001Click it on. >> evening. I call this public hearing portion of our evening to order and will ask for roll call. Matthew Petinsky. Karen Winner. Amy Carney. Mike Sharkey. And Donna Lewis are all present. Uh we are going to listen to a presentation on the revision of instructional time model and then allow for public comments to be opened following. Ms. Mitchell. Hello and good evening. Great to see all of you. Thank you so much for allowing me some time to talk about a proposed revision to our instructional time model. All right. Um we I'm going to try to be brief. I know we have lots of good things on the agenda, but just wanted to let you know that the focus of this effort was really around the state regulations that govern our instructional time,
002the different flexibility and opportunities we have. We also wanted to really focus our efforts on leveraging the flexibility that Arizona affords um school districts and schools in order to support students. Uh we have a mission to strengthen our virtual and e-learning programming and really create a digital ecosystem um from full-time virtual to full-time brick-and-mortar where kids can really have a uh new and improved experience learning experience um and really building a foundation to reimagine instructional time in general. You'll see there are a number of state statutes referenced, lots that governs our time, our days, um what's allowed and so I just wanted to make sure those were there for reference. Um should you have any questions about them, don't hesitate to ask, but we are um recommending an instructional time model that sits and resides
003very well within all of our state statutes. Um the three I pulled forward specifically sort of talk about what an instructional time model allows. It really allows us flexibility to offer um instruction in the manner listed below, direct instruction, project-based learning, independent learning, and mastery-based learning. Um local governing boards through our planning guides approve different credits for different courses and what's necessary to demonstrate competency, and then that last statute really governs um the amount of time, whether it's 180 days or um a specific number of hours for different coursework. This part is really important around ADM calculations. The instructional time model shift could support all of our students. It most certainly will support our full-time virtual students. Currently, our full-time virtual students reside in a AOI, which is a standalone virtual school that in Arizona
004um you're allowed to acquire 95% of an full-time FTE for students who are in an AOI. When you leverage that flexibility of ITM thinking about instruction and um learning a little bit differently, you are able to um account for 100% of the FTE for students even if they are in a full-time remote type of uh learning environment. Can I interject for one second? >> Do you mind just acronyms like ITM, FTE, AOI? Do you mind just either adding parentheticals or saying the acronyms so that we all understand? >> the instructional time model. Um the FTE is full-time equivalent, so meaning a full-time educator, full-time teacher, and AOI is a Arizona Online Institution. Thank you for that clarification. Sorry about that. I almost forgot what is AOI, but I'm glad it popped right back in. Um
005but it really means that uh through an ITM model that we would be recommending, our students that are in that we are serving 100% of their education, we could earn 100% of funding for those students. Right now, our model in an Arizona Online Institution or the AOI only allows us to earn 95% of that um full-time equivalency. Um the requirements uh you'll see there listed above um the state outlines different grade bands, what their different level of required instructional minutes are throughout the calendar year. And note that a school district can define our instructional time including in-person instruction and remote instruction up to 40% of a school's total instructional time. So when we think about an ITM or an instructional time model, we're talking about the school in general. So if there's a thousand students
006at the school, it would be 40% of all thousands of those students would have to be engaging in their instruction that way. It's not at the individual student level, it's at the school level. Um we are proposing this new instructional time model. Um it will allow and support Scottsdale Online to become an integrated program, which would support online students enrolled at each high school instead of its own standalone entity. Um we will continue functioning and fully supporting our full-time online online students um and our e-learning students and any concurrently enrolled, so meaning they're enrolled in both. Um it allows current flexibility within our current ITM model. The original instructional time model as my understanding is here in Scottsdale was written during COVID and so there's still some COVID like language but we do know families
007engage in the instructional time model at our brick and mortar schools already and so this brings all of that really into alignment and it establishes the foundation for us to redesign those learning experiences like I mentioned in the beginning full-time remote all the way to full-time brick and mortar and having more of a singular type of experience. Right now it's very different or a kid if you are in a e-learning class and then you go to a brick and mortar class it's it's very different experience and we're looking to build that more comprehensive experience. We also are looking to strengthen that virtual and e-learning for our students. We are thank you very much we're very excited about a new learning management system will help which will help modernize that experience. This allows students to be
008correct directly connected to a home high school. They can benefit from the pace learning when they need on their own time still have access to those individualized supports but should those students want that connection with a home school that is something that they then will now have. Also a shift in our current instructional time model opens up the opportunity for us to think as a system. Right now we have a think tank contemplating how to reimagine instructional time in different ways in order to support our teachers in having more collaborative time together. We also have a spark committee that's investigating of lots of different very creative and exciting experiences for students. Having this instructional time model really does open the opportunity for us to rethink how kids come and go the types of learning and
009helps us to think also about the potential for future competency based supports and instruction for students. Some of that thinking is captured in those resources that are listed. The state has just published a new state 48 profile of a graduate and the center for futures of education sort of distilled down how in Arizona we're really a nation leader in providing flexibility for instruction in schools in meeting the needs of kids today. Timeline and next steps per statute we do two public hearings to make sure we fully thought through the model and everybody has an opportunity to speak to it. Upon adoption it is active it allows you to kind of make it active upon adoption as you work on implementing and then there are some procedural steps that we would submit to Arizona Department of
010Education including these minutes. But they do sort of allow us to start doing that internal work that may be necessary to make sure our sole and e-learning students are ready to go for the 26-27 school year. And that's all I have. If you have any questions happy to answer or any additional follow-up information I could provide. Thank you. Governing board members? Mr. Sharkey? Um with the ITM model in the sole students basically going to the individual schools from a reciprocity standpoint if I'm a student at Chaparral and I've physical my whole career but I might want to take an online class. Does that change? Is it easier harder based on the ITM model versus AOI? For our current brick and mortar students that would want to do that it would really be the same experience
011the same enrollment experience the same functional experience with their counselors and that at their school and they are able to do that now. Okay, thank you. Dr. Potenski? So my family benefited from Scottsdale online so I want to say thank you to everyone who works on it. I think this kind of builds a little bit on governor board member Sharkey's question. If I'm associated with Chaparral but the online course I want to take is taught by someone who is associated with Saguaro does this start to create barriers or all online courses no matter where they're situated is available to our available to all students? All the online courses no matter where they're situated will be available to our students. We will retain some of the sole Scottsdale online staffing mechanisms that allow for example if
012there are two brick and mortar sole teachers at Chaparral but they teach I don't know let's say cool electives all day they may have students from Arcadia from Saguaro from each of the five high schools already in their roster that will continue and so we'll leverage and maximize instructors in that way and it does open the opportunity for students at one campus to engage in learning that may not be offered there but may be offered throughout our system. Thank you and it may be too early to tell but if the current model just make up a number has a hundred courses available to students or 50 courses do we anticipate when this is done there'll be roughly the same number and variety of courses available to students or will this necessarily entail some contraction in
013the offerings and and where? I don't anticipate I think it could potentially expand offerings. Right now everything that we offer is in the high school planning guide in order to ensure we don't have high sole overages. If you're at a brick and mortar site and that's class is offered at your site we put kids in that brick and mortar. However if we offer in the planning guide catalog and you don't have that opportunity at your school you could take any of those online courses so I actually see even further down the road where it offers more expanded opportunity in a more diverse and wider course catalog. Mr. Sharkey? Kind of zooming out from a high level what was the driver or drivers for this? Was it just to get the 5% extra ADM? Was it
014experience? I mean what were the sort of the key drivers for bringing this to the table? I think it was a combination of things. It really started with what is the learning experience for our full-time virtual students? Does it look like it's 2026. So as we dove into Buzz and Genius our previous products and seeing what they looked like that was one sort of element of thinking about moving to a different learning management system. That then opened up the difficulty for teachers and and families and students when they may move at the quarter or move and they're shifting from one curriculum set to another cuz right now they're very different to over time hopefully have a content that's consistent. I would say the 95% to 100 was more of a oh that's what we learned
015when we talked to some other districts who had already pursued this. So it wasn't a interest in pursuit of an AOI to an ITM it was actually as we learned to from some of our other peers what they were doing with their learning management system with their online academies it was really our Mr. Noonan who called other peers that have similar roles and just try to figure out how you guys doing this? What's your online academy and that sort of started a longer train of oh what if we did this? Oh now what if we did this? So truly that 95 to 100% was more of a like oh that's a nice added benefit to the system but really it started with learning experiences and access and opportunity for students to great coursework. Thank you.
