say round numbers is sixty thousand it would be like a quarter of a teacher it's not it's not Breaking the Bank I'm asking you is it doable or something like that Amy okay so um I have I went to San Diego this past year as the whole board or almost the whole board went and I have done a number of in-state PD by myself um and I just kind of want to say I like this idea of us to have our own budget we get to pick where we go but I think there is something to be said about as a board going and being able to discuss with each
142other one of the things that I lack I feel like I lose a lot of is when I go to these PDS or conferences um by myself like I have all these ideas and I want to talk to someone from Littleton and how can we do this and there's no one there and so I don't want us to lose that idea of as a it doesn't have to be all five of us or like a group of us going and being able to say these are littleton's goals these are the breakout sessions that might help us get to that goal and having that discussion and so I don't want to lose that yeah I think one of the most beneficial ones I went is where most of us went and after the sessions I think
143we had dinner I don't remember what but we got back together and said well yeah this this could work and it was a lot of good dialogue that I would not have been able to have if I hadn't had other people there right so I do agree with that but that takes the majority of all the budget one trip would take our budget so I'm just asking you know it's not an easy task to figure out what to do right because one trip and we'd all have to agree on like what trip would that be so that gets difficult too right what would it be maybe it's important to me or maybe I've been there five times and I'm like now I've heard it uh as to where you you would like oh my gosh
144I want to go there so that gets to be the difficult part in trying to just find one to go together we'd probably be better off to try to see if we could find one in state to go right if that's possible sometimes they're not as good as some of those other law conferences or conversations so first let's what's what's our budget what do we want to do 20 000 is only what is that 5 000 a piece no it's actually uh even less than that what is that three it's four thousand there's five oh that's right okay yeah but then if we want Dr Freeman to go or someone else then that would well that's their budget that's his budget this is just what the five of us would split well right that's the
145Costco Visa card oh okay the um I I think you know some things that make sense to me as a person who goes to a lot of these um by profession is you know high frequency attendance doesn't mean you're always getting new and fresh content right looking at breakout sessions from other board members but um board seats are either two-year four-year terms so you might want to say that you know let's just say your four-year term lands in the middle of that six-year spread and so you're you do one term in the board and you never get to travel so you might want to say at least it should be every four years so everybody who does a term in the board gets to go at least once to a national right or if you
146have two-year terms maybe you want to say once every two years I don't I don't know that every year is always that beneficial and that your takeaways are going to really bring back a improved governance so I think some of it is also being purposeful the other is um you know we showed you what the participation I mean this is actually the governing board's goal for itself number two which is participation in these things and so um probably miss southnick has been the best at attending but you might also want to look more seriously at the less expensive in-state options for your own professional governance growth um in my defense I've only gone out of the con out of the state once in the 10 years I've been on the board because you guys went
147to yeah and you guys went to San Diego this summer right after I was elected and the seeds were already taken yeah and we had planned for us to go to Chicago but then covet hit right and that's we don't really travel ing to be tonight it's just something we have to decide to decide where we can decide to travel we have to have a budget to know where we're taking it from um I did want to add I know we thinking of the um an SBA annual conference but they also have um other different types of ones so maybe you know we set a a 20 000 budget per year and maybe we decide as a board one year we go to the annual conference and the next year we go to the cube
148conference together and then it'll dictate where we're going right once you say you're it's kind of like when you travel on vacation you're like well I'd love to go there but can't afford it it's kind of the same concept so um are we thinking then four thousand dollars which is a twenty thousand dollar budget okay so my next question is is this four thousand dollars I'm not against it I think it works out well but just so we're clear that includes my in-state and out of state uh well that's what we're setting the budget for so we're really talking about out but it would include total cost to attend whatever learning development you want now my next question with this and what this include like registration to asba's delegate assembly I wouldn't think so I'm
149getting technical here yeah I I think you can get quite in the weeds like the the expense of in-state stuff is not I mean what basically what we showed you is it was 5 000 in state and 5 000 out of state um and so um but five thousand in state I mean you go to the things that people can work into their calendar have time or interest for five thousand out of state is a major undertaking in travel so um so you did it less often so if you said you're currently at 500 a person if you go to a thousand that means you could maybe every three years go to something National if you went to um 2000 you probably could every other year go to something National I I think leaving the
