001Oh, good. Oh, that would have been a mess, too. >> All right. Good evening and welcome. Thank you for coming. We're going to go ahead and get started and we're going to call to order the regular meeting of the governing board at 6 o'clock. And we're going to start with the pledge of allegiance and a moment of silence. >> 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. All right. Thank you. Um, first up, discussion and possible action to approve the board meeting minutes dated November 18th. Motion >> so moved. >> First, do I have a second? Second. >> All in favor? I >> I. >> All right. Construction update. Amber Bordis and
002Bob Lawson. President Davis, members of the governing board, um tonight's construction update is actually um part of our action items. We have two items up for approval tonight and we're review what those projects look like. Um the projects tonight align under effective operations and systems as we optimize the use of funds we have received from the school's facility division to add new classroom space. Um this will allow us to enhance the facilities and to support students and families that are attending those campuses. For planning purposes, we look at our district in three regions. Uh we serve 48 square miles and currently have 15,600 students enrolled. Um, when we're looking at our regions, we have our uh East Mesa or the Eastark area in orange. We have our central Queen Creek area in the purple. And
003then our southern portion of Queen Creek in the blue. Tonight, all of the projects are at Mountain Trail Academy, which is located in the northern portion of our district in orange that serves our East Smart community. Um, at this time, Bob Lawson's going to go over those projects. Again, those are up for approval tonight. So, if approved, we'll be able to move forward and proceed with these projects. >> Good evening, President Davis, members of the board. Tonight, we have two project updates, both for Mountain Trail Academy. As Amber had mentioned, both of these appear later in the agenda for your consideration. Our first project is in the installation of new bicycle racks at Mountain Trail Academy. The the new bicycle area will create approximately 80 spaces for for bicycle parking and the new racks will
004be located along the north side of the school administration building and inside the existing fence for security. Our next project is uh something that the community has been requesting uh since the school opened. This is the installation of a new crosswalk around across Mountain Road. We're working with Maricopa Department of Transportation to install the crosswalk. We've already had some preliminary meetings with them and uh we're finalizing plans for their review so we can move forward. We will be constructing ADA accessible sidewalk ramps in front of the school along Mountain Road and painting the crosswalk from the school across to the south corner of Galveston Road. McDot will be surp uh will be providing the signage for the crosswalk. And that concludes our report. I'd be happy to answer any questions if you have any >>
005that they'll provide signage. They have not indicated that they they're going to have flashing lights, but there will be signage at both ends um dropping it down to the 15 mph required for the the student crossing. And there's also uh signage that they'll provide us that we would wheel out to the center of the the uh crosswalk indicating crosswalk 15 mph. And then they'll also have a crosswalk guard on duty. >> Any other questions? All right. Thank you. Up next is our superintendent report. Dr. Perry Barry. >> Good evening. This members of the board, can you guys hear me? Okay. Is the mic working? Hello. This one's not working. Sorry. Technology happens. I have a I always give a superintendent report. Uh I give it through the lens of our strategic plan. These priorities were
006established years ago with the direction of the governing board and community stakeholders. And so I want to start tonight with priority one which is effective operations and systems. And I want to just talk a little bit about the Heinfield and Meech audit that just took place. Uh team completed the final fieldwork and staffing provided all pertinent documentation to support the process. The business services will continue collaborating with the auditors and preparing the annual comprehensive financial report, the ACFR, to submit to the um ASBO International this month. The final audit reports are typical uh typically issued in the spring and will be presented in a public governing board meeting in March so that everyone can see what the um results were. Priority two is a uh called safe and healthy environment. It's a huge priority in