016I have a question about the total number of hours. Could you go back to the slide that's required by the state and I I well imagine we're over that significantly. Do you know off the top of your head what our current I think our K8s are roughly all in the 900 plus? We are over a good portion. I don't know off the top of my head the exact I could probably find that out before the end of the meeting. Okay. And definitely [clears throat] in advance of the next hearing I can be sure to tell you that but yes in our current calendar of the 180 days we are already over. And with high school as well I imagine. >> Yeah. Yeah just think it's important for us to be aware that we are well
017over state expectations. >> expectations. >> Thank you. Other comments or questions? All right. Thank you Ms. Mitchell. At this time we are open to public comments on the topic of the ITM what's that stand for? Instructional time model and that's this this section only for public comments on the hearing of the instructional time model. So we'll have another section for public comments on all our other open topics in in in 8A on our agenda. Any comments regarding the instructional time model at this point from our community? Seeing none I will call an adjournment to the public hearing. And now I'm opening calling to order the regular general meeting for the governing board and the hour is 6:14. >> [snorts] >> And Rose Gorman Ann Azazi IB student who has been award-winning is going to step
018up to the podium to lead us. Just go ahead and pull the microphone down. The audience is yours. Please stand for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Thank you for joining us tonight. Rose was uh awarded top International Baccalaureate student. It was for the state of Arizona but actually her trophy read top IB teacher. So we're going to get an application into you soon and we look forward to your taking one of our classrooms. All right. We do roll call again. We'll do it again even later. Go ahead, Dr. Patensky. I'm Matthew Patensky. Karen Warner. Amy Carney. Mike Sharkey. Dana Lewis. I'd like to
019make a motion to approve the agenda pulling consent item 10 H. And we'll move 10 H to follow public comments right after 8A. And if I have a second on that. I'll second. All those in favor? I. >> I. Motion passes 5-0. Thank you. We are now going to go to student and staff recognitions and celebrations. Good evening, President Lewis, Vice President Sharkey, and members of the governing board, and welcome to all of our staff and families who are here this evening. We have so many celebrations this evening, and we're going to get started by inviting Dr. Sakkos to come forward. We have a number of students to recognize as well as our latest Blue Zone school that received approval. Dr. Sakkos. Thank you, Dr. Menzel, and good evening, President Lewis, Vice President Sharkey. Your
020mic's not on. >> And governing board members. She's in her teacher voice. Look at There we go. Hired. Thank you. >> [laughter] >> All right, let me start again. Thank you, Dr. Menzel, and good evening, President Lewis, Vice President Sharkey, and governing board members. Tonight, we are proud to celebrate an outstanding Scottsdale Unified student whose dedication to service and leadership has earned national recognition. I would like to invite invite up Desert Mountain junior Eric Wang and his principal John Andrews to the podium, please. >> [applause] >> Eric is a junior in the International Baccalaureate program at Desert Mountain High School and has earned the Congressional Award gold medal, the highest honor Congress bestows on civilian youth. Through more than 425 hours of volunteer service, Eric has demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to making a difference in
021his community. He is the founder of Students for Shelter, a student-led organization supporting individuals in spare experiencing homelessness, and he has partnered with local nonprofits like Keys to Change and Andre House to organize drives, serve meals, and provide critical resources. In addition to his service, Eric has shown leadership in academics and mentorships, founding math clubs at Title 1 schools, mentoring international STEM scholars, and developing innovative tools to support nonprofit organizations. Eric, I'm tired. Makes you tired? Yeah. Eric's achievement reflects the very best Scottsdale Unified of Scottsdale Unified service, initiative, and a passion for improving the lives of others. Eric, on behalf of the Scottsdale Unified School District and the governing board, congratulations on this remarkable accomplishment. We are incredibly proud of you. >> [applause] >> And please accept this challenge coin to honor this amazing
022achievement. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> [applause] >> That's it. Next, I have the honor of celebrating not one but two student authors whose words made a lasting impact. The Scottsdale Unified School District's Veterans Day writing competition in partnership with the Arizona American 250 Commission and the Scottsdale for Veterans invited students to reflect on the legacy of military service, past, present, and future. Through essays, poetry, and personal narratives, students were challenged to explore themes of service, sacrifice, and civic responsibility. And two rose to the top. We are proud to recognize our winners, Carly Cox and Sada Haramein, representing last semester and this semester. I would like to invite Saguaro students Carly and Sada to the podium as well as their principal, Dr. Lisa Hirsch, teacher Ashley Kros, social studies curriculum coach Dylan Bullard,
023and event organizer Justin Layman. >> [applause] [applause] >> Their writing just didn't tell stories. It honored them. Each piece demonstrated powerful insight, authenticity, and a deep respect for the men and women who have served our country. As part of this recognition, both students received a $500 award and were invited to share their work at the Veterans Day memorial service in Old Town Scottsdale, bringing their words to life in front of the community. That That's the kind of impact that goes way beyond the classroom. Carly and Sada, your voices matter. Your work reminds us why storytelling is so important, especially when it preserves the legacy of those who have given so much. On behalf of Scottsdale Unified School District and the governing board, congratulations. We are incredibly proud of you, and I'm going to offer you
024both a challenge coin as a symbol of your amazing achievement. >> [applause] >> And you guys are going to take a picture. Scottsdale Unified School District remains deeply committed to supporting the health and well-being of every student and staff member member across our campus. Tonight, we are proud to recognize the schools who ever truly bring that commitment to life. Ingleside Middle School, Principal Junior Michael, and anyone here from school, can you please join me at the podium? >> [applause] >> Ingleside has officially earned the prestigious Blue Zones Project designation. [clears throat] This recognizes schools that are creating environments where healthy choices are easier and where wellness is woven into the fabric of daily life. From encouraging physical activity and healthy eating to fostering strong connections and a positive school culture, Ingleside Middle School has demonstrated
025a meaningful commitment supporting the whole student. Their efforts are making a lasting impact not just in the classroom but throughout their entire school community. At this time, I would like to invite our Blue Zones partners to the podium to share a few words. Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for the opportunity to share. Today, we are very proud to celebrate Ingleside for creating a school culture where well-being truly comes to life. From integrating health and wellness into leadership meetings to promoting non-food fundraisers and healthy celebrations, Ingleside is intentional in every aspect of student life. Students build connections through weekly gratitude practices. They stay active through lunchtime movement, and they give back through service with organizations like Feeding Students USA and NJHS food drives. A thriving garden, family events like the Glow Run, and a
026strong No Place for Hate commitment reflected deeply supportive community. With diverse academic pathways like forensics and engineering and meaningful college and career connection opportunities, Ingleside is truly supporting the whole student. Congratulations to Ingleside on officially achieving their Blue Zone school approval. >> [applause] >> Thank you. Congratulations to the Ingleside Middle School community on earning this well-deserved Blue Zone designation. We are proud to celebrate your dedication and the positive difference you are making each and every day. Please accept these challenge coins to commemorate commemorate this achievement. >> [applause] >> All right, back to you, Dr. Menzel. >> Thank you, Dr. Sakkos, and congratulations to Eric, Carly, Sarah, and Ingleside Middle School. That brings our Blue Zones approved schools to 15. I'd like to invite Dr. Christine Bono to the podium. We have more student and staff
027celebrations this evening. Dr. Bono. Thank you, Dr. Menzel, and good evening, President Lewis, Vice President Sharkey, governing board members. Again, Dr. Menzel and Ms. Wagner. I would like to begin by inviting again Rose Gorman and her principal, Mrs. Waldron, up to the podium. >> [applause] >> As was alluded to, I'm so proud to announce that Anasazi fifth grade student Rose Gorman of Anasazi has been named a 2026 Arizona International Baccalaureate Schools Primary Years Program Student of the Year, an honor awarded to just two students statewide. Rose has lived in more countries than I have even dreamed to visit. She has lived and learned in Hong Kong, India, Germany, South Korea, and now in the United States. Rose has developed a deep global perspective and through her experiences in all of her IB schools around the
028world, she has found a strong sense of belonging and purpose. Rose truly exemplifies the IB learner profile. She is open-minded. She is principled. She is a risk-taker. Qualities that shine in both her academic work and her daily interactions. Rose is deeply committed to service. She was inspired by volunteering at an orphanage in India and she's continued to give back returning multiple times to support and connect with others. Rose represents the heart of the IB mission, not only learning about the world, but working to improve it. As she prepares to attend Mountainside Middle School, she carries forward the compassion, perspective, and purpose that will continue to guide her success. Please join me in congratulating Rose on this amazing accomplishment. >> [applause] >> Congratulations. And we'll go ahead and take pictures. Mom and Dad, do you want
029to get in the pictures, too? >> [snorts] >> For our next celebration, I would love to invite Principal Dr. Amanda Rand and the Redfield community to please join us at the podium. >> [applause] >> Tonight, we are proud to recognize Redfield Elementary for earning the prestigious A+ School of Excellence designation. As we mentioned at our last meeting when we celebrated our two other schools, we acknowledged Redfield, but they were unable to attend, so we decided to postpone it till tonight when the team could join us. Redfield's A+ reflects a school culture grounded in high expectation, strong relationship, and a deep sense of belonging. This marks the school's second time earning the distinction, first awarded in 2020. The A+ review team affirmed what the Redfield community lives every day. Students demonstrate respect and responsibility and the
