SUSD Governing Board Special Meeting 1/20/2026

001That's a yes, okay. I call this special meeting of the governing board to order. Uh can we please stand for the pledge of allegiance? Ready, begin. 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. Let's do roll call. Mike Sharkey. Matthew Potenski. Carin Warner. Amy Carney. Donna Lewis. So, all five board members are present and we're joined by staff here at the study session table. Uh I move that we approve the agenda as presented. I second. Okay, we have a second by both Matt Potenski and Amy Carney. All those in favor? I. I. All right, thank you. That goes to superintendent comments, Dr. Menzel. Well, good evening President Lewis, Vice President

002Sharkey, and members of the governing board. I'll be brief in my comments this evening, but first I want to thank all of the members of our SUSD team that participated at Saguaro for the Youth Voices event last Thursday. We had amazing student MCs, student presentations, performances by the orchestra, the choir, the Saguaro dance team, and then that evening was culminated by the community-wide MLK Jr. celebration and appreciate the board members who were able to attend that as well. Another upcoming event that we would invite all board members to join us in is the Parada del Sol on January 31st. We will have a district entrant entrance and you can ride in the wagon or walk alongside, but we certainly encourage you to participate in that what 72nd or 73rd Parada del Sol. And then for

003those who may not remember, we have our public hearing on February 2nd related to the Pima re-boundary conversation that will be held at Coronado High School beginning at 6:00 p.m. and everyone is welcome to attend and to share their thoughts on the re-boundary proposal. And then we have a number of celebrations on February 10th at our regular governing board meeting and with that I'll conclude my remarks. This evening is an information discussion evening in our study session, so what we're going to begin by hearing our association presidents speak to us uh uh related probably to IBN. Okay. So, SAA, SEA, and SSPA, and SDAA, do you have a sense of order of how you'd like to come up? Come on up. Yes. It's not on yet. You got to push the green, there you go.

004>> There we go. All right. Good evening President Dr. Lewis, Vice President Sharkey, governing board members, Superintendent Dr. Menzel, Gladys, and guests. I am Teacher Buckley, president of Scottsdale Education Association. I would like to first speak from a community and state level and then address our issues as a state or as a district. As you know, we face a $7.7 million budget shortfall due in large part to declining enrollment. Our state continues to be 49th in education funding, housing prices continue to increase, and affordability is more of a memory than a desired outcome. Every day my inbox is filled with news stories of cuts and reductions in districts across the valley and the state. Or how our school voucher program continues to make take money from our public schools and to fund the lifestyles of

005families that have never stepped foot in a public school. Prop 123 has become a thing of the past and its rebirth a place to solidify the very vouchers that harm our schools. Add all of that to current year funding that for to current year funding that forces our CFO to estimate the next year's enrollment numbers as she creates a budget and you will find that we're in a tough situation. A situation that will not go away until students and the future they carry with them are prioritized by our society. School is here school choice is here to stay and we wish to be the district of choice, but are forced to make these cuts to our public schools, which will unfortunately come with a heavy human toll on our students, families, and staff. Regarding our

006work as a district, as a member of our IBN team, I support the decisions of the team. This process was respectful and cordial with many perspectives being shared openly as time would permit. From my perspective, no one took these decisions lightly. We understand that there is a human toll through the loss of positions and jobs due to these decisions. Generally, within IBN, we take the issues or proposals one at a time. We had to address these budget suggestions in a holistic way and all together given our time constraints. Each of us gave more than the original time allotted to come to you with the best suggestions possible. No one loves all of these options, but as I mentioned earlier, we understand the time we are in and the role we play. When we discussed these

007proposals, I prioritized items first by the impact of students' educational well-being. Secondly, I looked at the effect on certified staff positions and jobs. When eliminating a position, I thought, "Can the employee transfer to positions and job Can the employee transfer to another position within the district or would they be forced to leave the district?" With the preference clearly going to transfer or surplus as opposed to a reduction in force. Thirdly, I thought of the commitment to the district that the district made to the employees of Pima and Echo Canyon. If we eliminate too many positions, for example, through increased class size by one, we may trigger a reduction in force. In a reduction in force, we would struggle to hold to our commitment to place all Pima and Echo Canyon staff. When I look back

008to the conversations we had in September, our certified staff expressed the interests of fair compensation and benefits, safe and secure environment, workload manageability, and job security. Of course, meeting each of these areas to satisfaction of all would be ideal, but not likely or reasonable with the current state of the district. Each of these decisions have a major effect on all of our presented interests. I believe we are making strides to meet the interests of fair compensation and benefits. Some may not see the suggestion the suggested cuts to security as providing a safe and secure environment, but I will note that many of the suggested changes in security are outside of regular school hours. Regarding workload manageability, within the current constraints and focus on budget conversations, I fear that we will not have time to address