007our district and this quarter, Queen Creek continues to see meaningful improvements in student behavior and onampus safety. The first quarter data is something that we we monitor data regularly, but first quarter data for 2526 shows that an overall 19% decrease in all types of school rule violations compared to the same period this time last year. So, I'm very proud of that. Um, our district's use of positive behavioral interventions and support, PBIS, combined with monthly data reviews between school leaders, security personnel, and the coordinator of school safety continues to strengthen campus climate uh, early response practices. Uh, here are just a few of the notable trends I wanted to touch on. Uh, decreases in um, accusations of bullying, threats, weapon possessions, and defiance. So, I'm very proud of that. Overall, the data reflects uh safer schools,
008proactive interventions, and effective partnerships among our principles, our security staff, a lot of our teachers obviously play a huge role in this. Local law enforcement, ensuring Queen Creek remains safe and supportive learning environment for all of our students. The department received a number of interested stakeholders to participate in what's called the local wellness policy committee. Invitations will be sent out to groups of teachers, parents, and staff in order to set uh the meeting schedule. This outreach will support broad engagement and committee reviews and updates uh wellness goals for our entire district. The next priority is called effective partnerships. This is something that our governing board values is positive schoolto community um relationships. And last week uh staff picked up food for Thanksgiving food drive from our Queen Creek schools and Queen Creek Junior High at
009the food bank. students helped out from all over the district, helped out distributing food from that food bank, and I had a chance to go over there and see it firsthand. It was awesome. Um, last month I also uh I partnered with local effect uh elected officials along with uh President Davis and uh Quincy. I a few of us went over there for a religious leaders from all faith in a ribbon cutting event called Light the World Giving Machine. The giving machine is a vending machine where people can donate to charities and provide tangible items of support and services directly to people in need in our local community and all over the world. And it was an awesome event. Um the next priority is exceptional personnel. Um, I want to recognize Lori Sternberg, the Queen
010Creek High School badminton, and Nick Garcus, the East Mark High School flag football, were voted by their peers as the region coach of the year for their respective uh, sport. Let's give them a round of applause. [applause] And priority five is student success. and uh Quink Creek High School students um Devin Mock, Caleb Rowley, Camdom Tinsley earned spots in the Arizona Allstate um show choir and I want to congratulate them and their families and coaches for their great work. Um this fall sports season, 29 student athletes up to this point earned all region first team honors and 32 student athletes received recognition for their sports all region uh second team. We have four student athletes who received region player of the year recognition and another student athlete was named region offensive player of the year
011and our student athlete earned region defensive player of the year. Voting for all uh voting for all state teams is currently underway. Two student athletes of the Eastark High School um dive team placed at the AIA Division 2 Swim and Dive Championship. Um and I want to recognize Natalie Stratton. Natalie, are you here? Come on up. Just give her a round of applause. [applause] Natalie is the division 2 dive state champion. Congratulations, Natalie. [applause] >> We'll get a photo of you later. Also like to recognize uh Daley Bluff, the division 2, I think she was a runner uh dive state runnerup. Natalie is here tonight. Um, I don't think the other student athletes. Okay. All right. Well, congratulations you guys and uh good luck moving forward. And I'd also like to congratulate and recognize the
012East Mark High School girls flag football team for ending their season as the 4A conference state runnerup. Let's give them a huge round of applause. [applause] And that concludes my report. >> Awesome. Congratulations to everyone. That's very exciting. uh brings us to our employees and the students of the month. Um we will start with our employees. The power of one awards are given during the board meeting each month to selected recipients at each school. For this award, a person is selected from among those eligible who has clearly demonstrated the outstanding qualities and efforts in making a difference that we look for in our Queen Creek schools. We would like to invite the following individuals that were selected from Jack Barnes Elementary to come on up. Rebecca Lowe, [applause] Margie Seik, [cheering] [applause] Robin Lubie, [applause]
