001nelson here mrs contreras here mr raider mr razor thank you mrs reyes here mrs sashanek here thank you uh i'll take a minute and stand and recite the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all if you'd like to silence your cell phones we'll take a moment here for a moment of silence and maybe just give some thought to the teachers students and all those who have been affected by the pandemic and this particular time thank you so much are there any statements from members of the board this evening amy please go ahead um on december 16th i was able to represent littleton at the arizona school boards association
002meeting um it was really informative we got to hear about some of the new legislation that was passed as a board uh the i know littleton voted to approve it at the time but um there's now a seat for the native american population um caucus as well as the african-american caucus and then we did elect the new officers of asba um their names have left my head at this moment but i know that we i've received emails and we've all received emails with their names thank you and thank you for attending and john or sarah i just wanted to thank amy for attending as well um it's a busy time for for everyone and so i appreciate that thank you very good mr brookman if i could have just a moment thank you john i
003think yeah um go ahead i'm um i'm participating remotely um tonight because uh my wife who's a teacher um was diagnosed with covid and i think her first response to me after receiving that news was not concern over her own health but concern for missing opportunities to be with her students and her colleagues at the school and i know it's been a difficult week as we've returned from the break from many of our teachers administrators and all of the amazing staff that keep our schools going so i just wanted to take a moment i know this wasn't mentioned in the speech yesterday but to just say my most sincere thank you to all of our amazing teachers and staff for what you're doing to keep our schools going for the benefit of our students so
004thank you mr president thank you sir i appreciate that and that's a good thing to remember too many times we don't remember all the good work that they do to be with the kids help with kids and see that they do get an education um thank you next item dr freeman thank you mr president members of the board those listening can everybody hear me okay okay so um good evening everybody my name is tara satoros and feliciano um we're wishing you all a happier new year 2021 brought more adversity than we'd hoped for and we're continuing to hold on to our believe theme by believing in our community believing in our ability to be resilient and believing in our capacity to support each other people may notice unfamiliar names on the board agenda this evening
005so take a minute to explain we would like to congratulate dr lisa haid most of you have known as dr kelly for many years on the celebration of her marriage you'll also see that miss chizzy's last name is officially changed to mrs garrison we wish them both many years of happiness before i go any further i also want to share our thoughts and prayers which go out to lisa for the recent loss of her father while lisa was fortunate to be able to be with him when he passed peacefully in his sleep we know this is a difficult time for her and her family it will be the first time in many many years she's unable to join us at the dias i'd also like to acknowledge we know she's not alone in grieving many
006of our families have lost a friend or family member someone they respected or admired in the last several months it has been a struggle for many and you have our sincere sympathies as well we hope that the air will clear in 2022 and afford us a chance to heal and reconnect sometimes we have to look a little harder for a measure of goodness happiness and joy so let us all resolve to be kind take good care of one another stay safe and be healthy in the new year january is school board recognition month and we join asba the arizona school boards association in thanking our board members for their service we all share the common goal of helping littleton district students thrive every one of our members has a reason for deciding to serve and
007we appreciate it asba is posting videos on their website of school board members who represent communities across arizona to tell why they decided to become school board members our enrollment this january is about a hundred more than last year at this time but still well below where we were at this time in 2020. we're heading the right direction but we know the pandemic has impacted school attendance here and throughout the nation we traditionally emphasize student enrollment in the spring but we want to remind parents they can enroll their students at any time we have a dedicated enrollment staff at our welcome center and they're here to help smooth the transition to one of our eight academies including our online academy to find the best way to meet their families needs during the month of december
008several of our littleton school communities participated in food clothing and service events to support those in need we always look forward to reporting on these to reinforce the value of their selfless service to our community quentin's student council created a toiletry drive with each grade level are acquiring different toiletry items to donate the student council at country place place held at canned food drive and raised 1724 pounds of food which provided 1437 meals for families in need over the holidays trace rio pumas collected 2 162 items to support the avondale city of avondale food drive fine arts falcons were able to collect 350 pounds of foods for st mary's food bank and we'd also like to congratulate the falcons on their first successful online performance of ballet forklorico their newest performing ensemble you can still
009watch that on the littleton youtube channel if you missed it the superintendent's youth council is a leadership program and a forum for direct communication between our middle school students and the superintendent the youth council participants increase their leadership skills as they share their voices on a variety of topics and advise us on issues that are important to them and to the district overall last semester they shared their thoughts on our district's learning model the value of their social emotional learning time how student agency has impacted their learning their school focus and the ways their campus is engaging families in the community one of the students shared this it was good to hear different opinions from students coming from all over the district getting a small peek into what they do he went on to share
010that i think students having a voice in their education is extremely important giving them that could be an excellent way for staff and teachers to give students the best learning experience possible and hearing things from a different perspective i would just add on a side note these kids are amazing the kind of things they tell us you'd be surprised i am happy to report thanks to the ongoing support of our community that the district completed installation of ions ionizing packages on all of our air handling equipment ahead of schedule before the winter break computer-controlled fans circulate air across those units whenever the rooms are occupied omicron is spreading quickly through our community sending people home from isolation and quarantine our last count of staff vaccination remains a little over 55 and that's too low without
011more people vaccinated it'll be hard to be able to provide in-person learning to that end we'll be hosting another clinic scheduled for saturday january 22nd from 10 a.m to 3 30 p.m it's our first saturday uh scheduled we've been doing after school so far to help protect our community and keep our classrooms open we encourage our staff students community and anyone else who needs to get vaccinated and my parents that booster shots are now available for youngsters 12 years and older we've hosted our fourth vaccine clinic with our healthcare partners last month and so pfizer first second and booster shots moderna boosters pfizer pediatric and influenza vaccines are all offered our four clinics so far have administered 650 vaccines since beginning in september finally in closing i'd like to thank bees or homes for their
012support impact new development has on our school community and that's all i have this evening thank you so much dr freeman i now have a proclamation i would like to read for school choice proclamation january 23 through january 29 of 2020 2022 school choice week whereas all littleton children should have access to the highest quality education possible whereas littleton recognizes the important role that an effective education plays in preparing all students to be successful adults and whereas littleton is a district of choice in the west valley allowing students to enjoy multiple program choices based on individual interests whereas educational variety not only helps to diversify our economy but also enhances the vibrance of our community whereas littleton has many high quality quality teaching professionals who are committed to educating our children and whereas school choice
013week is celebrated across the country by millions of students parents educators schools and organizations to raise awareness of the need for more effective educational options that challenge and motivate all of our students to succeed we now therefore be it resolved that as the governing board of littleton elementary school district we proclaim that our schools will stand with the nation in recognizing january 23 through january 29 2022 as school choice week thank you all right miss vandewater are you out there somewhere i am president nielsen members of the governing board dr freeman i'm excited to present to you our program showcase for this evening tonight mr atahini principal of littleton stem academy for computer science will showcase littleton's signature school focus through the lens of a computer science coding program computer science explorations middle school students
014will share paired coding problem solving practices in scratch which empowers students to engage with computer science as a medium for creativity communication problem solving and fun additionally littleton stem academy will showcase their kids at hope student of the month 7th grader jordan campos and recognize a dedicated volunteer mrs christina hardaway we are pleased to welcome mr attahini uh thank you miss vandewater uh greetings mr president members of the board dr freeman and the executive team uh today we'll be highlighting one of the impacts of our partnerships to a grant we secured called the amazon future engineer the amazon future engineer is a comprehensive childhood to career program to inspire educate and train children and young adults from underserved schools and communities to pursue careers in computer science the amazon future engineer offers qualified middle schools
015access to exploratory computer science classes through project stem we have the benefit of receiving these courses dedicated implementation and ongoing support at no cost some of the resources that we receive are curriculum so those are the materials that we use to teach students recruitment resources so posters and flyers to get students and community um excited about the opportunity afforded to us intensive supports so dedicated resources for implementation and ongoing support uh seven days a week classroom visits and real world connections uh so we're able to connect our classrooms with amazon engineers and opportunities to take field trips and professional development uh so there's a fully aligned pd there are fully aligned pd courses to help our staff feel confident in uh instructing this uh curriculum content so what you'll see in the video is our
