001practice what time's the game 7 30. seven minutes somebody we already lost here correct yeah I don't know that's that's her I'm not going to give an update we told them no no no no no no yeah foreign well we can talk about Renee Renee speakers are not on up here all right we'll move on to item H the consent agenda can I have a motion I move the board approved the consent agenda as presented I second is there any questions you the consent agenda's uh approval of voucher reports personal reports Student Activities some gift and donations um out of state travel uh some approval for revised school calendars up to 20 24 25. um the HVAC system for toradolita so all those in favor aye thank you next item is item I unfinished business
002there is none so we're going to move to item J new business discussion approval of Picture Rocks Elementary School principal appointment Dr Streeter president Lopez governing board members members of the audience Mary O'Hara Perkins has been serving as the principal of Picture Rocks Elementary School since 2017. Ms O'Hara Perkins is retiring at the end of the current year congratulations as such a selection committee was put together to identify the next principle for Picture Rocks Elementary School the position was posted 10 applications were received for the opening a screening committee including one governing board member one principal two teachers a support staff member a parent one executive director and the superintendent vetted the applications and selected five individuals to interview the candidates were interviewed by the same committee and two candidates were forwarded for a final
003interview with myself and governing board president Dr Lopez we are pleased to recommend Ms Vanessa scaffidi for the position of Picture Rocks Elementary School principal Ms scaffidi is currently serving as the associate principal of Ironwood Elementary School she's previously served as the associate principal of pictured Rocks Elementary School prior to becoming in an administrator Ms scaffidi has worked at Picture Rocks as a classroom teacher in the library media specialist okay I moved at the governing board at a point Vanessa scaffidi as the principal of picks Rocks Elementary School effective July 1st 2023. I second any discussion not uh all those in favor aye aye congratulations [Applause] so before we move on there is no such thing as Retirement trust me so yes we all come back so um item two is discussion approval of the
004assistant superintendent appointment president Lopez governing board members members of the audience we had an assistant uh superintendent position that is open due to the retirement of Dr Carolyn dumler which will be discussed at a later board meeting uh the assistant superintendent position was posted in 15 applications were received for the opening a screening committee including one governing board member two principals two directors and Senior staff vetted the applications and selected four individuals to interview the candidates were interviewed by the same committee and one candidate was forwarded for a final interview with the superintendent and governing board president Dr Lopez we are pleased to recommend Ms Denise linselada for the position of assistant superintendent Ms Lynn Salada is currently serving as the executive director of state and federal programs for musd prior to becoming the director
005of state and federal programs in 2016 Ms Lynn Salata served as principal of Picture Rocks Intermediate School principal of Desert Winds primary school and Associate principal of Desert Winds primary school and a teacher at picturox Intermediate School foreign as the assistant superintendent effective July 1st 2023 I second any questions nope all those in favor aye [Applause] congratulations to both of you we're going to move to item three discussion approval item a to adopt a district hiring schedule for teachers and speech language pathologist and a salary schedule for extracurricular and coaching positions do I have to do each one of them yeah um Item B adopt forms of teacher speech language Pathologists and extracurricular and coaching position contracts and item C offer contracts to district teachers speech language Pathologists and extracurricular and coaching positions Miss Harper
006good evening president Lopez governing board members Dr Streeter senior staff and community members hiring schedules for teachers and speech language Pathologists for 23-24 for 2023 2024 are attached the hiring schedules have been changed to reflect a two percent difference between steps also attached are the extracurricular and coaching salary schedules the new forms are secure of certificated employee contracts for teachers are attached for your review and approval and I'm happy to say this year we went from 17 contracts to five those are the teacher contract 10 teacher contract 11 tied teacher contract 14-year end and the extracurricular and volunteer coaching contracts also attached is a list of returning certificated Personnel to whom we intend to offer a contract for 2023-24 school year the list includes teachers counselors Librarians speech pathologists and other instructional personnel okay I
007have a motion yep give me one second Zoom this in I move that the Germany board approved the teacher's speech language pathologist and extracurricular activity and coaching position salaries scheduled as presented I furthermore I further moved that the government were to point contracts forms as indicated in the tax exhibits I furthermore I furthermore moved that the certified employees identified on exhibit Aid be offered a contract for the 2023-2024 school year a second any questions all those in favor aye aye okay the next item is also with Miss Harper that's discussion approval for a to adopt District hiring schedules and contract turns for administrators professional non-teaching and exempt employees B adopt forms of contracts for administrators professional non-teaching and exempt employees and C offer contracts to administrators professional non-teaching and exempt employees thank you hiring schedules