009ways to increase workload manageability, especially with many of the suggestions creating further issues in the area. I believe we should look at some structural changes that would be more supportive of returning IBN to the work of improving day-to-day bad practices and working conditions. For example, in other districts, IBN has three groups. One works on the budget, another works on insurance and benefits, and the last on working conditions. We are close to that with our work on insurance and the budget. We could simply add a working conditions group to emphasize that area of need. Finally, job security is a major major concern moving forward. While we are trying to limit job eliminations to a surplus and not a reduction in force, with the continued lack of funding, we will increasingly face cuts that may very well

010lead to the large-scale reduction in force, as many of our surrounding districts are currently facing. We have worked diligently on a more thorough surplus policy to best serve our staff that are forced forced to move sites. We will work even more diligently on a reduction in force procedure that will be fair and just for all employees that will not be returning to SUSD moving forward. I think it is important to emphasize that the relationship of the board and IBN, along with this along with this process of IBN, has shifted somewhat over recent years. As evidence through this meeting, tonight you are presented a list of options that we as leaders reviewed and provided feedback for. We are not able to gain feedback from constituents throughout the process that may lead to different decisions or outcomes.

011As SEA president, my power comes from the power I represent, and my job is to represent their interests. While I have initial survey data on what they are looking for in this process, they were unaware of many of these options and or and or the seriousness of the consideration. I would like to note that our team makeup was not properly suited to represent other certified groups without a more thorough feedback loop. To emphasize this point, I'd like to go back to my comments on January 6th. It is important to note that while we as leaders and represent representatives reviewed these options, specific employees that are affected by these changes have not been involved. While many of these options have been public for months, I fear that employees and community members not involved in the process

012do not see how real these options are and how we will be affected by each individual option. I believe there will be a great amount of anxiety in reaction to them. In the coming weeks and months, I encourage you to give the affected individuals space to be heard. I also encourage definitive decisions and directives on each of these options to provide everyone with the clarity on the changes. I support workers' rights to express their needs and the impact they have on our district. I look forward to your final decisions. This governing board has taken the position of doing the work alongside our IBN team. This is much different than in years past when a simple up and down vote was placed on our final product. I can see the positives and negatives in the shift.

013While I believe that the shift on budget shortfall is largely due to the gravity and scope of the situation, it is not a short-term issue and will force these serious conversations for years to come. I hope that we can continue to find ways to involve affected employee groups and the governing board, while also respecting the work and dedication of our IBN team. While we continue to improve the structure and feedback loop, I am hopeful that we can continue to make difficult decisions together as an IBN team and governing board. I appreciate your time and consideration on each of these serious items. I am open to any questions you may have either now or at any time as we work through the presentations tonight. I'll I'll let you decide who's Okay, good. Uh good evening, uh

014President Lewis, Vice President Sharkey, governing board members, Dr. Menzel, and Ms. Wagner. Thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening on behalf of Scottsdale Support Professionals Association, which represents all classified employees across the Scottsdale Unified School District. My name is Julie Geldersleeve, and I am part of the SSPA leadership team. We understand that the district is facing some very difficult budget decisions, and we appreciate how complex it is to balance financial realities with the needs of our schools. As those decisions are made, we ask that the voices and and that the voices and value all employees remain part of the conversation, especially our classified professionals, whose daily work directly support students, schools, and operations. The IBN process has been long, challenging, and at sometimes emotional. Three members of SS PA have participated, spending many

015hours thoughtfully considering how the budget shortfall affects not only our members, but the entire district community. We encourage the governing board to continue approaching budget planning with a broad, thoughtful perspective, one rooted in fairness, collaboration, shared responsibility. Supporting classified employees is not just a budget line item. It is an investment in the safety, stability, and success of our schools. SSPA stands along with a SAA, SEA, and SDAA. Together, we have been working collaborately collaboratively with the district through the IBN process to identify solutions that address budget needs while respecting the contributions and livelihoods of the employees who keep Scottsdale Unified running every day. Thank you for your time, your leadership, and your considered your continued consideration. Thank you. Good evening. Even though I look like Shelly Humann, SAA, I'm actually reading SDAA's association statement because

016unfortunately their team was unable to make it tonight. So, their statement reads, "Throughout this year, the Scottsdale District Administrators Association has engaged collaboratively with the association members through the interest-based negotiations process grounded in trust, transparency, and mutual respect. This approach has fostered open communication, strengthened relationships, and reinforced a shared commitment to supporting both our employees and the district's goals. All four employee associations have actively participated in the IBN process, working together in good faith to identify shared interests and develop mutually beneficial recommendations. As a result of this focused and often complex and highly collaborative work, the associations have reached an agreement on a set of recommendations that reflect thoughtful consideration of employee needs, fiscal responsibility, and keeping district priorities at the forefront. The SDAA would like to express their sincere appreciation for their members. They