016middle school students working on pair coding to build their capacity when it comes to problems or errors they may come across as they engage in the work of coding in computer science explorations is the introductory course that you'll be seeing the kids working on it's based in my cs or my computer science uh in scratch that empowers students to engage in uh with computer science as a medium for creativity communication problem solving and fun students start in cs e1 which is the introductory which is what you'll see then uh next year they'll navigate to cse2 which focuses on artificial intelligence and then year three they'll um elevate or transition or go to uh cse3 which is uh creativemedia the one thing i want to share with you before we uh show the video is that
017the application process was actually quite involved and i'm just really uh i really want to extend a thank you to ms armstrong our assistant principal and uh ms mullins our computer science uh teacher for going through this process so not only did we have to apply we also had to interview and then we had to go through an onboarding session in the summer to prepare for launch in the uh in the fall and uh they they really worked hard to make sure that this was a reality for us so uh please enjoy the showcase video hi my name is fernando romero i'm an 8th grader in legend stem academy of computer science i chose to come to leyton because i enjoy technology very much in a computer science class we've been learning animations and i
018created using code we also been learning that coding can be challenging and we need to use percentage and have a growth mindset and i think these skills will not only help me do in class not only helped me doing computer science but also helped me in real life situations and up in all classes when i grow up i want to be a computer science engineer and work with artificial intelligence like robotics or rolex products i'm so happy i can go to layton to prepare myself for that job here are some pictures and videos of students in my school studying the coding journey when the green flag is clicked clicked scratch cat starts at the left of the stage while it walks to the right it works the first time the program is wrong but after
019that scratch cat does not start on the left side look at the code and program okay so he has to come back that means he has to walk right back where he begins after this he's gonna glide over here and his coordinates are 180 negative 180 so glide one seconds to and now we can look as coordinates so oh i have it already and now let's run it i like the left side i like the right side too and it comes right back yes we did it we now save it save our project [Music] it says add a second move forward block to reach this sheet so the shape is here and okay so that's one run move forward so when i hit run and see how it goes [Music] so why did you change
020it to 200 pixels because um it's gonna give us like more blocks shorter because every 100 so you want to uh put 200 on the top and bottom oh okay and so you changed it to 200 so that you could use only one block instead of two yeah and the sides are always at 100. oh okay so let's run it nope it was right [Music] why are we doing all this in computer science we can use the skills we are learning like growth mindset and any job that we want after high school this seems like a lot of work how exactly are we gonna do all this the coding skills we are learning while making projects in scratch will help prepare us for a job in the tech industry like software engineering animation design website
021creation and many more so what exactly is ms smallins wanting us to do our first big project we will complete this semester is to code an animated movie scene we will plan out a movie scene and write all the code it takes to begin okay but then what will we need to do know what to do we will use our knowledge of events broadcasting the x-ray coordinate grid and writing sequential algorithms to make our characters come to life do we at least need to get a partner on this yes that's what pair programming is all about collaboration is the best way to create and solve problems in coding oh okay i think we got this all right uh greetings uh mr president members of the board dr freeman and the executive team brings me great
022pleasure to introduce you to jordan campos jordan has been a student at littleton stem academy since kindergarten he's a leader on the basketball court and has sought to bring that passion for leadership into the classroom he's a good friend and supportive brother he has a passion for the truth and is a highly personable young man he continues to work towards being a positive and strong influence amongst his peers and we want to congratulate jordan campos for being our kids at hope student of the month please enjoy the video hi my name is francisco campos and i am a kids at hope because i challenge myself to get all my work done and not be distracted by anyone and my goal is to have a brand new car and have my own detailing business by 16
023years old and i will always work hard for my stuff because it's not just going to be given to me i have to work hard for it the reason i come to littleton stem academy is because my brother jonathan who was 21 years old he came to the school for seven years and my brother enrique came to the school for seven years as well and my brother julian came to the school for nine years and myself has been going to this school for eight years and my sister mia has been going to the school for four years so it's a family tradition my ace of hearts are my mom my dad my brother jonathan my cousin zachary those are all my aces my ace of diamonds are my cousin zachary he has he has always
024pushed me to not give up and when i buy my lowest he's always there for me and pushing me my ace of spade is mislocker because she's always pushing me to be greater and to work harder and she's always tells me to not give up and keep going if it gets hard and i will all i will honor her because she sets high standards for me my best friend is my friend isaiah because he's been going to the school for eight years and he's always been there for me and always pushed me to be greater i'm great just a great student i really really enjoy that guy great guy and then finally the volunteer of the month greetings mr president members of the board dr freeman the executive team it brings me great pleasure to
025introduce you to miss christina hardaway our volunteer of the month ms hardaway has been a part of the firebird community for the past five years the most resounding part of her volunteerism is how the relationships she's established at our community events have cascaded to a level of trust comfort and connection to our student body we want to thank miss christina hardaway for her commitment to the firebird community uh please enjoy the video greetings mr president members of the board dr freeman and the executive team it brings me great pleasure to share some kind words of our volunteer of the month miss christina hardaway she is a constant at our community event supporting staff with setup she facilitates activities with students and families during these community events she has been available in emergency situations to step
026in and help events to be a success whether it's taking charge or providing insight into how we can develop events it's very much appreciated by all she is always present at our pta meetings and provides a helpful hand to our pta president and board members through her thoughtful ideas and exuberance and lastly prior to covid she was always there for our staff members to support in the development and the facilitation of field trips it brings me great pleasure to congratulate and highlight our volunteer of the month miss christina hardaway thank you mr atuhani thank you so much we appreciate that um anything else on that item if not number eight the call to the public um let me read a couple of things here according to the arizona open meeting law any matter may be
027brought forth to the board by members of the audience but they may not be discussed or acted upon at this particular meeting and just a reminder that you have a three-minute limit to make sure that everybody has an opportunity to present their concerns i have one here from mrs vianos are you here would you please come up here make sure the microphone's on so that we can hear her now i see a greeting i can hear you thank you yes i surely will good evening mr president school board members and district administration my name is joanne vianos i am a teacher at fine arts academy today i am speaking as an individual because of the three-minute time constraint i will be reading my thoughts very quickly as you know our schools are struggling during this
028current wave of covid as students and staff get diagnosed with latest variant we are doing everything we can to make our schools as normal as possible it has taken a lot of creativity patience stamina and understanding in order to get through a normal day when you have a librarian a nurse a tosa paris teachers etc all absent on the same day you have very few individuals to call on for help but everyone's pitching in and doing the best they can the teachers are struggling though to not only rewrite their lesson plans at a moment's notice but then monitor the health of their students each hour sanitize adjust the plans again keep social distancing and of course try not to get sick themselves it is simply impossible every day we have no idea what the day
029will bring it's the way of covid i absolutely understand that we all agree that in-person learning is best for most students however we also know that at some point other factors change the dynamics of the learning and then it may not be the best i truly feel that this is that time each day more and more staff members are being diagnosed and this is setting us all up for failure simply we cannot run a school efficiently without a staff we are not doing justice to their education we are ourselves scrambling every day we need a plan a solid plan that helps us give direction every day an if than plan a plan that prevents the site administration and having a scramble each morning they are our heroes right now shout out to natalie souch we
030need numbers we need charts we need you we need you to give us direction i know that's really hard to do but we have so many questions how many students should be diagnosed in a class before we quarantine is there a magic number how many teachers in a grade level would need to be sick before the greatest quarantine why does our staff not provide coveted days to staff instead of having them to have to use their sick days despite us receiving esser funds can we go to virtual learning for a few weeks in order for us to get control of this variant how does the district want us to handle grades for the children that are out some attend virtually others do not most do not do any assignments i need to know what to
031do and what to tell the parents now with all that being said i am a person who likes to identify problems but also try to come up with solutions number one if half the teachers in a grade level are absent then go virtual it seems counterproductive to split classes and then spread the germs even more considering so many staff members are sick the district may also want to consider making the upcoming professional development days virtual for so many reasons let's think outside the box how about asking bus drivers to help beam class monitors for classes that are having to log in virtually while their teacher is teaching from home we need your help we need a plan we need your thoughts we will do whatever you'd like we just need to know what to do