008for administrators psychologists therapists Specialists and exempt employees for 2023-2024 are attached the base salary was changed to reflect the two percent difference between steps on each hiring schedule also included our contract terms for administrators the new forms of administrator and exempt employee contracts are attached for your review and approval these contracts went from actually 30 last year to 10. so I'm excited about that the administrator and exempt employee contract forms include two contract two for senior staff administrator contract three for principal administrator contract four for director administrator contract five for associate administrator exempt employee contract 6 for 12-month exempt staff exempt employee contract 7 for less than 12-month employees exempt employee contract 7.1 for counselor year end exempt employee contract 8 for professional non-teaching exempt employee contract 8.1 professional non-teaching year end and finally exempting
009employee contract 9 for psychologist intern also and also identified on the attachments are those administrators and exempt employees to whom we intend to offer contracts for 2023-2024 school year these include senior staff members principals associate principals directors associate directors coordinators facilitators managers social workers psychologists nurses and therapist specialists I move that the government board approved the 2023-2024 hiring schedules and contract terms for administrators professional non-teaching and exempt employees I further move that the governing board approved contracts forms as indicated in the attached exhibits I further move that the governing board approved the offering of the contracts of 2023-2024 for administrators professional non-teaching and exempt employees a second you saw those in favor aye aye thank you thank you okay we'll move on to item five just oh yeah discussion approval of recommendation a day to
010award requests for proposal for literacy recovery adoptions and to adopt KC Scholastic literacy and K3 foundations by Wilson for Houston Elementary Schools this Reedy good evening Dr Lopez president Lopez vice president Holt members of the board Dr Streeter and members of our in-person and virtual audience this evening I am presenting two programs for consideration of RFP Awards and adoption in musd in January of 2022 Dr Streeter charged all of our elementary schools with improving our students reading abilities at that time an elementary literacy task force was formed with representation from all 12 elementary schools and positions in elementary schools supporting literacy in musd one of the key recommendations from this task force was to purchase and adopt a reading and writing program for our students at the beginning of this school year 22-23 reading and
011writing curriculum advisory committee was formed this committee included representation from all 12 elementary schools and all positions in total there were 24 members of this committee this group engaged in a thorough and comprehensive process including a formal RFP to select the programs being presented here this evening um I would like to personally after a careful sorry I like to personally thank the members of the committee including as well as the members of our procurement team for their professionalism their discourse and the time and energy that they dedicated to this process after careful review and Analysis of the proposals we received the following programs are being considered for award and recognition here this evening for our core program in Gate grades k-6 Scholastic literacy and for our supplemental program engage in grades k-3 foundations by Wilson
012it's important to note that these materials were made available on public displays since January 29th of this year at the school district office I would like to thank the over 200 individuals including staff members parents and community members who visited our district office to review these programs the level of Engagement has been inspiring and exciting I would also like to think of those 200 individuals the 135 classroom teachers that came before or after school in order to review these programs I'm pleased to report to you that the feedback that we've received regarding these two programs has been overwhelmingly positive last but not least I would be remiss if I did not thank all of you our governing board members for your engagement during every single step in this process thank you Miss Rooney can I
013have a motion I move that the governing board approved their recommendation to award RFP 23.12.28 literacy recovery adoptions and to adopt k-6 Scholastics literacy and K through 3 foundations by Wilson for use in the Elementary classrooms and Miranda Unified School District I second if there are any questions president Luke Lopez um I have a statement that Tom Carlson has asked me to read I want to apologize for not being here tonight there's been a death in my family and I need to attend the funeral unfortunately this meeting could not be changed so I've asked Catherine to read this for me these comments are mine not Catherine's please address any feedback to me tonight we are going to vote on something that we haven't voted on for more than 20 years with almost half of our
014students not being able to read at grade level musd is in desperate need of an organized dedicated and purposeful reading curriculum in my view this is a Monumental board action because we are changing the trajectory of instruction in the district the burning platform here Demands a robust solution and I have some severe misgivings about the Scholastic program cheap among them is that it is not based on the science of reading a close second is that it does not integrate literacy instruction across the science and social studies content area Additionally the Scholastic readers have their origins in the balanced literacy guided reading program that has been scientifically proven to not be effective there are more shortcomings but those are the ones that are the closest to our instruction here in musd on the positive side the