017are here to represent, support, and work on their behalf, and their engagement and professionalism throughout this process has been invaluable. They also appreciate the governing board's recognition of their association and the trust placed in them as partners in this work. It is with this theme of trust and collaboration that SDAA respectfully requests the governing board's continued support of the IBN process and recommends recommendations brought forward as they represent a consensus agreed upon by all four associations. Together, this collaborative approach allows us to focus on what matters most, supporting thriving schools and creating the the best possible environment for all of our staff and students. Changing places. Yes. Did you have a question? Dr. Lewis? Okay. All right. So, this is our beginning of our statement followed with my colleague, Dr. Dansky. Uh good evening, governing

018board. My name is Shelly Humann. I am the co-leader of the Scottsdale Administrators Association. On behalf of SAA, we want to acknowledge the significant time and effort demonstrated by the interest negotia- interest-based negotiations teams. This work has not been easy, nor has it been quick. Our associations came to the table committed to collaboration, transparency, and finding solutions that serve both the district and most importantly the students that we all support. The IBN team engaged in thoughtful dialogue, reviewed complex information, listened carefully to differing perspectives, and worked through challenging issues with integrity and good faith. We did this while we continued to lead our schools, support our staff, and serve our families every day. Our dedication reflects a sincere commitment to the district's long-term success. The recommendations brought forward, I would agree with my friend and

019colleague, Mr. Buckley, were not easy, and at the end of the day were the result of hard work and collaboration. They represent careful consideration, compromise, and a shared desire to move forward in a way that strengthens our schools and maintains trust across our organization. We respectfully ask that the board support the IBN team's input during this process. Doing so affirms the value of a collaborative problem-solving process and demonstrates confidence in our teams who carry out the district's missions each and every day. Thank you for your time, your leadership, and your continued partnership. Now, I'll turn it over to Dr. Dansky. Good evening. Tonight I speak on behalf of the secondary principals in our middle schools and high schools, and just to ask the governing board for support as we're starting to make decisions regarding course

020offerings. I know that the board received multiple emails from my parent community this weekend about our decision to, you know, unfortunately cut the Japanese program. Um but all of our schools are going to be making these decisions in in light of reduced staffing. Um we're committed to being fiscally responsible with staffing and prioritizing core classes. Um and also prioritizing courses where students are in high request of those and you know, unfortunately that means making some difficult decisions and um being a board member is on a short list of things I'll never do in my life. So, I just want to say I appreciate appreciate everything that you do and um I know that you'll be receiving quite a few emails as we're making those decisions. So, thank you. Board members, what questions might you have

021for our association of leads? I I would like to ask one. You you spoke beautifully each of you about the sense of unification among you and the collaboration among you. Um and the the long amount of hours you put in and I will imagine the emotion relative to the priorities that you dare to put forward and and reluctantly but you know, unilaterally come not unilaterally uniformly come together. Would you one of you please describe for us the layers of discussion? I know sometimes there's a green light, yellow light, red light approach or there's a thumbs up, thumbs side. Would you give us a brief description? I don't know Dr. Cruz if you prefer to do that or if there's somebody in the team that would yeah. TJ or whoever. Just let us know the the

022depth of the conversation so it's not just oh, here's a shopping list of cuts. It it was Yeah, well there was priority >> if you look at the timeline which I think really shows the respect of the of the team. So, this started in October. We kind of got you know, we got our our feet wet with everything. And then into November then looking at the lists again in December, again in January. We actually took January 7th so right after break came in did two hours. We're like, hey, we're not done yet. We got to we got to take one more swipe at it and then took an additional. So, we're talking full two full but I'd say about actually three when you count October, November, December three full school days um of work and

023then two afternoons after work for that. Um so, a lot of dedication and hours have gone in already. Um so, that's the timeline and then as far as the votes them themselves, so we we do a thumbs up and a thumbs down. Um when it comes to the conversations generally speaking with IBN, you would do like here's the interests and then you would rate things. Um and each one of these would get rated. Um but as you see in the list tonight that is an incredibly long list and in order to give really each individual item any bit of um any bit of discussion to be able to get to everything, we we did do multiple votes um up and down. We did have votes on individual items. Um we just didn't necessarily it didn't

024get we didn't get the normal amount of time we may on it. Um and one layer that we would do is we would have our conversations in like our small group so that would be our certified. So, for me that would be four SEA members and four district administrators. We would have our list and then we would um present that list to the bigger group and then each each would do that and we did that layer upon layer. Um I think on at least four occasions um throughout that process of then creating that list to get things to green. And so, if we had a thumbs up that was that was it's good. If you had a thumbs down that was no. If you got to a thumbs side a sideways, a lot of these

