001Welcome to the Jordan Board of Education study session for Tuesday, April 22nd, 2025. My name is Nikki George. I'm the board president and eager to welcome you tonight. Um, joined with me here today are all members of the board of education, Dr. Anthony Godfrey, Dr. Michael Anderson, and Mr. John Larson, as well as our board attorney, Mr. Paul Vancoman. We will go ahead and get started tonight with a review of the openhouse for the UFly and social studies curriculum approval. um and invite Miss Carolyn Goff and Michelle Levelville and Mandy Thurman and K Ruto to the table. Thank you. Well, we are excited to be able to come back and and talk about the open house. It was um it was great. It was fairly uneventful. Not a ton of people came, but I'll let
002uh each of these talk about who did come and and uh if there were any sort of questions or comments, but we appreciate your uh any board members who are also there and um and we just uh it was successful. We were able to visit with a few people and let them know kind of what was available. We also had a lot more responses to our online information. That was what most people went through. And so go ahead, Kay, I'll let you share. So, um we had five teachers who came and then um one parent who came in person and then Lisa Dean came in person as well. I was able to track on the social studies curriculum um because of the program that it's under how many unique views we had during that month
003and we had 953 unique views. So, a lot of people went to it. Okay, go ahead. Um, we had the same amount. It seemed like people came to just view everything that was there. Um, except we we we also provided a link to the EULY website, but because it's not our website, we don't have any way to track how many people went to the website to look at that. But yeah, the people who came were really positive. So we also invited um all of the teachers who had piloted the program this year to come back and provide us feedback as well. And so uh that took um several days of sessions that we sat in and asked their feedback and thoughts and it was also uh very positive and they gave us some good details
004of some things that we will tweak moving forward. Um, but overall that reception was also very positive and we had some some great conversations there. So, this was just an opportunity for us to report back uh to the board and if you have any questions, we're happy to entertain them. Thank you so much for making the effort to have those open houses available. Um, I did hear from just one or two people asking some questions that I apologize I didn't give you ahead of time, but I thought I would run by you. So, specifically to the social studies curriculum where the curriculum is written by Jordan School District, is this something that once we adopt it stays what it is or are we continually adjusting and making improvements as time goes on? No, that's a
005great question. I um am continually working on updates and I've had some of the original writers come back and work on some updates as well. Um, but that is definitely something that if they they notice something that needs to be fixed, if they let me know then or they want additional materials, I make sure that we get it. And then just as a followup, if you do have to invite people back to rewrite or adjust, how does that compensation work moving forward? like once we this is ours, do do you need ongoing [Music] funds? So far, I've been able to work with Carolyn to um help pay for that, but potentially, but so far, it hasn't been a huge need. Writing it in the first place was significant and that's where we utilized money from
006the state. So, we had a grant for that. uh tweaks as we move forward, we've been able to handle internally without additional cost. If that changes, you'll let us know. Yeah. If we needed to redo like the whole entire thing or if all of the standards changed or if there was a major uh transformation that needed to happen, yeah, we'd let you know. Because the state paid you guys to make this curriculum, it's now technically a statewide curriculum. Is that correct? So when we're making tweaks, does that tweak it for everybody else? Okay. Yes. It's um the the drive where all of the materials are stored is actually a USB drive and I just am the manager over it and I just can go in and make the tweaks. Any other questions? Great. Well, we
007appreciate you being here. Thank you. Thank you. [Music] Okay, let's move on to a review of the calendar survey results for 202627 school year. Dr. Anderson, Mr. Hamlin, and Mr. Olsen. Thank you. We're here tonight to present the results of the survey as well as the um survey preferences. In board docs, you'll find a copy of this presentation as well as the uh survey preferences. And with that, I'll turn it to Mr. Caleb Olsson. Thank you. All right. Uh we wrapped up our survey Monday morning at 8 a.m. It ran for about 2 weeks. We had 6,100 responses to this survey. That is a few less than we have in other years. In previous years, we've sent out more reminders. Um, I've kind of pulled back on that a little bit. There's no way in
008the survey to control for those who vote early and vote often. So, I've tried to reduce the number of reminders to try and minimize that possible impact. But you can see the breakdown there by uh stakeholder group. It's basically the same as it has been every year for the past number of years. Parents make up the largest group of respondents to the survey. Um the breakdown by level is also the same as it has been for several years. Elementary parents are the biggest responding group followed by middle and high school and then our special schools and district office. The survey asked for a preference between the two options which option they would pick. In previous years we asked for a rating on a four-point scale. switched to asking which one they would pick because it
009gives us a better response than having two calendars scoring almost identically on a four-point scale. On this response or on this survey, we had about 54% of the respondents in favor of a long break option and 46 in favor of the short break option. You can see the breakdown there on the right by each of the subgroups. Um almost all the groups were in favor of the long break option. are education support professionals. That's about a fourperson difference between the two two votes. And then the other subgroup is just individuals who didn't identify as being part of uh any one of those groups. And that uh 66% represents nine no I think individuals. So keeping a um aware of those subgroup sizes is important as you look at some of those numbers. So off of
010those survey results, the recommendation from staff to the board is that the board tonight choose to approve the long break option as the calendar for the 2627 school year. And as Dr. Anderson mentioned in board docs, you also had a breakdown of the responses to the preference question where we asked um individuals to rank a variety of items um based on how much they they were in favor of or opposed to those for future calendars. Those questions weren't required. So you may notice that the uh number of responses is different for each of those items as you go through. But, uh, if there are questions or discussions to that recommendation or to those calendar options, we'd be happy to go over those with you. Thank you for this. It It's funny that they didn't realize
011that you can't want school to end before Memorial Day and yet want a long fall break, a long spring break, a long winter recess, and not start early in August. You can't get all of your desires here. And I just think that was so funny because they're, "Oh, we want school to end before Memorial Day and yet they prefer the long breaks." Yeah. In the the preference questions, uh, Mr. Hamlin was pointing out that more people were in favor of long breaks than there were who voted for the short break option. So, would like short breaks, but also long breaks. I'm curious if that has anything to do with the way that we ask the questions. You know, if so, you can have these things, but you can't have all of them. So, put them
012in the order that you would prefer or I don't know. Is there a way that we can make that clearer to the people taking the survey? We could certainly play with that. Um, we've done this same format for a couple of years, so it it may be worth examining for next year. Um, I know the way they're structured now where we have just the list of items and we ask them to rank them independently, I feel like gives us maybe a little bit better information on an item byiteem basis because each one is being ranked independently. But we could certainly look at a, you know, here are six options, sort them in the order that you think is most important. The the biggest question I would have on that is just what the data looked
013like on the back end and if it was in a format that was usable. But we could certainly explore that as an option. A lot of curiosities. I don't know if these are really questions, but um it's interesting that the group that preferred short breaks are the group that are paid hourly. Do you think that there is a connection there? I can give you a a good reckon on my part, but as long as you don't take it to be truth in every aspect of the word. Um I assume you're referring to the ESP group that that a lot of we have a lot of ESPs at the school level who work the same schedule that uh students do. We have a lot of ESPs though who work at the district office in transportation other
014places who work a different schedule and who have typically if students have a 5-day fall break some of those ESP groups would have to work three of the five days. So if fall break is shorter, they get the same break that everyone else does, but the total number of work days doesn't change for them. So I I think it may be more of optically it looks less like there are days where I'm coming in and nobody is, you know, I'm the only one there or I'm the only one working. That also is a possible downside because I know our our facilities folks can get quite a lot done on those two or three days of fall break or spring break when students aren't around in a building. So, there's some trade-offs, but I think it
015it optically looks like maybe a a better option because I work the same days as my kids go to school sort of a a thing was the the feeling I got in looking at it. We have made exceptions where certain employee groups who are full-time are able to flex days that are less useful for them than days that contract days over a break. So the number of contract days doesn't change from year to year as Caleb indicated, but where they fall might. And so we've provided that flexibility for certain groups where it makes the most sense. Part-time employees can work with their supervisor to adjust when particular when their hours are worked. So there may be some variation from school to school if they choose because because they're using TSSA or land trust or other
016accounts and they might say we don't need you to work this week or we'd like you to work more or less in previous weeks. So Oh interesting. So it can vary from school to school. Thank you. So, I got a lot of um feedback from our employees that live outside our district and I don't know if we've ever surveyed, should we align our calendar with other pros and cons about that. Some people really like that we don't because then they can go places and the line. I do know a lot of our employees I told them the good solution about around that is just come work for us and that solves everything. But um I did get a lot of feedback and I don't know if we've ever looked at that. I mean logistically that
017might be hard especially where alpine split into three. So do we match alpine canyons granite but have we ever looked deeper into that to work together with other districts for com? Yeah. So, this has been a a question since I started doing calendars uh that that we've we've looked at and we've looked at several other other districts and it comes down to a couple of things. Exactly what you said, Mr. Robin Robinson. It's half half a dozen one and six of another where they like it and they like that we don't and they want us to. The other factor is that other districts re have different requirements for their calendar and their calendar days. So they can operationalize their calendar differently and every district has different priorities. So to align it, it would almost have
018to be like well tell us which one you want to align to and be that specific because every one of them are very unique. I do know a lot of the charter schools in specifically my area take our calendar and try to align it. Well, that's happening on a on a small. This was wondering on a larger one. It would be hard to do that for the entire calendar, but we could say we want the same spring break or fall break or but we tend to have a longer break than most other districts, too. Then everyone would have a traffic jam going to St. George also. So, or Disneyland or wherever they end up going. I'm not even suggesting that we do that. I just have received a probably more feedback this year than other
019years on that. Yeah, that's a difficulty for sure. They can solve it pretty easy. Just come work for Jordan. I do try as part of the calendar committee process to print out the calendars for other districts. So, we have them as a reference. This year, only one other district had a calendar for this year when we met. So, sometimes we even that part of the schedule doesn't line up in a way that would would be convenient for it. I'm curious from a historical perspective being new on the board, how does the split compare to previous years, was it closer? Was it about the same? So, one thing to bear in mind is that some years we have had three options. So, that impacts things. Third party candidates don't always do as well as as otherwise.
020um in other than the last two years I believe we asked for each calendar to be ranked independently. So this presentation to the board wouldn't be the the option that was most preferred was the long break option. It would be the short break option scored 2.4 and the long break option scored 2.5. That just didn't seem very helpful to the board because we're saying people like to vote and have different opinions. So make a make a decision on that. Yeah. So the past couple years we've we've shifted that question to be here are the options, pick one, so that we get a little bit more of a feeling of which one do you really prefer the most? Um and I think in the last two years that we've done this, the the longer break option
021has been the bigger percentage piece. Last year we had an additional one that that skewed things a little bit, but we it's easier for the board to make a decision I think if there's a a clear favorite than these two options were basically viewed as similar by patrons who took the survey. Okay, other questions. Don't want to steamroll anyone. Okay, perfect. All right. Well, we appreciate the information and we'll have a vote on this in the future. Not tonight. I'm just thinking when is that? I think it is tonight. It's tonight. Okay. Sorry. in the in the very near future. All right. Okay. Another item that has been discussed at length is the review of our fee schedule for the 2526 school year. We've had opportunities to hear from the public. the board has had
022time to review the proposed fees and prior to a vote, we wanted to bring it back into a study session in case there are things that you need to know before we vote. So, let's go ahead and start. Let's break this conversation into two pieces. First, what do you need to know before you can vote tonight? And then do you have things you would like to know to prepare for future um considerations on fees? So let's start first of all with items that would be helpful for you to have questions answered before you can vote on this schedule tonight. Dr. Robinson, at our last board meeting, you asked for this agenda item. Do you have anything specific? Yeah, I just didn't want to go first, but Oh, sorry. I think you were the only one
023who asked. Um, there is some things that concern me on here. Um, that quite frankly I'm surprised made it through. coaches, uh, admin, athletic directors, principles, our administration staff got clear to hear. Um, but at the same time, I don't know if I want to over um, analyze this. And I'm speaking about like $100 Spanx, $125 cleats, backpacks that are hundred dollars. Um, so I'm on that option. And I do want them to have the power to do it. But I have a couple problems. I think number one, I think parents are afraid to speak up. I think that they are afraid if they speak up, they're they're going to their kids going to have repercussions. So, I'm okay to vote for these tonight, but I would like two things. Number one, I would like
024to have a process put in place where someone can speak up anonymously about a program. Uh we do it with SOS with the superintendent. Is there some way we can allow a parent to speak up that the fees are going high without the rep repercussions? Um so that would be number one. Number two, um we did an audit when we first got on the board and it was fantastic to see where money was spent and how it was spent and how many how much money was left over in accounts and stuff and I would really like to do another audit especially if we hire an intern or auditor. Um, I would just like I think it's great that programs different schools can can charge what they need, but I would love to know like where
025money is going. So, I think I don't I don't know if I'll vote no or if I don't know what does other people think about those issues. I'm just I'm on the road. I'm on the edge. Do I vote for it? Do I allow it to go and then put in procedures that can prevent that? in the future. There's just no to me, there's just no way as a parent that I can say, "Look, you this team wants my this this uh program wants my daughter to buy $100 Spanx, you know, like I don't know what Spanx are. They're like you wear them under your skirt when you're running out on the field." Okay. Dollar bows. I can't even find I priced them. I can't even find them for that price. and cleats for that
026much. You know what I mean? But there's they can't speak up. I don't think that they have the ability to say that's too much. So I'll I'll speak next to back you up. I do share some of your concern about exorbitant costs that are required. I am also concerned about parents confidence in speaking up without repercussions to their child. I share both of those concerns. I think we can find some solutions to them. My inclination is to say give more direction to coaches and principles ahead of the fee schedule next year with specific expectations or things we're concerned about and take a look at it next year. Uh, and as an aside, I don't know if this is an option, but I understand that at least at some high schools, parents get surveys at the
027end of the season with a series of questions and it's anonymous considering it's the school and the team, right? Anonymous to that level. But is there a mechanism similar to that that that's already in place that we could use to ask one or two more questions? Because I don't want to be more concerned than the parents. I appreciate that the coaches are in a tough spot wanting to look like a winning team and then there are parents who at great financial sacrifice fund for their child to participate. So I'd like to find some middle ground there. But I intend I intend to approve the fee schedule. I also agree that I think it would be unfair of us to vote down a fee schedule because we have expectations that we didn't express ahead of the
028presentation of the fee schedule. I'm very open to discussing adjustments that we'd like to see in the future, but that was why I broke this into those separate pieces was what is immediate and urgent and what are things we want to consider moving forward. So from my perspective, the comments I've heard so far is board members feel comfortable voting tonight and would like to consider some changes for a future. Not so fast. Okay. Okay. The other issue I was going to say hear you bring any specifics. The other issue I was going to say for future is as I understand a lot of our increases was transportation and I found out that other districts around us don't put transportation in ours. So then it makes it me it makes it hard for me to compare
029what other districts are charging for for their fees. Is that correct? Just as a clarification for those listening, when you say they don't put a transportation charge in, it means that district funds are used to pay for transportation, not that they simply aren't being cost anyone anything. They just choose to pay for that rather than pass the the cost on to parents. So, as part of our future study, could we look at other districts so that we can compare ours to theirs, apples to apples? Um, but that's a future one. Also, um my other pressing need and why I'll probably vote no is there was a um fee charged add added for uh students that it's an activity fee of $50 I believe um so that they can go to games. It's a way to
030kind of reclaim the losses that we made on student fees. So, I've talked to a lot of kids about this. If they're charged to games, they're not going to go. And I don't want I don't like all the changes that we made on student fees for a lot of reasons and I don't want to pin our losses on the back of kids. Um I would much rather as a board uh go to taxpayers and ask them to pay that. So I would like to request that we don't charge that activity fee that we as a board fund the losses for the school. I think the school needs it. Like I I even went and talked to a school and at that very moment saw how they're using those funds that were taken away from them
031because of the legislators and um I think that they need those funds. I just don't want to charge kids for those funds. I would much rather as a board step up and figure out how we can pay the school so they don't lose anything and we bear the cost and figure out how do we refund it in our budget. Mr. Sorenson, are all of the high schools requesting that $50 fee? Sorry, I should have invited Mr. Curtis and Mr. Sorenson up. Please feel free. Collectively, that's what they had agreed on and but to Darl's point, I think their hope is that it goes away that the board will find another way to fund that. But that that was they felt collectively we want to do that if we're not going to be made whole, but
032their preference would be that the fees that they're used to receiving on registration would still be coming their direction. Then they would not want to do that. I I wouldn't say schools want to charge kids to go into home games. They don't. Uh, but they also recognize that they're trying to figure out how to continue to fund programs and that's been always a valuable resource for the schools where and I I remind you that to put it on the fee schedule doesn't mean we're going to charge it. It means we can charge it and we can't charge more than that. So if this board makes certain decisions to recoup that, we just simply take that take that to zero. Just because it's on the fee schedule doesn't mean it's going to be charged. This is
033their attempt to solve a problem that they can solve. Now it's in our hands to solve the bigger problem. I just can't vote for it. There's no way I'm going to ever allow that to happen in a vote for me. I mean, if you all want to vote it, that's great. But there's under no circumstances do I want that even possible in the fee schedule because I just don't think well then I would say your remedy isn't to vote no. Your remedy is to take action at a future date to take those funds to replace those funds some other way. But I don't want it even in the fee schedule. So is if I put it if I vote yes tonight then it's in there and it can be charged. But if you vote yes
034tonight, it it it can be charged. And then if you vote yes at a future date to something else, they won't need to charge it. They still could charge. None of them want to. We we would take that out. We would not put that as part of our part of our fee schedule. We could eliminate that part so that it is not reflective when we go out for registration information in the fall. But if this board doesn't approve anything else, we have no course of action. But we could make we could make a motion to take that out now. Right. So if we put this another way, you under no circumstance would you ask the user to pay their own user tax. you would ask the community as a whole to make it so you
035can attend a basketball game. I think I have a hard time even asking parents to pay these large fees and then charging them at the gate. Yes. So do I. I have a huge problem with that. But then to charge kids to go to their own school and I've asked so many kids this question and kids say I am not going. And so I don't I want to run a thousand miles away from that proposal. And the only reason our administrators are putting on there is because they feel lost. How are we going to fund the things that we do with that money? They need that money. And I would just be a lot more comfortable to say, "We're not going to figure it out down the road. We're going to figure it out tonight.
036And we're going to we're going to rest assured we'll fund you. Board will fund you. We'll figure out how to fund down the road." I just So I have a question. So if we were to change the fee schedule, we would need to have public hearings again, right, for the new fee schedule. No, we would have no fees. We could charge no fees. If we don't approve a fee schedule tonight, we can approve we can charge no fees next year. The deadline is eminent. Okay. Well, by the deadline, right? If we don't approve, we can make a motion. We can make a motion to change that. I plan on approving the fee schedule tonight. So, let me keep pushing if you don't mind. You're doing the same thing Mark Strong is doing. Yeah. You're doing
037the exact same thing. I just don't want to put on the backs of kids like But we've done that for years. No, I'm charging them for their games. We charge them a registration fee. We do charge them for a registration fee. It's parents that pay that. And guess who will pay the activity fee? Yeah, probably parents also, but I just it I don't I don't think it's the intent of the legislators to do this. It's going to be one of those things that come back and smack us in the face and legislators are going to look and say, "Oh, they just are charging kids for that fee that we tried to take away from them." I I have a question. So, I just have a hard time with that. So, so Darl, um if we
038are if we don't want kids to have to pay to go into football games like they don't this year students don't have to, what about for um plays or dance company performances? because currently I think students do pay to go into the um musicals or the plays or the dance company performance. So are are we looking to remove to fund all of those programs to the extent that they do not need to fund raise for their um their works? Um does that make sense? Is would that be included? is that are you also thinking about those things too? They're not in the fee schedule, so we're not voting on those tonight, but I would be in favor of that. I want kids to be able to participate in their activities at their school without a
039barrier of cost. You want grandma to pay it? You know what? I'm a grandpa and I'd be willing to pay it. But you want all grandmas to pay? I want the legislators to allow us to do it what we were already doing, but I don't want us to to sneak behind and slap it on the kids' back. Do fee waiverss apply to this activity pass? Yes. And does anyone know off the top of your head the difference between what families are not paying per student in registration fees and the cost of the activity pass? Yeah. current the current registration fee is proposed is um or currently currently they're paying $80 and the proposed activity pass is 50. Okay. So so net is they're they're spending $30 less if we are adding and taking away. That's
040correct. And and and just through conversation this was specific to UHSAA activities. So, the admissions to plays of musicals is on there and it is uh an increased cost from $10 to 15 up to that amount. So, our our when they go to a musical, when they go to those plays, currently schools are charging admission to that, which would be separate from this UHSAA sanctioned pass. So, just to make sure I understood that the activity pass is only athletics. it is only UHSAA uh activities that are sponsored. So cheer, those type of things would also be part of that. But not all UHSAA sanctioned sports charge admission either. So it's very limited to which groups actually charge a fee to get into their program. Football games, basketball games, and then again that is determined by
041the regions. As you know, uh, West Jordan is in a separate region than the rest of our five high schools. And so that collective board or those that those groups of principles determine each year which sports they're actually going to charge for people to get into. We don't make that decision. Would we as a district be permitted to creating an activity pass that includes the arts or activities that are not sanctioned by UHSA? Did I get that? I I think we could create whatever uh whatever it is that we want to do. That's not the proposal from the principles. They they want to keep that separate. And a lot of that has to do with the rights that they have to purchase with those musicals and plays are very expensive when it comes to purchasing
042the rights. So they're just in an effort to try to recoup some of the cost of what they had to purchase for that. So it may not make sense to combine it. So it may not make sense. I think we'd get a little push back from the performing art groups. Well, actually, a lot of the performing arts groups have empty theaters because people they're charging and so like the push back wouldn't be there if we're helping to fund it. It's a tough call all the way around, but I just don't like the idea of slipping in a new fee. So, can I ask a couple questions about this fee? First of all, you talked about the programs that we would have to cut if we didn't charge that. Can you be a little more specific
043about where that money currently goes? Yeah. So, and I think that just goes to the very first page of our fee schedule. I think that's the best way to look at what that money that they collect for is used. So you can see on that very and this is kind of our breakdown of the $80 and how it's used. But ultimately uh you know this goes to all of the these are just examples but the homecoming activities the academic certificate the activity cards assemblies award breakfast banners uh their school pins their pep rallies their parade. So, I think just looking at the list of what we've always identified, student of the month events, welcome back barbecues, that's what I mean, anything that kind of brings and creates a school together are the events and activities
044that they are that they're going to be missing out on or that they have been using as part of their registration fee. So in an effort to recoup some of that in hopes that they can continue, that's their biggest concern is we want to continue to be able to provide great events and activities for all students. And the only place we can actually charge fees sits at at our extracurricular. And so that's that's where the concept and the idea of that pass came. But as I mentioned before, it is it is not they're just really nervous about losing the money that they're used to getting from registration fee. Now, with that said, we we know that our deadline for this event for or for our fee schedule, actually, we have till July 1st, you know.