032thank you for your time and listening to my concerns i hope you have a healthy debate this evening no pun intended and a productive meeting and trying to meet all of these decisions i would love to stay for the entire meeting but i think i'll go watch virtually good night thank you so much we appreciate that are some of those things steph can look at and get with her and we already have it okay thank you very much very good we have a second to call the public here miss garanil again just reminder if you state your name and then you have three minutes hello uh my name is cherise granillo it's craig can you guys hear me okay there you go okay hi my name is cherise garniello and i wanted to take the
033opportunity to request that the board review case number 22-0108 my reasoning for this request is my daughter who is at the middle of this disciplinary action she's an honorable student she is in njhs she is a top performing athlete and she made a decision to be a part of something that she now regrets including in her exhibits were paraphernalia but that paraphernalia was not found on her it was found on another student so i'm i'm a little confused why that was included but the other student was not included with the case in a hole i would like the board to reconsider the punishment that was imposed in the disciplinary hearing reading over the policy it said it could be suspension from one to expelled and she was discipline till the end of the school year
034which is 2022. originally um i was under the impression and so was anissa that it was only being considered to the end of 2021 so we thought after the month of december that she would be returning to school if we had known that it was if the school was recommending through the end of 2022 school year we would have taken a little more time to fight for the case in this instance my daughter accepted accountability for participating in the drug paraffin using the drug paraphernalia but now has since regret that she has been suspended since the beginning of december so we're going on a month and a half of no school for her and i know we were suggested to go to the alternative program um but i don't feel like that would benefit my
035daughter in a way where she can continue to excel in her studies and in her athletic um extracurricular activities and also it would put her in a demographic where there's continued disney player actions and other children that have these continued problems whereas this was her first disclaimer disciplinary action on record you close up now that's three minutes okay um so um when it comes time to review the case i would just ask you to thoroughly review and take into consideration um my notes thank you very much we appreciate you coming and sharing that with us this evening thank you sir again we won't take action on that tonight but get with you are there any other call to the public this evening okay thank you next item is consent agenda are there any members of
036the board that would like to pull any one of the items on the consent if not may have a motion to accept mr mr president can we please pool item b three um the long-term uh suspense appeal case 22-0108 repeat that one again john please um i i apologize mr president i believe it is um it was the case that was just referenced in the call to the public it's on consent i believe that is item nine b three okay he needs to modify the motion to approve consent except for b3 so i'll move um that we approve the consent agenda with the exception of item 9b3 i'll second that thank you all in favor aye aye aye are there any opposed no so nine b nine b three and we pull that one and
037is that one that we need to go in executive session four so um um mr president if i could just note um i think i know the parent may still be there but it does look from the notes that the superintendent has already recommended to the board that the um the suspension length be reduced to this uh student returning after spring break um i i think i i don't know how much further we could um to discuss that but i i did want to to bring that to the parents attention um and i don't know if that's that's a satisfactory result but um she was still mentioning in her statements that the the suspension um extended to the end of the year whereas it does look like the superintendent has has recommended a reduction if
038i can ask a question does was the parent notified of the change of the suspension mr president uh mr raider miss reyes the backup material in your board view only has the documentation from the case with names redacted for student privacy one of those is the letter from the superintendent that went to the parent that is copied for you as backup material that was sent january 5th so she's headed about a week so noted thank you so does that answer your one question there john yeah i mean i again i don't we i don't know how much of this we can discuss in in public session but as long as it's it's clear that it's already and it's on the record that that has already been reduced by the superintendent i don't think i have
039any further concerns with this this case so are you asking to take it back off the and and put it on a docket for approval based on the the documentation in our our our current backup i'm confused what we're doing well i i certainly apologize if i i was out of order by pulling it um my only point was that i have no i would agree with the parent that a full year suspension um was unreasonable and i would just wanted to point out that um to the parent as well as to the audience that i do agree with the superintendent's recommendation to reduce the length of that suspension and with that i guess other than that comment i have no other concerns and i'm willing to move it for approval now or if there's
040further discussion regarding case specifics i i'm happy to um to move to executive session also but uh i i just wanted to make that comment on the record yeah as a point of order mr president members of the board it is it the discretion of the board you can move that now i would just remind you in executive session you can have questions answered but you can't rehear the case you can judge the severity of the consequence but you don't have to go into executive session you may move to approve the superintendent's recommendation now or wait until you've discussed it in executive discussion and then consider the superintendent's recommendation or another motion i think if you don't want to change the motion you can approve it now but if there's a member of the board
041who wants to reconsider the severity then you would wait that's probably the easiest way to i'll make a move we move into executive session just for i need some clarity now i'm a little confused so that is my motion i'm not sure how everyone else feels later on the agenda but you could take a point of privilege mr president if you want to do it now you need to leave a little bit later yes 8 15. but do i mean don't don't try to accommodate i'm just thinking if we want to do it we need to move an executive session right now i don't think it for me personally i just it won't take long i just need a clarifying but i'm not comfortable discussing it in open session yeah yeah we just need to
042send a separate zoom invite to john and sarah we can do it now but i'm concerned about a little bit later not going too long that you not being here i appreciate that thank you i don't think that my questions will not take long so i think we could be in executive session and back out pretty rapidly okay yeah and probably just leave this zoom open in the meantime and start another one in executive session mr president you would need to have a motion to move into executive session i don't so if i made me i asked that we move that i make a motion that if we could go and move it up to um current and move into executive session and change the agenda order i second that okay we will then recess
043for an executive session if you'd like to stay here that would be good so i made the motion to move it she second it now we just need a roll call dory all in favor aye any opposed no thank you john and kathy or john and sarah if you just hang on for just a minute she'll send you a new zoom link can we get that taken care of sure thank you thank you mr president so organisms oh um probably um to peer pressure last week are they back on with mr vero we're getting miss contreras back on the call and then we'll have a motion as soon as all the board members get back up online we'll go ahead and reconvene you can move to reconvene without her i mean you need three votes
044if you want to get moving all right may i have a motion to reconvene from executive session go ahead i move that we reconvene from an executive session i'll second thank you all in favor aye aye aye when the other ones come back here we appreciate uh the information that has been presented tonight and i'm sorry who did we have vote i four people or five or three three three so we did not hear from john we at this point we are trying to make sure they're confirming on zoom okay so we are three oh right all right that'll work no no no you keep me straight yeah the quorum is us three right here right now too abstaining i guess right yeah so let's wait till they come back here yes john are you
045there can you hear me sarah can you hear me jim are you muted down again john if you're if you're there you're muted we can't hear you maybe he's purposely muted give us a hand signal okay so you're saying they can hear john can you hear us now we can hear yes sir i can hear you thank you how about shara are you there too yeah i can hear okay so we've reconvened we've taken care of that already so we'd like to move out of sequence here i take prerogative to go down to item number 21. i need a motion on that with the according the the the number that would pertain to that uh nine b three is there a sorry i'm confused are you wanting us so are we making 21. i'm going
046all the way down to 21. okay so and on 21 there needs to be a motion for the superintendent yeah case 22012.0108. so at this point i'll move the governing board approve the superintendent's recommendation on the appeal the determination of the hearing officer for student discipline case is outlined and the case number will be inserted accordingly thank you kathy you have a second second thank you amy i have a roll call on that one mr nelson hi mrs contreras aye mr raider aye mrs reyes aye mrs sasha nick aye thank you so with that we would like to then proceed back to the rest of the agenda mr president thank you dr freeman item number 10. at least for a moment longer all right according to the policies of the governing board each year the
047board determines who their presiding officer for the calendar year not the school year will be because as elected officials at the end of the election in november cycle you take your seats in january [Music] i have not anybody talked to me about a burning desire to become board president so i don't have any advice for the board you you do however have to have someone preside for the year someone has to be nominated and i would imagine accept the nomination so i think mr president the floor is open do we have anybody that would be interested in taking that opportunity this next year it's been a while since i've done it so i wouldn't mind doing it again have you got time and availability to take care of that i think i do very good
048kathy would somebody needs to move it i move that we nominate kathy for the president for the calendar year of 2022. and i will second that wholeheartedly all in favor aye aye aye dr freeman we need to have a vice president or someone who would follow interface the board the board may establish other officers as needed it um that's all the policy says as you can do um a vice president clerk a uh president pro tem should the president be absent in in years past we've had none uh we've had um i think vice president or help me miss reyes i think one time we did identify like a backup person i can't remember what we called it i can't remember what we called them but we had a backup in the event that the