013and Lisa Think. [applause] We would now like to ask Miss Don Kenna, the principal at Jack Barnes Elementary, to say a few words about these individuals and how they were selected. Check. Check. Okay. Well, it is my pleasure this evening to recognize these four remarkable individuals with the power of one award. Each recipient has made a meaningful difference in our school and in our community based on their dedication, service, and commitment to our students and the community as a whole. Their actions remind us that each of us really does have a great and powerful um excuse me, have a great and powerful power within us that can create a lasting impact. We are grateful for their leadership and their example that they set. So, thank you so much for supporting our school and these very
014meaningful ways. [applause] If you guys could um head to the back of the room for some pictures, we'll meet you back there in a little bit. All right. We would now like to invite the following individuals that were selected by Gateway Polytenic Academy up for recognition. Stacy Nichols >> [applause] >> Melanie Johnson, [applause] Jennifer Broius, and Robert Carile. [applause] We would now like to ask Principal Jeff Markle to please uh come on up and say a few words about how these individuals were selected. Thank you. >> All right. Thank you very much. It is that time of year when we sit there and we think about how are our teams doing? Are we getting into the playoffs? Are we near thes? Uh we think about the teams and their accomplishments. So on a bias, I
015just want to say go Firebirds. Uh flag football 4A state runner up. Uh maybe go Broncos 10 and two. Um go Wildcats. I don't I don't I don't know. Okay. I just did I read the room. I didn't know the room. Anyway, looking at our team here at uh GPA, what makes things great is you have professionals that show up day in day out and uh do the job. And we have an amazing analytics guy because it's all analytics these day. Uh we have a utility volunteer who will jump in and do anything for GPA. Uh we have an all-star flex aid who runs a great cafeteria and a superstar teacher that uh drives all of us to be better. And so that is team GPA. And I just want to thank you for everything
016you do and make it a great place to work and learn. [applause] >> Congratulations. If you guys could head to the back for pictures, that'd be awesome. All right. Up next is our students. The student of the month award recognizes and promotes the success of QCUSD students. Recipients are chosen based on the characteristics identified in the PBIS program such as be kind, be respectful, and show integrity. The student of the month student is conscientious and exhibits a determination to learn while demonstrating these positive traits. We would like to invite the following students from Jack Barnes Elementary and Gateway Polytenic Academy Elementary who are examples of these characteristics for this recognition. Camden Glossinger >> [applause] >> Weston Winer, [applause] >> Sabrina Larson, [applause] and Gunnar Levenson. [cheering] [applause] Congratulations to all of you. Thank you so
017much for being great examples in our schools every single day. And we would also like to invite you guys to the back of the cla back of the room, not the classroom. Usually that's where you're at for some pictures. Thank you guys. [applause] Are you are you guys here for the your social studies class or your are you here for a social studies class? >> Yeah. Oh, >> that's awesome. Didn't she play last year, too? >> Yeah, but she played on the >> Yeah. >> I know. That would be cool. >> Kaitlin said that >> how you had those two polar opposite personalities in the same family is like the >> you do. What >> today? [laughter] >> Oh, hey. Oh, >> yeah. Everybody teacher is All right, we're going to go ahead and resume
018the meeting. We have no call to public comments tonight. So, we will move to our consent agenda. >> I move that we take consent agenda in its entirety. >> I have a first. Do I have a second? >> Second. All in favor? I >> I Okay, now we have a >> public hearing. We're going to go ahead and call to order the public hearing pursuant to ARS15-905. And we have our public hearing for proposed expenditure revision for 2025 2026, Jessica Johnston. Good evening, President Davis, members of the governing board. This evening we have a summary of the revised budget for fiscal year 2026. Tonight's presentation falls under the area of effective operations and systems specifically in the area of optimizing the usage of funds through our fiscal responsibility um and uh particularly in this case
019uh capturing all available budget budget capacity for the remainder of the year. We've already had three budget hearings this year. um the first in June for our proposed, the second in July for our adoption, and then um kind of atypically this year, a revision in August in order to um revise our budget onto the um final forms for fiscal 26 as the legislature um came to session and those forms were released uh after our uh proposal and adoption. Um this evening we have a budget revision um in order to capture the um ADM that we have increased uh in accordance with the November ADM capture. Um just to give you kind of an overview of the budget revision process particularly in the fall in October um we completed our annual financial report for fiscal year