045So, if if we don't want to make that decision tonight, but and we want to adjust and we feel like the board can make a decision before July 1st on to how they plan to backfill some of that money, then we could actually hold off on finalizing this up until July 1st or at our last board meeting prior to that when you then would have opportunities and chances to have further discussion on budget and where you want to spend money. That's an option. Can I ask a little more about this activity fee? So, when we say fee, this would be an optional fee, right? When you enrolled in in your school and you came to pay your fees, you could say no thank you. That's correct. And if you said no thank you and you
046decided you wanted to go to a home game, then you would pay just like if you were a visiting team. Correct. $7 or whatever their their amount is that they've determined. So, if you know you're only going to go to one football game and you want to go, then you could pay $7 instead of having the annual pass. So, it is option. That's the idea that it would be optional for kids to buy a a year-long pass. And you also mentioned if they went to every single game, they'd spend a lot more than $50. For sure. So, you had also mentioned that um we've raised the amount that a school is allowed to charge for a school play to $15 for up to $15 to entry. So, they they can determine that's the proposal, you
047know, so that that ultimately is what they could charge for people to come to a musical or play. And we put up to 15. gives them some flexibility depending on which musical or play that they're choosing and how much cost they're trying to recoup. I will tell you that would price my family out. We couldn't go to the high school play if I had to pay 15 bucks ahead. That is exorbitant. There's usually a student discount, right? I mean, but there is, but that feels out of control to me. $15 or I shouldn't say student discount, a student price versus a an adult price. Is there a matinea price? Yeah, when we bring the ninth graders over, they get that matinea price. I I just doesn't mean they'll charge 15 our attendance and those kids
048will just skip out of those activities. I just know kids. This is probably a question that would be hard to answer, but I just want to put it out there in case we have future discussion on this. because you mentioned that these plays are quite expensive to put on with the rights and whatnot. Are they breaking even? Are they selling out? Like what is the demand and the the revenue? They are not breaking even. But I mean the school is not a business you but I'm just trying to get a sense on this fee. Are we going to make it worse when we're already not? Right now they're able, like I said, they're able to charge the $10, the up to $10. We're giving them that flexibility to choose up to 15. It doesn't mean
049they will charge 15. And I think that leaves them the decision as to where do I recoup my cost? Do I continue to charge $6 and get more people or do I charge 15 and get fewer people and try and recoup? So, a lot of that then is left up to them on how they run their musicals and plays, but it provides them a little flexibility on the amount they can charge based on what they what they paid for the rights of that play or musical. And I don't mind giving them that flexibility. They have better judgment on it than I That's our hope. Yeah. That they'll have good judgment on what they charge. your judgment seems to be floating up is I think the theme that I'm hearing emerging that a lot of the
050fees that we're seeing seem like well last year we got away with this much now let's ask this much and this much and it's always rising and I understand that that is the state of our economy and inflation so it might not all be a decision but if we're saying that parents fear repercussions so they're not the control, then isn't it just up to the board to be that control? I'm parents are the control because they won't buy the tickets. They won't spend the $15 and then the next year they'll say we can't charge 15 because no one will come. Parents have the total control here. You pay the 15 to go to the play or you don't. If you don't, then they have to figure out how to recoup their cost some other way.
051And that and that's really the decision that the board needs to make. And I want to reemphasize what Brad said. You have until July 1st if you want to explore more of this. If you want to find out more about concerns about particular articles of clothing and the cost, what you are deciding, as Miss Wood indicated, is that you are choosing within what parameters do we want coaches and advisers and schools to be able to make a choice on how much they charge. um where do we want to say this is exactly what gets charged and where do we want to say this is the up to that you can charge and if we feel that we want them to learn the lesson by saying hey you charge 15 families aren't going to come then
052we can as a board you can approve $15 and then they make their decisions about whether it's going to work or not or you can say as as a board we don't ever want a school to be charging above X regardless of what that does to the bottom line so we vote that this is the the top fee. So, we can get more information if you need that. There's not an there's not a deadline, I think, that would keep you from getting more information if you want that. Or we can go back to what was said earlier and let's move forward here and take the next year to gather feedback in a different way to ask ourselves some questions to see what the patterns are. So, we're comfortable. This is a big decision for the
053board and we're comfortable facilitating this process in a way that feels best to you that will give you the information you need and balance that with the speed with which you want to make this decision. I will say I feel like my hands are tied when I don't get feedback from parents. So I am assuming there is concern when I'm not hearing it. But this is my plea to parents to tell me what you're concerned about so that I can make an informed decision going forward. Now, having said that, I spent a fair amount of time looking at the fees for Alpine and Canyon School District, and almost without exception, it seemed to me that we are below what those fee schedules are. And one of them is a year old, not for this coming
054year. So that helped me even though I had some sticker shock looking at some of these expenses that would have been cost prohibitive for my family growing up. It it does not appear we are outliers. So if we want to make some significant changes I it will have to be very careful and thoughtful because we're not an outlier. Can I ask in your research, were travel expenses included on those schedules? Yes, they almost, as a rule, said up to $2,000 for travel. And even subtracting the $2,000 and seeing what else they were charging for, we were still reasonable. In my opinion, that for me is something that I would love to study for the future is including the potential cost of travel. I think it's more transparent to parents when they look at this schedule
055to actually see what they're going to be asked. I right now they're not seeing a real picture of that. Are you talking about including it specific to each activity? If you're planning on an overnight travel for your extracurricular group, having an up to amount included in the fee schedule so parents can budget for it. We would just have to think about what the timing is for announcing that because we don't want to make it appear that that's automatically going to happen when there's a process that allows parents input to shut down a trip from happening at all if they choose because they have to vote 80 I think 85% of parents have to support a trip. That's correct. So we could say a range. We could say something like um over the past 10 years
056we've traveled 10 out of 10 times and this is the range of cost that it's been or the last 5 years to give some idea. So we could do something like that with the caveat that if we choose to travel this is how much it would cost. So that's something we could add if you chose to do that. The reason I presented it as a study of how or if that's right, I'm not saying we must do this, but I'd love to look at the possibilities, look at the practice of districts around us and try to give as much transparency to parents as we can. Sure. And and the thing too is no student is required to participate in any overnight travel or in any extracurricular and I understand the desire of many students to
057do so. So when I look at this fee schedule, um the representative who sponsored the bill to do away with well to create a pathway to graduation without having to pay any extracurricular fees, it is there. And so all these other fees are ones where people are making a choice to participate in something. So question earlier Miss George asked where the fees are being used. So we have a situation where the schools were accustomed to to receiving registration fees and they had activities and things that they would do with those fees. And now that's being scaled back or removed and they're trying to find a way to get some of that back. Right. And that's the purpose of this $50 activity fee. Is that is that correct? That is correct. Okay. When Miss George asked
058that question, um you you pointed us to the the first page of this um proposed fee schedule and listed off things like prep, pep rallies, parade, school pins, pride items, t-shirts, student of the month, welcome back barbecues. There's a a list of things that's that schools want to continue to do those things and a maybe I don't know list of 20 or 30 different things if the district decided not to fund not to not to fund that that shortfall. I'm assuming that some of these items, some of these 20 or 30 items would go away. I mean, is that is that your impression? That's the that's correct. Yeah. I they they would have to figure out how to cut back some of those events and activities that they're used to doing with the money that
059they've received through registration fees. Yeah. To me, that sounds like a great exercise. what you just said, they would have to figure out how to cut back. For some reason, I think a lot of people just jump to the conclusion that that's a bad thing. We've got to let our students continue to do all these things they've been accustomed to doing for the past x number of years. To ask them to to cut back is just we should never expect that of our students. or student body or administration. I I personally don't have a problem with cutting back or looking for ways to cut back. And so if we do continue down this road and look at fees, I would I would probably be against trying to make up what was taken away, so to
060speak, you know, by the by the legislature. Yeah, I agree. And I I feel like the board has expressed a desire to hear options to that end, right? Like before I can ask a taxpayer for an increase, I need to be able to say, "What can I cut back on?" Um, one of the items listed here is instructional equipment. I as I understand the law, we cannot ask students to pay for that. Right. What color is it? It's it's on examples include and it's crossed out on the on the fee schedule that we were asked to reference when I asked that question. Instructional supplies and instructional equipment. So, those those were items that you're looking at. Those were that was just an item that was listed there as if we say no to this then
061we're cancelling that but that in fact we must provide instructional equipment right yeah that's also why it's being crossed out that no longer will be collected as we went through HP 344 there's it defines instructional equipment versus instructional supplies Guys, so that's that's part of why it's crossed out. Look, in the interest of trying to get out of here before 2:00 a.m., can we table this? We have the time. Can we explore what that money is going to, what things can be taken out, what we maybe ad hoc committee or whatever, and bring it back for approval maybe in May because we still have till July 1. I I just think there's so many questions that should be answered before we move forward. And um I would much rather not approve something that we're not
062sure of. And so I have a question. Were there a lot of complaints about the $80 and the was it $45 registration fees? Did a lot of families complain? I did not I don't think I ever received a um an email or a phone call about these registration fees and and I understand there are fee waiverss and and for some people it can be a difficulty but so I think that um we might be thinking that the people we're not hearing for from hearing from are dissatisfied or um upset when they might be fine with this. That might be why we're not hearing from people. So, I'm just interested. Did did people receive a lot of feedback about registration fees and at at the last at the public comment portions of you know the hearings
063for the fee schedule this year? How many how many public comments have we received on the fee schedule? How about last year? Got a few last year. Last there was one group that came. We've had a few over the years. What we may not want to lose our historical history with is this board prior to when some of you joined really dove in and ripped school fees apart. We looked at over that's where we tamed this year's money on this year's student. we lowered those fees significantly, especially in the middle school. So, we've done a lot of work already to tighten the belt. And so, that's why I have really good trust with our administrators. They do need this money. Maybe there's one or two things we could cut out. And some things on there
064like parades, maybe that's shouldn't even be there anymore because I don't even know if we have parades anymore. But at the same time, like we've done significant work on this already. I've received some complaints on um haveing to pay those, but when you explain it's a user fee, they usually could understand that. But we don't get a choice. It was taken away from us. You've gotten some complaints this year. Not this year, in other years. in other years be and and for that reason I am willing to approve this fee schedule tonight because I have not gotten feedback from taxpayers, employees, students. I I haven't gotten any feedback from anybody that I have been elected to represent, positive or negative, about the feast schedule. And I'm basing this on my own self and the people
065that I that I live around and associate with. when we don't speak up, it's because we are content and satisfied and not upset about what is happening. So that's why I'm making this assumption that people are not upset about the fee schedule anyway. So I already said it, but I am willing um to approve this fee schedule tonight. The calls never come now. They come in August. I mean, but even last August, I didn't receive any calls or the August before. So, I have not, to my recollection, received any feedback for any fees as a board member from from anybody that I'm representing. And I will speak as the father of 10. I really when I got on the board, I was really struggled with the concept of student fees. But as I dove into
066it, I am very much in favor of student fees because I think the public has a burden to fund education. I get that. But there comes a point where the user should fund it. The user should pay for the services they choose to provide. I very much support student fees. I'm very much in favor of the athletic fee because then if you choose to go, you pay the fee. Grandma doesn't pay the fee. The public doesn't pay the fee. This is an extracurricular activity that should be provided, should be paid for by the people that go. So, I have no problem with this fee schedule because I very much favor fees because the alternative is either you charge the user or you charge everyone or you eliminate the activity because you've decided it's not necessarily
067a necessary activity. But I think we're charging the public enough. I very much favor student fees. To me, these fees are not high enough because the lower we make the fees, the more we charge the public. And if we can lower the what we charge the public by raising the fees a little bit by the people who actually use the activities, I think that's a fair balance. As the father of 10 who have paid a lot of fees, I am happy to pay that because every time I pay a fee, I am taking that fee off of the public's shoulders and saying my children are going to those activities. My widowed mother should not pay for my son to go to a football game. I'm happy to pay for my son to go to a
068football game. And I'm I I'm thrilled that I don't have to pay $80 anymore. I'm going to pay 50. But I would hate to the only alternative is if we eliminate the $80. Now we have to charge everyone widows and everyone for my child to go to a football game. So I very much favor student fees. I would vote for it and approve it tonight. This is for all the grandmas widows. I 100% agree with you Bryce. Me too. I am comfortable passing the fees tonight, but I would very much support um a deeper dive like an internal audit of sorts, setting some uh expectations on just I don't know keeping a more detailed track of you know what's being spent, how it's being spent so that we can set up clearer parameters for our
069questions and things for next year. But I think that I don't know if you you could make a motion, Darl, if you wanted to to postpone this. We do have till July 1st, but I am willing to pass it tonight. So that's my thoughts. Would others uh support tableing it? I don't want to go out there and Do you mean a postponement or a table? postponement. Well, postponement. Nothing's going to happen between now and when we vote on it that will change any of my opinion. I'm not lacking any information. I agree. For me, I think there are some philosophical questions that have to be answered by this board if we choose to raise taxes for everyone. And that's a decision for the future. That's not tonight's decision. But that I need no information to
070vote on this fee schedule. And and the the only thing that postponing it would do for me is what could make me not want to pass the fee schedule is if a significant if 50% of the voters in my district contacted me and said, "Do not approve this fee schedule." 50% of the voters in your district didn't even vote. You really want 50% of all the people to contact you on an issue? I don't, but I mean I'm thinking like crazy standard. Okay. Well, if I don't know if 50 people 50 people just 50 people contacted me and said, "Please do not approve this fee schedule." And they lived within my voting district, I could see not passing it. But right now, I feel like I would be representing the people I'm supposed to represent
071by approving this fee schedule. And I I'll echo again that I will not face taxpayers and tell them that I am going to increase their taxes without making sacrifices on our side. I'm not saying that at all. asking students to pay a fee for activities that are optional that they're choosing to attend. I'm comfortable with, especially where we said if you want to, you can charge $15 for a school play and we will rely on the wisdom and experience of our schools to decide what number they can go to. And I'll do the same with this activity fee. The schools can decide and if for a year they suffer with poor attendance, then they'll adjust. I'm okay with that. I might be wrong, but I just don't think the sponsor of this bill would have
072wanted us to throw it on the backs of kids. Well, we've given them a path. We've we've done exactly what he asked. We've given them a path to graduate from high school and not pay a fee. He might he might be totally happy with it. So we've given them a path to grad. If you don't want to go to any activities, you don't have to but rather what it comes So we've satisfied the the demand that someone can go to high school and not have to pay a fee. So now it's down to should the people who go to the activity pay the fee or should the whole public pay the fee? And I think he would be very satisfied to say you've given them a path. they can choose, but those who choose these
073activities can pay for those activities. And I think we're giving them an opportunity a for a discount because it will be a savings if they go to activities if they pay ahead. And B, I don't know about you, but at my house, mom's the one who pays. Dad's the one who pays at the beginning of the school year. my kid might pay at the gate, but I don't think this is going to land on the backs of most students. My bigger concern is those that won't choose to go to games. And and just this might be a little bit off, but I I don't think that we should be making our decisions trying to presume the intent of a legislator. I think that we need to make our decisions based on what is actually in
074the code. I'm making my decision based upon the hundreds of kids I've asked this situation to. When I've when I've talked to kids the last month, I've just asked them, are you still going to go to the game if you have to pay? And most of them say no. I've had the same experience with kids. I have not had the same experience with adults. Okay, we're good with that. We move on. So just to summarize uh there there has been a request made that we have an internal audit on our fees moving forward not before we can vote tonight. Um that audit should include a consideration of accountability for overcharging um a pathway to for parents to make anonymous complaints. Um let's see uh transportation whether it should be included in our fees or not.