049president or the chair was unable to uh to uh well i will volunteer to be the backup whatever that person needs to be if that that i think that's appropriate because it just keeps it smooth and running and we can keep on so with that i'll make the nomination for a um vice is it a vice chair it was vice president the last time thank you vice president not specified in policy so whatever you move if you get a second that's what it is all right so i'm making a motion that we do a vice president which is mr nielsen i'll second a second that sorry amy thank you thank you very much appreciate that i think you have did you vote the first motion already yes was it 5-0 okay so then you need
050to vote the second motion all in favor aye aye opposed no do we hand her the gavel or shall i continue for the feed no you're well i think you changed chairs after you've taken action but if you because of covid wanna hold your ground you can give her the gavel and not have her move i don't need the gravel but thank you um mr rays then you're presiding for item 11. okay so let me get my bearings all right we're looking at uh your calendar yes thank you i prefer that upcoming yep so at this time the governing board is going to consider dates for regular governing board meetings dr freeman madam president members of the board um the board secretary has gone through um the uh instructional calendar and other calendars bearing and
051worked with me to try to come up with what we think is the best schedule of calendar of meetings and there are some challenges with vacations [Music] you're going to see let me make sure i have the right page here meeting dates adopted usually are for the second tuesday you can see on your list that we've right now only scheduled one meeting in march for march 21st that's a third tuesday because of holidays and spring breaks for our school district and for the high school district uh what we did is instead of trying to have it right after the february meeting or right before the april meeting just sandwiched it right in the middle of the two other meetings so of course you know we may need to uh schedule something in addition to that
052in the spring depending on what happens with the legislature but that's 2023 so that's quite a ways away we'll have time to make that adjustment we also put on the schedule some special meetings the board has said that they want to be quarterly to discuss you know board business and have study sessions so those are listed and we recommend adopting that schedule so people can plan moving forward then of course dealing with things as they come up as we always have if we need additional meetings or to move things thank you is there discussion or concern about moving the the having the dates as noted if not we'll move i'll have a motion or i'll have a reading this is john i'll move the governing board approve the recommended 2022-2023 regular meeting dates thank you
053i need a second this is sarah i'll second that thank you roll call your eyes fine whatever is easier all in favor opposed none passes off five to zero item 12 is informational only dr freeman madam president members of the board um and in some years we've put [Music] more of a policy review for board in front of you but we have moved into a phase where auditors require us to have conflict of interest statements on file i think board secretaries worked to get most of those completed what we need to have on our agenda is um that you know we have covered these with you so by putting this on the agenda for uh those policies and section um b g and i about use of resources values behaviors conflict of interest and ethics
054is documentation that that's been done and that you know the form of that agenda will satisfy um any kind of review going forward if there's any questions i'd be happy to try to address those is there any questions on item 12 hearing none we'll move to item 13 dr freeman on fastbridge um thank you madam president members of the board call your attention to the details in the screen this was a follow-up to further questions from the monitoring report and happened to be some items also related to specific goals that the board was looking at so last year we had two schools who piloted fastbridge the other five schools remained on a cadence because they weren't in the pilot so last year's acadians data is a little bit short in the raw number of scores
055but it's summarized there for you and i'm gonna make sure because that's a long ways away for me to read that i can get my screen up here um to where it's easier okay fast bridge okay i i don't know that um it's a good use of the board's time to read all of this to you it took us a while to put it together because we've been a little short-handed but what you can see is in kindergarten those five schools grew um from 14 to 33 percent um that's a pretty significant increase the students classified as intensive dropped from 73 percent to 50 percent of the kids i think everybody knows that 50 percent of the kids is intensive is not where we're where we'd like to be that you know that hopefully would
056become a smaller number but it shows good progress uh through the course of the year first grade also showed good progress um second grade uh did not and from what i understand talking to staff um the uh the the uh staggers in beginning middle and end and the change in assessment has always been a problem uh it's being addressed with staff but we really don't think um that it's a problem with the quality of second grade teaching it's historically been there ms sosnick's nodding her head so we're not alone in that but the data started at 43 percent and it didn't really increase as expected the students classified as intensive was at 50 at the beginning and the end of the year so they didn't move as expected but i think part of what the
057board needs to understand is the expectation goes up with all three tests so not not moving up in a category doesn't mean you didn't move up it just means you didn't move up enough to advance now this year we have everybody in moved over into the new assessment and here you can see we're not comparing the beginning and the end of the year but the beginning and the mid-year the number of students who were at or above grade level grew um to uh grew 21 percent to 38 percent so if you subtract that out they would have only been at what 17 to start the year the intensive number dropped from eight percent uh dropped by eight percent to 31 so that would have been 39 um we won't have end of the year data
058the assessment window closes may 13th to give staff some time to pull together the numbers get those reports back to teachers and families that's true for all three of these the data timeline is the same first grade grew three percent um the intensive uh number of kids identified as intensive at mid-year um went up and that's being monitored second grade we're seeing pretty much the same effect um intensive dropped four percent and by at mid year the kids didn't go up as expected what we've done is we have instructional specialists and reading specialists at all of our schools they're working intensively with second grade team to see what they can do about that and then at the february meeting miss vandewater is going to have an update on the progress of the school's iaps and
059some of them had data on that so you'll get more information at the next meeting a little below that you see achieve 3000 data this is a graph that the boards reviewed before so this is new data it looks a lot like the data did last year where there is a gap between littleton's lexiles and expected lexiles what i did see in reviewing this is that there is an increase in the two tests at every test and so what we were looking at is the gap the distance between where our kids are and where we would like them to be is the green line so um there's an increase in lexile levels for each of the grade levels it starts out with the students down there in third grade a 14 increase then 10 10
0607 7 and 7 in grades three through eight respectively but the other data that's um described in that paragraph for you is the percent of uh lexile achievement toward the goal and you can see third grade's only 44 percent of where they need to be but by the time they get to eighth grade they're at 79 percent of um lexile status toward the goal that's the 710 to 900. so they're closing the gap each year as they go up and grade as well while they're not reading at the level we'd like them to be we're pleased to see progress in those increases there is another graph on dreambox usage and that had to do with math we've discovered here um uh a kind of a conundrum that's being that's gonna that will be addressed with
061staff and so the um the board set a goal to reduce the number of kids who had no usage or insufficient usage and what we see in december is the number of kids who had no usage dropped but insufficient usage went up when we dug into this what we found out is dreambox's definition of sufficient usage is five or more activities in a month we have a bunch of kids at four so they get dropped out of the data for whether or not they're on track they could have four on-track activities and then be designated as [Music] insufficient usage we think that's an area for teachers and students to really address that there might be some kids who are you know one activity wonders that if we just pick up one more we're going to
062get better data so right now we don't think this data is great but we think we've identified what the problem is and have a strategy to address that if we scroll down a little further that was k5 the 6 8 data has the kids doing four activities per week only us you know a slight incremental rise by a small decimal point but last year they were only doing two so this year we have them slightly over four which is a huge increase for middle school engagement in dream box and what we understand is that the kids like it and they're doing it we're just not necessarily making it over that five activity hump uh but anyway having reviewed the data everybody is aware of it and focused on that now i think there's a little
063bit more if we go down is that the bottom of the list so that is then the review of the data following up on the monitoring report from school year 21 and progress on school year 22 on those reading and math measures that the board was looking at i'd be happy to try to answer questions if i can about the data or what the implications are questions on the items submitted no hearing none we'll move to item 14. this is dr freeman as well it's information only okay we've had some conversations about the aggregate expenditure limit and um i would it's not in my prepared materials but i did see um a thing in the paper and i probably will attach it to the to the board update it was an article written by one
064of our state legislators judy um schweibert i don't know if anybody knows her she seems to be a pretty bright gal who's written uh in the republic an opinion on um the aggregate expenditure limit and has attached um a bunch of information as well as her thoughts primarily being that education funding in arizona is um well it ranks in the bottom of the country in both measures of effort and dollars and of course people are pretty disappointed that this did not come up in the governor's state of the state address at all i'll tell you why the aggregate expenditure limit if we can go to the next slide was established back in the 80s and people may remember prop 13 went into place in california it was having some pretty serious consequences there was an