150state allotment is one big group because if not everybody needs to go to new board member orientation right or bolts I mean when you're new you're new and when you're not you're not so and you would want anybody who's new to the board to go to that right but you don't all want to go to it because there's one new member right so I mean I just don't go to those anymore I think a trip a year is Amy I have a face um I feel like 5 000 I mean I love four thousand I love I I think it would help us grow and I think it could be beneficial to the district I'm very concerned that that seems like a lot of money to go on this trip every year and is the
151benefit of us are we truly bringing that much back to the district I would want to be sure that we're doing that because that seems like a lot to be doing every year we're jumping from 500 to and that's you know I and I I you know Dr Freeman you bring up a good point like that is 20 000 while it will not get us a brand new teacher it is still money money and it's still a significant amount and it's still money that we're taking somewhere from the budget so what's your proposal I I would be comfortable with saying every other year honestly 2000 I okay that's what my your gut says is good God says is good now I love conferences and I love professional development so I'm certainly not going to turn
152it down if you let me but I don't feel I feel like every other year for going National is better mark um yeah definitely um agree with Amy's feedback um I definitely I just think as a new board member I know it's like getting on and then wanting to like learn about all this stuff and kind of hopping into it and then not knowing what our budget was so I know I was the one who initially brought this conversation to us um but it is good to know I didn't know that we rounded it up the budget of every year and then build it on to go out of state I didn't know we did that so that's really good to know um I I do agree a little with Amy um I don't mind
153going every other year if that means that we get to save a thousand or between all of us five thousand every year on the board budget and I kind of piggyback off with what's already been said um I definitely want to be conservative but then also you know I know the personal and professional development is so important and it's even a good opportunity for us to have Team you know building exercises so we can establish a healthy Rapport of one another but then that being said you know this is all about our students and making sure that they are able to have all that they need and so I don't think that I'm in good conscience will be fair to you know jump such a high level it's like I agree with Amy I think
154every two years would be appropriate and allowed to allow us to meet that objective and have that balance so I agree also just to so to confirm we're just stating we're not stating but um we're just having discussion discussion but then changing our out of state but then keeping our end state other than registration yeah so I mean what we had in the data is you were at in your um 5000 in state 2500 out of state and 5 000 you know probably is pretty close we've actually had more participation this year like at the bolts and at the winter annual conference um some of it is because we have some new people on the board I mean I think there's some things you go and you go and you go again and you don't
155feel like you need to go and then the other is I think some Pantop need to get out and get professional development for everybody being locked in and so I don't I don't know if you would sustain the same level but like I said adding you know going over 5000 and being at 5249 is an adjustment that we can make and and um for those of you who are new who weren't here the beginning of the year one of the standard motions the board makes in um every year at the beginning of the year is to ratify vouchers into adjust spending within categories as long as the total spending doesn't go over which means you don't have to perfectly guess everything in the budget down to the penny so that's not a problem and um
156uh kind of I think to minister sinceros's question about the difference between the kafir AFR and the budget the expenditure always has to come in under budget and then there's a carry forward which was one of President reyes's other questions so the um the AFR and the kafir really are what got spent the budget is always a little more than that because we can't ever go over budget by law so it really is a good indication of the AFR really is a good indication of the the actual work that's happening right so um this would is would travel expense of the board go under administrative costs uh travel expense to the board has their own it's a 2300 function code so it's Office of the superintendent auditor general is going to put it into um
157that category when it gets reported I think I I mean I don't think it's I don't think it's an out of line adjustment and the other thing is um once again it's the budget it's the plan for spending the actual spending can be different you might want to increase uh the end State um a little bit more if people are going to keep going to everything I mean I I always do like seeing when there's three or four or five of you there sitting together and having some conversation I think it's more beneficial I'm just thinking if we if we go to Flagstaff that alone we're going to stay at Little America that for all of us to attend that's not that's more expensive because it includes travel but it's in-state travel right I know