075Um and should we include travel in our fee schedule? Did I did I miss anyone's comment? I was trying to take notes. Okay. Can you can you tell me more precisely what you mean by the overcharging? I think what I meant by that was when Mr. Robinson talked a little bit about specific items like cleats or spanx or whatever the item is. Um, are they in the range of what they should be? Are we are we charging too much or is this about right? Do we all need a certain logo on our polo or can we look just as good with a generic polo? Those kinds of questions. The others I understand that one. I I think that's two questions. Okay. Because I have three. You know, I might be I think this is the
076perfect timing to ask the questions that you've asked. Going back to your overnight travel where you emphasized that it's a study. I like that approach, the way you framed that because we really do need to study it and doing that at the beginning of a school year or before the fees have even been charged is the time where we can really do that analysis because we're able to do that from the start of the year. Um, we can look back some, but it allows us to look forward. those. I understand. I think with the with the clothing and the logo or the brand or the cost, it might be useful for us to have another agenda item if I may suggest for the future so that everyone can think about their questions and we have
077all of the questions early on so we can be thorough about answering them because I I worry about not having time to give the answers you're looking for and that some questions will be get other questions and and and and I want to be sure we're giving you the information you need to make a decision going forward. So, I would I would love to go over this list again in a future meeting if if that's okay. just to talk more about the the the the clothing because part of that goes back to the earlier point of do we allow coaches to say this is what a team has when they're ready to win versus this is the basic that we need to play the game I think and some parents I think there's a third
078question there because I think the athletes themselves are asking for these items athletes and parents so at what point do we allow the participants the parents to say, "No, we want a $100. We want the $100 cleat because they look better." I when I was a school level administrator supervising athletics, we made efforts to scale back. And it was parents who said, "We don't want our kids to look like this when the other teams look like that." And so, I'm not saying that's still the case. That was a long time ago. But the question is to what degree should participants be allowed to say here's the equipment we would like our team to have. Right? And like we talked about with the the range of admission, if if we find a certain range outrageous, no
079matter what the cause, then that's the board's prerogative to say you're not going to charge more than this admission regardless of how much the production costs or it's your choice. I think it's the same with clothing. And I just think having some more time to be sure we have all of your questions before we look into it. I think it's worth one more discussion before we start researching. Does that great? And if there's a way that they can anonymously voice their concern because it might be two or three parents that really want that $125 cleat, not the whole team. Can I just put it out there that if a constituent comes to me and asks for animosity, I will always honor that. An anonymity. Thank you. Animosity. I'm just making words up and that anger
080towards them. I'm Yes. I want animosity. Okay. Anonymity. Thank you, Mr. Barnett. Then I will always honor that request and I would suspect that anyone at this table would. I I will never encourage that. Please know that you can trust the people who work with your children. But if that is a fear that you hold, feel free to email me. I would propose president when we do boundary before we did permits or before we did boundaries, we came up with a list of board priorities. And I don't think we've ever established a board priority in terms of fees that are charged. And I would say as the representatives of the parents, it what might be nice before we start asking the questions is to say what are the board's priorities when it comes to extracurricular
081activities and funding those act activities and charging fees to fund them. And so maybe what we ought to have is a discussion on what are our priorities. But can we list five or six basic priorities to say here's a priority that I would have? I think that might be a beneficial starting point. It's a great idea. So, let's re-review with hopefully the right words. We will come back for a future agenda item where we can discuss um a potential study andor audit on how money in fees are being spent as well as board priorities in regard to fees. Does does that feel comfortable to anyone? Did I miss anything important? Okay. Yeah. Can I add just um two more concerns I have with fees and piggyback on that? We we talked for about an hour
082about what the maximum aggregate should be. Two things. We we kind of approve camp camps and clinics and trips, but we never get reports on camps and clinics and trips and how much those cost. So somewhere in that discussion, I'd also like to to look at camps and clinics and and trips. I just don't want like that to get away from us. If we're really looking at fees, we should look at them globally. So, sorry, I'll be quiet now. No, I appreciate that addition. I I said overnight travel but not camps clinics, but I can I clarify we're still moving forward with the approval of the fee schedule in our public meeting today. Anyone is welcome to make a motion should they want to, but I got the sense that most of the board is
083comfortable with that vote. Is that fair? Am I making an assumption there? Okay, great. All right, let's go ahead and move on to item D, a consideration of proposed changes to administrative policies. AS67, the discipline of students, AA418, the discipline of students staff responsibilities, DP378, Employee Code of Conduct. Dr. Godfrey and Miss Robinson, I didn't see her. She uh was working with staff to help with these revisions to reflect the discussions I've had with board members. And as a reminder, we talked about this in our last meeting, and these revisions are intended to align more closely with uh the LRBI manual that um guides our work when we are um managing student behaviors. And then we also have [Music] um state board rule and state law that we wanted to align with. And the question
084we talked about last time was what can we do versus what should we do in certain situations. So before we go over the proposed changes, I will say that we are waiting for a model policy from the state school board that is required by law to reflect changes in the law. So they are asked to put forward a model policy that will impact AS67 potentially in the future as we make additional updates. But I still thought it was important for us to bring these changes forward. We can bring additional changes as well. It's not like we're going to be printing a thousand copies of the policy manual and then have to reprint. We don't do that anymore, thankfully. So, we can make changes as we need to. Um so additional changes may be coming um
085specifically um [Music] around let's see we'll cyber bullying bullying hazing abusive conduct and retaliation. So not necessarily directly related to what we're talking about here. So there there will be some changes coming forward um that may impact 418 as well. Okay. So, in the meantime, we've made changes and referenced some outside documents that we think will be helpful. Does anyone else hear music? That's not just me, right? They're warming running upstairs. Do you hear that, too? Okay. It's just a sanity check really quick before we move forward. Okay. Like home. We have a time shore under under on AS67. And I'm going to go through this hopefully to to touch on these changes for those who don't have it in front of them who may be listening in. With vandalism, we propose taking out uh
086the reference to graduation exercises. That's just that just came up as we were going through the policy that was suggested by a board member because what it does is it makes it sound like it's limited to high school students when really that applies to students of all ages. And just by taking that out, I think it makes it clear that that applies to all students. And in um let's see part I'm going through the so Roman numeral 2 part C number 2 A we add C policy AA418 discipline of student staff responsibilities where we talk about immediately removing the student from the scene of a violation. Um, so there's that change. And then let's look at AA418. we talk about instead of outlining [Music] um in part two Roman numeral 2 E one we say
087when student behavior becomes disruptive to the extent that behavioral intervention measures must be taken staff members may employ deescalation strategies as outlined in the Utah least restrictive behavioral interventions behavior guide chapter 7 and we will link that in the final policy. And then we add um the physical escort reference in Utah code which means a temporary touching or holding of the hand, wrist, arm, shoulder, or back for the purpose of guiding a student to another location. And um when a student presents an immediate danger to self or others, a physical restraint may be used. And then we explain exactly what that means. And an employee, a school employee may use reasonable and necessary physical restraint in self-defense or when otherwise appropriate to the circumstances, too. And then four things are listed as possible outcome. So,
088if you're trying to accomplish those things, you can use that use of a physical restraint constitutes an emergency safety intervention as outlined in the LRBI behavior guide and may not be used as a means of discipline or punishment. use of ESIs must be reported and documented as outlined in the LRBI behavior guide chapter 7. So that's a that's a document produced at the state level and it's very helpful gives more detail. So part of what we talked about in the leadup to this policy is the idea that if someone is escalated, if a student is disregulated and escalated, putting hands on them may not be the best way to deescalate them and to put others out of danger. However, there are situations where that may become necessary and that's outlined in the LRBI manual. Um,
089and then in policy DP378, we've added policy AA418, a reference to that policy. So, in other words, in 4418 and in AS6 or sorry, in DP378 and in AS67, we reference back to AA418 so that it's all contained right in there. Exactly what you can do in certain situations. And the intent is to create a video this summer. We want to be careful about not depicting things in a way that looks kind of cheesy and takes away from the message, but showing what can how how can you guide a student because as we talked about this policy leading up to discussions in this meeting, there's confusion about, hey, I can never touch a student. I can never ever have physical contact with a student. And we actually outline ways in which you can have physical
090contact with a student and under what circumstances. Some positive, some to help move a student in a particular direction. And I've personally handled complaints from parents who have said, "Hey, they can't touch my child at all." While that's not entirely accurate, it's it's important that we be very thoughtful about that and very clear. So, I appreciate the effort to clarify policy and then also provide training that will allow us to I think it will give teachers the clarity they need to address situations more effectively. Can I ask about under F2B in which policy? Oh, sorry. Um 418 418. It's it's just outlining if someone is in danger and it talks about um protecting a student or another individual from physical injury. I would love to say or themselves there. I if a teacher feels that
091they're threatened physically. I I Does that wording come directly from code or is that something that we can when the teacher feels that they're in danger or when the student That's directly from code? It's in two at the very beginning in self-defense. Okay. Oh, yeah. Good point. it that wording just feels weird to me like you can protect someone else. I I will blame all the weird phrasing on code. Okay. Seems like others when it's to self or others, you are an other with regard to the student. Do you know what I mean? The students self. Now, now just now just to tell you on timing, uh we can bring this back to study session the beginning of next month and my hope is that it can be approved at the end of May so
092that we can go into the summer creating training materials. So, we have a couple more meetings to to discuss. I do appreciate the thoughtfulness of updating this and I am eager to approve it and put it in place even knowing that we might yet have to change it again. Yeah. When the Utah School Board gives us more direction. Thank you. I did have a question on AS67 that'll be on page two. on the long list of letters L under vandalism. Yes. Uh currently says willfully defacing, cutting, marring, injuring, damaging, or losing school or staff property. Um but up in H just right above it under the I think it's H. No. Uh G the theft or lararseny that one uh talks about let's see property belonging to another lawful possession or custody of another right
093so I wondered in the vandalism portion if we can put something about vandalism not just to school or staff property but to someone else's that belongs to someone else and I'm thinking of uh student projects that are on display in the school that might get vandalized or something. Sure. Yeah, we could I I think that makes sense because it's Oh, that's not student or staff. That belongs to uh or or staff or uh school. That belongs to a student. So, go ahead. Have at it. Yeah. No, I think I think that's a good clarification. We can add that. Thank you. My my understanding uh superintendent is that these these additions that we're making uh primarily to 418 and then referencing in the other yes locations. This isn't anything new. It's been around for a little
094while. There's just been some confusion about it and so we're bringing it to light more right in our policies. This isn't new code or new law. That's an important clarification. Yes, that's right. That's right. We're not forging new ground here. We're just clarifying what's been there and what's been overlooked, I think, out of an abundance of caution or even fear of repercussions for having contact with a student. I will say that anytime you have contact with a student, you have to be very thoughtful about that because if the student is angry or you are angry, then sometimes bad decisions can be made. Yeah, following up on Miss George's comment on F in 418 F2, we list four items there where it may be necessary to physically restrain a student um to obtain possession of a
095weapon to protect a student or another individual from physical injury. to remove from a situation a student who is violent. And then D uh to protect property from being damaged with the clarification that when physical safety is at risk. I I think sometimes people people think if a student is damaging property without the potential for injury of him or herself or someone else that that constitutes a situation where physical restraint can be used. But my understanding is that's not the case. We just kind of let the student continue his or her destructive behavior. is that well what's what's your take on that? I would agree that we don't use physical restraint but at the same time we don't simply let them do that. We're still trying to persuade them not to do that. We're still
096doing other things to try to intervene but physical physically stopping them would not be one of those. And that's that's explained in detail in the in LRBI. But yes, that that's an important distinction that will need to be made in our training because it feels counterintuitive. It feels like I should be protecting this stuff, but too many people get hurt protecting stuff and and we don't want that to happen. Yeah. Now, there is one line in code that might be beneficial to add to our policy. I love section three in the code that says nothing in this section prohibits a school employee from using less intrusive means including a physical escort to address circumstances described. And I love I like the idea of adding that. I know we've got the whole hey let's let's do
097the least restrictive behavioral but to add that from code might be beneficial to say look if you can do less do less. This isn't you don't have to jump to this uh level. And that was just the uh 8.32 or 8.302 section 3. I like the wording of that in the code. I would recommend adding it. That should probably be kind of our guiding principle here. And I I think it has been to some degree that that that we don't want to just jump to the maximum severity, you know, hence the least restrictive behav behavioral intervention. I think it's stated there, but to add that line from code, I think would be beneficial. I agree. And in e it references that like you said, employ deescalation strategies as outlined, but I think saying it more
098than once in a different way is useful. Yeah. Anyone else have ideas or concerns? Okay. Then we will um see this again on a future study session prior to a vote. I'll bring it back uh in our next meeting if that's okay. Thank Okay. Agenda item E, a review of potential revisions to board policy GP 104 board officers and appendix procedures for the election of board officers. Mr. Larson. Mr. Larson. Sorry. Okay. On uh board docs, you have uh both the the redline version of the policy as well as the appendix. And I'll just outline the proposed changes here on GP 104. The uh the theory here is the or the idea is that the policy not uh list out the procedure but the general thought. And so the the part that's redlined taken out
099here is the part that was in conflict with with the appendix. So if we remove it from here, we still have the general idea within policy of what should take place, just not the actual procedure. And then down in C, uh the thought there is just to break up that section a little bit so it's not such a long paragraph and to have the two different thoughts listed out. Okay. in the appendix where the uh most of the changes are taking place. There's some word changings uh here to try to simplify it, but wherever we have a simple majority listed, remove that and we're just going to go with four or more votes for this situation. That seems to make sense anyways. It seems to be something that the board would appreciate. in case there
100was just five board members, you didn't want to have three vote for your um executive committee. So, if we just state it's going to be four, I think that addresses that issue. Um then coming down further, I mean that that change is being taken place here in a few places. There is some word changes just to make it read a little better. Uh section F though 4F the runoff vote will only be between the candidates receiving the same number of votes because upon further reflection you could have same number top same number bot you could have different situations and so if there's going to be a runoff let's just do the same number of votes and see who that uh the uh victor will be to move on. Okay. Uh section five again four or
101more votes and then uh section six uh tries to address um if somebody is absent, somebody is gone. Um this is what's going to happen. And that's where we get out the sorry um five is if somebody's gone. Sorry. Five is if somebody is not at here present in the meeting and five would say well we still need four votes. So what do you want to do board? Do you want to postpone this meeting until somebody else could could attend or do you want to proceed because you can but you're going to need four votes. And if you still have four votes I think that still serves its purpose. Section six is if what happens if all seven board members are present but somebody just says I'm not going to vote and now we have
102a tie. What are we going to do? And this is where we get to flip some coins and say, "Okay, well, if somebody's not going to vote then and and we have a tie, two unique, very unique, I would hope circumstances, this wouldn't be used. But this just tries to address that scenario. And under the very unique situation where there are three people receiving two votes each, there would be a series of toin coin tosses. So a lot more procedure in the appendix to try to clear it up, less procedure in the policy, just let it give the the rough structure of how the meeting should uh proceed. And then the step-by-step kind of stuff is here in the appendix. And the big thing for me is it it removes that uh conflicting statements that
103they had. Any questions on those changes? I did notice that the executive committee put this on for approval tonight. So, uh just assuming it was a pretty simple, straightforward. We all see that there's no concern here. I don't need to think about this. Yeah. So, I'm I'm comfortable with that. But of course, if you want to delay, you can. So would it be a problem if I made just a suggestion? Would it delay the vote for tonight? It's an insignificant one. It's simply on on six. It would it would be easier for me to understand if it read if at any point the election process cannot move forward. So eliminating in and things. But if that's going to delay the vote, I just had to read it a few times. Ah, does that make sense?
104I I think well, President, you you weigh in, but from my point of view on that, you could still proceed tonight and then the the motion could be just the removal of these two words. I love removing words. I I want to point out that by code the election is supposed to take place on that first uh meeting in January after the election. So where it used to say satisfies the timeline required by law. I think it could be postponed until later in the meeting. I would hesitate to say move it to the next board meeting if it's supposed to be in. Um I think an interpretation and argument could be made for that. Um I'm sorry I didn't get that before you before. Okay. So So Paul, Mr. Van, a clarification then in section
105five, the board would not be able to just say look uh board member so and so was unable to be here tonight. So, we're going to make this the first agenda item on our next meeting. Yeah. I I think I I don't think that the code the code wants you to have have it done at that that point in time. I think it works with the four you can set forth the process, but the code specifically says that you can do official business if there's a simple majority. So, that's not going to happen. But if if enough people don't matter. Now, say there's an emergency and you can't have a quorum and you need to move. I think that would probably still be appropriate. I just an argument can be made that you're supposed to
106have it done. Do you have a suggestion of how to change number five? Then plenty of suggestions, but you know um do we just um so so that all board members can be present that may not need to be required. I suppose it well later in the meeting get them on the phone. Yeah. And we do have electronic means and we have done that where uh ill board members have participated electronically and and that's worked out just fine. I just am thinking if someone has a vacation, they're in um Antarctica enjoying the beautiful scenery, then they may not be able to join. Hopefully they scheduled their newly elected position. So that the phrase which satisfies the timeline required by law. Does that and that's and that's why I'm just trying to point out that I
107think the timeline require timeline required by law is that may prevent you from saying well let's move it until next month. Okay. It would have to be the very next meeting. Well under the code section it's supposed to be in that first meeting after the election. So perhaps let me if I may offer a suggestion. Can I work with Mr. Vancoman on rephrasing that? We'll get Ms. Wood's corrections in here and I just bring this back later. Yeah, because this is not a rush. How about scratching the word table in number five to postpone since that's technically more accurate. Unless See, that's an accurate use of table that we're going to use. We're going to come back to it later in the same meeting. That so that's the definition is table is later in the
108same meeting postpon next meeting. Got it. So if I think the end where current board members remain I think that would be during the meeting until you know whoever was the president part of the problem can be sometimes people have left and so it's an acting um but I'm happy to work with Mr. Larson on something and I actually really like the I think you you have the flexibility to say let's go the first to four and by the sort of the elimination process you really should be able to get to four. Um and and if but if you can't then you've got the procedures. If people are just not willing to get to four then it will go how it's outlined in six. But I think I think that yeah I think the board
109should be aware if somebody can't be here they should make arrangements to to participate electronically or or they may for forfeit the opportunity to be involved in that. Okay. So it looks like we will need another meeting to review this. So during the business meeting when we get to that agenda item, I'll accept a motion to postpone. Sound okay? Great. All right, we have a time short in about half an hour. Um, are you guys okay to keep going or do you need a break? Okay, let's move into a review of board policy GP11 types of meetings with Mr. Dim. Um, as you were just as a summary, this board decided on their calendar not to hold a meeting in July, which I hardily endorse and think that's a fantastic idea. Um, looking for through
110our board policies, GP11 requires to have a monthly meeting. So, we were talking about altering GP11 that would allow us to not have a meeting in July. However, the business administrator is under other mandates that put him in a very uncomfortable position. His main concerns, as I emailed out to the board, are any bids that came in. Now, we could do our very best to say all bids have to be in by June 10th, but that's out of our control. If a bid comes in after June 10th and needed to be in place before August 26th, which would be the next public meeting, we would be in trouble. And Mr. Larson is required to um officially public publish the minutes of a board meeting in a certain timeline. and approving the board meeting approving the
111minutes of a June 10th board meeting on August 26th is beyond the time limit. So to allow him to take care of the mandates that he's under, I think this pol this decision of the board is a little bit deeper than just changing GP 111. So I emailed you a couple proposals. I would propose number one that we do have a meeting in July meeting the requirements of GP11, but that it's an electronic meeting wherever you are. And the only business that we would conduct that night would be to approve the bids that have come in and approve a um a consent agenda that had the minute the minutes for the June 10th meeting that would satisfy all of Mr. Larson's business administrator mandates. Um, but it wouldn't necessarily impose a burden on meeting to
112on a board that would like to take July off. So, option number one is a virtual meeting with a limited business scope. Um, wherever you are, we would just hold an electronic meeting. I'm more than happy to be the one in the anchor location um so that we could meet those requirements and and we wouldn't have to make any changes to policy at all. No, that that anchor part was going to be my question. I was like we have to have an anchor location. Yeah. And I would be happy John and I would be we talked about it. We would be happy to be in the anchor location. Um so that you're free to take a vacation and schedule and be out of the state or whatever. And yet we would just ask that you
113jump on a qu a a a reduced business meeting. I don't want to give any expectation of you know we don't care. We do care but uh our expect that we would anticipate that the agenda for that meeting would simply be the the what we absolutely had to do and couldn't postpone. Option number two is in keeping with Robert's rules of orders, we could commission uh a body of four to speak and represent for us. So we could say, "Look, we're going to have finance committee plus the board president or we we could commission a body of four to say we will allow you to approve the bids and the consent agenda and everyone else could go." um that's least less desirable because it kind of looks like we're a divided body. But if you're
114planning on vacation and just couldn't even make it, that is legally permissible is that we could commission a body of four to speak for this board. Or the fourth option is we could just simply say we're not meeting and Mr. Larson, you figure out a way to meet your mandates, which I would re prefer not to do. I think the best option is to hold a virtual meeting with an anchor location. Uh we pick the day that we had planned on meeting. We have a virtual meeting with an anchor location. We approve the business that we are required to do and nothing else. And then we just meet again first part of August in a study session. So well that first part of August you also could approve a bid if it it was and
115and yeah. So I'm ready with a motion president if you want me to make a motion. I don't know if you want to have discussion first but don't you make a motion and then we discuss it. I move that we schedule a virtual meeting with an anchor location in July to conduct the minimal business needed to conduct to meet all mandates upon this board and our officers. I'll second it. Okay. So, we have a motion by Mr. Denford, a second by Dr. Robinson that we hold a July meeting virtually um with a minimal number of people at an anchor location where we can have a scaledown agenda that will include the approval of the June minutes and any critical bids uh that have a deadline that needs to be met. Did I say that right?
116Great. Any discussion to that motion? Mr. Larson, does that meet all of your needs? Okay. I do prefer that over the the other option. Right. All in favor, please say I. I. I. And any opposed say nay. All right. That motion passes unanimously. We need to pick a day. You want to pick a day? President about to ask. Yes. Let's pick a date for July. So, our regular meeting the fourth week would be one, two, three, the 22nd. When did we or the 29th? Okay. A nonh holiday week would be the 8th, the 15th, or the 29th. Why don't we do the 29th? Oh, you want to do in the middle? Right in the middle and do the 15th. But I don't know if I will have a signal on the 15th. Are you in
117Antarctica? I will be at Hebrew Valley camp. Does anybody happen to know if there's Wi-Fi up there? I think you'll have to drive down. You'll have you'll have access to a signal, but you won't be sitting in a signal. Yeah, you would have to drive to the gate. Parts of the camp can get it. I also will be traveling on the 15th. But why don't we do the 29th? John, did so from June 10th to July 29th. Does that work for minutes approval? July June 10th would be our la our meeting and then we approve the minutes on July 29th seven weeks. What about July 8th instead of our study session? [Music] Actually I I don't think it has the minutes. Um, the statute was changed some years ago. It used to be 30 minutes,
118but but now there are different definitions of the types of public bodies. And a school district is just a public body that is not a state public body or a specified local public body under the statute at issue. And so it doesn't have the 30-day requirement. It's just within a reasonable time after holding the open meeting that was the subject of it. So arguably you could go more than 30 days. You still have to have 3 days after the audio recording put up. Yeah. So for me, but I think but I think it's I think it's good practice to to not skip that long and this could be included, but I think it's just if any other business comes up, you need to have a sort of a placeholder and stuff stuff comes up. So
119the 8th is four weeks after the previous meeting and five weeks prior to the next meeting. Yeah, I think you're fine. I think you're fine. Well, could we put two down? Because a virtual meeting is a virtual meeting. We may not need it on the 8th. I was just wondering the 8th and the 29th or something. But we will need it for the minutes. We'll definitely need it for the minutes, but we might not have any bids. I I don't I don't think you have to be my opinion is you don't have to do it within 30 days under under the code. So if we had it on two days and we can look at what what pressing is we just have to publish it though and I don't want to publish two dates. I
120would prefer to publish one date and then see I don't think we'll need a second one. I would prefer to just pick one day and publish that date and make it clear that there's an anchor location with all an extra meeting too. Yes, we could always do it the 29th and then if we think we need an earlier, we would still have to meet on the 8th though. You can't publish a meeting and then just cancel it, right? So, why don't we just pick one? Choose the 8th and then if we need to have an emergency meeting for some reason on the 28th, we can always add to our calendar. Would would it matter if we do the 8th or the 29th with bids? Would it be more beneficial to wait later in July? Do
121you I don't know. I I don't know because I don't know the bids yet. That's why I'm thinking spacing it out going from June 8th to July July June 10th to July 8th and then from July 8th to possibly August 12th. Do we have to pick a day? Can we just call the meeting if we need it? We just call the meeting if we need it, right? And change 111. It still puts a little bit of pressure on Mr. Larson. And I'd like to plan. Yeah, I think if you choose a date, um, you just have to make sure that there's a quorum available to take action. Yeah, I think we'll be fine for a virtual meeting. So, is anyone uncomfortable with July 8th? Okay. At what time? Just FYI, that's Bingham Alumni Week. Come
122by and visit your old high school. I have a meeting at 4. So later would be better or first thing in the morning, 10 a.m. morning. I could do that. First thing in the morning, the movie Elf. So First thing in the morning, 10:00 a.m. is my lunchtime. I always worry about transparency. I want to do things when people are available. But it's July. No one's available, whether it's 10 or seven. It's a virtual meeting. They can join virtually. Yeah. And the meeting, I mean, they can always watch on YouTube. 15 minutes. Let's listen on YouTube or preference morning, evening. When would you be done? I think it personally, I would like it more in the morning. I tend to forget everything in the summer after about noon. As long as it's not too late,
123I could change my conflict. Yeah. Like you cut the day in half. Yeah, maybe. So, do you have a conflict in the morning? I just have it one at 4. It's a board meeting at 4. And do you have a cabinet meeting? You don't need to change that. July 8th. No. Okay. We haven't determined that yet. Depends on how many people will be in town. We will work around whatever works for everyone here. I'm not I appreciate the question, but we'll be there. If it's virtual, I can make it work. And I anticipate this meeting should not be more than an hour is my hope. I suggest 9:30 in the morning. I hear a 9:30. I like it. Okay. Any concerns with 9:30 on July 8th, so let it be written. Okay. So, can we
124just add our SK our calendar to a consent agenda at our next meeting? Is that how we officially p Okay, we'll just add our updated calendar approved today on our consent agenda. Okay, great. Thank you. That gives us a a month off, which I love, and yet helps the business administrator tackle the business that he needs to tackle. So, I think that's a win-win. Thank you. Great. Okay, we have about 12 minutes before we have the opportunity to be out there. I don't want to say need to, but uh to listen to the Jordan Youth Symphony. So, shall we go ahead and take a break and then we will come back for our general session starting at 6:30. Sound okay? Yes. All right. Welcome to the Jordan School District Board of Education meeting. Today is
125Tuesday, April 22nd, and we are excited to have a full room. Thank you so much for being here. We are excited to see what is to come. Um, my name is Nikki George. I am the board president and joining me are all members of the board of education, Miss Lisa Dean, Suzanne Wood, Erin Barrow, um, Brian Barnett, Bryce Dunford, and Daryl Robinson, as well as our superintendent, Dr. Anthony Godfrey, our associate superintendent, Dr. Michael Anderson and our business administrator, Mr. John Larson, as well as our board attorney, Paul Vancman. All right, we're going to go ahead and get started tonight with a pledge of allegiance, and that will be given by Jim Growthy, the principal of South Hills Middle School. Please rise. Repeat after me. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States
126of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. We'll now welcome uh Mickey Wakamatsu, our ninth grade student body officer to the pulpit to uh to give us our reverence and celebrating schools. The quote that I have picked is by Simon Sinek and it says, "When people are financially invested, they want to return. When people are emotionally invested, they want a contribute." Good evening, esteemed board members. My name is Mickey Wakamatsu and I am a ninth grade student body officer at South Hills Middle School. I'm honored to represent our active school community and share with you the celebrations and achievements of our school. At South Hills, leadership is not just a position, but an experience shared across our administration to teachers
127and students. Our principal plays a crucial role in creating a supportive environment. Teachers have expressed their gratitude for his respect and encouragement, which greatly influences their commitment to our school. One teacher noted that she feels supported and respected, motivating her to continue working at South Hills. Mr. Growthy is frequently cited by students as a reason for gratitude, highlighting his positive impact. Our teachers are dedicated to making meaningful connections with students, celebrating those light bulb moments when students take ownership of their leadership. They work collaboratively, sharing achievements and addressing student needs as a unified team. Their supportive culture extends beyond the classroom as demonstrated by our annual teacher talent show where faculty members come together to celebrate and enjoy each other's company. Our student groups are equally impressive. The student body officer season of hope raised
128an incredible $7,83051 for Milliey's Princess Foundation. The PTSA has seen remarkable success in the reflections program with multiple entries advancing to the second to higher levels of competition. The NGHS food drive collected an impressive 2531 pounds of food, embodying our commitment to community service. In the library, our students excelled in the Battle of the Books, securing second place. Our music ensembles consistently score well at the district music festivals, showcasing the talent and a dedication of our students. South Hills is not only about academic excellence, but also about creating a caring community. Our career day featured 36 community and business partners and our school musical drew nearly 1,000 attendees underscoring the strong support from our community. The shares program provides essential support for students at risk, ensuring they have resources needed to succeed academically. Our special
129education program with around 70 peer tutors each semester fosters friendship and inclusivity, making a lasting impact both inside and outside the classroom. Extracurricular activities and student clubs further enrich our school experience, offering opportunities for growth and connection. South Hills Middle School follows the tiger traits where each student takes responsibility, is in the proper place, goes prepared, engages in learning, and respect self and others. This year, we have created a token, a tiger stripe, to remind our commitment to these traits. I would like to give each board member a tiger stripe. In conclusion, I am proud to be a student at South Hills. It is a caring community, a fun place to learn, and an amazing place to be everyday. Thank you, school board, for joining me in celebrating the achievements and spirit of South Hills
130Middle School. [Applause] Thank you so much. We are so grateful for opportunities to hear about the great things that are happening in our schools. Uh if you are a parent or um an employee who works at South Hills Middle School and are here supporting a student, will you please stand and let us recognize you? All right. And then any students here from South Hills? Is it just Nikki? Thank you for representing. Well, we also have a gift for you. We should have given it to you when you were giving ours, but if you would like to come up, we'll give you a little pin to remember your night with us. We already got to shake your hand, so we'll just give you a pin. All right, we will now have our resolutions of appreciation. Whereas
131dedicated service to Jordan School District was faithfully and effectively performed. Whereas they consistently and conscientiously executed their responsibilities with integrity, honesty, and loyalty. Be it therefore resolved that the Jordan School District Board of Education and District Administration declare appreciation for the outstanding service that was performed in the cause of public education and hereby express our sorrow at the death of these valued friends. Paul Anthony Grigo, mechanic, lead mechanic and hall monitor. Marilyn K. Adamson Clayton Guthrie, director of nutrition services. Joanne Hermanson, teacher. Lynn Rodney Sedwick, mechanic. Janil Christensen Stowe, school lunch worker. Nancy Stone White, bus driver. Thank you. All right, we are happy to have with us our PTA region representatives. We'd love to invite Sonia Delaney, Jessica Navaro, and Kylie Devy. Um, as well as Julie Brener up to present some awards. Hi,
132thank you for having us tonight. We do need to excuse uh Kylie Debbie. She cannot be here tonight, but um Cammy Wit Church is here to help in her place. Um, thank you. So, we're going to first start off with our PTA reflections awards. So, I'm going to turn the time over to Julie Brener. She's our amazing region reflection specialist and does so much for us. So, I'm going to let her talk about reflections awards. Thanks, Sonia. Schoolboard members, we are grateful to present to you tonight our projects that receive state awards from our district, which is called Region 6 PTA. We'll start with a about two and a half minute video highlighting those 27 entries and then we'll present their names. had it working. Fingers crossed. mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. sometimes does good things
133and sometimes he does bad [Music] things. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Hallelujah. [Music] I'll sell the moon and walk the sun and find a secret place above where I can hide from all my fears and free myself from shedding tears. Magical mystery ahead to be discovered. Someone said it's not about the flaws you have. It's about who you can be. [Music] [Applause] Our theme for reflections this year is accepting imperfection. As the students reflected on this theme, they were able to demonstrate through their art, photography, writing, visual paintings, sculptures, music, dance, and film the ways that they are able to accept imperfections in their lives or others. Tonight, we have 23 students who contributed 27 entries, which all received awards at our state level of reflections. This is among 17,000 entries in the state of
134Utah that these students received awards. So, we are excited to recognize them tonight. Students, when I call your name, if you're here, please come up. We have a small token of appreciation for you. And then is are they going to walk through Nikki? Okay. And then you can walk through along and shake hands to each of the board members. And then we'll stay up. Right. And stay up here and we'll take a picture at the end. In 2D visual art, Aaron Grimshaw, Sadie Henderson, and Ivy Clark. 3D visual art. Madison Lungquist, Na Navy Dye, and Bridger Pedrosa. [Applause] In dance, Kennedy Sorenson and Mia Childs, take a pen. Congratulations. in film, Kabri Goins, Russell Jenkins, and Bridger Pedrosa. [Applause] No, no, just uh in literature, Anya Sinski, Hayden Draper, Melody Turner, Elise Shepard, and Bridger
135Padrosa. [Applause] in music. Ariana Shami, Adakus Baldwin, Nathan Prince, Boston Clancy, and Ledger Pedrosa. [Applause] Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And in photography, Adeline Hol, Ashlin Childs, Brinley Renan, Audrey Stratford, Madison Lungquist, and Bridger [Applause] Padrosa. Congratulations to all of our students. We are grateful for the way you represent our school district and our region. [Applause] Do we walk around and we'll join the Yeah. Yeah. Will you guys come up? Okay. They're coming around. I'll be up there. If I put my drink here, do you want Do I want it? Okay, Darl, scoot in a little. We need people on this side. It's like Yeah, we need more. Erin, go like right, too. I think that's okay. Yeah, it's all right. It's good. Yeah. Okay. I'm trying not to get the podium. pictures. One, two, three.