025things got to a sideways which is like, hey, I'll live with it. I I don't like it. Right? And it's going to hurt my group but I can live with it. There are things on there that some of us got to sideways on. Um but that's part of the hard work of IBN. But that's just to give you an idea of the time, the scope, and the layers involved. Mr. Sharkey. Um Stay there. And anybody else who wants to come up, please feel free. So, one thing I heard from all of the folks who spoke was the request that we sort of the board kind of respect the process that was done which I I totally understand. Mr. Buckley, you alluded to it that having the board involvement is sort of blessing and a curse

026that we're involved but that could change things. Um I imagine I know myself and I'm guessing my fellow board members will have comments on the list and hey, you know, I I like this, I don't like that. Can we move this? Can we trade off that? What is your take on that? Are we going to ruin the work that you will you will you feel like we'll be ruining the work that you did if we start to play with the list and move it around? Are you expecting that or wanting that? I really want to make sure that we're sort of rowing in the same direction and I'd since I heard from everybody, you know, the desire to respect the process which I want to do. I really want to understand, you know, and at

027some point today I'm assuming we'll be playing with that list. How does that strike you and what's your opinion on it? Um I think that all these associations understand that the ultimate decision of course is that board and to make those final decisions. And so, what we're hoping for is that you'll see some themes and some things that we really considered where we tried at least I know from our perspective and I I would say for all groups' perspectives really did try to keep the majority of suggestions away from what would directly impact students. Um that was certainly a consideration for all of us. Um and not to sidetrack the question that you asked board member but I to to the earlier point I wanted to say that I was quite struck that in our

028very first meeting that we had maybe not the first one but one of the one of the first ones that we had where we were here in this room and our associations were tasked with kind of coming up with the very first blush look at things how many commonalities there were between all of the groups. Um which I thought spoke to just how collaborative that we become throughout this process through the years and then also the fact that each of the groups was really trying to take into consideration that I'm you know, as representing all assistant principals and principals, I'm not going to just say well, let's you know, let's suggest that cuts should come to teachers or to classified staff and not touch our association. So, I felt that all of our associations were

029very good about considering all of the other associations. But I think that when you get into the list tonight board member Sharkey, you're going to notice that they they're you'll see where we tried to make patterns of things and again, I think if I'm not mistaken the majority of us our line was really where could we make changes that we understand are difficult and need to be made but would have the least amount of impact to our students and families. Right? Yes. Agreed. Um Just Well, and just to add on like when it comes to these changes, it's it's also not a matter of at least from my perspective the way I see it, it's not a matter of like we are fighting that this has to be the change. It's just the matter of

030like this is for lack of better words like this is what we could stomach on you know. So, like if something changes, I'm not going to go out there and be like, well, the board Now, if you threw everything out and did something completely different like yeah, that's one thing but I think adjustments here and there I think that's where I tried to mention in my comments where like the relationship is somewhat shifted. Because before it was very much we're bringing you a final product. But like this I don't know that like from our perspective if things change from here like that's understandable that you're now like a working member of of the group. It's just that we did put a lot of time and hours into this so we we would like in general

031things to you know, we do think that these are good decisions. >> that's very helpful. Thank you for sharing that. I appreciate that. Dr. Puzansky. I'd also like to give my thanks to all the hours that went into this. This is hard work and I know you're making difficult decisions that will affect peers and that's, you know, also very sensitive. So, thank you. Um quick count. I think there were roughly 40 items or so across the three pages. Can you talk a little bit about how something ended up on that page or didn't end up on that page? So, you know, this is a large district. You could have said we're not going to clean schools every other Tuesday. You could have said we actually should close additional schools in order to maintain a certain

032integrity of program in the schools that we operate. You could have I mean, again, you can pick anything. So, did this start with the district saying, you know, in prior meetings these are the kind of LEGO blocks we think you should play with and evaluate. Was it complete blue sky where you know, each team came up and said I've noticed this about our district. We could do it this other way. Just how did how did items get on this list? >> So, so at first it was presented as as a list to us and one of the things I think is really important that the community know is that a lot of the suggestions that came to us were brought to us from from meetings, from your board meetings where you know, where community members

033came in and said, have you thought about this? The line items really came from a list of that. Um, we were presented in general a list. There were at times where each group I feel like threw in different, you know, different suggestions of, oh hey, actually have we thought about this? Um, and then this list changed, too. There's a lot of things that started out as eliminations that became like, oh, let us rework this. Um, and so you'll see that with like Tills, there was like, hey, let's rework that. And so while that came to us as a suggestion, SEA didn't have that one, but like we were like, hey, if we get to rework this with the people involved, can we? And the group was very open to that and to the changes. Um,