030campus culture is rooted in kindness, connection, and high expectations. At this time, I'd like to invite Principal Rand to share a few words. Thank you and I'd like to mention the last time we were A+ was under Dr. Bono. Okay. Good evening, board members. This recognition reflects the heart, hard work, and commitment of our entire community. Redfield has often been called a hidden gem and what what makes our school so remarkable is not just our programs, but our people. Every day, our students feel known, our families feel welcomed, and our staff work together to meet the needs of all of our learners. Our comprehensive gifted program was highlighted in this process. It lets students be themselves and thrive in a program built for them. We have two of them right here. Redfield may have once
031been a hidden gem, but the secret's out and we are proud to share it with you. Thank you. And can you pass out Will you pass out the challenge coins to your team? Yes. I want to thank you all again. Congratulations. And Dr. Rand has some challenge coins and I believe Torrance will take you right back there, the whole team, for some photos. Thank you very much. Thank you, Dr. Bono. Congratulations, Redfield, and that concludes our celebrations this evening. Thank you. Uh it's nice to now time for governing board reports. I always go first, right? >> Always. I start down there. Yep. [clears throat] Um so, as part of being the board member responsible for the Desert Mountain Learning Community this year, I've had the pleasure of getting to know uh the community as someone
032whose family is is in the Chaparral community. But um so, a couple of updates. One is I had the opportunity to attend Hadestown at Chaparral High School. Uh my niece was in it, so it was extra special. Had an opportunity to see Dr. Menzel there. I don't know how you find time in your day to uh to be present across the district. And uh the production was amazing. The sets were amazing and it just reminds you uh how wonderful the arts are at Chaparral and I'm sure all of our high schools. But in terms of the Desert Mountain Learning Community, I had a chance to visit Cheyenne Traditional School, so I want to say thank you to Ms. Backa. Had a chance to visit Anasazi and say thank you to Ms. Waldron. Had a chance
033to visit Laguna Prep and so I want to say thank you to Ms. Kelly. And then finally, I had a chance to visit Desert Mountain High School uh and so I want to say thank you to Mr. Andrews. And in all of these visits, it's a chance to get a tour, meet teachers, learn about the different programs, uh understand the needs of the physical plant of the school, hopefully get a chance to meet parents and others. So, it's a really special experience. And when you see a school like Cheyenne, which is so committed to the traditional model, and then you visit a place like Anasazi, which is so committed to the IB model, these are not mutually exclusive, but they're definitely distinctive educational philosophies. I think you appreciate just the diversity of offerings that we
034have um for for families in Scottsdale. Uh so, later this week, I'll have a chance to go back to Chaparral High School, where I'll be speaking to some high school students about the college admissions process and hopefully destressing them about uh what I think has become a little bit kind of crazy when it comes to applying to 18 schools and um which is the vicious cycle. Um I'll have a chance to visit Desert Canyon Elementary and participate in the PTA meeting and then finally uh Redfield Elementary to help celebrate the A+. So, busy time visiting different schools, but loving every minute of it. And again, thank you to the principals. I know they have busy days. Thank you. Ms. Warner? Okay. Ms. Carney? Okay. Mr. Sharkey? Um I'm looking forward to visiting Tonalea tomorrow. That'll
035be the um I've already been there, but get the inside tour from Principal Viet. I've heard nothing but good things in his first year as principal there, so really looking forward um and it'll be all of the uh Coronado community schools that I visit at least once uh but it won't be the only only time, so looking forward to that visit and appreciate the tours to see things first hand and what our principals and assistant principals and teachers and staff do at our schools. Thank you. Uh it was wonderful to get to go to Anasazi to celebrate their fifth A+. Uh that is quite an achievement and their past principal uh Mr. Jeff and I want to make sure I say his last name right, Keesburg. Keesburg was there and just feeling his legacy and
036feeling the pride that was carried forward uh under Jennifer Waldron. Uh so, just great staff and student uh celebration with uh amazing presentations and and feelings of accomplishments. I also had the chance to go see Hadestown in uh Chaparral High School and it rivals Gammage. It was the talent was unbelievable, the stage setting was unbelievable, the lighting uh just the caliber of performance was top-notch. Anybody ready to go to LA or New York is going to probably come from here. In fact, one of the families I sat next to, their daughter just got admitted into New York University, Trist. I might have said that right. Um and is was torn between another top-notch college, I think it was Pepperdine, and she's going for New York, which is where she needs to go. Very exciting. Uh
037also, I had the opportunity to go on in March to celebrate our uh nationally board certified teachers and we've recognized them here a number of times, but what was unique was there were we as Scottsdale Unified School District were recognized as a district of distinction for having the most nationally board certified teachers, which is quite uh a statement in terms of the complexity and hours that our teachers put in to get this. So, way to go uh nationally board certified teachers. And finally, I would like to say thank you to Dylan. I don't know if he's back in the room or still out with the with the our other program getting photos, but um we are in April, which is financial literacy month and now that's a personal passion of mine. Um I I think
038the board received an email today of a variety of activities or various highlights of what's going on in the district for uh financial literacy. It is a great great beginning to where I think we might be headed for a robust curricular shift uh to help our kids understand money and life and budgets. And so, there is a um calendar of events that's an option that where there's a prize for a student who does each and every activity that I would encourage all our students and teachers to take a look at. It They're They're cute and they're fun and they have a little complexity to them, but not [clears throat] overwhelming. And there are examples like the money journey, base banking basics, uh investing, types of credit, history of currency, plan a vacation. That's a good
039one. Credit scores, um budgeting, buying a house. Just exactly the kind of reality our kids need. So, this is a touch of the beginning what I hope will evolve into a more robust curriculum for us. But I'm going to share this with the board if they would like to have a copy of this calendar. Uh so, that concludes our uh governing board reports. It's now Dr. Menzel's turn. Well, thank you, President Lewis and members of the governing board. Building on the uh April theme month, I'm sure I'm going to miss some of the things that happened in April. Uh but the first thing is it's already passed, but April 1st was paraprofessionals Appreciation Day. And so we want to give a shout-out to all of the paraprofessionals that work in Scottsdale Unified School District. >>
040[applause] >> Uh they're often unsung heroes helping ensure that our students are successful and truly grateful for all they do. The week of April 19th through the 25th is the National Public School Volunteer Week. We also know that we can't do it without our parent volunteers and others in our community who recognize the importance of investing in the lives of our students and so we want to thank our volunteers. Also want to recognize that April 22nd is Administrative Professionals Day. Every now and then that happens to be the same week as a board meeting, but it's not this week. So Gladys, thank you for the great work that you do as the administrative professional for the superintendent and board and to all of our other administrative professionals, we look forward to celebrating you later this
041month. April is also School Library Month. So April 4th is School Library Appreciation Day or was. April 19th through 25th is National Library Week and and the entire month we are celebrating reading through our libraries. So kudos to all of those who are supporting a love for reading in our on our campuses and across our district. This week is Assistant Principals Week, National. Do we have any Assistant Principals with us tonight? I see a few back here. >> [applause] >> Truly grateful for the role that you play and supporting what happens on our campus every day. School bus drivers, the school bus driver appreciation day is April 28th. And then all month it's Occupational Therapist Month. And so we want to acknowledge and express our appreciation for the work of our occupational therapist. So for
042all of those who are named in the specific themes for the month of April, thank you. And for those themes that I might have missed, that was not intentional, but that concludes my comments for this evening. It's a busy month of recognition. Thank you. We are now at our public comments. And I'll read our comment statement. In compliance with open meeting law, the governing board may not discuss or take action tonight on any matters raised during public comments that are not on the agenda. However, the governing board members may respond to direct criticism, ask staff to review a matter, or that a matter be placed on a future agenda. Public comments will be conducted in accordance with board policy B E D H. As a reminder, each speaker will have 2 minutes. The screen will
043indicate the time. Please be prepared to close your comments and relinquish the floor at the conclusion of your time. The board asks that each speaker please introduce yourself by stating your name and whether you live within our school district for clarity of the record. We thank you for your time and attendance here this evening and your cooperation in following the meeting decorum and protocols. I will read the name of the speaker. When you hear your name, could you please come up to the podium? I will read the name of the next speaker to be on deck and ready. Once you start speaking, your time will start. Our first speaker this evening is Jeff Rete. Followed by Debbie Schumacher. I have been contacted by so many people including Turning Point that want to represent me. As
044you know, I was severely punished for refusing to call girls by boys' names in the classroom without the parents' approval. It's all documented. This school district is in violation of direct orders from multiple federal judges. When I was fired from my teaching position, Dr. Menzel told me to continue as a coach in doing my Joe Foss Institute veteran presentations. I was rehired as a seventh grade flag football coach and my brother was again doing the eighth grade. During the first week of the season, Dr. Menzel changed my coaching contract from paid to volunteer. He did this by telling the principal that if I did not sign a volunteer contract, the season would be canceled for those 32 families. I signed it under coercion and spent the next 12 weeks in scorching temperatures coaching the kids.