065effort to avoid that happening in arizona so they came up with a different referendum or a different initiative no it was a referendum so the legislature put this together and it became part of the state constitution to limit the growth in state and government spending so those of you who are familiar with the work of the city will know that cities can vote to have home rule and go outside of the limit and so it created a baseline and then school districts have an aggregate limit they work off from that 1980 baseline plus a growth factor for those of you familiar with other government bodies that aren't struggling with this one of the other things that happened back then is the state took over spending and spending formula that money from the legislature goes to
066the department of ed to be distributed in state aid to schools whose qualifying tax rate is not enough to pay for all of their spending limit according to um title 15 state or state statutes so when they did that they aggregated that number all of the state aid of all of the districts now is aggregated into one appropriation to the state department of education that means that each of us cannot go out individually to our boards and ask to override it it can only be overridden by the legislature and that's the situation that we're in one of the things that the legislator pointed out is there's been an attempt by some people to say districts are overspending their budget this is just authority that the amount of budget approved by the legislature which i'll remind
067everybody listening is the lowest in the country is over the limit based on this formula so it's constitutional which means they can't change it with a statute they can't write a law to change it but the but the constitution does allow them to set it aside to do that they have to vote before march 1st [Music] if they don't do that there's a pro rata reduction so that work has already been done by the joint legislative budget committee and the arizona department of education that's where that's what the limit is and where it comes from in the next slide you'll see that um the voters approved later in 86 a 10 cushion well that was applied in 86 and so even with the calculations today there's also a set aside of other funds that aren't
068included so those are federal funds state grants other funds like adjacent ways cash funds instructional improvement funds and local locally voter approved funds are excluded however if you go to reduce the mno budget a lot of those other local funds are percent of like 10 or 15 percent of your other budget so they'll they would be um or could be adversely impacted now there's a little bit of a history to the problem we have i'm not sure if that's the next slide or not because i'm not peaking ahead we have this clarification of what's in the constitutional limit and what's not in the constitutional limit and there's two problems that have exacerbated this for fiscals year fiscal years 22 and 23. one was that the prop 301 when it went to the people was considered
069to be outside of the budget limit when the legislature extended it they did it by statute so it used to be outside the calculation then this year it goes inside the calculation because the 20 years of prop the people's approval of prop 301 has ended and now we're in statutory law the other is because there was a loss of enrollment in covid the prior year total student count dropped and that's the basis for the calculation so there's two kinds of things that are exempt those are things for special purposes or for sources of funds and i listed some of those on the slide before but this details what some of those are if they are local revenue is down the left side special funds and if they are special programs what we've done here is
070if they're excluded for a special purpose we put a p next to them and if it's the source of funds exclusion there's an s-ness to them so we go through and do the work of taking all of the authorization of the district and then pulling out whatever those exclusions are both at the state and the local level to see how much money would be remaining which would be over our share of the limit next slide so here's the statewide authority this was approved by the legislature and then reduced by the exclusions so 7 billion 7.2 billion dollars in school-wide or statewide school authority when you calculate the constitutional limit it only comes out to six the difference is 1.15 billion dollars over the limit a little over 16 percent the problem is if the legislature
071doesn't override this all of the districts get a share of this number to reduce from their budget in april may and june 16 of your budget and one-fourth of your year next slide so here is the details on fiscal 21 22 and 23. the limits been calculated for last year at 6 billion 3 and what happened last year is or last fiscal year is because there was an enrollment drop when everybody adjusted their budgets you fell under the limit and you didn't have to go back and address it so we saw this effect of covid decline in enrollment 301 was still considered part of the formula now in fiscal 22 you can see the limit is 6 billion we just went over formula funding exclusions tate excise taxes all of that adds up to 7.2
072billion in authority the amount above is 1.24 billion and then there are some other exclusions you can see the same problem occurs next year in fiscal 23 which we haven't even proposed a budget for yet but if you didn't if all you did was the minimum inflation into the state formula and didn't change anything else the authority which i'll say again for effect for the audience is the lowest per pupil amount in the country would be over the constitutional limit so this is obviously a problem that has to be addressed you can't continue to operate with 1.2 billion dollars less than you're appropriated especially at the very level low funding that we're at and you can't take it out of the system with only a fourth of the year to go and not expect dire
073consequences we really think it's a kind of a i'm going to say no-brainer but i don't mean to disparage anybody to approve this the legislature has approved it two or three times in the past for this exact same reason and what we understand is um the governor and the leadership aren't opposed to fixing this because it's not a problem that was created by schools or school boards it's a problem that's been created by these shifts in the economy and in policy next slide what does that look like in littleton it's a 6.8 million dollar reduction in our budget avondale uh 7.7 talisonnell 3.1 tolleson union 17.1 dysert 28.4 those are all millions of dollars that would have to be cut in april it's essentially the equivalent of ending the school year in april or if
074you wanted to keep 12-month employees on staff sending the teachers home a little sooner so um what what we're cons well here's some of the issues prior year count and current year count have been mixed around in policy overall the low education funding has kept below the limits but you had things like they cut all the capital and then restored district additional assistance they cut the gifted funding and then restored it sped funding has been gone up and you remember when the teachers walked out there was the 20 by 2020 increase initiative all of those things have created a shift in funding that was not accounted for in the formula for the aggregate limit prop 301 shift i've already talked about from being voter approved to legislatively approved so it goes from outside to inside
075special ed in 1980 was essentially in its infancy those of us who were going to school in the 70s and 80s didn't see a lot of special ed kids or a lot of special ad services they're everywhere now and some of them are extraordinarily expensive k3 reading and ell increases in funding and decreases in funding through the years career and technical education districts didn't exist and certainly schools don't look today like they did in 1979. so those are all issues now here's the timeline there's economic estimates that were already put in place determining the annual basis for the limit and that's put out in november the state board determined if the expenditures of districts are going to exceed the limit that's actually a collaborative process with um joint legislative budget committee that was done these
076numbers came out a little before winter break and we've been discussing them and what we've determined is now that the legislature is reconvening it's an appropriate time for the board and the community to be aware of what the numbers are and what the timeline is if the legislature needs to approve by a two-third majority vote of both bodies to exceed the limit and remember it's not a it's not an expenditure limit it's the funding formula limit this nobody's spent six million dollars more than they were supposed to it's the six million dollars that we're supposed to spend in april may and june um april 1 is the deadline for districts to revise their budgets effective of the reduction so what we anticipate would be maybe some scenarios for the board in february at the end
077of february the legislature has to do this vote if they don't when we get to our march board meeting we'll know how big the hole is that we have to fill and the board will need to take action in march to address that budget reduction so that it can be implemented in april um next slide that's a timeline so because there's two years on here what we've proposed is a two-part solution one is solve fiscal 22 by having a two-thirds vote override that do it now don't wait till february 28th as you get closer and closer to that deadline i would expect the behavior of people to change quite a bit and maybe some crazy things to happen so the sooner the better the other is you have to deal with fiscal 23 and you
078need a long-term solution so this doesn't keep happening year after year after year we think the first one should be pretty common sense next slide what we're worried about is all of the things they're fighting down there like critical race theory i don't know anybody who was teaching critical race theory but the governor brought it up in his state of the state address that there are issues that down there that some legislators really feel really ardently about and want um to see put into law mostly those are the things that the court threw out that got tacked onto the budget because they couldn't get passed in the last session and they're mad about prop 208 they're mad about liberal school boards and as the governor said bureaucrats so we're worried that some of the tenor
079and the kind of discourse happening at the legislature may get in the way of getting this done it doesn't make any sense at all but that doesn't mean that it couldn't happen and so we believe it's important for the board and the community to be informed of what it is and what the consequences would be and hopefully leadership can get members in line to get those two-thirds i'd love to see them do that in january so we could get on with finishing the year and planning for fiscal 23. i don't know if the members have any questions if i can't answer them i can write them down and go find an expert to get the answer for you so be happy to try to do that and then i've kind of laid out what kind
080of action they need to come before the board in february and march depending on what happens at the legislature and their progress on this issue is there questions for dr freeman hearing none thank you dr fredman uh can i just make a quick comment of course president thank you very much i um thank you dr freeman for the information i think it's really important uh and i'm not trying to add anything to your plate that we have some of the concrete scenarios laid out sooner than later so that we can be communicating with our legislators and our community what the real impacts of this would be and it's not being hyperbolic or trying to scare people is just um clearly communicating what a 16 cut does at this point in the in the school year