02025 and um during that time uh the AD also does um its first official uh data capture uh for ADM for finance purposes. Um and so in November ADA school finance confirms all of our prior year carry forwards. They take that submitted AFR. They take a look at the current year ADM and they um confirm current year budget capacity for all school districts across Arizona. Um in December if um school districts have adopted a budget that exceeds that November calculated budget capacity then they by more than 1% then districts are required to do a revision to revise down. Um that is not the case for QCUSD. Um, as I've mentioned to you before, we always adopt a budget using very conservative ADM growth numbers and um, as has been typical in the past several years,
021we are bringing forward a revision to increase our budget capacity here in December. Um, this is a just a quick look at um, the importance of the override to our operating budget. Our revenue control uh, the override is calculated based on the current year revenue control limit. 15% of that um and um using the fiscal year 25 student count. And so that equates to just over 16 million for this fiscal year which is added to our operating budget. Um we also um have in effect all of the um new priorities for the override that were approved by our voters in the reauthorization in um last fall. So that includes um salary and benefit um pieces, reduction in class sizes, maintaining that reduced class size in K8. Um providing the additional piece of academic support which
022includes reading um and math interventionists um secondary math lab hours, summer bridge programming as well as math professional de for our teachers. And then we've also continued um supporting academic programs in the area of um gifted services um JOTC and our new um naval program at Eastmark as well as music and arts and CTE programming. Um the changes to our revised budget this year um has um enrollment or an ADM adjustment based on the 100th day projection um and our weighted ATM. there is an increase to our revenue control limit of just over $4 million based on that ADM capture. And it also takes into account our actual carry forward um from fiscal 25 which is um just under $6 million in M and um just under $3 million in capital. So you can see
023in this table um just kind of a summary of what um each of those pieces were for our proposed or our adopted budget, our first revision um which we maintained that um conservative estimate of 200 student growth. The revised um budget that's on our um board documents this evening includes the actual weighted ADM adjustments for our current enrollment. Um, you can see the additional capacity to our M as well as a slight decrease to our unrestricted capital budget and I'll explain what that is from on the next slide. It also includes the actual calculation of our M override piece. So, we always use um estimated figures for our revised budgets. Um, as far as the ADM, ADM always fluctuates throughout the year. And so, um, one of the pieces that you saw on the previous
024slide was a very slight decrease to our unrestricted capital budget. Um, that, um, is due to the one-time funds that we talked about earlier in the year. Um, particularly the ones that we, um, the one-time district additional assistance money that's calculated based on ADM, and that also took into account um, what those calculations were across the entire state. And so, our allocation did decrease ever so slightly um, in that piece there. Um, moving forward, we'll um have a final budget revision in May with our um updated numbers as enrollment continues to fluctuate throughout the spring. Um, as uh our part in the business and operations um teams will continue our capital planning efforts for growth. We'll also um continue our efforts to pursue additional funding opportunities specifically with state and federal um funds to support
025the district needs. Um, you know, we always have our annual applications in for the school facility division for new school construction as well as um applications for building renewal grants to support um our aging facilities. Um, we'll work to build our budget carry forward to support our ongoing capital needs and continue to monitor the ADM throughout the course of the school year. And again, we'll have that final revision for you in May of 2026. And with that, I'm happy to take any questions that you might have. Any questions? >> All right. Uh we have um requests to speak regarding uh the expenditure revision. Public requests. Any requests to speak? All right. So with that, I can take a motion to adjourn the public hearing. >> Oh, yeah. So we we did update a policy tonight