136Guys look awesome. We also have some refreshments for you guys out in the lobby, too. So, if you'll meet Julie out there, she'll get you a yummy treat. Thanks for being here. Okay, now we're going to start with our PTA uh Utah PTA awards. Um and um the Utah PTA awards celebrate the dedication, leadership, and contributions of individuals who go above and beyond to make a lasting impact in our schools and communities. Recognition is not just about honoring achievements. It strengthens engagement, inspires continued excellence, and reinforces the value of volunteerism. Utah PTA is committed to fostering an environment where greatness is recognized and appreciated. These awards provide an opportunity to highlight the individuals who exemplify service, innovation, and commitment to education. Whether at the regional or state level, each recipient has played a vital role
137in shaping positive experiences for students, teachers, and families. Tonight, we celebrate those who have made a difference through their hard work, creativity, and passion. They remind us why recognition is a key priority in any successful organization. Their efforts ripple through our schools, enhancing the learning environment and strengthening our community. Um, and just for information, these awards are nominated by local PTAs. So, um, some are fortunate to have just award writers, but some people just take on this extra role and and nominate people in their school communities. Um, and we're so grateful for them. It takes some extra work and but we love honoring our volunteers and people that help us with our PTA and are so supportive. So um first we have our honorable mentions. So tonight we honor individuals whose dedication and efforts have
138truly made an impact. These recipients advanced to the region level demonstrating exceptional commitment to their schools and communities. It's my pleasure to recognize our honorable mentions. As I call your name if you'll come up um so we can celebrate you. Same will have you come up and shake hands. And we always want a picture. So, okay, first from Bringham High School, we have Chucky Fam as outstanding secondary educator award. And we have Stephanie Mau's outstanding support staff award and Jen Dishman Spirit of PTA award from Blackbridge Elementary. We have Cindy Tenny engagement award. Christy Haywood Outstanding Volunteer Award. And from Oh, go ahead. Take your hand if you like. From Elk Meadows Elementary, we have Emily Crane. Outstanding Elementary Educator Award. And from Jordan Hills Elementary, we have Jennifer Carlson and Sarah Champion Engagement Award.
139And Michelle Bailey Outstanding Support Staff Award. [Applause] Okay, stay up here for a picture, please. Welcome to take a pen. Congratulations. if you like. Do them separately. Do you want to do them together? Oh, okay. Sorry. I guess we're going to do a picture at the end with everybody. So, hang tight. Change of plans. That's why I have assistance. Okay. Um, next we're going to honor our award of excellence um at the region level. So, moving beyond honorable mention, we now celebrate those who have achieved the award of excellence. Oh, I already said that. At the region level, these recipients have set a high standard through their outstanding contributions, inspiring those around them with their dedication and passion. Um, please enjoy join me in congratulating our award winners as I announce their names. From Bingham
140High, we have Ivy Ericson Outstanding School Administrator Award and Karina Taylor Spirit of Inclusivity Award. from El Meadows Elementary, Jeff Welch Outstanding Support Staff Award and Carol Anne Rogers Spirit of PTA award from Foothills Elementary. We have Morgan Meyers engagement award. Natalie Tixen outstanding elementary educator award. Abe and I'm going to mess up his last name. Oipe outstanding elementary educator award. And she put even though he supports all schools in Haramman. Daryl Robinson spirit of PTA award from Jordan Hills Elementary. Brida Ang outstanding volunteer award from Mountain Ridge High School. Bailey Donahoo outstanding secondary educator award. [Applause] Take a pin if you like. You can take a pin if you'd like. Blue. second decision. Oh, they were supposed to get those. What do you want me to do? Okay. Are you going to know which
141ones are which though? If we just called your name as a um region award winner, will you come get this other award? Sorry. to hand it out. [Laughter] [Music] This is what we do without K. Kylie here. So, Ivy, Karina, Jeff, Carol, an Oh, who else? Morgan, Natalie, Abe, Brida, and Bailey. Okay, we got them. We can. Oh, here comes a couple. Sorry, that was our bad. We don't want to take them home. Okay, sorry about that. Okay, and now for award of excellence. Finally, we recognize an extraordinary group, those who have earned the award of excellence, not only at the region level, but also at the state level. So, when they've advanced to our region, which is our school district, then we send those award winners on to state. And then we have um
142some of them have won at the Utah PTA state level also. So, their efforts have left a lasting mark representing the very best of what our school and community stand for. It's with great pride that we celebrate those outstanding individuals tonight. So, first from Butterfield Canyon Elementary, Reisha Glover Outstanding Elementary Educator Award from Foothills Elementary. Brandy Eaton Advocacy Award. Caitlyn Vidmar Development Award. Patricia Hanland, Outstanding Support Staff Award. Whitney Joseph, Outstanding Support Staff Award from Riverton High School, Kayla Edwards, Outstanding Secondary Educator Award. and from Westland Elementary, Hillary Moser and the kindness committee for the engagement award. Congratulations. Take a stand if you'd like. Thank you. Each of these honores has contributed in meaningful ways strengthening our schools, supporting our students, and demonstrating the power of community. Uh we're so grateful for these PTA volunteers
143and for all they do um or or educators and all they do to support our PTA. Congratulations to each of you. Thanks for your dedication. And uh yeah, stick around. We'll do a picture and we have refreshments for you also. Take a pen. Congratulations. I know. How much can you hold? Congratulations. If you'd like. Congratulations. So funny how their eyes are. I'll have to decide something. This is Does this move? need some help. [Music] I'm so sorry. Open your home. I'm so sorry. [Music] [Applause] Okay, sweet. Good job. Okay. in the box. Let's go. No, not tonight. I think Wow, it is so fun to see all of the good that's happening in our district. Thank you for being with us. um those that are walking out of the room, we will go ahead and
144continue on our agenda with board member recognitions. I'd like to start and I'm going to give a little bit of an introduction to give context for who I'm recognizing tonight. The Jordan School District has had a partnership with the Special Olympics of Utah, which has been championed by our superintendent, Dr. Godfrey, and has been funded by the Jordan Education Foundation, and is supported by First Lady Abby Cox. The Jordan School District has been touted as the district with the most unified champion school program participation in the state of Utah with exponential growth in the last two years. At the high school level, and we're not just in the high schools, by the way, but I'm going to focus on high school tonight. At the high school level, there are over 200 student athletes and partners
145participating in unified sports. This participation requires strong support from school administration and a high level of work on the part of teachers and coaches. We are so grateful for them and their commitment to providing our outstanding students these opportunities. And with that background, I would like to recognize our state champions in basketball in their division from West Jordan High School, the blue team. So that you know they have played at Corner Canyon Utah State University, the University of Utah and at the Delta Center. They won their game at the state championship. In fact, on the main floor of the Delta Center. So, I would like to read the names of the teammates who are in attendance and of the teachers coaches. If you would like, you can stand when I read your name. Brie Halterman,
146Nick Capinger, Jose Valetta, Estrada, Garrett Draper, Jean Pierre Compos, Fernandez, and Peter Mukuru. Our teachers and coaches in attendance tonight are Jessica Little, Sheldon Russell, and Christy Baker. I'd like to invite Brie Halterman and Garrett Draper to make a few comments here at the podium. And if your teammates and coaches would like to come up and stand behind you, you're welcome to do so. So, hi, my name is Garrett Draper. I am a junior at West Jordan High School. Go Jags. I am a unified athlete. I have participated in unified swimming, basketball, and track. I I like having fun with my teammates and meeting people from other schools. Unified sports is a great way to learn about sportsmanship and how to work as a team. everyone who wants to to get to play. We have
147a lot of great athletes. I like supporting my teammates and cheering them on. I like to be involved and represent my school. We have fun riding we we have fun riding the bus together to all to all of our events. It's pretty loud on the bus, but that's but that it's okay. That is okay. But that is okay. It's still fun. Being a student athlete can be challenging, but we have a great we have but we have but we have great coaches who support us. Because of unified sports, I have the opportunity to serve as a leader on the youth action committee. We have lots of meetings and help plan supports the events. Being a part of the state competitions is very cool. I am a unified state champion. Thanks for supporting the Thanks. Thanks
148for supporting unified sports. Hi. Um, I am Brienne Halterman. I am a peer tutor at West Jordan High School. Um, this is my third year. Um, I have participated in unified sports since it started. It was started my sophomore year that we actually got like really involved with it. And I've loved being a part of unified athletics at Westjorn High School. I've loved watching the kids play basketball, soccer, track and I've like became best friends with some of these kids and um I've seen that like kids with disabilities and not non-disabilities become best friends and it's such a beautiful site and um sorry um I love that like in unified sports everyone just is there's the feeling of belonging. Like everyone has that feeling. Like there's been times I don't feel like I belong, but
149with when I'm with these kids, I'm like, "These are my friends. These are the people I love." Like I love showing up to my class all the time. And um I just feel like I've seen so many of these kids come out of their comfort zones in this class and with sports. like um there's some kids that didn't even want to do the sports but now love the sports that we play and um it has provided me so many different experiences to play soccer, play basketball with them, like try different sports that I haven't even tried and just become closer with these kids. I've honestly just loved it and I cherish every moment I have had with them. So, and I I just want to say something. You can watch this meeting um on YouTube
150if you want to see yourself get recognized. And I don't know exactly where the camera is, but maybe you can find the camera and wave. Is it back there? Yeah, you can wave to the camera so you can see yourself on YouTube. Okay. You want to ask them to come up? We would love to shake your hands and give you a pin if you guys would like to just start and head down this direction. Take a pin. Congratulations. Take a pin if you want. Nice to Nice to see you. Thanks so much for all you do. You can take a pin if you want. You were super brave. Good job with your speech. [Applause] Are there other board recognitions tonight? I I have I have a couple, but I'm going to start with um Chelsea
151Lopez. Can I pause for just one second? We should have had a picture. You guys made the effort to come. Can we Can we have a picture with you? With the state champs. Yeah, I know. I want a picture with a celebrity, Ryan. [Applause] Okay. So, um, I would like to invite Chelsea Lopez to come stand at the rostroom. And while she's coming up here, um, I would like she has been awarded the Utah Council for Exceptional Children Outstanding Parrot Educator Award, which is awarded to a PAR educator who provides direct service to children, demonstrated a sustained interest in the field, made an outstanding contribution, has made substantial contributions to the field, and I want to read what like anyway this and I'm just going to read something. So Chelsea has been an exceptional pareducator
152in the essential elements classroom within the Jordan school district where she brings extensive experience and dedication to working with individuals with disabilities. Chelsea has a particular talent for working with older students in post- high school studi settings where her ability to connect with students and provide meaningful instruction or independent living skills truly shines. In addition to her work in the [Music] classroom, Chelsea has founded a nonprofit organization called Inclusion Cheer, a cheerleading program that provides people with disabilities the chance to join a team and learn cheerleading skills. Her efforts have had a tremendous success growing from just five participants to 50, a testament to her vision and the supportive community she has fostered. And I saw your cheerleaders at South Valley. They are amazing. Chelsea is deeply committed to the field of special education. She
153has recently begun a bachelor's program to become a certified special education teacher, a career path where she is sure to make a lasting difference. Her dedication, empathy, and innovative spirit make her an ideal candidate for this award, and I am confident that her contributions to special education will continue to benefit countless students and families for years to come. So, and also Chelsea, I would like to invite you to say a few words. Do you would you like to will you say something? Um, I didn't really know what I was going to say. Um, but I just I wanted to mention um just the growth that I was able to experience within the district. Um, I did I started as um a peer tutor at Haramman High School and um that's kind of where I was
154introduced to um just I guess um being involved with getting to know and be friends with people with disabilities and I also did cheerleading. And so when I became a parent educator at that school when I had graduated um that was definitely played a part in the spark for inclusion cheer um which then led in and snowballed into the path I've led for my life and I know will snowball into even more um for the rest of my life and I'm very grateful just to have had the experience that I did in this district as a student as a as a parent educator and I just appreciate the support that I've received. So thank you. Thank you so much. Do you want to Do you want to shake hands? Okay. And thank you so much,
155Chelsea. And at this time of year, it is hard for me to not well, I just don't stop myself from um recognizing the time and effort of our teachers and students and parents in helping our students shine and um and for parents to see the fruit of their students labors in musicals and concerts. And this was highlighted to me um as I watched Matilda Jr. at Joel P. Jensen Middle School last night and it students were truly allowed to shine. It was a studentrun production with student directors, student stage manager, student choreographers, um student set designers, and and I it just fills my heart to that our students have these opportunities to participate in the arts and to grow and shine with their peers and to perform for their parents and grandparents. So, I just
156want to thank all of the people who make that possible. So, thanks. Can I just tack on to that? I also loved attending Matilda at Joel P. Jensen. They were awesome. Um, also a quick shout out to the Jordan Youth Symphony who came and performed for us this evening. It was a delight. It's so fun to see the extra effort that students are willing to make to be able to excel at their craft and they really do excel. Also, the Lion King has been happening at Oakrest. Sometimes I have to remind myself I'm in an elementary school. These predictions are fantastic. Um and then uh the unified botchi ball tournament happened this since our last meeting and it was so fun to go and see not only the amazing athletes but also the effort and
157the thoughtfulness that goes into organizing an event like that. Um so a huge thank you to Elk Meadows for hosting. A lot of good things are happening. I'll just do a quick uh shout out. Um the there is high school art on display um at the Riverton Dome meeting hall and I have not had a chance to get over there yet. It goes till the end of the month, but I'm super excited. I love art and so I would encourage you all, especially those who were participating in reflections, to go and see some more art down at the Old Dome meeting hall in Riverton, all of our high schoolers. And next month, we get to see middle school art. So, I'll be reporting on that as well. Great. Thank you. Superintendent recognitions. Thank you very
158much. I'll just uh mention that earlier today in this room we had the the South Valley Chamber put on the junior women in business lunchon and graduation. And there were uh female students from Canyons, several charter schools and from Jordan district who are celebrated. And the women in business, the junior women in business program allows for mentorship from women in business for these girls as well as a $1,000 scholarship for each of the 25 girls who are accepted into the program. They already have 50 applicants for the next year and they've expanded those opportunities. The South Valley Chamber has with sponsorship from a number of groups including America First. And we heard a panel of women in business speak about being in business and how they got started and and and how they're doing. Um,
159and it was it was really exciting to see the so many people from the community supporting um, students from Jordan School District in getting mentorship every month. They they do a service project. They've really been able to make connections that will allow them to continue to pursue their interests in business. So, that was fun to watch. No matter how much we celebrate, we've celebrated a lot tonight. There's always one more thing we could mention that's really cool and really unique, meeting the individual needs of of students and and helping them see opportunities that they may not have seen on their own. And that's most powerful when we see the community at work. So seeing PTA here, unified sports, and seeing women in business earlier through the chamber, it's just really exciting how we connect to
160the community and provide opportunities for students that way. So, thank you to all who made that possible and everything else we've celebrated tonight. It's really exciting. All right, we'll now move into the public comment portion of our meeting. Uh, as we do so, just a few reminders. Uh, the board of education encourages public engagement. We value the input from our residents, students, and employees. The board does not take public comment on personnel issues or statements regarding the character professional competence or physical or mental health of individuals during board meetings in public comment. If you have concerns to that end, please feel free to email board members directly. Those wishing to have comments heard by the board are asked to list the topic they intend to discuss as well as their name on a signup document
161or through their email. Um, comments should be kept age appropriate. The board does not discuss issues that are not on the meeting's agenda. The board may ask staff to follow up on issues raised or may address them in a future meeting. Silence by the board on an issue does not suggest support or opposition to a message given. Um, so the board will take public public comment at this time. Um, and in-person comments will be heard first, followed by comments received electronically. Both in-person and emailed comments can last a maximum of three minutes. So, please try to be respectful of that time. Uh, I will try to read your name so you know the order that we'll hear you from hear from you, but when you come to the podium, please make sure that you state
162your name. Okay. So we'll go ahead and start now with Todd Kornberg and following him we'll have Madi Adams. All right, first that's awesome. So the subject uh I want to talk about today is um the subject is PE space online enrollment and activity access in our schools. This past summer, 78 school uh students at Haramman High School alone, not accounting for other schools completed their PE credits online through nond district programs. This trend has significant implications. We lose weighted pupil unit funding for those students and PE is now the number one class being taken online. In Jordan School District, every 27.6 six students enrolled, we receive funding for one full-time equivalent FTE teacher. As a result, when students opt for online PE, we lose teaching positions. This is already happening. Haramman will offer fewer
163PE classes next year because the demand has dropped. So why has have students uh are students choosing to take PE online? During my time as principal of Copper Hills and later with Heramman's enrollment of 3,300 students, we were forced to hold PE classes in common areas spaces not designed for physical education simply because we lacked gym space. Today, students are crammed into overcrowded gyms, making physical education and activity difficult. Even my assistant principal's children have opted for online PE, citing the lack of functional space. In every high school in Jordan school district, students are forced to run laps throughout the building due to poor air quality, cold weather, or muddy spring fields. This isn't our athletes that we're talking about. This is general PE students. When students play volleyball, pickle ball, or basketball during PE,
164many are sitting in the bleachers waiting for their turn due to limited space and court availability. Next year, I will be the principal of JWAB High School, where in contrast is striking. JWAB has one of the largest field houses in the state and serves only 850 students in grades 9 through 12. There PE classes are held in fieldhouse giving every student the opportunity to engage in meaningful physical activity and develop a foundation for lifelong health. I say this not to be offensive, but to highlight the critical issue. With current population sizes and facility limitations, I personally would not choose to take PE in one of our district high schools. Um, it also affects performing arts, marching band. We need more space to accommodate all students. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Up next, we have
165Madi Adams, followed by Wendy Barrett. And I'm sorry if I'm killing your name. It's okay. I'm actually used to it. Um how to say it right. Oh, Mattis. Maddie. Okay. I apologize. That's okay. I've It's my whole life. Um I think I picked a good night to come here because it's been actually quite uplifting. I really loved hearing all that. I'm sorry that's going against my three minutes, but um hello fellow board members. I wanted to thank you, take a moment to thank all of you guys for your service and the time that you spend on this board to serve our community and our schools. I really do appreciate you. And I have a dad joke for you. Okay. Why did Dero E aa Why? Because he out tandon. No one's laughing. I just presented
166this joke as if it were spoken by a student with just two phonological processes, cluster reduction and final consonant deletion. Now, after a few years of speech therapy, the student will be able to present the cho the joke to you as follows. Why did the scarecrow receive an award? Why? Because he was outstanding. Get it? Outstanding. I am a speech language pathologist in the Jordan School District and I'm here this evening to speak on behalf of all of the outstanding speech therapists. I have been an SLP for over 26 years and ever since joining Jordan Jordan School District and um speech and language pathologists have been at critical need and they still are. Each year we are asked to carry larger case loads larger and larger case loads sorry without a full staff of certified
167and licensed therapists. Retention of speech and language pathologists is different difficult in this district. We are the second lowest paying in the Wasatch front. Therapists are recruited and frequently incentivized fiscally to leave. I myself have been approached and contacted several times. We serve students with neurodeiversity, autism, down syndrome, head injuries, and many other medical diagnosises. Yet, we're not deemed or paid or viewed as medical professionals in this district. We are nationally certified, have master's degrees, and are obligated to complete Utah State educator licency requirements as well as JPASS and a lot of the other things the teachers do. Yet, we are not deemed teachers even though we are on the teacher scale. I am here this evening requesting of you as a board to decide where we belong. Teachers or medical professionals. If we're teachers
168on the teacher pay scale, we would just like to have access to all the monies that the teachers have access to. Masters plus 30 and shine. And if we're medical professionals, put us on the OT, PT, psych pay scales. We have been standing in the field not knowing where we belong for a long time. I invite you to demonstrate how outstanding you believe we all are to Jordan School District. Thank you. We'll now hear from Wendy Barrett followed by Lily Prague. Hello. Okay, so you've heard from me a lot. I'm sorry, but good to see you all again. Um, so I'm going to echo a lot of what Madice just said. Um, I thought I've never really fully introduced myself when I come, but um, I am also a speech language pathologist. I work at
169the middle school level at a couple different middle schools. Um, I have been in speech language pathology since 2004. That's when I finished my masters. And I decided to become a speech language pathologist when I was in college trying to pick my major. My grandpa had a stroke and he had a speech difficulty after that. Um, swallowing difficulty as well. And I've watched as he did some home health therapy and I realized that that was what I wanted to do. Um, so I went to I finished my bachelor's at BYU and did my masters up at the University of Utah and I thought I wanted to go into the medical side of things and so I started working at LDS Hospital in the neuro rehab with stroke and brain injury patients. I stayed with Inner
170Mountain working on the acute care floors doing some outpatient. Um I've worked for home health care companies and then in 2017 I decided I wanted to try out the schools. I wanted to maybe be on my kids schedule a little bit more. And so I started out at Copper Mountain Middle. I thought that was kind of a bridge from working with adults to maybe working with teenagers. Um and you know I've been surprised. I thought I was doing it for the schedule but I've really really loved the work that I do. It's very creative, demanding, and fulfilling. You work with great students who need help and are struggling to communicate, and you just feel like you're making a difference. Um, but the demands are hard. We, you know, have, like Medie said, we cover a
171lot of case loads where we're, you know, missing, um, personnel. Every year I go to our staff meetings for the district-wide speech pathologists and we're saying, "Do you know of anybody else who can come work here? We need to cover this position. Someone's going on maternity leave. We need help cover this." You know, and it's it's constant because we are that critical need. Um, and so I wanted to talk about how, you know, Madis also mentioned, which I was going to mention, that speech pathologists are the second lowest paid in the Jordan School District compared to other speech pathologists along the Wasatch front. Um, speech pathologists have to get a a certificate of clinical competence and they do a clinical fellowship year, their first year out of graduate school where they have to be supervised.