081which um you know may mean kids getting out of school in april and again i'm not trying to inject inject any hyperbole so i know you you mentioned working up some um some real life scenarios by the the february meeting but um i actually think it would be beneficial to have have the scenarios as soon as possible so our legislators can be talking um about them on the floor and that we can be communicating to our residents and our teachers what these these cuts will be yeah we have uh we have uh thank you uh madam president mr raider we've tossed some of those ideas around of course there's uh implications for um different things you choose we're uh we're right now self-insured for unemployment because we've never put anybody on unemployment um and so
082there may be an additional financial consequence to the district if we laid everybody off we haven't figured out how that's going to work quite yet simply put it's a fourth of the year so if you took 16 divided by 1 4 those of you who remember how to divide fractions know you multiply by the reciprocal 4 times 16 is of the budget for a fourth of the year so i mean it's just there really isn't much you can do um but we we will work on that mr raider and maybe you know put some straw things together and of course collaborate with the other districts in the region in the state uh for ideas on how other people plan to approach this different school districts have different amounts of cash reserves that they might be
083able to use to tide them over we might have to use ours to fund unemployment and they may have to also as districts dig into the details and find out you know what some of the different complicating issues are we're we're working with colleagues across the state and with business groups to try to make sure people are informed and that we've thoroughly gone through alternatives you know one of them one of them being if you try to stay open and burn through all your cash reserves then you have no cash reserves in fiscal 23 issues such as that but i appreciate your concern and you know as we i i really hate to put out premature ideas that aren't very well thought through and um and get you know whatever group is most impacted by
084them uh terribly agitated for no reason if it's not you know a real viable option so um we don't we don't want to put anything out that's going to create a false a false sense of panic does that make sense to people i see mrs reyes yeah that thank you dr freeman and that makes sense and i certainly don't want to create false sense of panic and or become the um focus of uh you know a campaign where it makes it look like you know we're threatening or being adversarial towards the governor's office or other segments of our state legislature but i i do think uh the flip side of that coin is is our our parents and the teachers need to know the real life consequences of something like this so that they can
085also be advocating in their best interest thank you all right with that uh we'll move on to mr french who will discuss emergency compensation and regulation the dkr and this is an action item so mr french thank you president reyes the governing board members dr freeman littleton community as you may know the district had a network emergency over the winter break we had a select group of employees that came into work to work on the network and ensure the district was ready for school on january 3rd this evening i'm bringing before the board of regulation the district recommends attaching to district policy dka payroll procedures and schedules which would allow the superintendent or designee to declare a district emergency for items like the network disruption the emergency would be specified for a period of time
086and classified employees needed to address the emergency would be compensated at 1.5 times their hourly rate for hours worked outside of the employees posted work hours and or designated holidays exempt staff would be compensated with leave in half-day increments of leave based on time worked the district had three employees that fell into this category over the network emergency and we are asking the board to approve emergency compen uh compensation this evening um jim can you go ahead and open up the next item that item yeah sorry um if we uh you'll see that this compensation will cost the district less than two thousand dollars and we avoided having to delay the beginning of school on january third so i'm happy to answer any questions the board has um but this is um the action item
087this evening is uh to approve the additional compensation for these three employees is there questions on any of uh what mr french uh presented hearing none sorry mr president um mr french if if i could just for a second and certainly support the the compensation for work completed i guess i'm struggling do we not just pay overtime when folks um go beyond their let's say 40 hour work week if it hadn't been an emergency and we needed staff to come in on a saturday for a special event wouldn't they be potentially compensated time and a half for anything above and beyond already thank you madam president member raider the way that this had worked um in this time this situation specifically is that we had a couple of uh holidays that ran um as part
088of that week so the employees only get time and a half member raider when they work physically work over 40 hours that week what we're looking to do here is if if they work any designated holidays that they would receive that compensation as well we had these employees potentially working christmas day and christmas eve taking time away from their families and helping the district get back up and running did that answer yeah no thank you very much for that explanation all right hearing no more questions i'll ask for a motion i move that we approve the emergency compensation retroactive to december 22nd for the listed staff i'll second dad all right all in favor aye aye aye all right passes unanimously any opposed oh yeah because they're online any opposed hearing none the motion passes
089unanimously number 16 mr french thank you president reyes governing board dr freeman littleton community this evening we're asking the board to award the invitation to bid for the littleton head start expansion uh the governing board approved the release of an rfp and qualified select bidders and an imitation to bid for following uh to follow for the littleton head start expansion at the september 14th board meeting upon the release the notice uh the notice of invitation to bid was sent to five qualified bidders and was selected from the rfp outcomes out of the five vendors the district received four responses the determining factor for award was based on the lowest responsive bidder and sd crane was the lowest responsive bidder at 2.2 million dollars the vast majority of the funding for this project will be provided
090by the head start program with the district assisting with some adjacent way funding for the ingress and egress of the new building i've attached site maps for the board showing you where the new building will be located in relation to the rest of the lilton campus as well as a building drawing showing the six preschool classrooms this project would build if the board approves tonight the district asks the board to approve the invitation for bid for the littleton head start expansion to sd crane so this is showing you um the existing preschool uh facility at littleton as well as jim if we can as well as the existing building a which we retrofitted for head start two years ago and the new building would be situated right there in those two between those two buildings
091um creating what we like to call a head start campus and then the other item here is the six classrooms uh with bathrooms for the head starts um kids i'd be happy to answer any questions the board has is there questions for mr front hearing none will have a motion we'll go ahead and make that motion the governing abort approved the award of invitation for bid for the littleton head start expansion to s d crane i'll second thank you all in favor aye aye aye aye are there any opposed hearing none motion passes item 17 mr french thank you president reyes governing board dr freeman littleton community uh for this item we are reviewing the transportation corridors and boundaries for the fy 2122 school year the transportation staff are not recommending any changes to the
092attendance area transportation corridors for this school year the limits on transportation will continue and families would need to take into consideration the availability of transportation services when selecting a school choice program the two areas currently restricted are the area north of the freeway mcdowell road transportation not would not be provided to australia vista and fine arts and the area south of the gila river indian springs where transportation is not provided to call your clinton littleton these transportation corridor restrictions will remain in force but exceptions would be permitted in exceptional circumstances only to maintain program capacity as needed i did want to let the board know this is the same boundaries approved by the board in fy 21 the district asks the board to approve the present transportation boundaries as presented thank you is there questions
093regarding the transportation boundaries for mr french none i'll take a motion i'll move the governing board approve continuing with the current transportation corridors boundaries thank you i'll second that thank you all in favor aye aye aye is there any opposed hearing none motion passes we're moving on to item 18 dr freeman thank you madam president members of the board um if you know if you're watching the news you're aware of the controversy around uh workplace vaccinations and masks and testing the federal government the department of occupational health safety has put out guidelines for large organizations to have employees either vaccinated or tested weekly um excuse me we have some guidelines on those either they have to bring in a test a negative test or have a proctored test as you're aware there's shortage of testing
094materials right now what happened was it was appealed to the supreme court and stayed then the stay was lifted because the federal government said they would not begin enforcement until the middle of february but there is still a question before the supreme court on the legality or applicability and from what we understand the court had some questions about a blanket requirement for everybody versus one that was targeted and strategic for instance the one for healthcare providers is a smaller group for a particular reason so we are not sure between now and the time this would go into effect how the supreme court would rule but we have a feeling that there may be changes and that the agency may make changes however what we've done for the board today is we've put together given the
095current rules and what we know about them a mandatory vaccine requirement draft to review with you tonight so on this draft we've gone through and put together you know what we think is pertinent information the purpose and the scope essentially right now if people are exposed or are infected you have a test to return this would essentially be a test to stay at work if you are not vaccinated so we've outlined potential procedures with the deadline of february 22nd that's from the feds and then considered fully vaccinated two weeks after receiving the requisite number of doses [Music] if you have um proof of vaccination what those forms would be [Music] other other information supporting leave in time um we i mean we do give paid time off to people uh for sick leave and for