158but I think that was to distinguished piece we were trying to ask because I haven't been that and again when I look over the agenda whoever the speaker is and what they're presenting I I it's mine but that alone is probably a snot cheap no it's not cheap and I would suggest um either I mean we had one or two people go but if you won't want to go together would be to set you know set aside some time to have a conversation um you know post an agenda oh yeah we would do all that I'm just saying I'm talking money right right yeah it's not right now everybody going to Flagstaff for the summer Leadership institutes not in your budget because it hasn't been your past practice well we haven't had we've had covet
159for two years I don't know we had a past practice if you for instance said that you want to all go you may want to all go in a future year to that I I mean I think you would want to add a thousand dollars at least Syrian statement that's what I'm thinking as well so you might you might want to do that for fiscal 24 is change the 5 000 to 6 000 and change the 2500 to I'm 2500 to 10 000. which is um two thousand a piece instead of 500. on that and have that be the fiscal 24 jumping off point and then I think what you do is you come back and reevaluate and see where we've been what we think we've missed out all right well I think there's been
160enough discussion unless there's other discussion to talk about kind of what the what the board's thoughts are at least and kind of where we before we had in in terms of adults right and they'll be um you know you'll have more discussion of the 14 goals for the district and your own governance goals when you do your April board retreat um so this will kind of tie into that and I saw I thought I saw my email a survey invitation did every everybody get one of those okay yeah um all right so everybody has that information you're going to give us a legislative update yeah Madam president members of the board um I'll try to be brief with this because the um I mean the legislature is a moving Target as people are aware um
161the schedule had two weeks remaining to hear bills and committees and normally that would mean that the action is going to start wrapping up but um committee agendas aren't really packed this week's agenda started out pretty light we're expecting some changes I'm not sure what happened in House Ed today because we've been working on all the things that we've been presenting to you tonight but what's happened is actually things are moving slowly as opposed to rapidly and we may see committee agendas start getting loaded up next week since those meaning for bills are supposed to already be being heard from opposite Chambers so they've extended the deadline to hear bills from uh from opposite Chambers so this week is not the last week to hear bills and committees so they're pushing back their deadlines and
162Senate still passing some of their own Senate bills so they can't be transferred over to the house yet unless they are um so you know that's that's kind of a problem the governor has already I think vetoed 16 bills or sent 16 bills back so um I I I think they may have underestimated her resolve a little bit they've tested it and found out um that she means business so um that's changed the complexion a little bit there's some things happening in Senate ed tomorrow I listed a couple of those so one's the Pledge of Allegiance and um used to be students were required to say the Pledge and then there was some issue in federal courts about free speech and coercing a pledge um so at this um in this bill what they are
163saying is the student has to be excused by their parent I'm not sure if that you know went to the Supreme Court if um if that would hold up there is a famous case during the Vietnam era where um students were wearing black armbands and the Supreme Court said you don't lose your constitutional rights at the schoolhouse door um so I I don't know if um I don't know if that were to pass what all the implications would be there there's a bill called school choice failing schools notice and there is right now some movement between the State Board of Ed and Ade and who's going to do what and some of that is because we had a democratic SPI uh last term we have a republican SPI this term and their disposition towards letter
164grades and takeovers and those kind of things is different so it creates an another different dnf letter notification and then there was a floor Amendment um for requiring the Ade to develop school choice notification letters requiring school districts and boards and Charters to submit evidence of compliance of notification um and so uh really getting into the weeds uh you know we in the past sent letters home I think you know uh Amy you may have gotten one I don't know if we're we're all school-wide Title One school so everything is subject to um Federal notification as well as state there's another one on school districts organizational meetings deadline and there was there is currently in statute a time frame for you to convene your original meeting where you choose your officers so it's got to
165be done by a certain date which is why we always do it at the first meeting in January I don't know why they change it to any date in January unless maybe people are still on winter break all the way to January 15th I I mean usually the deadlines are in the middle of the month or the end of the month historically so I don't really know the rationale behind that the other one is this teacher training parental notification and um there is an acronym I think called Dei which is diversity equity and inclusion and what we suspect is the uh the people who don't like diversity equity and inclusion training want to know when you're doing it so it requires the board to adopt a policy to provide parents with information in an electronic