172And I've seen a lot come work in the schools, get that certification, and then leave going somewhere else that will take them once they're fully certified. Um, but we want them to stay once we've trained them. And so, Medis talked about some of the ways we can compensate. And one thing that I know you guys will have to make a decision on soon is how to use the shine funds, which replace the teacher salary supplement, which is designed for critical needs. And so, I would like us speech pathologists to be considered as part of that. the legislature did have um something pass the house a last in the last couple years, but because they knew Shine was going to be replacing the TSSP, it didn't pass in the Senate, they decided just to table it.
173Um so the the state has already wanted to include us in that, but now the new funds are being used at the district level and you guys get the freedom to use that money how you think it would be best served. And so I'd like to request that we be considered for that, including the other requests that would help us recruit and retain those qualified SLPs. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. All right. We will now hear from Lily Prague, followed by Addison Barker. Okay. Hello. My name is Lily Prague and this is my friend Jackson. And we have been doing unified sports for a long time now, about two years. and I'm talking about why we should not get rid of unified sports. And um all I can say to this is that being able to
174do all the fun sports with my with the best people I know is the greatest blessing in my life and has changed my life for the better in so many ways. It is my second home. It is a place where everyone is welcome and I would and I could be having the worst day and I leave feeling so loved and happy. I would not be the person I am today without it. My greatest friends in my life are gain and peer tutor and I will always and forever be grateful for all the awesome opportunities we get like unified sports. Thank you. Thank you. And Lily, I apologize for mispronouncing your name. Words are hard. Okay. Addison Barker followed by Josh Halt. Hi, my name is Addison Barker and I am also speaking about why we
175should not get rid of unified sports. I am a peer tutor at South Jordan Middle School and I have been a peer tutor for about a year. Um, it has changed my life. I would go to school, wake up in the morning, not want to go. But when I started peer tutor, I was at my lowest. I had not very many good friends and I just would go to school, get through the day and come home. Um, when I became a peer tutor, sorry. Um, I felt like a part of me came back. I found my best friends there. They didn't judge me for who I was. They just accepted me for who I was and we're the nicest people. I am that is what I want to be. I want to be a special
176education teacher because of how they make me feel and because of how happy they make me. Um with getting rid of unified sports, I feel like they wouldn't have the opportunity the same opportunities that we have. They wouldn't have the opportunity to be on a swim team or a soccer team or a basketball team. they wouldn't get the same opportunities. And when I am able to do that with them, it's like my two favorite things, doing sports and being with kids with disabilities. I feel like we should make sure that um we keep the things for them because they are truly amazing and the world is a better place with them. Thank you. [Applause] Thank you. We'll now hear from Josh Halt followed by Exodus Aatasi. Hi, I'm Josh Holt. I am the assistant head
177coach and defensive coordinator at Riverton High School. I am 35 years old, born and raised a member of the Riverton community. Um, I love the city. Um, it's part of the reason why I still coach there. Um, and what athletics does. I love that unified athletics is called unified athletics. I think all athletics should be called unified athletics because it unifies people from every walk of life. Um, and I've seen that in my own life. I've seen that in my own experiences as a coach and a player at Riverton High. Um, I am here to talk about just facilities and Jordan School District falling behind in facilities and compared to what other districts have provided with their student athletes. Um, in the 25 years that Riverton High has been a school. I've been to every
178football game except for eight years when I was coaching at another school from so when I was 9 years old on up. It's a second home to me. But in the 25 years I asked what's changed in the school, the facility, the whole thing. Nothing. And that's just the truth of it. Um but what has changed is we've had four different sports that have been included to our athletics at the school. So we've increased the number of athletics that are being played at the school but we have not done anything for the athletic size for the athletics for the sports facilities to increase what space we do have. Um I just think that's something that we should consider. Um, I also want to take a second. I didn't know I would be saying anything about
179this today, but to the speech pathologist, I also took speech therapy at Rosamond Elementary School. Um, so thank you. Um, it was my Rs, my L's, and my S's. And I will tell you this, I learned more in my speech pathology classes and I have more memories in elementary school from going to my speech therapy than I do from just normal elementary school class. Not nothing against my teachers. They were great. But I I learned so much in those sessions as well. And it's truly a great memory in my life. So thank you and thank you guys. [Applause] Okay. Exodus Aphitasi, you'll have to tell me how I ruined your name. And then James Freeland after. N you got it right. It's Exodus Alpha. But uh uh I want to thank you guys for uh
180giving me your time and letting me uh come up here and talk with you guys. Uh, I also want to give my thanks to coach Freeland and all the other coaches on the coaching staff for all they have done for me throughout my high school journey. Even with limited access to supplies, facilities, and so forth, they've helped me as a player and as a person. Uh, playing sports here at Riverton High has helped me become a better athlete and grow to be a better adult. Uh during the third week of the 2024 through 2025 football season, I remember walking into Brian High School and noticing their their school. It was pretty nice and noticing what they what they have and what I'm giving. Uh, it's also hard not to notice Corner Canyon's recent success and
181the differences between our facilities. But, uh, all I'm asking for is equal access to success like them. And hopefully my thought may sit on your mind and you will consider giving equal opportunity to myself and my fellow peers. Thank you. [Applause] Thank you. We'll now hear from James Freeland, followed by Morgan Bangader. Hi y'all. I'm Jim Freeland. I need to take two seconds though because I have a 15-year-old daughter and she would love Hi, Taylor. She's embarrassed by everything I do, so we might as well make it count. A lot of things spoken tonight about that really actually ring true. My mother was a speech pathologist and chose to be a special ed teacher because they were paid so poorly. So, um, keep the fight. Um, I'm here tonight to talk about, um, facilities equity.
182Uh, it was it was, um, a breath of fresh air, although it it was a little real for me when Mr. Kornberg got up and talked about, uh, PE access and space. And uh something we've been battling since I got back into education is uh the the the concern of the number of kids uh taking classes elsewhere. And I think as most teachers uh we personalize a lot. It's on us. What can we do differently to make this happen? And uh everything from making our content more relevant to providing uh more dynamic lessons and space is something that we think about and um I love what he spoke about. Um, I know that I'm talking about a first world problem. We are blessed with what we have. Um, I've coached in places in inner city
183Oakland. I have coached in the nicest of neighborhoods. Um, this is something though that we talk about access and um, equity as as our kids go over and see newly built fieldouses. And this and this isn't about fieldhouse. This is about space. Um it's it's something that some that can't be have a band-aid put on it. It's something that needs some serious thought and a multi-year plan. When I was hired at Riverton, um Miss Weight, um Mr. Bartholomew, actually Mr. Tranner and Mr. Newfer at the time, talked about a seven-year plan on how to update some of our facilities. And all of them were band-aids, but all of them helped give our kids access to the things that some of our other schools locally would give. Um, this isn't a Riverton only problem. This is
184I am from Dallas originally and as the boom of football happened in the late 90s, early 2000s, it's a growing problem to be able to keep that growth and uh excitement up with funding. Um, I would really like us to think about um as as we take care of our kids and the whole child, understanding that maybe the last part of that whole child is understanding equal access to all kids that have success. Um, couple things that I wrote down. I know my time is waning. Um, this this isn't about football. This is about our kids wanting to stay in Riverton, wanting to be proud of Riverton High School. um to have something to showcase uh as they go up and they graduate through our high school. I love Riverton High. I've enjoyed my time
185in Jordan School District. Um this is my second school here and I I love what I do. This is fantastic. Uh we couldn't do be doing a better job. Thank you so much. Okay, we'll now hear from Morgan Bangader followed by Devonire Howland. I'm not sure. I don't know if you Okay. My name is Morgan Bangader. Um I'm a parent of four students at Midas Creek Elementary School. They are in sixth, fourth, third, and first grades. I serve on the school community council and I am going to be the PTA president next year. My husband is happy about none of that. Um thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening and for your four kids, right? Yeah, the four Yeah, he Yeah, he is happy about the four kids. Uh, thank you for the
186opportunity to speak this evening and for your ongoing service and commitment to students and families across our district. I'm here to formally request that the board consider realigning secondary boundaries for Midas Creek Elementary so that all of our students can feed into one middle school and one high school starting with the class currently in fifth grade in the 2026 2027 school year. To be clear, we are not asking for any changes to our elementary school boundaries. Midas Creek is a tight-knit, thriving school community. But right now, when moving from elementary school to secondary schools, our students are all split across three different middle schools and three different high schools, including Ochre Hills and Riverton, South Hills and Mountain Ridge, and Copper Mountain and Haramman. All incredible schools. But this school division after sixth grade has
187been a topic of discussion amongst our community for as long as I have been part of it, which was when my oldest, who is currently in sixth grade, started kindergarten. Many families struggle with this split as it divides friendship groups that have been together from kindergarten through sixth grade, creates confusion when transitioning to middle school, including figuring out when orientations and registrations are for each different middle school, and limits the ability of secondary school programs to let our students know what opportunities are available, including band, choir, and dance programs that would like to come perform at our elementary school, but we are not able to logistically accommodate three different programs from three different feeder systems. Um, I believe Representative Robinson is no stranger to this topic of discussion on his social media pages over the
188years, including the end of last year when some of our parents inquired about a potential boundary shift from Midas Creek to unite our school into one secondary feeder system on a post of his. And I wondered if a potential boundary change would even be in the realm of possibility. So, on December 4th, I reached out to each and every one of your board members uh via email to inquire about this possibility. I received a reply from board member Bryce Dunford, and he has been a great resource as we have started the research process. Um to better understand how our families feel about this issue, I sent out two different super informal uh surveys. The first one I asked, "Do you support uniting all Midas Creek students into one middle school and one high school? Of
189102 responses, 75 said yes." 16 were a maybe or unsure, and 10 said no to any boundary change. Based on early feedback, we had a quick meeting with Bryce Dunford. Sent out another super informal survey uh through parent square to all of our Midas Creek parents and family members and said, "Do you support Midas Creek Elementary School changing boundaries to go to Ochre Hills and Riverton High School starting in the fall of 2026?" We received 145 responses. 99 said yes. 11 supported the change, but would request a permit for at least one child to go to a different school. Nine said maybe, and 29 said no. Um, what I'm coming here is to ask for help from the board. I'm a mom at midnight sending Google form surveys and it's not the most scientific process.
190Um, we would really like to reboundry our school into unite into one feeder system uh for middle and high school. All right, Devonire Howland followed by Janet Sanders. Hi, my name is Devonire Howland. I am a kindergarten teacher at Ridge View Elementary in Haramman. Um, and I just wanted to speak on behalf of the social studies curriculum that you guys are voting on this evening. Um, as an elementary school teacher, I know, um, from experience all of the new programs that we have been getting in the last couple of years. So, I understand that that it's just one more thing. But I wrote, um, I was on the committee that wrote the social studies curriculum for kindergarten um, with some other amazing teachers. And I know that it is going to be a fantastic resource
191for not just Jordan district teachers, but um state Utah state teachers throughout the whole state of Utah. Um we worked really hard um in conjunction with K um to write all of those lessons and to get them to be what they are. And so I hope I hope that goes well. Um and I'm also really excited about You Fly. So um I'm just I know there's been a lot of changes, but I I'm excited about those ones. So, thank you so much. Thank you and thank you for your effort writing the curriculum. Okay, Janet Sanders will be our final signed up speaker. Last but not least, it just pushed the Okay, I must have bumped it. Sorry. Okay. Um, yes, I am Janet Sanders, a Jordan School District parent, grandparent, teacher, and the president of
192the Jordan Education Association. Um, I'm excited to share with you what I view as one of two potential legislative wins for education in the last week. Last week, the Protect Utah Workers Coalition, composed of 14 public and private employee unions throughout the state, announced three that 320,000 signatures had been collected in the effort to get HB267, the public labor union restrictions bill, onto the ballot for a citizen vote. The required number of signatures was appro approximately 141,000 with at least 8% of voters in 15 of the 29 counties in the state voting for the referendum. So we more than doubled that number. The coalition feels confident that the number of valid signatures throughout the state will be found sufficient to exceed these requirements. We will hear the official results from the Lieutenant Governor's office by
193June 21st. What does this mean for education in Utah? It means that barring unforeseen circumstances, HB267 will not go into effect July 1st as stated in the bill. So, public unions in Utah will be able to continue to operate under the same requirements that we do now, at least until the general election in November of 2026, when the voters will get to decide. In my position as the president of the Jordan Education Association, I regularly meet and correspond with other presidents of district associations throughout the state. Lately, we have been discussing negotiated settlement dates. And it has become clear to me that most of the districts along the Wasatch front will be settling before May 7th, the date in the bill. These districts include Canyons, Alpine, Salt Lake, Davis, Provo, and potentially Granite. I understand
194that there are not scheduled JSD board meetings between now and May 7th that would allow this to be possible in our district, but I also know that special sessions can be called with 24-hour notice. I would like to encourage you to consider doing so. In speaking to my building representatives and others, it would be not only greatly appreciated, but seen as a goodwill gesture by our members who, with the board's cooperation, will be able to vote on a settlement next year, at least if things go as expected with the referendum. The other potential win for education, in my view, was the recent court decision in the Utah Fitzall scholarship voucher program. Personally, I would love to see that hund00 million back in Utah's public schools. Fingers crossed. Thank you for being an amazing board to
195work with. I appreciate your support of educators and know that you value our excellent working relationship as I do and the other educ uh educators in the Jordan district do. Thank you. All right, we have a few emailed comments. [Music] Corey Chase, I have been a at I've sorry, I'll start over. Corey Chase, I have been a teacher at Jordan School District for eight years. I love my job and I love this district. I have also been a proud union member for each of those eight years. I am asking the board to please allow us the opportunity to ratify our latest contract. HP267 is not yet legally in effect. JA has a long tradition of partnering partnering with the district to provide quality outcomes that meet the needs of all stakeholders. Please continue in that
196cooperative tradition regardless of political climate. Thank you, Corey Chase. Tiffany Bowman. Dear school board members, my name is Tiff Tiffany Bowman and I am writing to you both as a community member and a licensed speech language pathologist SLP. I want to express my appreciation for the work you do in guiding the direction of our schools and to share a few concerns that are important not only to me but to many SLPs within our district. Speech language pathologists are classified as critical needs position and yet we are constantly one of the hardest roles to fill and retain. A major contributing factor to this challenge is compensation. Along the Wasatch front, our district ranks as the second lowest in pay for SLPs. This discrepancy places us at a disadvantage when trying to recruit and retain qualified and
197experienced professionals. As SLPs, we are currently placed on the teacher salary scale, but we do not receive access to the same financial supports and incentives that classroom teachers do. We respectfully request consideration for access to the following national certification funding support compensation for M's plus30 as provided in districts like Davis. Shine funds formerly TSSP which are designed to support retention in high needs areas. Improved compensation would go a long way in addressing the supply and demand issue and would help our district retain highly trained providers who are already invested in this community. If these supports cannot be extended to SLPs on the teacher scale, we ask that you consider moving SLPs to the OTP PT psychologist salary schedule, which better reflects the level of education, training, professional standards, and expectations of our role. Thank you
198for your time and consideration. I would welcome the opportunity to discuss this further or answer any questions you may have. Sincerely, Tiffany Bowman. And board members, I received one written that was anonymous. I emailed that to you as it's anonymous. I'll pass on reading that tonight, but you have it. Next one. Susie Kuzme. I am Susie Kousme, a former Jordan uh district speech language pathologist, member of the West Jordan community. I had a neighbor recently tell me that their son was receiving speech therapy through early intervention services in the Jordan district. My response was, "Get services for your children early because as they reach grade school, the SLPs in Jordan are overworked and burned out." Don't get me wrong, Jordan School District has amazing SLPs. We have dedicated, professional, creative individuals who are willing to
199work for their students for less pay than any other district than other districts offer. We have speech therapists who are willing to take on extra-large case loads. It's worth noting that that states with case load caps max out around 55. And if you recall last board meeting, we mentioned a district case load of over 100 students. Jordan district has incredible speech therapists who are not only remediating students articulation errors, think Elmer Fud and Daffy Duck, but who are creating communication systems for students who are non-verbal using picture symbols. SLPs who give students who stutter confidence and fluency that will impact their social life and job prospects down the road. SLPs who are working with teachers, PAR educators, families, and outside agencies to ensure that a student has the support and same opportunities as their peers
200when it comes to understanding others and being able to express themselves. What I hope you hear in the SLP's messages to the board is this. JSD SLPs want to do their job well. They want manageable case loads and time to do the documentation and meetings that coincide with these those case loads. They want their department peers to stay in the district to work for years to come in order to share knowledge and grow as professionals. Jordan school district SLPs are tired of not being acknowledged as the professional therapists that they are. They are tired of being called teachers and not receiving the same treatment and benefits as teachers. There is a problem here and you are the ones with the power to remediate it. Thank you Susie Kuzme. Brooke Bolt. Dear board members, I am
201Brooke Bolt, a speech language pathologist in the Jordan School District for seven years. I am passionate about what I do and love working for Jordan School District. Throughout my time in Jordan, I have witnessed increasing case loads for many of my colleagues, primarily due to challenges in filling our positions. This makes it uh more difficult to provide the best possible services to our students. A significant factor contributing to this issue is our compensation. We rank as the second lowest paid providers along the WASE front. To maintain a competitive edge, it is crucial to ensure our pay aligns with industry standards. This will help retain our experienced providers and attract new talent to our district. Currently, we are on the teacher pay scale but do not have access to additional teacher related funds such as national
202certification support, masters plus 30 compensation and shine funds. This exclusion makes us the lowest paid master's degree holders in the district. We respectfully request that speech language pathologists either receive these additional funds or be included on the OTP psychologist pay scale to ensure competitive compensation. Thank you for considering this matter. Your support in addressing these concerns is greatly appreciated. Warm regards, Brooke Bolt. Laurel Cole. Hello, my name is Laurel Cole and I have been an SLP in the district for 12 years. Your SLPs are coming to you, the school board as you look at the budget for next year. Because over the past two years, we have met with numerous administration members, and presented options for fair compensation. I'm hearing more often than ever from SLPs who leave the district that it is because of
203pay. We are a quote hard to fill critical need position end quote and are the second lowest paid special ed providers along the Wasatch front. This is because in in this district we are on the same pay scale as teachers but have have not had access to stipens they do such as the shine stipend or national certification bonus. Most of us have national certification through our organization ASHA as a uh and pay for the necessary continuing education classes to maintain that. We have watched as the school school psychologist, occupational therapist, and physical therapist have been able to move to higher pay skills. We are all members of the special ed team doing legally essential work for children with disabilities. SLPs complete the same amount of education and supervision as those other wonderful professionals. We are
204coming to you with hope, suggesting that we either be given access to the same additional funds teachers have access to, or that we be moved to a similar pay scale as our colleagues, which acknowledges our education and skills for providing specialized services. We know there are more of us than OT's and PTS. However, other districts have been able to make this work, even if it is by moving their SLPs to a master's plus 30 for their salary and giving access to the beforementioned stipens and bonuses teachers have access to. Increasing our pay at this time will help fill this critical need position. Retain SLPs who are experienced in giving effective therapy and retain SLPs who are at the beginning of their careers and have spent time being trained in systems specific to our district. I
205have worked with and done observations of dozens of SLPs over the years and want you to know that we are deserving of this compensation. We are extremely diligent in managing high case loads with compliance in paperwork and filing, doing time-consuming Medicaid billings which bring funds to the district and in giving essential services to children with autism, severe medical conditions, language delays, language disorders, speech sound disorders, and more. Our hearts are in our work and we are an integral part of our school communities. We are asking to be valued for the education we have obtained and continue to maintain and the valuable services we provide to the children in this school district. Thank you Laurel Co. Appreciate that. Okay, that concludes our public comment portion. Um, for those of you who are here for public comment
206and do not wish to stay, even though the rest of the meeting is going to be a thrill, um, please feel free to leave. We will not be offended. Okay, let's go ahead and move into our consent agenda. And I think the nature of these, we should take them one at a time tonight. I move that we approve board minutes for the March 25th meeting and the April 8th meeting. I'll second. We have a motion by Miss Dean, second by Miss Barrow to approve board minutes. Those in favor say I. I. I. And any opposed? Great. Let's move to agenda item B. um the school land trust plans which each of our schools have had the responsibility of using the land trust funds and allocating those monies to benefit students. Uh the board has now
207had an opportunity to review each of those uh plans and so this is a vote to accept those plans or to approve. Is it to Yes, approve. Sorry. I move Are you taking a motion? Okay. I move that we approve the school land trust plans for 202526 school year. I'll second. Okay, we have motion by Miss Dean, second by Miss Barrow to approve the school land trust plans for 2025 2026 school year. All those in favor say I. I. And any opposed? Okay, that motion passes unanimously. Now take a motion for agenda item C, the Teacher and Student Success Act or TSSA plans, which have also recently been reviewed by board members. I move that we approve the Teacher and Student Success Act or TSSA plans for the 2526 school year. I'll second. Okay, we
208have a motion by Miss Dean, second by Miss Barrow to approve the TSSA plans for 202526 school year. All those in favor say I. I. Any oppose say nay. Right, that motion passes unanimously. I move to approve the land trust plan amendment for 2425 for Elkridge Middle School. Second. Right. A motion by Miss Barrow, second by Miss Wood to approve the land trust plan amendment for the 2425 school year. Um, all those in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Right, that motion passes. All right, we can take items E and F together. Uh, each year it's the opportunity of the school board to perform an evaluation of our superintendent and business administrator um and to have an opportunity to thank them for their diligent efforts and their successful leadership. We appreciate having these men head
209up our district. And so I will now accept a motion. I move that we approve or pass. What is it? Approve the evaluation of superintendent of schools and evaluation of business administrator. Second. Okay. We have a motion by Miss Barrow, second by Miss Wood to approve the evaluation of our superintendent of schools and evaluation of business administrator with great thanks. Uh those in favor say I. I. And any opposed? All right. One more. And it's been alluded to during public comment, but we have had an opportunity to have public um open houses and are now proposing the adoption of the UFly and social studies curriculum. A huge thank you to those teachers who uh represented Jordan School District well when asked to put together a social studies curriculum for the state of Utah. Um so