034and that was kind of the magic of of what was happening in the room. But I I would also add that we were given opportunity to really put on the list whatever we thought of out of box. So, to your point, something that maybe someone hadn't presented before or hadn't been brought up at previous meetings, we were given an opportunity to present those ideas and to see if those ideas would get traction within our associations and then also with our sister associations. So, you had loop Oh, go ahead, please. I just wanted to add and just really focus for you guys that this is a full collaborative effort. Everything on that list was very heartfelt in making those decisions. We know money equals people and we're talking about our colleagues, we're talking about people we

035care about in our lives. And so, yeah, the list changed as we went through the process, but it would it Some days were more difficult than others depending on what popped up on the list. And I can honestly say everything that that's being presented to you today is all four associations in agreement. And that is something I don't think we've truly experienced before in this collaborative effort of IBN. Thank you. Any follow-up? Other board members? Uh, again, I want to reinforce, thank you. Please, of course, stick around. We may say, hey, how did that go and then when you went into those layers if we we want a little more depth behind the the layers of consideration if if if you're willing. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Thank you. Do you want to

036say anything, Michelle? All right, that brings us to 4B, uh, fiscal year 26-27 early budget projections. We're going to do a discussion on budget planning and potential areas to address the budget deficit. Uh, Dr. Menzel. Thank you, President Lewis, members of the governing board. I first want to begin by expressing my gratitude for all of the IBN team members for the presentation you heard tonight from the association leaders. Uh, they're uh, not exaggerating when they talk about the number of hours that have been put into having these very difficult conversations. And I think it's important to to reiterate uh, that none of the work was taken lightly uh, and there's a recognition that the the um, difficult budget decisions will have an impact on people. Uh, and as uh, Dr. Shelly Hummon said, uh, we

037focus first on how do we protect the core of what we do to support our students in their learning. And we know that uh, people across the organization and all the positions um, add value. And the the recommendations and the potential reductions that we're discussing this evening are not a sign of uh, anyone not doing their job or adding value to organization. It's about having to make difficult decisions with the financial constraints that the district is facing. Ultimately, our goal is to ensure that we have full and thriving schools and that we're viable long into the future as a district. And so as we have Shannon present the uh, a quick overview and reminder of the information that was shared back on October 28th with respect to our budget, uh, I'm hoping that our conversation

038following that presentation allows us to identify uh, where there are areas of alignment with the governing board or maybe where there areas you have further questions or perhaps misalignment. Uh, for from a budgeting perspective, we need to know if there's something that was on the green list that's in front of you that the board just says is a non-starter, we need to know that so that we can move in a different direction. Uh, I believe in honoring the IBN process and I think there's a recognition that uh, this governing board had requested options uh, before making a final budget decision and so we've made that shift. We've engaged in more robust conversation earlier and look forward for the uh, input from the governing board this evening as we take the next steps in preparing for

039the 26-27 school year. With that, I'll turn it over to Shannon for the presentation. Thank you. Uh, good evening, Board President Lewis, Vice President Sharkey um, Sharkey, members of the board um, and those that are here tonight. Uh, we are going to be looking at early projections uh, for the 26-27 fiscal year. Um, the purpose of this is to really set the stage as we begin the those budget discussions. And I will say that these are early projections. We usually do this in January um, with the early projections, but we don't have final numbers. Our 100th day doesn't actually even um, isn't until tomorrow. So, these are very early projections. And again, as Dr. Menzel um, stated, some of what you'll see in here tonight is um, might look familiar as it was things that

040were also discussed discussed when we met in October to talk about the budget. With that, I want to start with the district vision and mission. Um, I want to make sure that we ground ourselves in what our vision and mission is. Talking about the budget reductions and fiscal constraints that doesn't change that vision or mission, um, but it requires us to be thoughtful and intentional in how we make those decisions and hopefully some of that is conveyed through the with what we did with the IBN process. Um, our strategic goals that really impact for tonight's discussion and how we've gone into this process are goal three, attract, hire, develop, support, and retain highly qualified, passionate, and talented professionals. We've really tried to make that a for a part of the budget discussions and how do

041we deal with those reductions, but also make sure that we're um, attracting and retaining the staff that we do have. And then generate and utilize resources to maximize educational opportunities in order to ensure organizational health. And I think that's key for what we're talking about here tonight. As we look at what are the tough decisions that do need to be made um, and making sure that we're utilizing our resources is in the best way that we can. Um, this is an early budget projection. Um, the figures that we have are based on the information we have at this time. Um, as Mr. Buckley alluded to, it is difficult when you're trying in January to figure out what your you know, your enrollment might be for next year. Um, so these numbers are very early. They