045We had a great season. My brother was paid. There was a lady hanging around my practices and games. She never coached and yet she was paid my $1,800 coaching stipend. Your lawyer tells me there's a contract in the district office that says she fulfilled all the duties and responsibilities of the position when she did none. Interesting that Dr. Menzel is running around telling everybody the district's broke and needs to close schools while he's cooking up phantom coaching contracts and lining the pockets of friends of board members. The lady by the way that accepted that gift from Dr. Menzel is a former president of the Scottsdale Education Association and is presently a principal at one of your schools. As far as the veteran presentation, shortly after I was fired, I was scheduled to address the eighth
046graders in an assembly at Desert Canyon Middle School. They called and told me the district office had notified them I was not to be on campus. I informed Dr. Menzel and he told me he would take care of it. They called and said maybe next year. Would you invite someone in your classroom that had been fired by the district? Dr. Petinsky recently informed me that the board members are just following the advice of legal counsel. We're on a hold until Gus Rosenfeld decides they are done fleecing the taxpayers of legal services relating to my case. I have made over 30 appearances at Scottsdale School Board meeting over 30 months and every vote is three to two. It is beyond despicable to see how these two amazing, incredible, bright, experienced Republican women have been treated by
047you Democrats. Thank you. Debbie Schumacher followed by James Mayo. My name is Debbie Schumacher. I'm an SUSD homeowner and grandparent. I hope that the board is aware, but most importantly tonight I'm here to ensure the viewers at home are aware of Scott Menzel's plans to continue the destruction and dismantling of the Coronado Learning Community. At the Tonalea community meeting, Scott told staff and families that they must increase enrollment to over 500 in the next 2 years. Scott has set an unrealistic goal considering that families are leaving the neighborhood because of rising cost. His plan is to close Yavapai and move them into Tonalea, eliminating the middle school altogether and making Coronado High School grades 7 through 12. Scott is pushing SUSD backwards to 1896 when Scottsdale had a one-room schoolhouse. There is a risk of
048social turbulence when mixing middle school and high school students. The developmental mismatch between younger and older students with different social and emotional tracks is concerning. Due to elementary enrollment age requirements, there are several high school seniors who are 18 years old most of their senior year. If a senior fails and attends high school for a fifth year, they could be 19 years old. For comparative context, the average age of a seventh grader is 12. A Danish study found that test scores drop after similar consolidations. This type of transition in poverty areas in South Scottsdale is a lower socioeconomic area is linked to declines in engagement and higher dropout rates. I'll say it again. SUSD must work with the city of Scottsdale and the Pima-Salt River Maricopa Community to attract major middle-class employers to the area
049who will provide families to fill the Coronado Learning Community. Employers are requiring employees back in the office. Employees do not want to commute. They want to work, live, and play in the same neighborhood. Thank you. That brings us to James Mayo. Good evening, everyone. Good evening. I'm James. I'm a parent from Cherokee Elementary. I've spent some time properly understanding where SUSD is and more importantly what's actually changed. Enrollment is down. Financial pressure is real. But those are outcomes and the real shift is this. For the first time, families don't have to stay. With ESA, they get to choose. And when people can choose, they compare. So the question isn't how do we stop students leaving? It's very much about why would a family choose SUSD over every other option? That's a very different question and
050it requires a very different answer. The truth, it's not a marketing problem. It's not messaging. It's not awareness. It's the experience inside our schools. That is now the product. And the timing here matters because the district is about to build its next plan for 2026. The current plan was built for a different environment and this is a chance to build one that fits the reality that we sit in today. The idea. I've built a full blueprint around one principle. Teachers and students come first. Everything else supports that principle. We realign how the district runs. We free up resources and we reinvest directly into schools. A little bit like the online experience that's going through change at the moment that we were discussing earlier. You don't win by fighting ESA. You win by being better in
051a world where it exists because ESA isn't the problem. We can either sit or we can help shake the foundation. I'd like three things, please. A working session with the board to walk this through, a small planning group to pressure test and operationalize it, and good sir, Dr. Menzel, I'd like the time with you to align it with the district's plan. This is a moment to lead, not react. I'd value the chance to help shape in just a tiny way. Thank you very much. Thank you. That concludes our public comments for this evening. Uh we are now moving to information and discussion. What's that? I'm so sorry. Comments from the board? Questions? Thank you. If Miss Gladys could pass out the information he did, please. Thank you. Any others? Okay. Thank you. Um let us
052have uh us let's move to information discussion items. I'll keep one. Thank you. Um Oh yeah, it's personnel item 10H. Thank you. All right. So uh we're going to I'm sorry, we did move something from consent that we moved to after 8A which is 10H and it is um the personnel item. So uh Dr. Menzal, you want to talk about why this was recommended to pull? Uh well, uh we had a board member uh request to pull it and uh so that'll be part of this and we also uh try to move up when we have individuals who are being hired from the administrative team uh so that they don't have to sit through the whole meeting before we get to consent agenda. Thank you. You want to make a comment? Uh I just asked
053to pull pull that item because my son is listed on it, so I'm going to be abstaining from that vote. Thank you. >> Thank you. Other comments? Questions? Okay. I make a motion to approve the personnel action item as presented. All those in favor? I need a second. Second. All those in favor? I. It passes four and then uh an abstention. Thank you. All right. That brings us to information. >> our principal here. Ah. Let's do I keep trying to put it back into the Okay, Brittany. Where is she? There she is. COME ON UP, BRITTANY. >> [applause] >> BRITTANY JUST EARNED HER role as the new principal of Cherokee and we're very proud of you. Congratulations and I know that'll be great for the school and a great opportunity for the kids. OKAY. >>
054[laughter] [applause] >> ALL RIGHT. IF WE'RE READY NOW FOR INFORMATION, let me have Miss Crocher come on up and present the audits and compliance uh for the fiscal year 24-25 and I think we have a representative from Heinold Meech. Yes? Oh, hello. Okay, good. Come on. Uh good evening, Board President Lewis, uh Vice President Sharkey, members of the board, Dr. Menzal. Uh tonight we have our annual audit presentation. Um Jennifer Shields is here from Heinold and Meech and that is the organization uh that we contract out to do that audit for us. Thank you, Shannon. Uh good evening. Uh let's see. We're on. We're good to go, right? Um Okay, hi. Uh President Lewis, Vice President Sharkey, Board members, Dr. Menzal, thank you for allowing me a few minutes of time this evening to do
055the annual audit presentation. This is um the presentation regarding the fiscal year ended June 30th, 2025. So I have a few things to uh Let's see. Go through. There we go. Okay. So in terms of the audit timeline, um you know, we're very near ending this current fiscal year that we're in um and so I realize that. So it's just a a good chance to remind you all as board members and the public as well that the audit itself does take a quite an immense amount of work and the timeline is very long. You can see from your screen that the audit for the year ended um June of 2025 did in fact begin in the month of June 25 and then um work proceed um proceeded throughout the the next 6 months and it
056culminated with the issuance of the audit report for the financial statements in the month of December of 2025. So that was for the financial statements and then there are several other reports that are issued after that um time period as well. So some con- concluding procedures happened um subsequent to that and then um you know, ultimately we're here this evening to talk about the actual audit results. So in terms of the scope of the audit services that we perform, we are hired by the board to perform the audit in accordance with unif- um un- US generally accepted auditing standards, also with government auditing standards and the standards that are required by uniform guidance, which is um federal standards. We're also hired to complete the uniform system of financial records compliance questionnaire and that is the
057document that is put out by the Auditor General's Office for the state and it contains a number of different questions and ultimately um that report ends up going to uh the Auditor General's Office where they'll determine whether or not the district has met compliance um as set forth by their office in accordance with various state rules, regulations and statutes. Um as an auditor, um my responsibility um related to the audit is to um you know, our job is not to find fraud or to prevent fraud. The responsibility for fraud prevention rests with you all and with management. Um my job is to design audit procedures such that if there is a significant deviation or fraud that occurs that, you know, our test work would be perhaps able to uncover that. So ultimately, what we do
058is we speak with various individuals throughout the district. We design our audit procedures under a risk-based audit approach and um part of the procedures involves um communicating with board members as well. So I know one of you at least was selected for um interview this year. Um in terms of other required communications to let you know, there was a new um accounting standard that was required to be implemented by the district this year. It was a very significant um a- accounting standard. It's it's called compensated absences and what it did what it compensated absences are are the um you know, it's the vacation and time leave that is afforded to your employees by district policy. So when our employees are ill or they take vacation time um it and what happens to that time both
059as it's used while they're in your employ as well as what happens to those leave balances when they separate from the district. So it was a very very uh large undertaking and um the district was able to successfully navigate the implementation of that accounting standard. Um every set of financial statements includes a number of different estimates. In the case of Scottsdale Unified School District, you can see there's four bullets on your screen. Those are the most significant estimates that are included in your financial statements. Um so things like how long we expect our um physical assets to last um any whether we have any receivables that we think we're not going to collect, those types of things. Uh I'm happy to report that we had no audit adjustments that are required to be communicated to
060you this evening. So nothing that rose to a level of significance related to um errors in the financial statements that would have needed to be corrected. Um in terms of non-audit services that we provide, your um contract with us also has us perform non-audit services, which includes the preparation of the financial statements. We do also prepare conversion journal entries that take your um base um your your basic accounting records and it convert them into the to the um method of accounting under generally accepted accounting principles, so GAAP basis. So we do propose journal entries um just to simply convert the um the cash basis records over to the GAAP basis records. Those do not qualify as um errors or adjustments in relation to the prior slide that I point out. Um we also do prepare
061and assist with the preparation of the data collection form and when I mentioned earlier the uniform guidance um standards that we follow, the um the data Pardon me. The data collection form and the what's called the SEFA, the schedule of expenditures of federal awards, those are um related to the federal awards. So we assist with those um the preparation of those documents as well. Um in terms of other required communications, I'm happy to report that we had no disagreements with management over financial accounting or other um re- reporting related matters. Management did provide the required um commu- uh the the required representations at the end of the audit. So it's basically a lot of um language that says that everything that we asked for as auditors, management did in fact provide to the best of
062their ability. And then as your external independent auditors, we are required to be independent of the district and we are also required to continually assess our own independence and make sure that we are in fact independent and that we have not had any violations of our own profession's ethical responsibilities. So I have no um no confessions or no no dis- no uh problems with um with us meeting our own independence or ethical requirements. So there are several um reports that you're being provided tonight. There's the annual comprehensive financial report. That's the largest one. That's the set of financial statements. You also have a single audit reporting package. That's that federal package uh that federal uniform guidance audit that I mentioned and then also what we call the USFR compliance questionnaire. And over the next couple
063of slides, I'm not going to read them all to you, but I've highlighted for you the electronic page numbers if in fact you do wish to reference those. I would like to point out page 20 in the annual comprehensive financial report. Page 20 is the independent auditor's report and the district did in fact receive what we call a clean or an unmodified opinion with respect to the financial statements. And if you were interested in other data related to the district and the historical financial information, there's several different page numbers that I've highlighted for you there that will give you some good information and history about perhaps some of the changes in you know say cash balances or you know spending there's information about budgets in there as well. The single audit report is as I
064mentioned the federal the federal portion of it. This report is also where if there were any significant deficiencies or material weaknesses and internal controls, those would be reported in this particular report and I'm happy to report that we had no significant deficiencies or material weaknesses that were noted over either the financial statements or the federal compliance programs which in this I know I've reported to you before in the past but with um with the COVID era funding there was your SR program which kind of just dwarfed I mean it just dominated every other program in terms of size and so the SR program had been audited the last several years. It had also been deemed as high risk by the federal government so it was required that we audit that program. So fiscal 25 is
065the first year that we're seeing a return to maybe more pre-COVID levels of federal funding and so last year for the 25 year we tested the title one program and also the special education program as well. So those were the two big programs that we looked at in terms of federal compliance. So no findings to report with those as well. The USFR compliance questionnaire it has quite a number of different um rules and regulations. The questions are designed to either be answered yes or no and a yes answer indicates compliance a no answer indicates that there was some type of a deficiency or a non-compliance that will would be evaluated by the Auditor General's Office. It covers a whole lot of different areas. You had earlier a public hearing related to the instructional time model.