210I'll now accept a motion. I move that we approve the adoption of UFly and social studies curriculum. Second. We have a motion by Miss Dean and a second by Miss Wood to adopt the UFly and social studies curriculum. Any discussion? Haven't even been asking. All right. Those in favor, please say I. I. And any oppose say nay. Motion passes unanimously. Okay. I was kind of hoping you would ask for discussion on the last two because I just wanted to say uh thank you to uh Dr. Godfrey and John Larson for being uh so kind and patient and attentive to us new board members with our questions about the school district. You have been very helpful and knowledgeable. So, thank you for all of that help. Thank you. Um, I couldn't have said it better and
211thank you for taking a minute to mention that. Everybody should have the opportunity to express their appreciation. Okay. Um, I'll now accept a motion to accept the consent agenda items. I move that we accept the consent agenda items A through E. I'll second. Okay, we have a motion by Miss Dean and a second by Miss Barrow to ex accept the consent agenda items A through E. Any discussion? All right, seeing none, those in favor, please say I. I. I. And any opposed say nay. That passes unanimously. All right, I'll now accept a motion for bids. I move that we accept the bid for facility services parking lot edition at West Jordan High School. The rebid. It's bid number D. Have a second. Did you say it? Sorry, I was talking over you. I apologize. Okay,
212we have a motion by Miss Dean, a second by Miss Wood that we accept the bid item D for um the rebid of the parking lot addition at West Jordan High School. Yeah, sure. So, um we have previously approved this bid, but uh discovered later that the company that received the bid in our last meeting had not had an opportunity to um come and walk through the job site um while the others had and so this is being rebid after following the proper procedure. Um, any other discussion? Great. All in favor, please say I. I. And any opposed? Great. That motion passes seven to zero. I'll move that we approve Herman High School Chromebooks and licenses and Mountain Ridge High School Chromebooks and licenses. I'll second. Oh, she'll second. All right. We have a motion
213by Mr. Barnett and um a second and a third. Just kidding. A second by Miss Barrow to approve or approve the bid for Haramman High School and Mountain Ridge High School Chromebooks and licenses. Any discussion? I just wanted to say that uh looking over these I was just curious how many sophomores they were anticipating for the fall. So, I called the schools and asked and Haramman is expecting uh 899 sophomores in the fall and Mountain Ridge is expecting 850 sophomores. I was just blown away. But very interesting fact. So, okay. All in favor, please say I. I. And any opposed? Okay, that motion passes seven to zero. I move that we accept the bid for teaching and learning instructure mastery connect. I'll second. We have a motion to approve the bid for Instructure Mastery Connect
214by Miss Dean, second by Miss Wood. Any discussion? There was some concern about the the use of this product, whether it was uh widespread enough throughout the district to to warrant the the purchase. Is there someone who can speak to that? What the what the usage level is across the district? Amanda Bullinger's here from teaching and learning to speak to that. Good evening board. Amanda Bolinger, associate administrator for teaching and learning. So I can definitely speak to the usage. It does vary from level to level. At an elementary school level, we just did a big deep data dive when we were looking at usage because we obviously want to make sure that we're using any kind of software or program before we're paying taxpayer dollars for it. So currently we have 83% of our elementary
215teachers have been using it this year. Um, in middle school we had 46% and in high school 23%. So it does vary from school to school on the usage and from subject to subject. Although I will tell you that with our work with MTSS, you know that PBL or proficiency based learning is one of those programs that we want to make sure all of our students have access to. So as a teaching and learning department as we work forward with the proficiency based learning, it is a program that will help support that. It's an assessmentbased program that allows teachers to get real data in real time. And not only that, but they can also compare data from school to school and teacher to teacher. So, it's a pretty cool program that is also embedded into
216Canvas. So, it works seamlessly with our other programs and it's also one of our big six in our digital teaching and learning tools that we support in teaching and learning. Are there any other questions I can answer? Is this a program that we pay by usage by is it we have to buy a license for all schools in the district? How does that work? It's by student. So if you look at the bid that was was given, we're not paying for all the students in our school district currently. Um it's less than our our total number of students, but it is by students, not by teachers. I I'm not sure I I understood that. So So are we paying for 56,000 students? 52,000 currently, which is the total enrollment. Our enrollment is going to be
217closer to 57,000. And we're paying for 52,000 seats. Yes, sir. How did you guys come to that number? How did you figure out that that's what we were going to use or pay for? We are actually this this contract that we're working on now is a renewal. So, we were at about 52,000 when we did it three years ago. This current contract, we have been able to uh secure some pricing through UTN or UETN, excuse me, the Utah Education Technology Network. And so, we were able to get a better price, but they locked us in at the same numbers. It's just part of our negotiation with them. So, actually, for the price we're paying for these next three years, it's actually twothirds of the cost of what we paid the last three years. So, we're
218saving some money, which is always good news for taxpayers. if you were to to support the bid of course. So with that cost savings is that something that you need to u maintain continuity in order to receive. So where we are seeing a decline especially in the secondary level of use um if we were to postpone and and dig deeper into that would we be at risk of losing that discounted rate? The discounted rate comes through UEN they have they have a a contracted amount. Uh the challenge that we face right now is that for some reason when the contract was originally procured it finished May 15th. So our current contract ends May 15th. We could absolutely look at paying for the rest of this year and then holding off on the following years and
219that's something that we would have to negotiate. So it depends on on that that part. So it's up to you guys on that. Um I will say that as far as usage too, it also depends on the subject area. So for example, if we have a high school uh student, we're paying per student. So their math teacher might be using it and their world language teacher might be using it but maybe their language arts teacher is not. Currently we were working on some uh singleton PLC's. We even had PE teachers at high school level using it to compare data for the mile run for example. So it depends really on the the level and the content area um of of the usage. So it is going to vary and and the awarded expenditure is a
220threeyear. It is but we pay each of those prices per year. So if you if you look at the breakdown um that total cost we we don't pay the whole amount upfront. That's broken down into three payments. Okay. the three years similar to our other contracts that we've done. My my inclination is to gather a little more information. Personally, I I don't know how other board members feel, but I I would prefer to get um a little more information before approving this. you have a sense of what information in particular like do you want more on usage? Yeah, I would like more on usage. I would like more on is this is this something is is this a a critical piece of our software offering? You know, can we can we do without it? Are
221there are are there aspects of it that can be accomplished with other by other means? I don't know if there's any overlap. Yeah, those those kind of questions if I may. Um, we currently, just so you know what we use it for, especially elementary secondary, you know that we have done a secondary math program that we've done. We use it for all of our benchmark testings for our secondary math and we have uh recently inputed all of those elementary assessments for our open up mathematics that will be in there. We've used it for uh Whiten Wisdom is using it as well for some of the assessments. Um and then any any other teachers that want to use it as their assessment software that is currently what we use. We have compared it to a few
222other programs. Uh there is one other program that is very common um that is used for um some of our high school mathematics. However, this is um a fourth of the cost. So we can definitely look at other programs and and look at what other options we have. But because this is a state contract and the price that they lock in, I don't know that you're going to find anything at a better price for what we currently use. Um, and using that assessment tool is vital to getting real- time data to drive our instruction in our district. I I do have a question and if you don't know the answer, it's okay. Okay. I I'm curious if your view is that it's valuable to promote increased usage in high schools if that would be part
223of next steps if we were to approve this. Yes. And in fact, that's something that we've started this year. So, our digital teaching and learning team has been providing professional developments throughout our district um at individual high schools and with individual teams on a needs basis. But like I mentioned before, it is part of our big plan with our proficiency based scales that this is the tool that can be embedded into Canvas. Uh it works seamlessly like I said with that and be able to give real-time data. I will tell you when it was rolled out I was a elementary principal and when we we've learned things as you know along the way when we roll out programs and you guys have have seen we've kind of provided you with Nosters's model of any kind
224of change and there's different parts and pieces that need to be in place to make a program successful and when mastery connect was first rolled out all not not all the parts and pieces were in place but we do have a plan moving forward where you if you were to approve that on how we can make sure that we're utilizing that. And so even though when we talk about 23% of high school teachers are using it, you have to remember that that doesn't mean that um that's not 23% of the students. So 100% of the students in high school are using it in at least some of their classes. So when we say 23% of the teachers, you're going to have some teachers like our wood shop teacher or auto mechanics teacher or some of
225our arts teachers not going to use it. Um, however, in our financial literacy is one of our biggest users of it in a high school level and same with our world language. So again, it's per student, not per teacher. So if you look at the data per teacher, it it was going to be a little bit different. You might have one of the subjects that is probably used the least in is English language arts. And that's simply because when they're writing essays, that's a little bit different to get that real- time data in a format like Mastery Connect where there's often multiple choice or those questions are manipulated more like a rise assessment and helping figure out the rigor and getting students ready for those rise assessments. So, it's going to vary by subject as
226well. Just for the sake of asking, if this did not get passed, would this leave our teachers and students high and dry? We would definitely work to try to find solutions. Uh but I would say that it would be I mean, if we were to pass it in a future date, potentially we could work something out. Um if they were left high and dry after May 15th, then that would be a challenge, especially with it being the end of the year piece. Um, but if you wanted to, um, you know, look at us having to see if we can figure out for the rest of this year and move forward, we could absolutely do that. Um, but it just, you know, that's it's up to you guys on how you want to perform that. But,
227um, like I said, we've spent a lot of time putting assessments into the program for our new math K5 math rollout. So, if we were to go with something different, we would need to, um, redo those assessment pieces. Can I ask one question? you you you spoke to the question about whether there are other products that we could look at that would provide these same services and this can be embedded in Canvas but does Canvas itself or any other program we currently have in place provide what ca what uh what what is provided through instructure? Yeah, that's a great question. So, Canvas itself is our learning management system or our M LMS and that provides opportunities where you can build assessments or assignments inside of that. But what Mastery Connect does that Canvas does not
228do or some of the other programs don't do is it actually disagregates the data by question, by student, by teacher, by school. And it allows us as a at a district level to look at data across the district. So then we can see where are our strong points and then we'll know who's doing well, which schools are not doing well, which teachers are not before we get to the end of the year assessment. So that is a very unique um aspect to Mastery Connect that is not available in our other tools. Uh some of the other tools like I mentioned the one that individuals use mostly for math. The other issue about that is that's only currently built out for 6th through 12th grade. And so that would leave us without anything for elementary K5.
229Is this a tool that is used just by those at the school or do you use it at a district level for data and whatnot? We absolutely use it at a district level for data. And in fact, the other nice thing about it is that our teacher specialists that work in teaching and learning can help create the assessments and the benchmarks. So then the teachers aren't having to do that. The other thing it does is it has a bank of questions that then they can pull from. Instead of creating the questions, they can create some assessments from questions that we've created at a district level, which is pretty unique. Then putting that onto the teachers to have to create all of those assessments themselves. I how how does it work with school AI or does
230it work with the school AI? Different programs. School AI also embeds into uh Canvas and can be used as a tool uh for other assessments. Mastery Connect is going to be used more often for unit assessments or benchmark assessments that help us make sure that students are in alignment with the rigor of RISE. So it can be used as a formative or a summitative. School AI can absolutely help us more like exit tickets or in the- moment learning. So then we can adjust instruction in the moment. And there are some teachers that use school AI for some of those pieces, but school AI doesn't provide for summitive or summitive assessments across the district. Okay, no other questions. All those in favor of approving the bid for Instructure Mastery Connect say I. I. I. And any
231opposed? Nay. Okay. That carries six to one. Can I make just a brief comment on that? Nay. Of course. I think part of my concern and and it might just it might be my problem. I sometimes when these these bids come up, maybe specifically software related bids, you know, we've had a weekend to look at them as a board member, unless we're really vigilant and we're talking to people and maybe that's like I say on me. Um, some some questions came up about this particular software product. and and I I just wasn't able in such a short amount of time to be able to determine whether or not I liked this product and I thought it was good for the district. And you know that's the type of concern that I have. I I just
232didn't have enough time to settle my mind that the right choice had been made. And it has nothing to do with the district staff or that I don't trust that they're doing their job right. It's just something that I wanted to feel good about and possibly possibly be able to respond to constituents who had questions about it. And I don't know if there's anything that can be done about that. um when there's when there's a bid, when there's software that that needs to be changed or curriculum that needs to be changed, I guess my question is, is a weekend enough for a board member to be able to do all the due diligence that he or she wants to do prior to making a decision? And in this case, it wasn't enough time for me.
233Do you have a proposal for something that may have made our process better? Not not at this time. Okay. Well, as ideas come, please bring them. We always want to refine our processes and um and be better stewards of taxpayer dollars. So, we're always open to those ideas. Okay, we have one bid left. I'll accept a motion, please. I'd like to make the motion. Sorry. I'd like to make the motion to approve transportation, school bus routing and planning software, field trip activity planning software, and tablet technology. And we have a motion by Dr. Robinson and a second by Miss Barrow uh to um approve the bid for transportation, school bus routing, planning software, field trip activity, trip planning software and tablet technology. Do we have discussion to this motion? I actually have a question. So
234almost every year I get at least one um interaction with bus drivers who are asked to go out and write out their bus routes. Will this make it so that we have digital maps on our buses? Yes, it will. I know we've been talking about this. It's been a few years. That's I know. President George, I know this is exciting for you, exciting for us as well as a department. Great. Perfect. Well, thank you for following up. I know that we probably have the best option here. I just wanted to say that I really appreciated the letter of justification. I felt it showed a high level of attention to detail and to make sure that we were getting the best system to fit our needs. So, thank you. Thank you. Yes, it also made me
235excited. So, count me in. Okay. Any other discussion? Sorry to make you walk up just for one. Okay. All those in favor, please say I. I. And any opposed? Right. That motion passes seven to zero. Moving on to special business items. Uh we have our budget hearing. A recommend recommendation to approve the amended budget for 2425 fiscal year. Mr. Deford and Mr. Larson. One of the most important things that we as a board do is we account to the public for expenditures on tax dollars taken. Uh we take that very seriously. I know I do. I know all of you do. And one of the reasons for multiple amendments is to take a more careful look and more timely look. Um a bud budgets always need to be amended especially since data comes in at
236different times of the year. Our numbers are clarified. I mean we we are required to produce a budget in June and yet we really don't even know student count until October. You can begin to see the challenge that that poses. So clearly budgets need to be amended. A budget is simply a guide on expenditures. Um they are not necessarily a reflection on where we are financially. And so every we decided as a board to have three budget hearings a year instead of one. We were when I came onto the board, we were amending the whole budget in June and then approving a new budget at the same time. and we just felt like that was too much at one time. And so we've decided that we hold a budget hearing in December and a lot
237of the changes in December have to do with the updated numbers that we get in October and there in in the fall. Then we decided to do another one in April which allows us to talk about carryovers and uh some legal requirements on our budget which John will explain. And then we do a final amended budget in June. So, three times a year, we look at what do we know now that we didn't know in June when we proposed this this budget and how do we need to make changes. So, John's going to explain changes in revenue and you will notice changes in expenditures. Um, we welcome any question you have. uh we it's very important to all of us that the board can stand in front of their constituents with confidence in the budget
238and we want to we want you to have such confidence. So please feel free to ask any questions that you have as Mr. Larson explains kind of line by line the changes that have occurred in the different categories. Um, I would like to say that as a finance committee, we have the blessing because we have a little bit more time to devote to this than this board would tonight. We went, we had a much more indepth discussion. We looked at each category. We asked a lot of questions. And I'd like to let you know that the finance committee stands confidently behind this amended budget and recommends to the board that it be approved. So, Mr. Larson, walk us through. I assume we'll hear his presentation before we hear a motion. Well, then we'll have some
239input. All right. Thank you. Go ahead. Um, Mr. Dan Ellis, our director of accounting is here as well as Mr. Jason Mott, our senior accountant that did uh most of this work really putting this together. So, if I get stomped, they're my backup. And if you see them run for the door, let me know. Okay. Um so the April budget hearing is really the big changes that occur in the budget. Uh the December budget hearing is uh smaller rocks that we know about from October like Mr. Dunford was saying and uh undoing some of the uh things odd things that are done just have to be done in June. Um, but it's really the April budget hearing where uh we're collecting all of the changes across the tens of thousands of accounts and and looking
240at each one of those and saying, "Okay, uh, well, how much should be budgeted for John Larson's health insurance? How much should be budgeted for this person's retirement account?" And the system helps us do all of that by going through name by name and calculating that out. And then the accountants are taking that and looking at each of those accounts along with the program directors and seeing if it's correct and if some if anything jumps out that is wrong. And so they're adjusting those and looking at those. So this is the the real big um this is the minutia what we're getting through on this hearing. So there's a lot of changes here. I will try to tackle these at a fairly high level and if you have more questions let me know. um property
241sorry the budget is divided up on revenues according to local revenues, state revenues and and uh federal revenues. Our local revenues are projected to be up higher than we had originally estimated in June. Uh the biggest portion of that local revenue increase is coming from property tax. If you recall, however, one of the odd nuances of school finance is that the property taxes assigned to the general fund actually um offset most of what the state guarantees are. So, as we collect more money in property taxes broadly, the state gives us less state guarantee money. Now that is not true on one levy and that is the board levy there. That one is only a portion of it. So there are some increases that can come in but the basic levy and the voted levy are
242by far the two largest here far and away. And so the benefit of that it gets offset against the state revenues. The other big uh increase here on uh local revenues is interest earnings is projected to go up this year for the current year. Moving on to state revenues. Uh only a $2 million change really is not too bad. Um and this one has a lot of moving parts in it. Like I mentioned there, there's decreases in state revenues for those guarantee pieces that are coming down as well as uh just resetting our projections that occurred uh this time last year and uh bringing those down to actual. But that is all being offset by information we now have that we didn't have before about uh actual TSSA, CTE, special ed, um concurrent enrollment, uh
243comp guidance, BTS, um the list goes on and on of the hundreds of grants that are out there. And so those have all been um researched, analyzed, gone through, rebudgeted to make sure we have the full amount put in there. The net change there is state revenues up $2 million. Federal revenue up $900,000. Uh this is mostly uh an increase for um special ed programs from the federal government. Uh increase over what was projected this time last year. Moving on to expenditures. Um expenditures have a significant change that occurs in the instruction line and board. We've talked about this before and if if any of you want to have a further dive on this, I'm happy to go uh go through it. But there's uh the budget that we do in June is going to
244take any funds in the unassigned category and put them to instruction. And then in December, as well as now in April, we're taking that off of instruction, putting it back down to unassigned. And so that is a very large shift of approximately $66 million. All it is is just a recategorization. It's not lost money. It's not gained money. It's just moving it from one category to another. That's because there's kind of a goofy law that says your budget can't have any unassigned funds. And so we have to move it in and move it out. Something we do every single year. It looks funny and we wish we didn't have to do it, but there is a legal requirement to do it. And that's one of the reasons why we also provide different budget schedules within
245the budget book showing things a little differently. So, you'll see uh and I I didn't write down the page numbers, but uh the official budget is like pages 13 and 14 13 14 somewhere in there. And then a few pages later, we have one that just demonstrates this pulled out and uh put down so that you can see this page 24. Page 24. Thank you. Am I looking at the the current version on board docs? Mine says 55 million. You said 60. Yes. So the that went down 66 million and now we're offsetting that by there's 11 million of these reanalyzed costs and uh programs and grants and things that are coming up to bring it to a net change of 55 million. Yep. So I I mentioned as an example earlier that we uh
246are resetting or or uh putting the budget for federal IDA that's part of that federal budget going up. Well, if that goes up, the federal IDA um spending has to also go up for that program. And so that's part of these changes that's offsetting that 66 million. and and just take that same example among lots of grants and programs. Um the same is happening in these other categories where it's just kind of this reset from what we thought was going to happen in June. We reanalyze it and we say, "Oops, okay, this is where it was." This isn't additional spending. What the board approved in June, that spending is there. it that approval is is uh in place. This is just going through ten tens of thousands of accounts and just being sure that we've
247mark those accounts the way uh they should be done. For example, last June through the budget you approved a uh allocations for additional salaries. Well, that's at the same time of the budget hearing. So we can't do that to thousands of accounts all at once. So that is done in mass. So that's in the budget and now we're doing it to all those tens of thousands of accounts and being sure that it's in the right spots. Okay. Um so that's support services students. Uh that's what's going on there. Um same with the staff. It's really all of these one. I would um like to point out and maybe this is just because it's near and dear to me but the business category uh had a significant change for such a small category and that was
248we reset uh the the insurance premiums with the state of Utah uh were less than anticipated. So that's come out and we're resetting that budget. So there's a large decrease in the from what was anticipated in the business line item for a small line item like that. Um and again that's a good example of we take the best information we have in June. We budget for that and then when we get the bill from the state of Utah if it's different and it's less then we Yay. But uh then we just adjust it in April and make it what it needs to be. Is that too high of a level? Do you want more detail? Am I good? We went through in finance committee deeper than that, but I don't know how deep the board