166format as part of the parent involvement policy to an include procedures that require the district um to um basically disclose any training for teachers or administrators and to give parents access to the training materials so that would be extremely onerous and and probably like a lot of those materials we pay for on a per participant price I some of the vendors we work with probably wouldn't want their stuff given out for free it's proprietary so I don't know um that they're really considering you know at least from the vendor point of view what the implications for proprietary information would be House Bill 2460 is suspension requirements so there was a bill that went through a session or two ago saying you couldn't suspend any little kids and then of course the kids came back from
167being home with covet and especially the little kids were tearing up classrooms probably as far as teacher workman's comp claims go our little kids create more claims than our big kids and so um so there was a push back to add short-term suspensions like one or two days for the class to regroup and the administration to work with parents to see if kids needed other therapy or medication or those kind of things and so that's been moving but I saw a children's action Alliance put out a Facebook piece last night um saying that suspension discriminates and it doesn't help you know we disagree with that we think that the other kids and the teachers do need a little bit of break from kids who are extremely disruptive and an opportunity for parent meetings to be
168held for the school and the family to work together to see if there's simply behavioral socialization or other kind of Developmental needs the kids may have and sometimes nobody even realizes that until they get to school and they're sharing space with 25 other little people instead of [Music] um I I see a lot of people when they're out you know if the kid starts acting up somebody hands them their cell phone and they start playing with it which of course they can't do in kindergarten um uh there's 25 uh 33 classroom instruction posting requirements um it mandates that schools post a free electronic copy on the website of each course of study being offered a list of all the Learning Materials being used including the source of supplemental materials and each lesson plan being used
169or implemented this curse would be hugely onerous for teachers in addition to the planning they're already doing and so um I the people I've talked to the juries out on whether this is once again to discover anything that could be Dei or the other is all of the people who are going to use vouchers to homeschool want to take our teachers lesson plans and materials off of our website so they don't have to do their own planning they can just Bogart our staff's work and then take the voucher and work from home with our teachers lesson plans so it's a free homeschool curriculum guidance um or maybe it's both um lastly there's a big bill um which is 2060 and it's one of those strike everything amendments where the kitchen sink and the bathroom and
170the living room and everything is in there and so um that's pingarelli she's the chair of um the committee she's also one of the people who voted no on the AEL um she's uh I think she was a Peoria board member from that Northwest Valley very conservative area but there's website things in there deleting uh Charter subject to the usfr allowing districts to do their own dyslexia training without the somebody telling you how to do it narrowing the requirement for K3 reading changing the administration of the kindergarten entry evaluation that would actually probably be helpful recognizing the Ade requirement to develop parent rights handbook for both districts and Charter parents requiring within five days of enrollment a pupil can request previous records that's a issue sometimes getting those from another school district but we actually
171have to have their their state record released to enroll them so that's an ongoing thing I'm not sure there's there's a bunch of other things in there about dyslexia and parent-right handbook and so that's going to be that's going to be a tough one to watch when watch when they start putting all kinds of different things into one big strike everything bill and there's things moving down there some that are report supported both by democrats and by Republicans that um we would find objectionable so it's it's a strange year in the legislature we're going to go down I think the first week of April and meet with some representative groups with the travicates group that the West Valley School Districts joined to see you know what kind of bridges we might be able to build
172and I'm usually down there every week not necessarily with an ask but talking to different members and trying to provide information on different things to continue to build rapport and relationships because there's so many new people down there and new staff so some point we may want board members to weigh in on some of those and if you're not already signed up and request to speak or something like that we can certainly help members do that that's I don't know if that's not enough information for you or more than you wanted to hear obviously the session is going to go on for a while so a lot of these things can change the information um it's always mind-boggling so it's all you can say to some of that stuff at this point if there's no
173other conversation I'll take a motion to adjourn I move that we adjourn at 8 47. I'll second that all in favor I