026and I know that a lot of people don't get to see the the work that goes behind the policy. Are we voting on it next? We already could say >> Okay, that's what I thought. Okay, so uh it was a policy update that adds some guard rails into our uh school, gives a little bit more oversight into things that are coming into our kids' hands. I think that it's really important to have these types of policies. There was a lot of work that went in behind the scenes. And I know as um a member of the public and not the board, I often looked at these kind of procedures and went, "Okay, so you just all come in and say yes and that's whatever." There was a lot that went in behind the scenes. Erica
027did a lot of work on this. There was a lot of discussions between, you know, myself and and Samantha Perry to make sure that we had the right intentions, that we had um the right motivations here and the right policy that added value to the district. So, I'm grateful that everybody was on this that that the work went into it, the discussions did happen, and that we came um to the conclusion of a really good policy update. I think that this is this is an important one and um I'm very grateful for all the work that went into it. >> Thank you. >> I'll move that we adjourn the public hearing. >> First, do I have a second? >> All in favor? >> Okay. Next up is action items 8A discussion and possible action to
028approve the fiscal year 2526 revised expenditure budget. Jessica, >> President Davis, members of the governing board, you just heard a presentation um with a summary of the revisions to the fiscal 2026 um expenditure budget. Recommend approval. >> Perfect. With that, I'll take a motion. >> I move to approve the fiscal year 25-26 revised expenditure budget. >> First, do I have a second? >> And then um by roll call vote, we'll vote. So, all in favor, Samantha I. Jennifer I >> All right. Next up, uh, discussion and possible action to approve McCarthy Building Companies to complete the crosswalk improvements at Mountain Trail Academy. Amber Bordis, President Davis, members of the governing board. This portion was presented tonight in the construction update. Um, this allows us to provide a crosswalk at Mountain Trail Academy to cross Mountain
029Road for families that are walking and biking to the campus. Uh, this approval will allow us to continue that work and proceed with construction. and and we recommend approval. >> Awesome. Any questions? All right. With that, I'll take a motion. >> I move that we approve McCarthy Building Companies to complete crosswalk improvements at Mountain Trail Academy. >> First, do I have a second? >> All in favor? >> I. >> All right. Discussion and possible action to approve McCarthy Building Companies to install the bike racks at Mountain Trail Academy. Amber Bordis, >> President Davis, members of the governing board, we also heard about this project in the construction report that would allow us to provide 80 spaces of uh bike parking at Mountain Trail Academy. And um this would be allowing us to use the award
030from the school's facility division to accomplish this project. District funds would not be used. So, we're recommending approval so we can proceed. >> Perfect. Do I have a motion? I move to approve of McCarthy Building Companies to install the bike racks at Mountain Trail Academy. >> First, do I have a second? Any [clears throat] discussion? All in favor? >> I All right. Uh discussion and possible action to approve award of contract for RFP26-12-31 for transportation services. Uh Vicky Harba Gur Girly, sorry, I don't know how to say that. Could correct me. It's Gutil. All right. >> Um, President Davis and governing board, the district staff has completed the competitive solicitation process for RFP26-12-31 to secure contracted transportation services in anticipation of the expiration of the current agreement on June 30th, 2026. Um this procurement was
031designed to ensure continued support for daily writership field trips and specialized routing needs as the district grows. The evaluation committee scored submissions using the published criteria considering um both qualitative factors and price. Multiple awards are recommended to provide the flexibility and breadth of services needed to meet the diverse district transportation demands. Recommend approval. Awesome. Any questions? All right, I'll take a motion. >> I move to approve the award of of contract for RFP26-12-31 for transportation services as outlined in the attachment. First of second. >> Any discussion? All in favor? >> I. >> All right. Uh, that brings us to personnel. I can take it in its entirety. >> Move that we take personnel in its entirety. >> First and second. All in favor? I >> I >> All right. Uh, executive session. The board may
032vote to convene in executive session pursuant to 38-431.03A1 for the purpose of discussion and consideration of the superintendent's evaluation and performance. Um, we need a motion to >> I move that we um convene into executive session for the discussion and consideration of the superintendent's annual evaluation and performance pursuant to ARS 38-431.03A1. 03 A1 >> first. I have a second. >> All in favor? >> I >> All right, we'll be back.