042will change. Um, some numbers have changed and they might continue to change, but as we get more information, then that's when we can update projections and begin to understand more about how the budget is going to look. Hopefully, they're not huge changes, but I'd like to hope that um, our enrollment looks better than what we initially think. We're projecting. Um, the biggest driver for our budget is our average daily membership. Um, I'm not going to go a whole lot into average daily membership, but it's based off of how many kids uh, how many days enrollment within the first 100 days. Um, this looks at what has happened over the last five years. And as you can see, the largest decrease was in 24-25 of 411. So, we kind of started with we know that there

043will be changes for next year because of the closure of Pima and Echo. Um, and looking at what is what is the right number to use for that. Um, so I started with what is our our five-year trend? What has it been? The next slide will also look at two-year average and five-year average. And where we kept landing was really between it was about 90 to 100 more than what we've seen. And again, that's dependent. We haven't closed a school in a number of years. We know that other schools have lost roughly 25 or so, so I feel like that is um, a little bit higher number than what we've seen other districts lose through school closure. But I also believe that with the budget getting tighter and tighter and we're not having the um,

044I'll call them rainy day funds that we've had in the past, I would rather come to the board next year and say we have a little bit more than what we thought than having to come to the board and say we've got to cut another million dollars or more because we underestimated. Um, so again, looking at that two and five-year average, um, it's been roughly around um, not quite 400. This just goes into a little bit more detail into looking at that. The number I'm using for our projection is an average daily membership reduction of 490. Now, the state gives us additional weights for students that could be because they're preschool, K-8, or 9-12, but there's also additional weights um, for Group B students, special needs students, free and reduced lunch, gifted. So, when we

045take those weights and add on to that 490, that gives us a student weight count reduction of 609 or 2.3%. We've generally been at about 2%, so this is again a little bit higher than what we've seen um, in the past, but again, not knowing, you know, we're still working on getting kids enrolled at new schools, not knowing what that's going to look like, we chose to go with a much higher number. Um, our enrollment does impact the budget and what we um, what we can do. And so, because of that, um, higher reduction in weight count, um, that cut of 2.3% we anticipate a base level or amount per student to increase by 2%, which is or about $102 per student. So, um, because the weighted count is more than the 2% inflation count,

046uh, that would ends up in a reduction of about half a million dollars. Additionally, we have been bringing down the budget carry forward each year. Um, that has to do with a couple of decisions, but it also was impacted by the fact that we all know that it just costs more in this world than it used to. And so, we're seeing that impact in how much we bring um, we carry forward. So, we're estimating another 1.9 million reduction in carry forward. And then, um, there's some one-time funds in there that have to do with DAW weights and frame reduced weights. Um, I don't know that that'll be in the budget for next year. So, I've also pulled that out. Again, if we find out something different throughout the budget process, we'll obviously adjust that. But,

047all of those factors combined put us at a reduction of 3.3 million, um, for the budget. And I wanted to separate that out a little bit separate because what we're talking about tonight and the budget issues we're dealing with are really two things that are combined to make a bigger budget deficit. The first part being the reduction in, um, ADM and how that's impacting us. But, the second thing is over the years as we've, you know, continued to reduce, uh, or go down in enrollment, and we've tried to keep that away from, you know, budget cuts, um, but also still trying to give raises to our employees, decisions have been made, um, over the I mean, we've actually paid employees out of cash accounts for 20-plus years. Um, but the decisions have been made to

048pay for some or to move positions over to cash accounts that have very high balances. That's not sustainable. We've always known that wasn't sustainable. Um, it worked for quite a bit of time, but we've reached the point where it's no longer sustainable to do that. And so, there is 3.9 million that has got to get moved back to M&O accounts for next year. Um, and then there's another, if we were to do the full amount, there's some that we could do this year, and then we could, um, address the rest of it in the next fiscal year, um, but that would that would be 4.5 million. So, when we talk about a budget gap, you know, a range there, it's because there's some things that have to move this year, but there's some cushion on

049some things that we could push, um, for another year. Property casualty insurance, the district, um, has had a very robust self-insurance fund, um, that comprised of multiple funds, and and we've been using that to help offset the costs with, um, property casualty insurance and have not been fully funding that out of M&O. And we've also reached a point within that that we can no longer sustain that. And so, we definitely need to move at least 500,000 this year, or I'm sorry, for next school year, and then, um, continue to monitor that the following years will have to also move more, um, or contribute more from our M&O to that self-insurance to cover our property casualty insurance. So, between the budget gap with, um, ADM loss and then again these positions that we need to move

050over to M&O, we see our we find ourselves in a budget gap of roughly 7.7 million to 8.9 million to address the full deficit. Um, this really just takes a look at what's happened within our M&O over the past couple of years. Um, and it's multi-year projection, um, for year 2026-2027, we do have that factored in with the 609, um, student count reduction. Um, and you see that's that 3.3 million dollar reduction. Um, for the following years, we use the same number I use the same number that we've used in the past, which is about 485 reduction. That might be high, it might it might be low. It really, until we know how this year works out, um, it it's hard to tell what that number could be for projections. But, it gives us an