096personal exemptions so personal reasons but how that would be used how they'll be notified and removed from the workplace stipulations on testing must be tested at least once every seven days documentation presented who doesn't report to work these are all pretty much stipulation and guidelines we've pulled right off of websites and other places but to make them local and to describe how they would be used here i don't think you can see confidentially privacy how we'd handle new hires you know so we've done our best to try to lay everything out i don't know if the cities had to start working on the same thing if you see anything that we've forgotten you know can bring to our attention you know offline i'm sure we're all working on drafts on this so the um in
097what the consequences would be if you know if we had more resignations because of it and those kind of things that could be quite challenging i don't think the board i mean i think the board should take some time to read this and see if they have questions i don't know if there are any tonight i don't know if i can answer them but i certainly will write them down and research them uh i think you know we have till the middle of february to do this we have two more meetings where we could go over this and and things may be changing still but i thought it was important for you to see uh what it might look like and for our employees to see what it might look like certainly if people want
098to who have been resistant to get vaccinated get started on their regiment you know to be out ahead of this i think i think we are going to see more and more of this because of the implications of unvaccinated people on health care hospitalization our health insurance there's a whole bunch of implications for other people for the degree of illness created when you have unvaccinated people and then what we're dealing with right now is the huge amount of exposures from omicron whether you're symptomatic or not symptomatic sending people home for at least five days and it's going to hit us more this week you heard from one teacher tonight we had set guidelines for two teachers per team or 33 percent of the kids to go remote and we had fine arts get pretty close
099to that yesterday i haven't heard about today but the commitment we made to the board in the community was if we had to go to remote would be to do it in the smallest increments of time and school units so we have had one or two classrooms sent home i would imagine we're on the verge of maybe sending a grade level home again this week and if this continues the way it has been you know whole buildings corridors or even schools even though nobody wants to do it if we don't have staff to supervise kids we're kind of right back where we were at red fred i mean we can't just put 500 kids in the cafeteria and show movies and be safe what we think we'll uh want to do is give parents weekly
100increments so that they can plan with their workplaces and other things like that anyway i i think what the experts are telling us if more people would be vaccinated and keep their masks on we might have a chance but kind of given the politics of arizona and people's behavior so far um there's a great potential we'll see more and more action like this from the federal government and some other big businesses and those kind of things so i don't know that it's going to happen or it'll look like this but i think we should be out ahead of it in our planning and our discussion so are there questions or things that we should be considering or researching the members are aware of and um madam president do you think you want to see this
101again in january or in february there's a lot going on so yeah we've also built a shell in in our organization as well really just pulling osha rugs and popping them and pasting and uh there is still a lot of unanswered questions so i for me i'm personally i need to read it really carefully and uh think about it and we need to watch you know the supreme court see what decisions are going to be made there's a new ruling as well that just said that uh we will pay uh the insurance companies will pay for home test kits yeah so that changes a little bit of dynamic and how you're gonna uh buy them at walgreens and get them paid and reimbursed so i think we just need to sit tight and see i
102like the cell we did the same we built the shell and sit tight and watch and see what happens um board members comments thoughts i would agree with with you madame president um i think things are so fluid and just changing right now i just i think it would be wise to see how things um revolve okay i just got a couple things i'd like to go i'd like to go like you say madam president to go through and read it and just think what's there so do we have to take an action on that or no i think you really could wait till the february meeting to take action but i don't know if you want to wait till then to start considering right what might happen and what the implications might be anyway
103would that policy accept self-testing can i test myself at home and bring it no it has to be proctored you can bring it to school and do it in front of whoever whoever yeah i don't know that we picked a person but i think we have to um and what happens if there's no testing material i was over at walgreens earlier today four different signs there in front of the thing we are out of kova testing material here we have we have a few left we offered um a test kit to every teacher before winter break to take home and asked them to test before they came back on break so we didn't have people coming sick to work there's a few around we are on a waiting list of the county who has been
104helping provide those for school districts but as you mentioned they're in short supply and you know what i think from the news i watched the biden administration is confident they'll have some kind of what do they call that emergency manufacturing military crisis thing you know their their intent on doing this and so they're going to make those available we are concerned about the insurance thing uh we were talking about that today the number of tests per person per month or whatever and so that could easily break the bank on your insurance that's exactly what we started so that's unless the federal government's paying for those that's a problem there's a lot of problems just one last one is there a size of the company or the size i think you remember one time that says
105this supplies only a company over 50 people or less than people i think it was a hundred but we qualified right away okay we didn't debate that but i think if you're a very small company you might not have to do it but i don't know how small well interesting enough i have a good friend of mine who works for a very large grocery chain and is in pretty high uh chain of command advised me today that she received notice from the federal government they had um bought hundreds hundreds if not thousands of kits and had them in a warehouse ready to go knowing that that people were going to be able to get reimbursed they were advised they're being seized by whom the federal government oh oh oh the grocery store chain had them
106yes yeah so i think there's a lot of interesting doughnuts i thought the prior administration was the only one who did that yeah no i think there's some interesting dynamics so we'll just sit tight it sounds like everyone's in agreement okay well we don't have any in our warehouse right now but but there might be in somebody's desk drawer if you knew who to ask that yeah dr freeman i met madam president i would certainly agree with your your comments as well that this is entirely too fluid to make any determinations right now and i definitely agree we'd like to read this a little bit further just one comment um i think a lot of what i've been hearing too is that the efficacy of the vaccine has really improved with the booster shot so
107i don't know if again this talks about a a two dose vaccine or whether it's you know the vaccine a fully vaccinated person is actually three doses or or how the the booster and or subsequent boosters play into the policy as well you know we just checked into that ourselves asking and right now uh again as of today what 758 um the definition was the the two just the two dose the booster was not um in the direction at this time but now they're saying there'll be a fourth um booster coming in february it's going to be a series i don't know when they're going to clock stop calling it boosters yeah me neither so i i think still that's very fluent and who knows what the definition of fully vaccinated will actually become yeah
108i i mean madam president members of the board i don't for people who've already had two shots i don't think the booster is a problem other than just managing your time it's the people who aren't getting shots and the other thing that we heard today was um pfizer is working on a new omicron modified vaccination if they you know they know the science now then they would have to um you know test the they know the delivery system they know the production and distribution model they just need to test the new um dna information on a serum but they're saying that with production already issues already worked out that there may be an omicron variant um vaccination by march so we'll see um yeah definitely tons of moving parts yeah i i don't know that
109we need to discuss this a second time in january unless members have things specific but unless this uh is clear the deck is cleared on this somehow it would have to be on the february agenda yeah i think i think it gives us time to read it and really analyze it and ask questions because i think each one of us has lots of questions as well as everyone else so those aren't we'll table it and then bring it back when whatever fluid settles down we have a little bit more concrete information with that dr freeman we're going to turn it over to number 19 to you a mitigation plan for safe return thank you madam president members of the board i as i've said earlier in the meeting we're dealing with a different dynamic now
110in the virus spread with omicron and you know part of the reason you're still seeing concern about hospitalizations is because even though it is less likely to hospitalize somebody it's it's half as likely to hospitalize somebody but it's more than as likely to spread so the example the county health department gave us was if omicron gets 6 000 people sick but only 3 percent go to the hospital it's 180 people if delta only got 2500 people sick even though it's six percent hospitalization rate that's only 150 so the fact that this is spreading so much and so fast is what's keeping pressure on the system and workforce you know restaurants airlines and school districts where you're having to quarantine people so our suggestion to the board tonight we have to revise our plan with the
111department of ed every six months that is in your attachments we have a problem with maricopa county's school and zip code specific data i checked this afternoon before i came out here we still don't have that for last thursday but what you can see here is both the state and the county shot up dramatically in last week's report we don't have the the like i said the city zip code school district data but this dramatic increase in illness um is reflective of in here if you scroll down a little further that's district data points and county data points if we smooth that with two parameter smoothing you can see the trend in those curves is heading up sharply and so um the issue is that data goes back to december 26 the most recent data