249wants to go here. I thought that one of the points of having the committee is so that it could go deep with three members of the board for like facilities or finance so that it didn't have to go that deep for the rest of the board in a general business meeting. So, but if other board members want more, I am fine with that. But as a member of the finance committee, I felt like it all made sense at the finance committee. Suzanne, why don't you speak? Because a brand new board member sitting through a budget hearing and walked out of the meeting feeling. I felt smarter after uh I did have a lot of questions just trying to make sense of it and I felt like John answered all of my questions even though I
250had to ask some of them twice because I thought I got it and then I realized I didn't get it. So I felt like it was fairly thorough and I felt very comfortable with the amended budget by the time we were done discussing it. I I've offered this in the past and I'll I'll continue to offer it because I like talking about school finance so much. But if any of you would like to meet with me and go over this or a group of you, that's fine. Um I I would go through any of this with you. um the budget book, any questions you have on any of these things, how it works, uh give me more detail about how the voted and board subsidy works because that that is a a unique nuance to
251school districts that cities do not have anything like that. But if you want more, please reach out. question on total revenues. Yeah. If if that had come in negative 9.4 million, what concerns would I would I have as a board member? What how would that affect me as a board member if we had if we had guessed that in the opposite way? Um I would nerve would be shrinking. Yeah, I guess I would be asking the question, well, are we being too uh generous in our projections? Are we being too optimistic in what we think we'll be receiving? U now that can go too far the other way as well if we're being too pessimistic. I I believe though this reflects really good projections uh from what we had last year. I think it's uh
252really nice, especially since a lot of this is just grants that changed. But I think it's a good question I would be asking about oo uh are we being too optimistic in the information we're bringing to the board in June? Could you remind me what the fund balance is? Yes. Uh the fund balance you can think of is what's left over, the money that's uh remaining after we received our money and paid all the bills. It's the savings account. So, any business is going to need money left over because uh any home I would say as well because you never know when the water heater is going to break or you never know when uh a family member has an accident, you know, needs help. You um so you want to have some money in
253your savings account um for emergencies like that. Fund balance is the remaining amounts at the bottom of this page. Fund balance is separated out into several categories. So within the wonderful world of government accounting, uh we're required to separate that those remaining funds into categories to say how spendable is this money that's remaining because you have leftover money, but how spendable is it? And so these categories go down. The first one is is completely not spendable because it's in the form of inventories. We have stuff that we can't, you know, pay employees. You know, we're not going to tell employees this month. We're going to pay you in the form of crayons. But we have a lot of inventory like that. Okay? So, it's not spendable. Below that, restricted, which is legislatively the state told
254us you can't use this for anything else. Then committed is the board said you can't use this for anything else. Assigned is management is saying we're not going to use this for anything else. And unassigned is just everything remaining. Um and if this is too deep, we can meet later. But just kind of a simple, you know, thinking of my budget at home, uh, our total revenues that we received is still less than our total expenditures. So is that when this extra money we have stashed away, our fund balance comes into play to help offset that? Am I understanding this correctly or not? Yeah. Then you have the remaining balance that can float those differences when you have a year that you that we have to spend more. And those years could be planned that
255your family could say, "Uh, this year we're going to take a special trip as a family. We've saved up for it. We know we have the money." And so that year your expenditures may be higher. And so it's okay to plan accordingly to do that. You just have to know what you're going to use the money for and how much you're going to have after you after you do that. Okay. So, we all have a budget. Oh, let's budget for car repairs. And guess what? This year, the car didn't break down. So, all that we budgeted for in car repairs is now extra. Okay, I'm seeing it now. Thank you. Got it. President, I move that we approve the amended budget as presented to us tonight. I second. Hey, we have a motion to approve
256the budget. Um motioned by Mr. Dunford, seconded by Miss Dean. Uh before we go into discussion, this is a public hearing. Is there anyone here? I didn't see any signed up, but anyone here who had hoped to speak regarding the budget hearing? One thumbs up. We'll take it. All right. Um, other discussion by board members. I would like to pay tribute to Jason who's here tonight. We don't get to see him a lot, but years ago, the finance committee asked John to predict where we will be financially. And John came up with a brilliant little model of projecting where we'll be. And we started to use that model in our, you know, budget talks and our negotiations. And then we hired an assistant. I won't name him but he came up with another model and
257it was different and so we began to look at both models and each year we would say well what was the John model or what was this other model we would kind of look at in between and Jason has joined us and has tremendously improved that second model that it is now called the Jason model. So we have the John model and we have the Jason model. And John will tell you that the Jason model is more accurate than the John model. Oh yes. So that's the genius that we have working for us is we have we neither of them have a crystal ball but they have figured out to fairly consistently and accurately say here's what we think your revenues will be as you go into a new fiscal year. And so just to
258pay tribute to Jason and it Dan is always grateful. I just Dan does so much work in preparing this budget. We've got to pay tribute to those two while they're here. So thank you gentlemen. We very much appreciate all that you [Applause] do. I agree. All right. Uh other discussion. Okay. We'll go ahead and move to a vote. All in favor of approving the recommendation to approve the amended budget for the 2425 fiscal year, please say I. I. I. And any oppose say nay. All right. That motion is approved. Seven to zero. Okay. Up next, we have a recommendation to approve the calendar for the 202627 school year. Dr. Anderson. Thank you. Um, approving a calendar is is likely one of the more impactful things that this board does when you consider the um substantial
259effect it has on families, parents, students, workers, even businesses, and other schools in our community. Um, all kind of they all use our calendar to plan um their lives and uh their days off and businesses and so forth. So it's impactful. Um we take this seriously as uh the board knows uh the this uh calendar development is governed by policy and we have representatives uh from parent representatives from each one of our high school feeder systems on the calendar committee. We have teacher reps, we have uh ESP reps and administrative reps to name a few. And I appreciate the work of Mr. Caleb Olsson who chairs this this committee in doing that. Um, as typically we we try to form a calendar about 18 months in advance so people can make their plans and and
260um anticipate what's ahead and give options um for what they want. This year we had two calendars put forth by the calendar committee and those went to survey. We had over 6,000 responses um from each of the the main stakeholder groups of parents, employees, and students that represented each of our areas in there. Uh the the calendar options um were divided between basically what we call the short break option and a long break option. And those are self-explanatory. We also embed in their preferences that people can can uh indicate what they like best, whether it's a week-long spring break, week-long winter break, or weekl long fall break. and do they want to end here or do they would they prefer to end there? Um myriad of different options. Uh those those uh results came back.
261We looked over those in in the previous study session. Uh approximately 54% of survey uh results indicated that they prefer a the long break option. Uh 46% indicated they prefer the short break option. That's where we leave it and uh leave it to the board for any questions or discussions on the matter. Oh, is it the the long break option is the one we're approving that that's the motion. That's what the motion will be. That's the motion will be because it's not I don't we can make any motion listed here. That's what my motion would be. Okay. It's the recommendation that we received um during the study session was for the long break option. We can make a motion either way. So, I move that we approve the long break calendar that was presented to
262us. I'll second it. Okay. We have a motion by Mr. Dunford, a second by Dr. Robinson to approve the long break calendar as it was presented. Any discussion? I have a few things to say. Um, one of the things that happened when Bryce and I got on the board is we went through the policies and kind of changed it, streamlined it, gave more room for innovation. But I think the greatest thing we did was to open it up to um input from the community, from our administrators, from our teachers, from our even students. And that's been a real help over the time. There's been a calendar or two that I would like to see go the other way. But I think in every time we've gone with what um the public has gone, you know,
263what our surveys say and so I support this um and I'm really grateful that we have a vehicle in place really to hear people and what they want and thank you for the committee that does a really good job on this. Okay, other comment. All right. Those in favor of the motion, please say I. I. And any opposed say nay. Okay. The motion carries unanimously. We'll now move into agenda item C. Recommendations to approve the student fee schedule for the 2526 school year. Take a motion. I move that we approve the student fee schedule for the 2025 2526 school year as it has been proposed and presented to us. We have a motion by Mr. Deford and second by Miss Wood that we approve the student fee schedule for the 2526 school year as it
264has been presented to us. Any discussion? I'll be voting no on this. And just to anyone who missed the study session today, they can go and listen to my concerns and issues um on the study session earlier today. Any other discussion? All right. Um, those in favor Oh. Oh, sorry. Thank you. Is there anyone from the public who would like to speak on this agenda item? All right. Seeing none, those in favor of the motion, please say I. I. And any opposed say nay. Nay. Okay. That motion carries six to one with the opposing vote from uh Dr. Robinson. Okay. President, I move that we postpone item D for a future agenda. Second. Okay. We have a motion by Mr. Deford and second by Mr. Barnett that we postpone agenda item D, recommendation to approve
265potential revisions to board policy GP 104 uh for a future business item. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please say yes. Yes. And any opposed? All right, that motion carries. We will revisit that later. Okay. Superintendence report. Dr. Godfrey. Nothing else to report. All is well. Good news. Okay. Committee reports and comments by board members. Facilities committee doesn't have anything to up update here. May just a a short update in uh closed. Finance Committee met last week and we would like to propose something to the board. Um, Mr. Larson made a proposal to finance committee. We feel very good about it and so we just want to make you aware of it. As Mr. Larson explained, we have different categories associated with previous leftover accounts and some of them are restricted, some of
266them are assigned, some of them are um available as unrestricted. And so we have set aside some money in an assigned account in the event of an emergency with our insurance. And given the fact that we you know we have a reserve we are proposing that we move additional funds. As you remember our our our insurance fund is below its desired level. We have an operating amount and then we have we'd like it to be a certain amount and we are operating below what we like the budget to be. So, for the time being, we'd like to move some funds from the unassigned up to an assigned category. That would be the equivalent of the discrepancy between where we want to be and where we are. Again, we're not spending those fun money. We're not
267putting them into the insurance fund. We're simply taking from the unassigned category and putting them into a temporarily assigned category so that everyone knows that in an emergency, if there were one, we have money set aside for that purpose. It does not change our reserves. It does not change whether or not we can access those funds. We're simply looking at a category realignment. Um, we'd like to move forward with that. we don't necessarily think it's something we want to take to the board. So, if there's any concern from a board member, please let a member of the finance committee know and we will um we cannot do that. But we just think that's a win-win because it sends the message that look, we're good. We're good. Our insurance fund is good and yet we're not
268necessarily spending down our reserve. Question. I'm I'm looking at the budget that was just presented on the unassigned line, take some of that money and put it into one of the assigned categories. Assigned. So there's an assigned to educational programs and personnel. We would we would add a new No, we would add it to personnel. Personnel. Okay. That's where we have had funds for an emergency if we needed to um for insurance purposes. We're just going to increase that for the sake of letting everyone know that we're okay. We do not anticipate an emergency. We anticipate that those will be available. They're part of our reserve. But yes, that's correct. We're just going to move them from unassigned to assigned. Okay, that's all from finance. So, um, the oh, what is it called? The challenge
269run. The Jordan Education Foundation challenge run is on Saturday the 10th of May at 9:00 a.m. at Veterans Memorial Park in West Jordan, um, where it historically is held. And it is a great way to spend some time before Mother's Day with your family getting muddy, getting grassy. The it it's really really fun. I've done it with my family and I encourage anybody who wants to have a fun time in the dirt, in the grass, being physically active. And then there are really fun sponsors. Kids like to go around and historically there's been like a climbing wall. There's one year there was a Chick-fil-A balloon and one of my sons was used as ballast. So I mean there are a lot of opportunities at this challenge run. So anyway, um you're running out of time
270to sign up, but have I plugged it enough? Sign up for the foundation challenge run. I wish I could, but we're chock full of kids sports on Saturday. Um, I would like to report on JPAC. We had our first meeting last Thursday. Uh we did not have very many people show up unfortunately, but we got some good feedback on how we might be able to uh connect with our SEC chairs better by going through the principles and emphasizing that this is something we want the chairs to attend. If they chair cannot, then another member of their SEC should attend. Um hoping that we can spread the word um more. Um but we discussed uh legislation that was passed. Uh Dr. Mike Anderson was able to facilitate that and we had lots of great discussion, lots
271of great questions um from our parents and helping them understand the legislation that was passed. Um and then we talked about the cell phone policy, just getting some feedback from our parents, seeing how it was going. um if they had observed positives, negatives or just kind of neutrals. And the the overall feel was positive and kind of that there was no earthshattering difference and the parents feel good about it. Um they kind of talked about how it might still kind of vary on enforcement based on teacher um and that possibly new hires might not be aware of the policy. We had a parent there who is a uh part-time employee um PE teacher at one of our elementary schools and she was not aware of the the policy and how she might you know deal
272with cell phones in her PE class. So we had good discussion. It was really great. Um and we had quite a few board members. I think we had more board members than parents show up. Um but we all kept our distance and um it it went well. So I am feeling encouraged about our next meeting that hopefully we will hold in the fall possibly um around November after SEC's have been able to have their elections and pick new chairs if new chairs are uh voted in. So yeah, that's it. And I forgot to mention that tomorrow is the licensed educator advisory committee here in this very room um from 4 to 6. And um anyone who is coming, I'm I'm also hoping toward the end to get feedback from um the representatives about possible things
273that they would like to have on agendas for the meetings next year. And also I'm curious if there are which board members are planning on attending. So Daryl, I'll be out of town. Actually, I'll be gone tomorrow. Okay. So it will be me and Daryl. Yeah. 4 to 6. I will I'll be able to hold on. I'll be able to come um for about an hour. So between 4 and 5 I will be here. Okay. Excellent. Excellent. Okay. So, it will be the three of us. Nice. Okay. Three amigos. Thank you. I don't have anything to report, but I do want to bring something up for action. Earlier today, um the JA through Janet Sanders asked that we kind of uh I don't know how you want to say work a little bit more diligently
274to get our contract settled. So early when I was on the board, we were always led out. We were the first and the danger of that was um we sometimes uh got jumped after and if that makes sense and so people would come out with better contract but also it doesn't help to kind of be slow. I think last year or the year before we had some um time set up as a board that we could meet more quickly. Um so when we get super close like I'm an advocate for clearing the schedule and getting it done. Sometimes we're just barely off and if they can set their schedule we could set our schedule especially with the use of electronic meeting and other things. I just like to make that a huge priority. I don't
275think we need to be the first to do it to put contracts out, but I certainly know that a lot of people are contacting me and they're anxious, you know, and I know we're just barely getting numbers, but um at least if we had that a priority as a board to when we get really moving on this, we ought to just clear out our schedules and do what we can do. Are you suggesting that we um have an additional meeting? Yeah, I think we even said last year, was it two years ago, that we'd have several if we needed it, and we could use the 24-hour window if we need to. And I know we all have really busy schedules, too. But I just know a lot of people are waiting for both of our
276organizations to get together and get this done. So, can I ask historically when have we finalized? Varies. Do you have dates? V varies depending on the year and sometimes it's the state getting us the numbers even to know where we are and so it's really kind of a tricky thing because you know we talk about there's a WPU increase but there's a bunch of other things floating too so we may or may not have the money available until all those kind of ducks get in the row and I don't know if it's this week or two weeks from now or when the time is but whenever that time is that we can start going back and forth it's the back and forth forth. It takes forever that we just need to expedite and and get
277done because usually we're pretty close to each other and we have a good working relationship with them. Traditionally, is the full board in on those negotiations or is it just the superintendent? Like how has that work? The full board's in on our proposal and then he'll submit it. So the superintendent acts as a liaison that brings our proposal to ah got it that make sense. Yes. Mr. Larson is in that meeting as well with the committee elected committee from JA and the proposal from that committee is what we brought to you previously. Are board members interested in scheduling a date right now or would you like to do that after we have a chance to speak in negotiations during close session? I'd like to just know more about where we are with what we know
278for next year financially. That's what we'll do today in closed. Okay. So before I decide it, I think I'd like to know more. Okay. So just one more question. Um when we have negotiations and there's a proposal and there's something that's agreed upon, we then have to uh have a meeting, right, to vote that in or all of that official stuff. Correct. So that's why we would have to potentially make another meeting if we're going to do it before May 7th. Is that correct? Well, for instance, like if we come to some conclusions tonight, we can make a presentation, but we can't respond to it until we meet again, which would be May 13th, and you know, we they may come back with the proposal, and then we want to counter that. Well, then we're
279at the 27th, you know, unless we have these other meetings to to kind of facilitate it quicker. I understand. Thank you. So last year, at least last year, yeah, we had a virtual meeting with the intention to have other virtual meetings um specifically for negotiations. So we would open the meeting publicly and then motion to go into close um and we were able to do that a little more flexibly because of the virtual nature. I thought it worked well and I'm open to that as well. also a ratification process through JA. Um, and I think it takes about a week for them to vote. There's a specific amount of time that their bylaws require. So, we reach a tenative negotiated agreement is what it's called and then that goes out to membership for them to
280vote on. And then that comes back and then the board is able to vote to ratify or to finalize that after that ratifying vote from JA. So there's some turnaround time on both ends. Anything else on negotiations for right now? Can can we decide uh later like if we have our close session then would we have to come out of close session to propose a a meeting if that's what we decide like is that how that would work to announce it or something? We just have to announce it 24 hours in advance. Okay. And I think we can give that duty maybe to the executive committee to work with us and our schedules to facilitate that. I I don't know if you need a formal proposal for that or not, but I think if the
281executive committee could work with us and, you know, schedule those meetings and give us that 24-hour notice to the public, I think it would be good. But I just don't want to wait two weeks in between every discussion, which we didn't in the last year or two. Okay, we will continue that discussion uh later this evening. Um I have a couple of items from executive committee. Uh as we were reviewing the agenda document there a couple of items that um we would like to make some recommendations on. Uh, one of the items is there is a gentleman who is asking if we would be open to sponsoring a youth court in the district. Um, we would recommend bringing that item for government relations to consider during their committee meetings and then coming back with a
282recommendation. A youth court Yes, this is like a mock court. So, Canyons has it. It's It's a youth justice type of court. It's for court students who have violated the law. I see. Okay. In nonviolent ways. Um and they have the choice to appear before a court of their peers. Um it's it's a program that we have heard about at conferences for two Yeah. Canyons has Canyons has has a successful program. Um and we have someone in our community who is excited about it and asked if he could come and make a presentation. um we thought maybe it would be worthwhile to study that in a committee prior to bringing a proposal to the board. I I support um the committee studying this. I I have been to those breakout sessions about the peer courts
283and I am very interested in finding out whether or not they would work for Jordan school district. Yeah, I would like to see a study on that. And I would also be interested in going to canyons and watching one of these youth courts. I'm sure that could be arranged. They're what do they tell us? Once a month they hold them. And I think they do it right. I mean the the peers who listen to the court sit right where their board sits. Um it it takes some coordination efforts of course with law enforcement because it is in fact it's not mock. These are are real scenarios where um students have violated the law. Obviously they wouldn't accept anything. It's usually nonviolent crimes but we'll use vandalism as an example. And so then their peers hear
284their case and then they um come up with a plan that will help the person who violated the law to um make amends and then there's a follow-up process. It's pretty layered. It's cool. Okay. Um, another item on our agenda request, we heard some comments regarding some busing situations that have happened as well as um just some comments that board members have received from community members regarding busing. Um, we would like to recommend that we assign this topic initially to be studied by our finance committee to look at some potential options for um a solution to some of the busing situations we've heard. Does that feel comfortable for everyone to start there and then bring it with the recommendation? So are so these are things that would not be addressed with the school bus routing
285planning software field trip activity planning. Right. So we heard public comment regarding some um a parent who came and talked about students with disabilities who are receiving calls on occasion that they remember that. Okay. And then we've also heard some reports on um field trips during the day where we're having some conflict and word isn't getting out because of shortages or um staffing. So those are some issues that we'd like to look for some potential options on and thought finance committee could be a great place to start on that. Okay. And just a reminder about that document, if you have something in your mind that you would like to um have considered for a future agenda item, please feel free to go on and add that there. Other committee reports. Okay, we do have one
286item left in our study session. So, um, very, very long closed. Very, very, yes, the days of early out are not this season. Okay. So, I'll accept a motion to close our business meeting. I move that we close and return to our study session. I'll second it. Okay. Motion by Mr. Deford, second by Dr. Robinson. All in favor say I. I. Any oppose say nay. All right we are adjourned. sort of. Welcome back to the Jordan Education uh or the Jordan Board of Education study session. It is still April 22nd. Um, we still have all members of the board, our superintendent, associate superintendent and business administrator, as well as our board attorney with us. We are continuing our study session meeting with item G, a review of the 2025 National School Boards Association Conference with
287Dr. Robinson and myself reporting. Dr. Robinson, do you want to start us off? Want me to go first? Please. Absolutely fantastic schoolboard uh meeting. And as I was going there, I was just thinking of all the great things that have happened at our school board um meetings. And I what's been weighing on my head my mind lately a lot is special education. And right off the bat, we stumbled into like it's a home run class. So, it's called Changing the Conditions of High Quality Special Education. Amy Fleet presented. She has 55 years of experience in education and still going strong. She's 78 years old. And it was awesome to have her perspective. Um, she gave us kind of a history of special education, how in the 70s it just was barely beginning kind of one
288sizefits-all. It's really like they started looking at personal educa uh personalized learning and it kind of answered a lot of questions of my own personal life and why I didn't get help that maybe would I would have maybe got in today's world but um so it was really really good and getting kind of that history but more importantly really good and maybe answering some questions that I have on my mind um specifically um she aligned her comments with my dissertation work. So when I did my dissertation work, I did on blended learning, not special education, but I was looking at what the educational leader does in getting behind blended learning and how they develop really good um professional development that gets other people in the school going. And she kind of aligned the same way.