066That is actually something that is part of this USFR compliance questionnaire and so there's state statutes so it just gives you an example of the types of things that we test for. So it's not just financial in nature like did you pay your employees in accordance with their contracts? Did you pay your invoices properly as you know invoiced by vendors? It also includes things like did you have a hearing on your ITM? Just lastly I always I don't know why I wait till the end for this but I'd like to just say thank you to Shannon and Lisa over in the finance office. They are the two that really coordinate getting a lot of information for us. They are incredibly helpful. There's a quite a lot of information that we request so thank you to
067them. They were very helpful. Looking ahead to next year we have two more accounting standards sorry sorry Shannon there's a couple more accounting standards that we will be implementing but it is not expected that they will have as heavy of a lift as the standard that we just implemented this year. So with that I am happy to stand for any questions. Governing board. Dr. Petensky. I've two questions. The first you mentioned the Auditor General and you prepare the report that the Auditor General uses in their analysis. As you may be aware we were tagged and approaching high risk and there were four specific concerns. Some of them were kind of the macro environment in terms of enrollment trends and demographics but can you I don't know if reconcile is the right word but can you
068kind of connect the dots between the nature of the audit work you do and the findings here and then something like the auditor report you know which has a little bit more of a flashing red feeling to it. >> Yeah I'll do my best and you know Shannon feel free to jump in. Um but so so in general when the financial so what we're here doing is the financial statement audit and then also those compliance requirements. So the things that the that the legislature deems important for schools to do to keep kids safe to get them educated in accordance with state standards and all of those types of things. So our our audit is largely based on financial accuracy compliance with generally accepted accounting principles and then the USFR compliance questionnaire is you know all
069of those other things that I kind of referenced earlier. The Auditor General is governed by the legislature to and there's there's a legislative requirement that they had they issue two separate reports each year. One of them is the spending the the I will get the name wrong I apologize but it's the classroom spending report the the dollars in the classroom and how many you know what's the percentage of dollars that here at this district or every district that are spent directly related to instruction in the classroom. So they do that report which it can largely tie the source data for that is rooted in the same thing that the financial statements are you know it's the same same data source. How they pull and extrapolate data to do that particular spending report may be different
070than how it is presented for GAAP based financial reporting. So there's not a direct reconciliation if you will but there's a pretty close correlation between those two reports. And the so that's the first one. The second report that they do has to it's the the risk analysis again I'm paraphrasing I don't know the official time title of that report but they do as you noted look at very macro level things and there are I mean just today we we actually in our community received notice um that there's a nationwide study about declining enrollment. It's a nationwide issue it's not just a Scottsdale issue it's not just an Arizona issue and so one of the largest drivers of financial health if you're to forecast would be the number of students that you have here in the
071district because students generate the the funding. So I think there's largely a um a core there there report you're going to approach high risk if you are declining enrollment and then also there was something unique in your district in the past year where you utilized some cash balances for something that was not really within the district's control but it had to do with a statewide property tax settlement that was adjudicated and it it it took it was like over a seven year period and so every school district predominantly within the state that was in Maricopa County or actually it's just Maricopa County. I apologize. Um had to basically repay property owners for an error that was not the district's fault. So the district had to have a decrease of cash balances in order to essentially
072pay back those property tax owners and so that was one of the things that I believe um lent itself towards the district becoming or being moving toward that high risk category and I know you mentioned there were four but those are the two that I can think of off the top of my head. Thank you that was helpful. Yeah and to to go back off of that the report that the Auditor General uses to make some of those classifications is based off of our audited financials. The biggest driver for us that impacted our fund balance but also our revenue was the almost 24 million dollar reduction in revenue for Quazamire. So that that that one thing alone impacted two of the categories that were um so you know listed as high risk. So it was
073a unique situation with that. Yeah thank you. My other quick question just while I have the mic. You mentioned the USFR questionnaire. If I read it correctly we said no to whether all reports of conflict of interest forms were kind of followed up on which jumped out at me. So is there a little context to this? To that why wouldn't we follow through on every conflict of interest report? That is actually an issue that we are really working to address. We had two employees who um had not signed the conflict of well there were two that were selected that had not signed the conflict of interest. We are now going through I get a report every single week from HR to make sure that we are addressing every single employee making sure that they adjust
074the conflict of interest. One of the things that came out of it and that we've changed our procedures within purchasing is that when somebody does notify that they they might have a conflict of interest or they do in fact have a conflict of interest that is now generating a report over to our purchasing department so that we can ensure that they are not um anyway in any way shape or form you know doing any procurement or part of any procurement decisions um it. So we we the two that were selected weren't There wasn't a company you know, they're they weren't participating in anything that would >> the form. I misunderstood that. >> Yeah, they just they didn't sign They may not have signed the form and then if they did say that they had it
075with we didn't go back and make sure that they were not ever involved in RFP process or anything like that. So, we have corrected both of those. And when we complete our forms, district leadership, the superintendent, that all ultimately ends up with purchasing so they can cross-reference and make sure. Legal Oh, yes, legal gets that and then we also um make sure that purchasing and is now also following through on that. Thank you. Mhm. Any other questions or comments? Well, I would just like to say uh you know, that under transparency, I don't know of a more scrutinizing uh body than a school district uh in terms of constant scrutiny uh and watching of every dollar and making sure we're triangulating that. So, the complexity of the work and the detail of the work is
076rich. Uh I I don't think I've ever seen anything as squeaky clean. I'm afraid to use the phrase, but it was sincerely amazing. So, Ms. Crozier to you and your team, a big congratulations on this audit uh result. Normal bumps and hiccups happen and this is just simply amazing. So, a a big kudos to you and the team and the whole leadership associated with it. Thank you for We need you as an outside voice to make >> sure we're doing. This is an excellent system of of assurance. So, I'm just really pleased with the findings and always expect bumps, but this was just amazing. All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right, our Native American Education Program update by Sheila Cypress. Come on up. Is that all right we just move over here? Yeah. Dr.
077David Furnisky, thank you for coming up. Go ahead. Good evening. Good evening uh Board President Lewis, uh members of our board, uh Vice President Sharkey, Dr. Menzel, and our community and Gladys. Um I'd like to introduce our Native American Education Coordinator, Sheila Cypress. Um tonight actually we have a quick change of plans. Sheila and I are actually going to tag team the presentation tonight because unfortunately she's a little bit under the weather with a um sinus infection. So, we are going to work together tonight on this. Um I did want to acknowledge uh Sheila. For those of you that don't know, Sheila has uh dedicated 30 years to service for our Native American students and families. 29 of those years here in the Scottsdale Unified School District. She is a tireless advocate who continues to
078build strong partnerships to support our Native American students not only here in Scottsdale schools, but across the state. Um I wanted to share a quick story. Last Thursday night >> [clears throat] >> we had a chance to participate uh in the Salt River Pima uh Maricopa uh education fair. And so, we have a table there where we were able to share some information um about our programs and Sheila obviously works with the tribe quite a bit. And so, I was having an opportunity where I get to get up from the table and mingle and meet some people and all I do is I say that I'm with Sheila Cypress and it automatically uh elevates me to like celebrity status uh at that event every year. Um this evening Sheila and I are going to provide
079an update on student performance alongside with um programmatic supports and services for our Native American students. This is part of our spring update. Um we are going to start by grounding us in our district vision and mission. This work is really about ensuring all of our students are engaged and supported and this update hopes to connect with our mission and vision. Also a good grounding for our work um is that our work really lives in our district values, in particular our values of belonging and inclusion and trust. We want all of our students and families to feel connected to their school community and confident that they feel seen and supported. We are going to um give a snapshot of some student performance data in in addition to some programmatic things that are happening with for
080our Native American students. Um I also want to acknowledge there's been a ton of work behind the scenes uh with Sheila and her team this year um having a continued focus on student data, in particular academic data and attendance data. Also, quick shout-out to Dr. Bogner and Dr. Anna and Samar. Um they have worked alongside us quite a bit this year um to continue to answer the question how are kids doing and how do we know? So, um the slide that you're looking at right now really just gives some context in terms of the students that Native American students that we serve. Um This year what you see you will see that we have 849 Native American students across our district. Um this total number includes students who identify both as Native American in combination
081with another ethnicity. If we were to look at just students who identify as Native American only, the number would be cut in half, closer to 450. You're going to see representation across all grade levels. Strong numbers at the secondary level, in particular Coronado, Saguaro, and Arcadia. Um those three high schools host nearly 75% of all um Native American high schoolers here in our school district. These are our average um daily attendance trends as pulled as of um actually last week. Attendance is always a key indicator for us. It's been a focus not only for our department, but for um for Sheila and in particular a lot of our high schools um working to increase the percentage of of um average daily attendance and um decrease chronic absenteeism. Um Sheila's done a fantastic job in working
082with in particular high schools, sending out a regular cadence of attendance data um to school teams to support the efforts with their attendance. You'll notice here that we average on around 91% um average daily attendance for our Native American students. Um we also have taken a deeper dive on chronic absenteeism for our Native American students. That has actually been one of our wildly important goals as part of our department. Um not only for our Native American students, but for our English Language Development students. Um When we look a little bit deeper at this data, um we notice that 36% um of our total Native American students are considered chronically absent. Um that is below the state average. We were actually looking at a report earlier published by the Helios Foundation earlier this uh in September
083um which showed um it was a report which established chronic absenteeism as being an issue across our state, but then boiled down subgroup data um showing that for our Native American subgroup um with chronic or excessive absenteeism across the state is upwards of 50% um for Native American students. Um again, we continue to work with families. Sheila continues to work with teams, um principals, um and sites site specialists to support um the decrease of this number. Also looking at our Let me keep going. Yeah. Also looking at our behavior um we as a district in collaboration with Samar, we roll all subgroup data up to the state um every year and so, we look at all incidents and out-of-school suspensions in particular um by ethnicity code. And so, you'll notice here that our Native American