015Scholastic curriculum has a solid writing program and Scholastic follows our state standards nicely I have read the staff comments on the materials and they are very positive still IBU Scholastic as being an 80 solution to make up for these deficiencies we will purchase and use fundations to teach phonics and phonic awareness oh excuse me to teach phonics and phonics awareness to our k-3 students foundations are subtle solidly based on the science of reading so we can look forward to improved literacy in short order we will also be buying the geodes decodables which are aligned in scope and sequence with foundations we will be sending teachers to get the l-e-t-r-s professional learning which is widely viewed as being the gold standard for training in the science of reading in addition to training provided by Scholastic and
016Wilson the publisher of Foundations the district is committed to a substantial investment in materials and training so that we can move the literacy needle in a significant way now let me address a couple concerns some teachers have noted that the Scholastic program is not approved by the state this is true however the curriculum is going through the approval process and Scholastic expects to be approved I have secured a promise from the administration that a provision will be included in our contract that if the Arizona Department of Education does not approve Scholastic then we can get your money back I've also secured a promise to offer significant professional development in literacy instruction another concern that has come to me is about the adoption committee the committee members were asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement to prevent
017them from discussing any deliberations with any of the companies that were being considered this is a standard practice to ensure procurement integrity I have reviewed this agreement and found it to be straightforward and appropriate unfortunately it appears that verbal directions was given to the committee members that they were not supposed to talk with anyone outside of the committee to include board members that instruction was completely inappropriate and it undermines the board's Authority if a board member wants to know how the committee worked then we are entitled and obligated to understand that process we are the ones who are going to approve spending millions of dollars on a literacy curriculum so we have the obligation and authority to fully bet all aspects of that process period I don't want that to ever happen again because it
018interferes with our statutory role of providing oversight of the district so having said that I want everyone who felt silenced to know that you can reach out to Dr Streeter senior staff or any governing board member to share your thoughts observation or concerns regarding the committee's work if I were here tonight I would vote in favor of adopting the curriculum I have considered alternative approaches but we need a core reading program now time is of the essence because kids are advancing through the grades and too many of them do not have the literacy fundamentals in place to be successful well I would prefer a core program that isn't an 80 solution the downside of waiting another year is not acceptable I think we could do better but we just don't have time thank you okay
019anybody else have anything go ahead Dan do we have any idea what kind of money we're talking about it's about 2.1 million I believe do you you have those numbers sure the anticipated upfront cost with Scholastic literacy is a little over 1.85 million dollars and with foundations by Wilson 000 with an eighty four thousand seven hundred dollar uh annual cost the primary funding source for this purchase would come out of our Esser funding foreign other questions no I'm excited for it I know for gosh 18 years that I've been on the board we've talked about the importance of writing and we all know that our kids it's so easy for them to get on a laptop but when you ask them to write um they'll look at you like you want me to what can
020we just type it so I'm super excited about the writing um cursive that's been forgotten so hopefully kids will get back on track and and see the importance of it I still believe in picking up a book and the smell of a book you cannot beat that so um I'm excited for the program so I only have one comment I just in as much as we push out something to bringing back the love of it specifically to for children is a big importance too that we've had that conversation as well so besides the curriculum there is bringing back that wanting to pick up the book instant as well so thank you all those in favor aye we'll move to item six Mr contorno discussion approval and policy considerations thank you a job order contract is
021a contract for a fixed term or maximum dollar value which occurs whichever occurs first in which a contractor is selected based on competitive bid to perform various separate job orders in the future during the life of a contract so with it's a purchasing method used for Contracting Services for mostly construction um statute allows for the governing board to set this limit at any at any level they wish ours is currently at one million dollars the district is suggesting moving that to two million dollars due to a inflation of Supply on supplies um supply chain slowdowns is requiring us to use jock a little bit more often um and then one of the big ones is that our school facilities board um a lot of their projects and that's what actually pushed us with over the
022million dollars they they want something done fast we're looking at some projects and job order Contracting is their preferred method and it's over the million so um that's the policy DJ e that we would be asking to have it changed deed policy j e is student fundraising activities and we became aware through our independent audit that we were out of compliance with approving student fundraising activities our current policy requires that all fundraisers are approved by the governing board when I'm researching um various other districts language they had changed that to superintendent which infers to our process current process of of principle in the sponsor of the um of the clubs to be the ones that actually approve um so that language is simply changing that one word at the end to be governing board um