289And um she says uh nationally maybe 12% of school principles are qualified or even capable of being and the word she used champions of education. And um so um she says what you really need is you need somebody who can be really be a champion of education. often we bury special education directors deep into the organizational chart and they don't have the access they need to the superintendent and so there was some good ideas with that way she talked about having people on the team that are very good at compliance and it's very difficult to have somebody who's excellent at compliance but still can be that cheerleader champion for education and so how do you come across both both of those and so um but developing a growth mindset u just bringing this to the
290board on a regular basis and just kind of um getting behind trying to figure this out and it's really comes down to leadership and and organization and some of those things. You went to that meeting with me. You want to chime in on that before I chime in on the ones I went by myself? But I'll just add that one of the uh most exciting takeaways that I had was because I was sitting next to Daryl and we were hearing a common message and it was sparking ideas and we were going back and forth. We probably weren't the best audience because she really got our minds going. But I really loved that interaction. It was I have three pages from that one class. This is like a three-hour uh presentation. It was not just your
291normal drop in. It was a special presentation that we went to and it was very before there was special education. She has literally witnessed the birth of special ed. It was awesome. She would be a great person. She's coming to Salt Lake um um is it next year? She would be a great one to this fall have come speak um to some of our special education administrators. But anyway, some other things I think and we'll take that to the superintendent and executive committee if you want to follow up on it. But um then the next one I went to is uh conversation about superintendent evaluations and was done by Kansas. They were so proud of their accomplishment. They said national average to changing a superintendent is about every 1.6 years. They have moved it up
292to 2.6 six years for a superintendent. They're so proud of themselves. They've made 460 superintendent changes in the last 10 years in the state of Kansas. Only five superintendents have been there longer than five years. So, first of all, I just sat there in awe that we have such great leadership in our district and um we don't I think we trust our superintendent, our administrators to do their job. We we're there to support them. They're here to support us. We have a shared vision and that's very rare I think as I've talked to and and to have that national perspective. I sat by people that are just eating their superintendents alive and uh and they couldn't decide like who's in charge superintendent or the board or whatever. And I just want to thank our superintendent
293and all your administration for making sure we have I could not even imagine doing a superintendent search every 1.6 years or 2.6 six years or even five years. I don't even want to do one for 10. Did they mention why there's such a high turnover rate? They don't trust each other and they just eat each other up, you know. So, um that's that's really what it is. Um and they had felt that they had made huge strong I mean some of them are leave because they get to a small school district and then a bigger one opens up. So, it's not like they're leaving s being a superintendent. They're moving to a another position and they have a lot of really tiny school districts. But that's the trend that I see is that there are
294a lot of small districts. Yep. So when I go to the national superintendent conference, it's like, oh yeah, I'm a superintendent of four schools or like one feeder system basically. Yeah. which is not to diminish the work that they do, but you say, well, let's say in Jordan, within Jordan district's boundaries, you had seven districts, you know, or six districts or five districts, then you might move from one to the larger to a larger. And so once I once I'd made it past two years, I said I was above average because I'd stayed You're way above average. They had some good things that I'll bring to the executive committee, but um General Session was Melissa Stockwell. She she was hit by a roadside bomb in Iraq and just an amazing she just went from being
295a a wounded soldier to being a parolympic champion and just was very motivational. Um I went to a class about um cell phone policies and that was really very interesting and everyone was kind of in the idea of uh protect instructional time. Um but most people have have gone to the turn it off keep it on your purse and in silent mode. There are also some software that parent uh the what's the parent square that we went to that can communicate with the cell phone. So that was kind of really interesting um the the program that we're using. But they the schools that have gone to a total band have noticed that there's a lot of kids slipping in passing times and especially at lunch spending time in their cars. And I thought that was
296kind of interesting. I did talk to I gave um Dr. Anderson a pouch from a bunch of school teachers got together and made a really good pouch. Pretty affordable. They're making it out of their garage so I don't know if they have any left. Um, and also the one that we went with that we looked at, they've backed off from what they told me they've backed off from. We'll tell you how to use it after you buy it. We could use it how they want according to what was that one called? The the yonder pouch. Yeah. So, they had a booth and I talked to them. So, that was kind of interesting. Um I went to a class that was very interesting about using AI as um cutting edge security even so much as uh
297they have the families from Parkland there and they're using it for like facial recognition so that when a kid walks in the school we know where they're going to be. And one of the things I really liked is when a visitor comes, they give them a badge like this and it has a tracker in them. So any visitor that comes in the school, they can track where they're going. And I really like that um a lot. And I thought that was good. But they talked a lot about we get pretty apathetic about security until a major incident happens. And so I just like to remind the board that this should be something we should talk about at least quarterly whether and it's a it can be a closed item also. So we ought to have
298a way of putting that up on our on our agenda a lot. I went to a really cool class on autism um spectrum. Um was very interested in hearing what they had to say about there. And then one about um student centered classrooms, personalized learning. Um the general ed the general session was a really great guy that talked about how technology and AI are impacting the future and he wrote a book called pivot and about how we need to be able to pivot to how that how that's changing the face of education. Another special ed class and then I ended up with an artificial intelligent class which we're way far ahead of everyone else. They were really super excited to I mean even the speaker I I'd made some comments to my table and the
299speaker came up and talked to me after about what we're doing with school AI and stuff. One thing they did talk about is do we have an AI policy. So that might be something to throw by the policy committee and see if we need to look at updating our policies at all. But overall fantastic is a good venue. Uh Rock Sand did really well with us and making sure we're um walkable distance and so yeah, it was it was a good conference. I'm really glad we're able to come here. I'll add my two cents in. Some of you probably know that um I've been questioning conferences, our role as board members. Um, and so I went to this conference this year uh with a very open mind to say, is it worth it? Is it
300worth the time away from my family? Is it worth the money that is spent in order to get me here? And um and I really tried to be objective in my thoughts on that. And so I'll tell you a few of the conclusions I've I've come to and I would love to get your feedback. There was a time when many members of our board attended NSBA and that number has shrunk. I think this year was the lowest attendance our board has ever had. Certainly since I've been on the board. Um that's shrunk in Utah, too. They're down 130. Yep. Yep. It shrunk across. And so I I was just asking myself at one point, has it been a year or two ago that we said, "Hey, if you want to go to an additional conference
301on top of NSBA, then you can bring that proposal to the board and potentially go to more than one." And somehow over the time that has passed, that seems to have morphed into you can choose a replacement for NSBA. And so, um, I was thinking about what are some of the things that we gain from going to a conference. And I think first and most obvious is that we gain knowledge, right? We come back as um more knowledgeable board members and we're able to support our district uh better because of our knowledge. Um, I think we need to be intentional in deciding if our role as board members is to become education experts or if our role is to become exceptional board members who represent their constituents who work well with our superintendent and his
302employees. Um, and consider what conferences are going to bring about that outcome. Um, another benefit that I really found is this shared vision that comes when you sit in a room with a fellow decision maker who is hearing the same the same information that you're hearing and then you're able to begin bouncing ideas that are specifically pertinent to the work that you're doing. And I'll give you an example. I remember being in California. The first time that I heard about Portrait of a Graduate was at NSBA. And that evening, we had some downtime. We decided to take a ferry. Um, and that whole ferry ride, I sat next to Tracy Miller and I said, "Man, should we pursue this? This feels really exciting to me." and then to look at that coming into fruition in
303our board with um our own portrait of a graduate and where those ideas were generated. Daryl had mentioned a few as well, our mental health initiatives. Yeah, that came out of San Antonio and going to some classes down there and I remembered Philadelphia was really great. That's when Dr. Godfrey came as associate superintendent with us and I didn't really know him very well because back then the feeder was kind of an area we didn't have the Brad Sornson over the high school we just had feeders and so he was working in the Bingham feeder I had really talked to him so it was really good to be able to get to know our associate superintendent and I think at that board one we had everybody there at in Philadelphia and so and San Antio and
304San Antonio too. Both of those. So that's so cool. I've never experienced that. It sounds awesome. Okay. And then another benefit that I see is um the relationship building. As a board, we have very structured times that we can spend together and there is a real benefit to shared experiences. Um, I was talking to a few other Utah boards about how they approach conference attendance and for many of them it's it is an expectation that's set out in their board handbook that they'll attend together. So interesting approaches and I'm not saying we need to be like anyone else but u food for thought. So um rather than giving you a tra travel log and I could tell you some really cool things about the conference, I wanted to just pose the question how how does
305our board want to proceed when it comes to conference attendance? I think we've gotten all of us are interpreting this conversation that we had a year or two ago a little differently and I would love to see us align our vision. Um, my recommendation is going to be that I would love to see the board rally around a a conference that we would strive to attend together. Of course, life happens and not everybody is able to attend at once and we understand that, but I would love to see the board strive to attend a conference together. And if you have an additional interest, I think the intention of the vote that we made was that you can do more than one conference. Is that the way that you see it? And is that the way
306that you still want to proceed? I'd love your feedback. That was that was my understanding and something to to be aware of. At our request, they post they push back the conference week. So next year's the 9th, 10th, and 11th, I believe. Or maybe it's the 12th. So it's that because it's the 22nd to the 24th in Atlanta. No, that's not Salt Lake. It's in San Antonio. This San Antonio I think it's the 10th, 11th. AI has been giving some misinformation when you Google it. Don't trust Google. official word when we were at NSBA and we read their official in front of it. Did you just say don't trust AI? Yeah. No, you can't. In this case, it's good for a search, but you always want to verify. I think because it's not on their
307website. It It should be on their website. I think I did. That would be great. What would be helpful for me is get it on my calendar early. And I'm not saying NSBA is the be all and end all. If our board doesn't want to go that direction, I'm okay with it. I think one of the difficulties is is during, you know, general conference, which is a time that many people in our community are tied up with family. And so that's been and that's we had actually gone when Christy Sweat was the president. She really was kind of our she rallied for us in that and and I'm I'm okay with going to any of them. It might be better to pull away from that one. But there's something about going to a board conference
308and sitting next to board people. I talked to so many people from other states and it was just that time when you're sitting waiting for the class or or you do a breakout, you know, like talk to your neighbor kind of thing. You just get to know so many people and see their perspective. Well, and it's so powerful to see uh the challenges across our nation and we talk a lot about why it's important that we have elected boards on a local level. And then you just see that amplified as you get to talk to boards from across the United States and see the things that they're facing and the things that are similar. And right now we really do have some common questions with the rest of the US with questions on the federal
309level about the Department of Education vouchers. There are a lot of things for us to be uh vigilant about right now. And so it was nice to be able to collaborate on those. I will say that when I went to the USBA conference back in January that I really enjoyed that meeting board members from across the state and being with our board members in a more relaxed situation uh getting to know each other. I just did not feel uh prepared to go to a national conference at this moment. Being a new board member, I wanted to make sure that I was staying grounded in my district and focusing on what I needed to learn and understand. Um, but next year I would definitely be interested in going to the national conference. Um, I think there
310is a lot of good in rubbing elbows with other board members. Um, just how I enjoyed it just in our state but nationwide. I think that would be a very interesting and beneficial um opportunity. So, of a picture of uh it's NSBA 2026, April 10th through 12th in San Antonio. Well, thanks for pulling that up. I can send it to everybody. So, is this the conference that we want to Well, first of all, do we do those I just because those are my opinions, I don't mean to impose them on anyone else. Is the board interested in trying to rally around going to a shared conference? It's okay to say no if you're not. I think a local one would be much easier for most of us to go than one that's out of state.
311And we'll have USBA every January. So we could determine that that is and then we'll have our the leadership conference is every other year. So that is coming this year as well. And that's in Utah and specifically for school boards. that has limited seating per board, right? And we haven't gotten numbers on that yet, how many we can bring. My my concern and I know that I know that there are good things that can be learned and had in these types of events. I I've never been to the national one. I've been to a couple USBA ones and I I don't want to sound like I know it all and that I can't gain anything from anybody else or other ideas, but I I personally haven't seen the return on investment. I I guess um
312I think we have a great group of people. These these three men on my right have great ideas. they know what they're doing. We've been in the business for a long time. That that's kind of what prevents me from wanting to rally or or to participate, especially at the national level. I I have my concerns about taking direction from the national level. That's that's been a concern of mine. And I will say taking direction feels strong to me. I don't Did you feel directed at an SBA? No. Um, you got to understand is it's not the organization. I mean, maybe it's those half an hour talks they give that might be that way, but these are about issues that are being affected in the board me meeting. It's not a political or anything like that.
313And if you want to see return on investment, just look at what we did with mental health. We changed the It was that conference. It was when we came back. It's the rats in the cellar conversation. It was getting um getting um people in in place in that position. U that saved kids lives. I just have to I just have to believe and I don't know if he can put a price on that. That changed the dialogue not only in our district but in the state. And so you can put every conference together and we still made out like a bandit because we needed that at that time of need. But I know you're sold on that idea, Darl, cuz I lived it. But I don't know that that everyone shares that same opinion, for
314example, of the mental health issues or initiatives that have been and I'm not saying I'm I'm against them. I just know that there are there are a group of people who are questioning the value and the amount of money that's been spent there. And and and this isn't a forum to start talking about that, but just in general, I've I I don't know. And and I'm not saying that there's not value there. I'm just wondering if there's enough value to warrant a week of my life, you know, away from home, away from family. But but that's just me. Exactly. I'd love to hear others opinions. I've I've been to several conferences and I have found um value in them from a lot of things from interacting with school board members and superintendent from other states
315and even other school districts within our state. um from having being able to have conversations with another board member and find out what they really think about certain things that has been valuable. Also, um going to the breakout sessions have been very some of them have been just very informative about um how to interact with the public. And I I know we've had those with the USBA um conference and new board member orientation, but how to interact with the public, how to um what the appropriate relationship between a the board and the superintendent and other administrators is like I've it and then also I said that it's broadened my imagination. Um, and I I understand that some, not all, school districts are like Jordan, but to hear the different things that school boards and school
316districts are doing across the country has been eyeopening to me. And um after every conference I have shared different ideas with um like things that I thought were very interesting and um anyway useful. I've shared with teachers and different administrators and even members of the community and and so I see value as far as like the cost versus value as far as time and money. Um, I think people have to evaluate that. I feel like I'm kind of rambling. I don't know if this is what kind of opinion you were looking for, but I have found value in the conferences that I've that I've gone to. It it also has helped me to feel um to humanize other board members too to spend time with people in a different more relaxed setting and so that
317is valuable to me also. So I can see the value in attending with other board members and it's also given me access to um members of staff where I could there when I've gone to conferences where staff members were there or when I say staff I mean upper level administration Dr. Godfrey Dr. Anderson uh John uh Mr. Larson, I've gone to a class and then I can ask this is what was talked about. What is this like in our district? And so it's been highly educational for me too. So like is it worth it? I don't know. But I have found a lot of value for like personal value in going to conferences. I don't know if that was answering your question or just a train of thought coming out of my mouth. So, I've
318heard a couple of ideas here. One is that um we kind of do what we've similar or similar to what has been done in the past where there's not an expectation. The opportunity is available to all board members to attend NSBA every year and um we would love to have you but there's no expectation there. Um, I've also heard that we try to rally around making it a priority to attend USBA, which I think we should do both of those things at the minimum. Um, USBA I think is a different experience because it's homebased and so I run out for my life and I run back when I can and it's very different when I have to get on an airplane and leave my home base behind. It's a different experience. you're spending your um
319your time together at mills in evenings, all of those things that are not the case at USBA. So, while I think USBA is valuable and I think it should be a priority if you choose to make it that, I personally would still like to see our board work towards um attending a conference that is a little broader scale. Um but I've already expressed my opinion. Okay. So, that's one idea. Another idea would be that we choose a different conference and um try to work towards that and we haven't really talked a ton about that. And so I I have been to a couple of NSBA conferences. I I did not go this year and I have enjoyed um and learned from other board members from Utah and other um superintendent from Utah also. I mean,
320so it seems like NSBA is the one where we would be most likely to have people from Utah there. I I find that valuable also to develop relationships with board members from other school districts in the state. That's been very valuable because I've been able to get their insight into a lot of different public education um issues. So, and I feel like at USBA there's less that I need to filter. So, in some of my breakout sessions, I'll be really honest, I have sat through sessions at NSBA and said, "I don't think that would be appropriate on in my district. I don't think that would work with my constituents." Um, I've even seen like entertainment where they've brought in students to perform and I've been like that would not fly in our district. Um, so
321there are things that you filter out, but I also think there's some value in that because I recognize um how to queue into my community and I also recognize that there's a world beyond my nose and I think both of those are valuable. I went to Isty last year and that was awesome at a different level. I was able I think we had 45 people that went to that and so so staff teaching learning and that was a great way for me to connect with people that work with me not colleagues but you know people are working in our district and their vision for the future and stuff and that was very valuable to me but I didn't get the bonding connection that we've got in other board conferences so put my two cents there.
322I just say I'm open to another conference. Uh I just don't know the best way to research conferences, right? And is this conference a good conference? And you know, is it legit? And so if someone else wants to do the research and I think there are so many conferences that are very well worth the time and very legit and yet I don't know if it's my job to become an education specialist. I'm I'm not sure that that's my role. I'm not sure that that's how I represent my constituents. And I was having a conversation with Dr. Godfrey recently and he said, "It's my job to be an education expert and it's your job to ask questions." And I thought that is kind of profound because when I come in and think I can do his
323job, that's when I think we have two-year turnover, right? 2.6. It's a point six. So maybe we ought to resurrect the idea of having a board retreat and and sever it from a conference. If the idea is board bonding, then let's bond as a board and sever that from a retreat. I mean, sever that from a conference where the information may or not may or may not I mean it's just it's it's personal. years ago, we would spend a day together in the summer. One year, we started in Copperton Park and we just had a great session digesting each other's personality and how we fit to each other and helping that helped me understand Matt Young better than anything else I've ever done. So, I mean, I know we've kind of given a taboo to
324a board retreat, but if the purpose is board bonding, administrative board bonding, then maybe we consider just going somewhere away from home for a few days where it's just the board. It's not a conference. Does that have to be inside of our district boundaries? Not to take board action. No, because if as long as we don't take board action, then it would be okay. If you're giving a notice of quorum as opposed to noticing a meeting, I think that would be okay because there are lots of times when you have a notice of quorum because you're going to be up at at downtown for conference or whatever. Al, do you agree with that, Paul? Yeah, I actually don't think you need to do notices of meeting uh I mean of um potential quorum. I think
325you just need to structure it such that if it's not a meeting, it's not a meeting and and you can back it up. And if you're dealing with interpersonal issues, those are not um matters that are going to come before the board for you to take action. You know, that sort of thing. So, that's a situation where Daryl and I could challenge two other board members to a pickle ball game and kind of get to know each other. Yes, me and Lady. You might want someone else on my team. I know. I may have fourth, but I'm not any good. Thanks for the We would have a talent show and oh would the boundaries be mixed. I if the board the if the purpose is board bonding then plan a board bonding. If the purpose
326is improve your skills as a board member then improve the skills. I I just don't think you're going to get your bang for your buck when you mix those two. But we have Yeah, there's been a couple. The best part of going to NSBA has been the time I spend with the board, not in the meetings. John and I exploring the Alamo was one of my fondest memories. I remember that Alamo. Yeah. Fun. When you guys were in the Alamo, I was in the mental health classes. That was mine. I And we were just exploring the the plane ride. The plane ride back, sitting next to them was more valuable than any meeting I went to. The dinner that night on the board on the riverwalk. That's actually what I missed. That's why it was
327No, I'm just kidding. That's my wife was there, but Yeah, your daughter was there and your wife My daughter was there, but I was in that class. But I maybe that's the deal is maybe we all go to conferences for different reasons and I don't go for the material to force somebody to go to a conference one way or another because of what your what you want to get out of it may or may not be the best. I and I I don't attribute the mental health decision to the NSBA convention. I I attribute it to other things. And so if that's what you got out of NSBA, great. But that's not what I got out of NSBA. To me it was a direct result because before that everyone was saying don't talk about don't
328talk about it you're going to cause more suicides and I very first thing in that class is we've got to talk about this. So for me it was a direct as as direct as any conference. Again we're all looking for different things right? So maybe to try to make us all look for the same thing isn't isn't ideal. I don't know. Best thing about Philadelphia was Tracy and I were wondering if Anthony was the right person and we went on a walk with Anthony and that's all I needed. That walk with you and I and Tracy did more to solidify your position in my heart than anything else. You raised yourself into He didn't even walk with me. I still support him. I appreciate that. Tracy and I said we memorable for me as well.
329We have some questions. How about we go for a walk? Yeah. So, while I am enjoying this, I I'm wondering if this is something that maybe we could come back to or do we need to? We don't even need to come back to it. Maybe it's business as usual. I I guess what I'm trying to say is it's 10:19. I I'm wondering if I guess this isn't really an agenda item, so we can't move to do a retreat or a summer. We can explore it like we can see if Yeah, the clarification I wouldn't mind is is it National School Board and another conference because if so, I'd love to go to ISTY this year in San Antonio. But if it's not, because that's originally what we said is if you want to go to
330a different one, you can make an additional request. So, is that an and or an or? I think it's ever been an or. So then I would like to request that I go to San Antonio this year to ISTY. Well, I think that has to come before the board and there, right? I don't think it has to be in there. I think the board has to approve it as a group. Um, and I I do think it would be nice for us to understand what you're looking to gain from a specific conference. like well it's the teaching learning team that goes down there and that's what I'm really interested it's my it's my passion but I can write a proposal yeah write up a proposal and submit it send it to the executive committee so
331how about one long trip and one quick trip that sounds familiar I'm just kidding okay we can move on right I'll take a motion to go into Close session. I move that we move into close session for character and competence of individuals, property, potential litigation, negotiations, and security. Right. We have a motion by Miss Barrow, a second by Miss Wood. We'll do a roll call vote. Mr. Barnett, yes. Mr. Deford, yes. Miss Barrow, yes. Miss or Dr. Robinson? Yes. Miss Wood, yes. And Miss Dean, yes. Okay, this meeting is adjourned and we are in close session. Thank you.