051idea that, you know, we have a large, um, budget deficit to address for next year. We'll still have to address that a little bit in the future years, but it's not as impactful as what we're talking about, um, now. And hopefully, we can address those issues and and and maybe change the course of where we're headed. The other part of that is it also assumes that we become stable with our carry forward and that stays flat at 8 million dollars, which is getting awfully close. The the board set minimum is 4%, which is, you can see, is roughly a little over 7 million. So, we're getting very close to that board set minimum as well. I'm not sure why it's not clicking. Did the batteries die? Okay. Um, and again, this was we this is

052probably familiar. It's was in the October presentation as well. And it really just looks at the carry forward and how that has changed. What you'll notice is a lot of the, um, higher years are when we had SR dollars to help support us. Um, you'll see that that's been coming down. In, um, fiscal year 24, the state did a one-time allocation of about 5.4 million dollars. We actually carried that over into fiscal year 25, which is why you see a very high increase in 25 and then a sharp decrease in 26. Um, we carried that money over into and then, um, we spent those funds in FY26, um, by giving one-time stipends to employees and addressing medical, um, medical insurance. Um, this slide again was also presented in October and it really just looks at,

053you know, we had very, very healthy balances and and the target was that we really did need to start to bring those balances down within our cash accounts, um, really as well as, um, in indirect costs and civic center or rental funds and bringing those down, which we've done. Um, but we do have to start addressing eve- evening out the, um, expenses to be more in line with the actual revenue received. Um, and then one of the things, and this was actually brought up in IBN, is, well, just reduce the positions that are being paid out of, um, out of the cash accounts and that way we don't have to move them to M&O. However, the positions that are paid out of those cash accounts, um, impact we've got, um, several, um, almost 17 positions

054for facilities, um, more than half of the business service department, um, or finance payroll is paid out of there, as well as more than half of the human resources department, um, which are all critical for making sure that people get paid, um, we're getting staff hired, and also that we're paying the bills to keep the lights on and another necessary compliance issues. Uh, this looks at the prior year and the current fiscal year. I will say keep in mind that prior year is actual expenses, where current year is budgeted. Um, we don't always spend every single dollar that's budgeted. That's why we have carry forward. Um, but this is within all funds. And what you'll see here is that certified and classified, um, are the highest groups within this. And that should be. Our goal

055is to educate kids. That's teachers. You would expect that our highest would be certified followed by classified. We broke it out a little bit, too, um, with district admin and school admin. Um, and the and the purpose is really just to show that we we're trying to put more into the classroom, trying to take, um, make cuts at an administrative level, um, and that's reflective here, at least within what's budgeted it versus expenses, um, but also again to show that when you're making decisions within salaries, it's hard when when the bulk of the salaries are certified and or or classified. Um, one of the discussions was it's really important to attract and retain and to do that means that we've got to address salaries and compensation. Um, so we did talk about what does it

056look like to do a salary increase. Um, for each 1% it's roughly 1 and 1/2 million dollars. Again, um, this breaks down the highest group being certified, classified, uh, site admin, district admin, and then we pulled out senior admin in this case um, from district admin. So, with all of that in mind, where does that leave us and what do we need to, um, address? The total budget deficit, um, based off of the enrollment decline, as well as needing to move those cash accounts over back into M&O, puts us at about a 7.7 million dollar budget deficit. If we were to give a 2% increase, and this is just a number that was that we've used as 2% has been what we've we've done in the past, that's about a 3 million dollar, um, addition

057to the budget. Um, horizontal movement and that is, um, if you're a certified employee and you, um, and you you take more classes, you take more college classes or other ways to, um, enhance your professional development, that can move you along, um, horizontally on the salary schedule. And so, doing that each year is about 500,000 dollars. Election costs, we know that we definitely have an election last year with, um, two board members, but if the governing board were to move forward with a bond election, um, that would those two would be about 200,000 dollars. And then we know there's just some budget increases that are going to hap- going to happen. Um, we are working on getting budget departments right now, but we know an internal audit, which is required by the district, is going

058to go up. We know that utilities happen to be increasing. Um, what's not factored in here is there is talk of APS possibly doing a 14% increase, which is pretty significant for us. Um, that's not in here yet because we don't know if they're going to do it. I'm hoping I'm hoping they don't. Um, but then as well as there's contracted services. And when I mean I'm not talking about um, sped contracted services, but we know that we use we contract out ABM cleaning. I anticipate that that'll go up. So right now we've put in a placeholder of about $200,000 for just anticipated things going up within departments and whatnot. Um, we have the Pima school closure, which we estimate a savings about 1.2 million. Echo Canyon school closure with an estimated savings about 1.3.