084students represent on or less than 5% of total incidents um by ethnicity in SUSD. And that's a year-to-date number. Is that 5% of all Native American students or 5% of all students? >> All students um in incidents or having OSS. Out-of-school suspension. Um tis the season for our assessment cycle right now and so, we look at this data um closely for all subgroups, but we'll notice here um this chart looks at compares Native American students' performance on ASA for our currently enrolled students. Um these students are now So, this looks at both 2024 spring data or excuse me, 2020 4 and 25 data. Um you'll notice that the numbers are trending marginally in the right number. We like to see numbers um decrease in the minimally proficient band and so, um we see that, but
085we also see in ELA the percentage of students um Native American students passing increased from 36 to 37. Again, passing being on or above grade level. Um and then with math, the percentage of students um on or above grade level increased from 31 to 34%. So, that's obviously when our summative data comes back. It's just something that we'll take a look at this summer for um this subgroup. Um looking also um at ACT Aspire and ACT. So, this is for our ninth Oh, thank you. This is for our ninth and 11th grade students. Um at the secondary level, we see that students are performing stronger in ELA than math. Math continues to be a focus um for us. Again, this is looking at the pass rate um, as measured by the state pass rate, which
086is at 19 um, or higher. So, those are showing percentages of both ninth and 11th graders um, in math and ELA for ACT Aspire and ACT. I'll talk about this one. Thank you Thank you for indulging us on our little tag team here, but I can't talk very much cuz the slowness and it's like driving me crazy cuz I love to talk. Uh, on this one we um, I asked Dr. Anna to look up this because in our grant in our title six grant, we do um, pay for our students who want to take an AP test. And that has been always been a big focus cuz we've never used to have a lot of students take AP test. It scares them and they're or they look at it like, I'm never going to go
087to college. So, they weren't really concerned about it. Well, we looked at the data as of 24 of last year, we only had seven Native American students who who took any of the tests that were, you know, available for them. This past year we had 31. So, that's a big jump from seven to 31. So, we need to celebrate those kids that took that leap of faith to at least try and, you know, try their tests and see how they work out. And I love the fact that, you know, out of the 22 AP exams, we are at a 58% passing rate. So, that was that's a big bump for my kids cuz some of my kids, you know, their parents didn't go to college. Their grandparents didn't go to college or their great-grandparents didn't
088go to college. So, for that group of kids to do this is a big accomplishment just for them. It's makes them feel good. And as you look at cost of the cost of it, um, breaking it down, if they do pass these classes, you're looking at $425 average of a class, which comes up to about $28,000. Can you imagine to a family that is struggling to make ends meet, that cost saving is like enormous. So, that's one of the things that um, I wanted to celebrate going from seven students to 31. I'm looking forward to seeing what we have this year of um, 2026. So, we'll find that out more and, you know, over the summer. So, I'm pretty excited about that. Yeah, and then Dave's going to go ahead and do the FastBridge ELA
089benchmarks first. So, just a quick snapshot for our little guys. So, this is K12345. So, this was our winter benchmark. In fact, I think some of this data may have been shared as part of our midyear report. Um, this is um, important to look at now in particular for our elementary principals just because it gives a good some predictive value in terms of AASA. So, for our Native American students, um, students on or above grade level, we can anticipate 43 to 61% for third grade, um, fourth grade 28 to 38% and fifth grade 42 to 57%. Again, A early reading is taken by K1. Um, they actually don't have a blue band, so they we do not have a college pathway for that assessment. Um, A reading is taken in grades 2-5. We do have
090that um, pathway. And then again, I believe uh, again, some of this was shared as part of our midyear uh, data report. Um, we look also at um, ixl and in terms of uh, predictive value, predictive measure for students sitting AASA right now. Again, this was taken in December and January. Um, many of our students at risk who may have been flagged from the beginning of the year data, our middle of the year data, which we don't have the comparison here, has shown some marginal improvement in terms of um, math achievement, but it still shows us that we need some targeted supports or we've needed some targeted supports leading up to spring um, testing. Um, just noteworthy to that um, we'll partner with uh, many of the schools. They'll receive intervention during the day as
091part of a targeted tier two or tier three. Um, typically at the elementary school, that's baked into the master schedule and then at the secondary for um, middle school advisory or working with um, tier two math or reading class intervention classes for students. Question on the the math numbers. Um, the obvious the the trend there is obviously not something we want. The um, starting in kind of third, fourth grade, you know, obviously once they're behind, it sort of cascades. Is that a known point? Do we have specific interventions kind of in the third, fourth grade as opposed to blanket, you know, across all grades? I'm just wondering if there's any sort and this may not be just for you, maybe more broadly across, but I'm more concerned if we, you know, have something targeting in
092that third, fourth grade band to try and prevent what's happening. Yeah, thank you for the question. Um, I think again that work uh, really takes place at our beginning of the year diagnostic. So, um, again, this is the trend in particular for for our Native American subgroup, but schools may experience um, different data just in terms of it may be fourth to fifth grade or second to third grade. And so, it's ultimately how MTSSA teams are responding at the school level um, to that need. I don't know if just from a district level, um, if we're seeing that trend from third to fourth in general. I do think we see that trend from third to fourth in general. I think it >> We do. Yep, I think we see it more generally also related to
093just the complex text that starts to grow coming from that third to fourth grade where they're it's no longer just identify the main idea. It's really looking at the themes and some of that complexity really grows and so, some of those interventions really trying to target not just phonics and how to read, but really reading and understanding. It's not something I don't think we see pervasively, but I think as you looked at different groups or different schools in particular, you would notice that. I think we were a little more indexed on math. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's really the writing inside. And going from 5% far below grade to 78% far below grade, but that particular inflection of 9% up to 24% and then presumably, you know, the compounding effect of that if
094I'm not sure as much about the third to fourth in math. I do know more specifically about ELA, but I'll I'll look and get back with you and it's around that being pervasive. And I'm wondering, too, about the total end count here because when I think about 78% I'm sorry. I I appreciate you saying that. Yeah, the the end count in terms of how many students are we talking about? So, if we think On eighth grade specifically. What's that? On eighth grade specifically cuz it's shocking when you see 78%. If you said seven of 10 kids or >> eighth grade would be um, we have 61 students identified 61, thank you. I just had to go back to the other slide. I think you alluded to this. Um, but I am curious and this may
095need to be more of a follow-up versus a top of mind, but how this varies by school. So, are some of our elementary schools doing a better job with this student population, you know, compared to others? And then what do we learn from those schools? And just to clarify by by school, by subgroup, by by >> Yeah, this whole presentation is about Native American students. So, our Native American students who are attending, you know, to pick up two that just jumped to mind, Cheyenne and Anasazi, you know, Cherokee and Sequoia. Are there I know they don't distribute evenly across all of our elementary schools. It's geographic, but are some of our schools doing a better job with this population? Happy to follow up on that. Thank you. Uh, this one is our graduation rate and
096I've been kind of keeping track on it as you can see before even COVID. And one thing I really would love to celebrate with our kids and my staff and all the principals and everybody that put their hands in to make sure this was working with >> [snorts] >> is as of last year of the 2025, as you can see, our big jump of improvement really was Coronado and I want to um, thank Melinda because I know she did a lot of interventions on her campus along with our staff person there, uh, Ms. Perea, who is no longer um, with us as a district and she's moved on to bigger and better things. So, um, we actually we were very proud and as Native American population students in SUSD as of last year, we broke
097the barrier of always being below 90%. We broke at 97.22%, which is actually higher than all of SUSD districts. So, that's we've been celebrating that all year. Um, I even proposed this at one of our meetings with uh, the state departments about this and they were shocked and I told them the same thing. I said, I was shocked because I thought the numbers were incorrect or they somebody transposed number and I had to ask Dr. Anna like three times, are you correct with this? And she said, yes. So, we are very happy, very proud of all these kids. Uh, we had 61 graduates last year. This year we're looking at 67 graduates for our Native American students. So, I'm curious to see what our next year's graduation rate will be. Um, but like I said,
098we have when I first came on 29 years ago, we were looking at a graduation rate around about 40% of our Native students. So, it's taken this long, but it also took a lot of hands. So, the whole theme of it takes a village to raise a child, here's your proof right here. It took a village to bring us up to this 97%. So, we're very proud of that. Mr. Sharkey. >> Those are great numbers. Congratulations on that. And the And the interventions um academic intervention versus kind of social kind of belonging, you know, they're two different and both equally. Do you find there's more of one than the other um that are needed in support? I mean, should we do both and all, but I'm just curious because we're seeing such great results. I'd
099love to see in your mind what was sort of the more impactful intervention. Well, with my staff, they're all um they're all culturally founda- foundations. Is they're they're cultural They're very cultural ladies. I myself was never that way. I did not grow up culturally in the aspect of knowing my culture, knowing my language, and so forth. My thing was always academics. That's what my grandfather always drilled into every single one of his grandkids is because he went through the boarding school era. So, he knew the traumatization that happened. I mean, he ran away from boarding schools twice. The second time he wasn't found. So, his whole thing was he never got farther than a fourth grade education. But yet, this man was always the smartest gentleman that I knew in the world because he taught
100himself. Taught himself to read, he taught himself how to fix cars, he worked in the mines. So, he knew this stuff. So, his thing was always education, education, education. So, when I was growing up, I mean, I tell the students this story that when I was in high school, geometry was my worst subject. I could not do geometry. You can put an algebraic formula and tell me work on this, I had no problem. Geometry was never my passion. I hated that class. Did not like my teacher, even though she was a very lovely lady. I just It just didn't click. I got a C my first quarter grade. My father's My father grounded me until the next term to raise that grade because his mind was always you know I You know you can do
101it. You're smarter than this. You're grounded. No going with your friends. You can go to school, do your little activities, but that's it. Well, second quarter came around. Got another C. Same thing. You're grounded. I got straight C's. So, basically I was grounded for the whole school year. But um the funny thing was um my father didn't tell me he didn't do well in geometry in high school. Till my grandmother, as you know, most of you you know your grandparents keep everything. She went into her little box, pulled out a report card, and presented to my father, and said, "Excuse me. Why are you grounding her when look at you? You had an F. I didn't ground you. Why is she getting grounded?" So, I always used to tease my dad about that, but I