112we have and that's the day after christmas so that isn't giving people five days to get sick after christmas yet we anticipate illnesses are going to go up even more if you scroll down further you look at the county epidemiological data and you see that huge spike at the end and that's illnesses and you can see how it looks relative to the big spike we had last january and so um that certainly has gotten our attention what we're proposing doing on the um expectations for return and the safe return this is the chart the the basically the three color chart we've been reviewing with the board and what we've done is tried to stay in the yellow which gives us the opportunity to have in-person learning but we've gone down and recommended that we make
113a few changes to try to avoid large gathering places in places where we might have spread so one of those as you go down the list you can see that um we still have field trips as virtual only we're keeping the extracurricular clubs configured the way we have them um before and after care has is really being handled by boys and girls club we don't have really that to address at this point if you scroll down a little further uh you know what we've done here is we've moved some things over to the red so our recommendation is we had a few people in the room tonight is that if omicron continues to spread we go back to uh virtual board meetings um mr raider said you know there's there's a bug in his house
114and that's part of the reason he's being remote i don't know if the board wants to go all remote or if you want to continue to kind of have a hybrid or blended approach or on a meeting by meeting basis but we think it probably wouldn't be wise to invite audiences into the boardroom at the rate this is spreading so that was one um if you keep going for um our internal meetings um uh there you know we had talked about make your day uh masks we were looking for ways to um to give people some uh relief from masks because they've been wearing them so long we were gonna put into effect an 80 rule if 80 percent of the people were vaccinated and agreed that they didn't uh need to have masks they
115felt safe we've kind of abandoned that for now we think masks are going to be really important to continue there's no change really in nursing services we have to interact with people there if you can scroll down we have um internal meetings and consulting coming up on this list did we go past oh there it is it's on the top is moving those to virtual so this friday we're supposed to have professional development for the district we're moving it to virtual i think the only thing that's going to be in person is the bus drivers bus rodeo where they work on driving skills which you know we don't have a simulator for that but everybody else is going to be remote for professional development on friday and and what we're telling people is if you
116don't have to be in person don't be in person and we've already designated uh job classes of people who are eligible to work remotely and then uh if there's exceptions we've given supervisors authority to make those exceptions as long as they're responsible for the the work being done make your day like i said we've already agreed to have that go virtual you know i don't think that's going to be a problem for our community or our parents our staff and then the last thing was if we scroll down a little further was travel um you know we do have some external meetings um uh you know here in the county and and with colleagues where we're wearing masks but we're recommending um no more out of state travel we may bring some things to the
117board for meetings like in april and the board is scheduled to go in april with the idea that if the amount of spread in the community and illness drops you know the procurement will be approved and we'll be able to execute it but if it doesn't we just don't follow through on the purchase orders and the requisitions and those things we need to get the board approval out in front but that doesn't mean people are going to go if the metrics are still high but it does allow us to move our paperwork forward so you may still see travel items even though right now we're canceling trips january and february um we're in the process of cancelling all those because of the spread of omicron that's really the changes from the chart from what you've
118seen before that we're recommending jim if you'll open the other attachment this is a form that the department of ed came up with it's kind of their response to aggregating data from all of the districts so that they can report to the feds that we're all planning for safe return so we've gone back and forth with them to make sure that we have all the right things in all the right boxes for them and because we have this other document really what we're doing here is a lot of referencing to other materials and policies you can see there governing authorities education agencies relations with other schools basically delineating some of that out so it can be merged on with other districts and with other states for the feds so this is this is probably more
119of a compliance document to make sure we've covered all the things that they need us to comply and we have to have that go before the board every six months for a year of review and the review of the public those are all the materials we have you know i i went through some of that pretty quick but i know it's not the first time you've seen a lot of it um and so um we do have action on this because of the changes the the changes and the state um the department of education forum so at this point i'm going to open it up for questions regarding the changes dr freeman referenced and take questions on that no questions no questions any questions sorry kathy um just make a comment real quick of course
120um thank you very much um madam president and dr freeman for that information um and i i'm i'm really glad to see um to mrs viano's point earlier um in the meeting that as much of the professional development is moving remotely as possible to provide our teachers with with some sort of break i guess maybe this isn't fair to administration but you know as we sit here and review um the documents it seems like there's a little bit of a disconnect between what the the teachers and our maybe administrators are actually feeling where the situation maybe feels at the site level a little bit out of control and they don't know from day to day what the next step is is there something we can do to help um you know address some of those
121concerns that misfianno's brought up and and bridge maybe that communication gap or are are things just so dynamic that it's you know to some degree we are are kind of living day-to-day with the data um uh thank you mr raider madam president members of the board so the um i mean she's um from the fine arts academy where they had like i said a high number of teachers out yesterday and um what we've had we have a couple things going on so one is um some of this is fairly new from after winter break right i showed you guys a chart in your weekly update last week about how omicron has taken over delta just in a matter of four weeks um the other is we put in place this um staggered coverage plan that
122was related to the sub plan from the teacher compensation plan we did before winter break so now there is a descending sequence of um covering for rooms when there aren't subs that includes special areas and paraprofessionals and other people and so that is that is now a district-wide plan what what we think has happened a couple things relative to her comments is if that plan hasn't been implemented in your school where you're at you probably haven't seen that plan because that is all of you know five days old the other is this idea of at what point do we send the kids home and do we send the teachers home you know that has also not been executed and we have um we have different numbers of teachers at different grade levels so we didn't
123set the number at 50 we set it at two teachers in a team and um what we had happening was people were trying to stay in person because they thought that's what we wanted and the direction they got um at the beginning of this week is once they get to that level we need to send people home for five days and i think we're going to get some pushback on that but the other side of that is if everything is day to day and we don't know what day it is until the kids already show up it's too late to tell them not you know to go remote so um we think the smallest increment giving the current mitigation rules is a five day remote assignment and we haven't pulled the trigger on that yet
124but that's been my experience mr raider in dealing with a lot of these things is um the building level administration may not have called a meeting to communicate that to everybody um and they're probably going as fast as they can to keep up with what's happening at their school i know you're familiar with that campus as well and a lot of the things that are happening there so there probably is a little bit of um you know us still catching up to ourselves uh communication wise but the other thing you'll be my observation is uh people pay more attention to that when it impacts them directly than when it's just uh you know a laid out list of sequencing things i i think the you know the the point i made to staff today was
125they were trying to keep kids in person and and and um i i think at the rate we're going that's it's not going to work we need to take a chunk of um isolation and and quarantine in in these a minimum of five day increments that's going to be hard for people i mean there's a little resistance to that even amongst teachers but i don't i don't know how else we can make this work because families have got to know you know what to expect to do with their kids and not on a we had you know i don't know if people are aware but when we weren't opening school um last year the charter school was they had people driving up and being told there was no teacher today and as they were trying
126to drop off their kids and that's not the way we treat our community so we are trying to figure that out a little bit i think we're further ahead than she realized and so for instance i know um uh miss muesl who's in charge of professional development uh sent out a thing today that said there have been a lot of questions about produv and this is how it was going to be handled the majority of that pro dev was already virtual so there were only a few uh segments that needed to be transferred over [Music] we weren't that concerned about that because the majority had already planned to be remote because of remote you know because people are at different locations and things so people are working from the data set of the data they
127have it's not always the same as ours no thank you thank you very much for that explanation and i appreciate you taking a moment to address some of the concerns that she raised and just want to reiterate you know i know both our administration at the the district office as well as at the sites and our teachers and our everybody are just trying to work as hard as they can to adapt to extremely difficult circumstances so so thank you again for all you that you're doing thank you john our kathy our president had to leave so she's asked me just to finalize this any other questions of dr freeman at this particular time if not we do need a motion on that one no on the mitigation plan i move that the governing board approved
128the updated mitigation plan for ess er safe return to in-person instruction and continuity of services thank you i'll second that thank you amy all in favor aye aye aye aye any opposed the last item we've done 20 and 21 last item is 22 which is adjourned may i have a motion to adjourn our meeting this evening i move that we adjourn thank you amy a second oh second that thank you sarah all in favor aye aye aye thank you all for being here in attendance all those who aren't there and no opposed you didn't vote for oh thank you all right good night everybody good night everybody thank you good night thank you good night