023yes if we were to be in compliance every candy sale every pencil I would be coming to the board and go can we sell so um those are the two suggested changes to the policies dje and jje very short one million to 2 million and I'll just changing governing board to superintendents I just have a quick question so does that mean what do you need to make a motion oh sorry yeah I moved at the government board approved revisions to policy DJ e bidding purchasing procedures and policy jje students fundraising activities hi second okay so let's have a quick question so who um I'm fine with giving that why so we have it at principles in the club what's the what's the what's the re what's the moving it to the um superintendent for what's
024the well superintendent incorrectly if I'm wrong but um superintendent when we went through the asba um policy review infer it kind of refers to everything they want you to put it on the superintendent superintendent and then delegate that authority to obviously the school level but correct me if I'm wrong the way the way the policy is currently written is the governing board yeah every fundraiser so this would just change it to superintendent or superintendent superintendent designee oh okay never mind yeah okay cool just want to make sure I was like wait what okay I'm good so anyway follow those in favor aye so we'll move on to item seven discussion approval or policy considerations Dr dumler yes thank you Dr this call Dr Streeter members of the board and the community uh this policy um
025jfabk is has recently been updated by the years assistant policy for admission of students in foster care and the changes are made to conform with the law and the U.S Department of Education non-regulatory guidance as an interpreted by the U.S department so there's been some shifts in interpretation of litigation changes are intended to emphasize that educating students between school child welfare agencies and vpe Ade and mandated collaboration includes assigning a district point of contact for children in foster care some of the definitions have also been amended or added thank you can I have a motion I move that the governing board approved revisions to policy jfabda admissions of students in foster care hi second any questions follow us in favor aye item item 8 discussion approval of corporate education program agreement with Ottawa University Dr
026dumler and thank you president Lopez again audience as you know we are always looking for ways to help our employees as they further their education we were contacted by a representative of Ottawa University with the request to enter partnership this agreement would allow any of our employees to receive a 20 tuition reduction when they attend Ottawa University's programs and specifically we have an employee working on a school psychology in BDS at Ottawa this will be very helpful for her rich Works through that program approve the corporate educational agreement with Ottawa University hi second next item is item nine discussion approval of Haven totes Inc partner agreement Miss Reedy president Lopez members of the board members of senior staff and our audience as you know in musd we work tirelessly to support students and families and
027especially through our student and Family Support Services for the needs that extend beyond the classroom and so our Family Resource Center would love to the opportunity to be able to offer fresh food from grocery stores to families in musd that need it currently we partner with the Community Food Bank and we have a lot of dried Drive food and goods that we provide to our families an opportunity to partner with Haven totes would give us the opportunity to serve as a food pantry we would be trained and we would be able to distribute those Fresh Foods to our families in need this agreement would make that possible okay kind of emotion I remember the government board approved a partner agreement with Haven totes Incorporated in the marina Unified School District I second question on this
028um is this something that's done on the weekends or is it during the week or do we know where are you Dr Rich do you know can you clarify when it would happen during the week okay thank you all right all those in favor aye thank you okay item 10 discussion approval of formal decision regarding second incentive retention stipend Dr dumler I know every year Association pretty much defer a decision about the retention site until such time that we are sure that that's tutorial has to pay those standards and so the agreement requires that the governing board take formal action regarding its decision prior to March 31st Mr Antonio has confirmed that sufficient funds are available to pay the full amount of 500 for the second retention incentive stipend to all eligible employees this includes
029all employees thank you grab a motion I moved to the government board determine the significant funds are available to pay the second retention intensive and retention incentive stipend of 2020 to 2023 physical Year to all eligible employees a second any questions nope all those in favor aye thank you we will move on to item 11 discussion approval of 2023-2024 governing board meeting dates time and location Dr Streeter this agenda item provides an opportunity to discuss and take action on the schedule time and location of the 2023-2024 must regular governing board meetings in your packet is the recommended schedule for the 23-24 school year if approved the meeting date should be officially posted on the outside bulletin board at the Scott d foster Administration Center and listed on the district's website the dates that are in
030front of you are coordinated as best we can with Statewide events that happen Arizona school boards Association are holiday break spring break fall break Etc 2023-2024 regular gardening board meeting schedules as presented I further move that the governing board meetings be held at 6 pm at the town of Marana Municipal complex I ARS 38-43103 A5 for the purpose of Consulting with and or instructing the board's representative regarding negotiations can I have a motion I moved to the government board conduct an executive session pursuant to ARS 38-431-0385 for the purposes of Consulting with and slash instructing the board representative regarding negotiations all those in favor aye aye so we will be going into executive session and we will be coming back to adjourn so I thank you guys for coming foreign