102My mind, I always tell my students that it doesn't matter if you get that C as long as you do it. You feel it. You're good with it. Let's Let's focus on your academics because I don't want us to be the stereotypical history that we're being told that we can't learn or we don't know how to do things or we're going to end up being on welfare or whatever. I tell them, "You know, this is the way we get back at at our history that's before us. Go get your education, go to college, change laws, show the people who you are." So, in my mind, that's always the foundation is education. So, my staff people know as soon as they come on campus in August, they are to pull every single transcript of their staff
103their schools' kids that they work with. They are to start planning and making sure those kids are on track to graduate. They meet with the students every quarter. Talk about their grade. And then they start talking them a little bit about college. Hey, have you thought about going to college? Let's look at this route. Let's start at SCC or MCC. Do that. Let's kind of move up. This is the things that they do every year. Plus, they do contact They do monthly contact logs to me to tell me what they are doing. So, my thing is I look at everything as foundation as education, but they're the ones that incorporate the cultural aspect of it. They bring in uh cultural speakers. They take them to cultural events, if it be at SCC, MCC, UofA, NAU,
104where they can be part of a group. So, to kind of say one over the other, it is, but it isn't because a lot of our kids are Some are cultural and some are like the way I grew up. Thank Thank you for that. And you know, again, the numbers are impressive to you, Principal Splittgerber, other people have contributed. Really great to see these. So, congratulations. Thank you for sharing. Okay. Uh this one is basically our program highlights and activities. I'm trying to think of everything all at the same time. So, everything on the left-hand side of your screen, uh those are basically uh some of the activities that we have done. Um I've gone to the Indian Nations and Tribal Legislative Day and represented SUSD uh to show them that we do have Native
105kids in our district and that we are there. So, we celebrate that along. Uh like we just did um We did a Salt River higher education presentation. We were out on the table and so forth. Uh we've had uh Arcadia students that participated to the MLK Leadership Conference that was over at SeaWorld. They thoroughly enjoyed that. We have Native Health coming doing presentations. We have our monthly Native American parent meetings. So, you as you can see, we do quite a bit of um little activities. Um The highlights on this I wanted to share with you is one of our Coronado students was uh pre- selected and participated in the Indigenous Bowl. To be honest, I didn't know we had an Indigenous Bowl in this country, but we do. So, he got to be part of
106that. JAG competition at Coronado, um we had one of our Native students got first place in public speaking. And we also had another student that was part of the team for the Love Project that also got first place. So, that was another three. We have a student that's also been ex- selected into the Mayo Summer Mayo Clinic. We had four Native students that participated in the Heard Art Show, and one of them, she did win first place in her textile um and weaving category. So, and then we have also students that are also were part of the 2026 ABODA Concert Festival, which was great cuz I don't We don't really see our kids really, you know, being presented for that. We had a lot of kids that we helped support to get them to the
107Disneyland music trip, middle school and high school. One student requested to go to a theater festival, so we were able to make that happen and help her out with that. We had another This is our second year of having a student that is in the National Society of High School Scholars. And a lot of sports activities these last couple of years with track, foot- ball, baseball, basketball. I mean, I think any sport out there I got a kid in now. Whereas before, they were kind of quiet. They never really got involved. And like I said, with graduation convocation coming up on May 16th, as you know, you are all welcome to join us. It's on a Saturday at Arcadia's um auditorium. This year we are going to be recognizing 67 students. So, that's that's a
108big thing for us that we're pretty excited about. And then we are have our continued partnerships. As you know, we've always dealt with Native Health, Phoenix Indian Center. Um currently, we're in the renewing year of our IGA with Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. And then we also work I'm working well with the Pascua Yaqui Education Services, even though we have a very small group. And then we're also very um involved with the Native American Family and Fatherhood Associates in us here in Mesa. So, we have quite a few partnerships that we still deal with. And that's pretty much my end of my spiel. Thank you for the update. Board members? Ms. Carney. Thank you for that. Um I just I'm wondering how how many staff do you have working under you? Three. Three? Okay. >>
109So, there's four of us total in the district, but you know, kind of like the old adage, you know, we're we're mighty. >> [laughter] >> But what we have a lot of partners are, you know, with the schools, other teachers, staff, you know, so we like to acknowledge them as well. Okay. And then how would you say that you're partnering with the parents and the families to get them involved in their education? We have um we always have We have a monthly parent meeting. We start it in September, so we have one September, October. We don't do November, December, and then we have January through April. They're also involved because of the fact that they have to approve our grants before we as a district ever submit them. So, they do know. We talk about
110chronic absences. I'm sure they're sick of me bringing that up at every meeting. We talk about chronic absences. They were very ecstatic when I brought them up about the graduation rate. We bring in presenters for colleges so that the parents can meet with them and talk with them. In fact, ASU, when we brought ASU in one night, she had a standing line of parents talking about ASU and the opportunities that were there. Grand Canyon, we just had Grand Canyon University do their presentation. So, the parents are involved with that process, which has helped because some of those parents now, we have Tohono O'odham Community that offers free classes if you're Native and you sign up. So, actually got a couple of parents thinking about going back to go to college. So, it's helpful. Where Where
111do you do your meetings? At Coronado High School. Our Native American room. Yes. Great. Thank you. Excellent. Of the 849 students, do our students need to be registered relative to their tribe to qualify or can they just self-declare? Um that one with because of our grant funding is what we really look for. With one grant with Title VI, it's a descendancy. So, let's say a student doesn't have enough blood quantum. Let's say they're an eighth, but the parent has the tribal thing, they >> [laughter] >> bit better, but >> [laughter] >> but we do >> Well, honestly, 106 with all that you're doing. Right. Well, we also have Johnson O'Malley, which is a separate state one. That one comes as filtered through ADE. Title VI comes directly to us from Washington. Right. And with Title
112with Johnson O'Malley um when they first allocated, we had a little over 15,000. Then they gave us an additional 4,000, so we came up to 19,000. And that pays a lot of the the sports fees and it paid for a lot of the kids to go on these band trips, which they never would have been able to do. We were sad when Coronado's band could not go and do their um Memorial Day weekend one cuz we we had kids lining up for funds for that. So. And do you know the proportion of deseg that you get? We don't actually have any allocation out of deseg. None. Okay. So we can't I'm not I'm going to cross that one off. Any sense of how much from ISS? If you don't know, it's okay. >> the position
113is the ISS and that position is out of deseg. One position. One position out of deseg ISS. Thank you. Okay, and Johnson O'Malley's out Actually, two. There's two out of deseg. Coronado and Saguaro are both out of out of deseg. And then Johnson O'Malley's about 15 to 19,000. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Okay, appreciate it. I think you. >> Nice job. Thank you. Ready for 9C, status update regarding phase one and two repurposing of schools, Dr. Menzel and and Ms. Mitchell. Ms. Mitchell will uh review very quickly. Uh the board has received weekly updates on on the phase one process and she'll just go through those so the public has the benefit of kind of hearing a status update as well. Thank you so very much again, um and thank you for
114the feedback on the ongoing updates. I just want to summarize. We're making really good progress on supporting students in enrolling from Echo and Pima into our SUSD schools. Um we're at about 75% of Echo students, 87% of Pima students. And right now we're tracking about 9% of students who are indicating they will not return to SUSD. Uh Dr. Bono took some time last week to send individual text messages and phone calls to the 60 remaining students at Echo and the 30 remaining students at Pima who have not made decisions. Of those, she's been working one-on-one. Sometimes at 6:00 at night, she's like, "Oh, I got a parent call." But being able to get those families situated and supported. For any families that are still undecided or who we've not yet been able to make contact
115with if they are SUSD residents, we are going to I believe at the end of the week roll them into their school of residence. What we don't want any families to miss out on are the annual notifications, any information about next year. And as the spring starts to roll around, lots of families start to get information planning for the year ahead. And we don't want any families to miss out on that. Any family that wants to make a change from Echo or Pima, we are still expediting that and trying to do it where families don't have to do more applications or more paperwork. Um staffing updates, lots of excitement around staffing. 100% of our certified staff from Pima and Echo have been placed in schools for next year, unless they've decided on their own to
116leave the system. Um and we still only have two classified staff that we are looking to place. Those are noon aides who are looking for a spot close in proximity to where they're at, but almost every single staff member situated and supported knowing where they're headed for next year. Um we will continue to do lots of enrollment and outreach until every single kiddo is tucked in and every single staff member has a place. Wanted to just share a little bit about the rolling out of the red carpet. Last I think it was last week, maybe the week before, some of our principals took time from their schools to go to where their teachers who are coming to them next year work right now. Um so they went and met them, brought them bouquets of flowers,
117and just really trying to get people excited even though you have to say goodbye to a school you may have loved, we're welcoming you with open arms. And so some of those touches of the concierge service you'll see throughout the spring as staff and students are welcomed to their new areas. Um really what will start to also move into the next few six weeks is relocating everybody. We'll be moving a lot of staff members from Pima and from Echo. Dennis Rayler and his team have put together a really strong plan to support each and every member making sure all of their stuff gets transferred with as minimal amount of work on their behalf as possible. And so that's been really exciting. Last Thursday, we met with some members of the community. So I am also
118happy to celebrate volunteer week. We had a room of about 10 to 15 really excited and enthusiastic community members. Some are members of the SUSD Foundation Board. Others are active community members who want to help build an army to support community concierge. Really being the people who meet with individual families, boots on the ground, not only promoting and marketing our schools, but helping every single family find the just right school for them because here in Scottsdale we offer so many incredible options that we know there is a school for every single student. So through this training we're able to test out some of the presentations, some of the ideas. And we're really excited for some next steps on growing that army, trying to invite more people to attend and figuring out how do we nestle
119in and what is the best structure for community concierge. Knowing that as phase two continues, we will definitely need more people to help support the the successful transition of any students. Um so that's sort of in the Echo and Pima closing. In terms of phase two, really grateful for all the family members and the community members who've come to the two meetings that we've had so far. They've been engaged information about marketing, enrollment, finances, building networks as a team, and asking really really incredible questions. We will meet again with them on the 16th where they'll be really diving in more to enrollment models and ways to look at potentially reducing our footprint in that area. And then very last but not least, just want to shout out to all the Coronado Learning Complex school leaders.
120We had the opportunity meet with them this week and talk about their enthusiasm for a growth strategy. Really doubling down on supporting the the students in the community, but also what is a strategic plan that will help us with this adaptive challenge, looking at different things that we may have not looked at before. And so that team will continue to work. We were putting together that phase well, it's not phase two, it's a Coronado Learning Community Committee where we will bring together business partners, community members to also help us intentionally and strategically plan for growth in that complex. Mr. Sharkey. Um thanks for the update on the Pima and Echo students. Really appreciate the detail and attention we're paying to them. The 44 students who've indicated they're withdrawing, do you happen to know how many
121of them are in our boundary versus not in our boundary? Um I can look more deeply into that. I would say the vast majority so far that we when I think about when I'm counting them, I'll see Creighton, Maricopa. That's typically their residents. So I would say a much higher percentage are students who are open enrolled into our system now. A much smaller number of SUSD residents who are saying we're not coming back to SUSD. But I'll get in my next report, I'll make sure I I break that down for you. >> I would assume, especially with the Echo footprint, that would be a lot of the students in there. So that's why I was asking. Thank you. Ms. Carney. Uh thank you. Can you speak to the Echo repurposing and when we're going going
122to be addressing that next? I would probably defer to Dr. Menzel in terms of the Echo repurposing. I believe in April there will be an additional meeting, but in when it comes to the repurposing of that building, I do not have the background knowledge on where we are with that. >> So the last meeting, Jennifer McLennan indicated we would have an executive session. That'll be on April 28th to talk about that. Okay, I'm just getting questions from the community on that, so it's it's good to say that publicly. >> 28th. And then um I'm going to say it again. I said it last meeting and I just want to reiterate that staff that are involved with the phase two schools are asking to be surveyed before they are just given three options. They really want
123to have a voice. And I know I'm so I'm just asking again, what is our plan for surveys going out to the employees in our phase two schools? Um in terms of employees in the phase two schools, what you recounted pri- is still the current plan is looking at a variety of different models, presenting a variety of different models, and gaining um feedback around all the different contexts and variables. Not so simple as a survey of which one would you pick, but what are the factors that would you know drive you to choose one way or the other for the parents. Um for staff in general, I don't know that we've explored that conversation in a robust manner, but I would love to do that and bring back some additional information um for you guys
124related to staff surveys for phase two. Thank you. Any other questions? Dr. Patensky? Uh on the question of surveys, is that ultimately the purview of the phase two committee and process to decide do they want to survey and whom they want to survey and what they want to ask in order to inform their process? That would be correct. The um each group that's working through these, they're asking lots and lots of different questions. So as we get closer to thinking about different models, we would ask them to surface what what is most important that you feel like you need to know in order to make eliminations, adjustments, recommendations. And so they will um be a big factor in driving what some of those questions are. Um whether it's that we bring a generated here's some
125drafts, what else? Um that part is still um working with the facilitators to have a better understanding of that piece. Got it. Thank you. And then um we don't want to we don't want to harass, but for those who have indicated they're they're not coming back, is there any part of the process where we reach out again um and Yes, I agree. We do not want to harass, but Dr. Bono definitely wants to have repeated opportunities to talk to those families, remind them of what a wonderful school district this is. Um so we will continue to outreach them until the really and truly until we get records requests and it's August and they don't show up. We'll continue to send out reach for them. Cuz I imagine part of that is understanding this where many
126of the peers of their kids >> it. Yeah. Yeah, thank you. All right. Thank you for that update. Um as we look at consent agenda items A through G and I through P, I make a motion to approve those as presented. I need a second. I had a question on one On consent agenda? Yeah. Yeah. We didn't pull it. Oh, I needed to pull it in order to ask a question. Okay. I'm sorry. Can you repeat that? I didn't hear. Uh this is the first time I've ever had a question on the consent agenda item, so I didn't know I needed to pull it to ask a question or can I ask a question now before we vote? Um I I'm not sure on that. I think the safest thing would be to abstain from
127the item if you have a question or a possible conflict. No, it's more of a question, so okay. I will ask it after the meeting. Okay. Thank you. All right, I'm looking for a second on the motion. I'll second the motion. All right. Uh all those in favor? I. I. I. I and it passes five to zero. And just on reflection, I think [clears throat] there's a lot of ways to get information in in in follow-up. Yeah, I just hope it didn't affect how you would have voted. All right. Um We are on ele- Sorry? 11 is roll call. That's right. Um okay, so as we get to 11A, um I need not just to make a motion about this, but I need to start with a roll call because it's required for audit for
128this audit piece of of of of of action. So we'll do roll call again. No, we have to No, we have to Make the motion. On the roll call the vote, not roll call the attendance. That helps. All right, thank you. Um I make a motion for acceptance of the audit and compliance questionnaire for fiscal school year 24-25. I need a second. >> Second. Second and and all those in Oh, no, now you roll. Now all those in favor, I will do a roll call. Dr. Patensky. I. I. Ms. Warner, I. Ms. Carney. I. I. Mr. Sharkey and Donna Lewis is an I and it passes five to zero. Thank you. Okay. And 11B, approval of the 26-27 governing board meeting calendar. Dr. Menzel? So the calendar was uh prepared following the template from this
129past year. Uh as always, if there's a need for additional meetings, the board can schedule those. Uh but we followed the template that was adopted. Uh it's now been two years that we've had followed the schedule. Questions or motion? Ms. Warner? Uh you you none? Okay, I'll I'll I'll make a motion to approve the calendar as presented. Need a second. I'll second the motion. All right, if there are no questions or discussions, all those in all those in favor? I I and it passes five to zero. Thank you for your work on that, staff. That leads us to future agenda items. Board members, what proposed topics would you like to have considered? Dr. Patensky. I will uh repeat again my request for us to spend time either in a study session or as part of
130a regular meeting to do a deep dive into district office expenses. I think there's a lot of interest, there's probably myths, there's probably a lot to learn in terms of kind of broadly what is the district office do, how does it divide by head count, by dollars, uh are some of those expenses really site-based expenses that get classified, how do we compare to other districts in that ratio, you know, how do we think about the district as fixed cost so that as our students decline, you know, those ratios then change because it's not like 10 fewer students mean necessarily one less, you know, IT support person or whatever the example may be. So I'd love to do that deep dive. And then uh the second topic, probably the number one thing that I hear uh
131as a board member, um including in my own household, uh is the topic of half days. You know, we seem [clears throat] to have a lot of half days. They seem to always fall after holidays, so you're coming back and then you're going right back into a half day. Uh it feels like the instructional time of the half that isn't the other half is pretty low by the constraints that a half day creates on the schedule. Um so I'd love to understand are there opportunities to do something I value, which is provide professional development while in a with a schedule that reduces the disruption of frequent half days. Ms. Warner, Ms. Carney? Ms. Carney? Uh thank you. I've already emailed this, but I would like a study session or a agenda presentation discussion to discuss
132cutting back on one-to-one student device use um going back to pre-COVID use in our classrooms. And I know I had asked this a couple years ago when we did a brief presentation on it, but I really um want to see us dive deep on that. I have a lot of um even administrators, teachers, parents asking for this, so I think it's an important discussion. Great. Thank you. Mr. Sharkey, anything? I'm good, too. All right. Dates of upcoming meetings, our next meeting is April 28th, my son's birthday, at 6:00 p.m. special governing board meeting at the MDA. Um I make a motion to adjourn the meeting. [snorts] Second. All those in favor? I. I. 7:52 adjournment. Thank you. Excellent job. Okay. These were passed back, so I'm going to