059And um, to make all that work, we also anticipate and we uh, talked about this at a couple of other board meetings is transferring DAA to um, M&O. And so we're anticipating moving about 5.4 million. All of that, if we were to do all of those things, would still leave us with a 3.6, almost 3.7 dollar uh, million dollar deficit. Um, because we are talking about moving um, DAA over, we cannot move the override dollars over. We can only move the state allocation, which is roughly 11 million dollars is the state allocation. The projected allocation for next year for both state and override is about 26 million dollars. We uh, anticipate carrying over about 12.5. And again, that's just based on we're only halfway through the year. We know capital expenses tend to hit more

060in the spring, but that's assuming that our expenses are roughly the same as they've been in the past. Um, and again, so that puts us at a projected expenses of about 23 million. If we move 9.6, and the way we get to 9.6 million is we know we've the 4.2 million that was approved for this year's budget, that continues forward. Um, because those dollars are now mixed into the M&O budget. If you add the 4.2 and the 5.4 that we're talking about to balance out the budget, that puts us at a 9.6 million dollar transfer, leaving us with a carry forward of about 6 million. Um, which as you can tell and see in this next slide is doable for a small amount of time. It is not sustainable without making changes to how we

061spend capital. Um, so we could do it for a year or two. Um, and and just keep our capital expenses within about where they are right now. Um, if we go beyond that, we have to start addressing bringing those capital expenses down or finding other ways um, to address capital needs. That could be in the sense of um, you know, plant funds, which would be like if we sold a building, that can be used for capital. So that could help offset some of these things. But the point is is it's not sustainable for a long amount of time. It's something we can do for now, um, but something that we'll have to address in the future. Um, so with that, we get to um, the items that we took to IBN. And as each of

062the four groups um, shared, we took oh, Just suggest maybe we take a pause for a second before it feels like a demarcation point. Um, so I want to go back to kind of the high level assumptions. I applaud the instinct to start conservatively. And if things end up a little bit more positive, then we've got wiggle room. Conversely, some of the decisions we're being asked to make are not easy ones to reverse. Once we make them, we've committed. And so and presumably most of these are things that we, you know, don't want to do or we wouldn't be doing them. So I just want to understand a little bit of where that conservativeness is. >> Sure. So one that you described, I think, is a source of state funding that we as a practice

063get every year, but absent knowing that it's been committed to for next year, you're not comfortable factoring in as revenue. Is that correct? >> Yes. And that is the hard part is that um, while we're also working on our budget projections for next year, I think you're referring to I'll just go back a couple slides here. While we're also working on a budget for next year, the state is working on their budget for next year and what that looks for looks like. Um, so it is a little bit hard um, No, I understand the challenge. >> Yeah, it's a little bit hard to know what's going to happen and that's why I say some of these numbers could change some. Yep. Um, what I would say is that there are a couple things when we're

064looking at it, we know that um, we know that we have to move, you know, 7.7 million >> little Can we go back? Sorry, let me I'm not So Just give me a minute just to kind of ask a couple of questions if you don't mind. Just I'm generally trying to understand it. That's the $848,000. Yes. Okay. In practice, has this programs that fund us at that 848,000, have they ever not been provided by the state in recent >> the one-time funds really have to do with some additional um, funding going towards free and reduced lunch, which is a weight that we get and district additional assistance. It could be >> have those not actually been approved in a given year? Um, they they are give they are approved in a given year. Um, they

065have not changed the weight. Um, you get a you get a a specific weight for those two items. That has stayed the same as have many things within Is the >> Yeah, so I think no, so not getting it at all or not getting a change in the weight? Not getting a change in the weight. So that $848,000 is really a way to address not changing those weights. So the question becomes, will we continue to get that money? Will a weight change? Is this That's the part I don't have an answer on. >> I'm sorry, I'm still a little confused. Which is the 848? The not getting the money or not getting a change in the >> $848,000 is additional one-time money that we have received for um, DAA Okay. >> district and district additional

066assistance and free and reduced. Both of those item uh, well, free and reduced lunch is currently a group B weight, where we say we have this many kids that are free and reduced and they say, okay, you get an additional weight of and I don't know the number off the top of my head, but you get an additional weight. That number hasn't changed. That's normal. Those weights don't always change. But they have given additional money for that free and for free and reduced lunch program. Uh, within M&O for free and reduced lunch. They the state. The state of Arizona. And so I understand it's one-time. Each year they get to choose whether or not they're going to do it. >> done it twice now. I don't know if it'll be in the budget for next

067year or not. DAA had not been increased in a number of years. In fact, we were um, it was actually being um, cut until there was a lawsuit. And then that's when they said, okay, we're going to fully fund DAA um, based off of what your allocation should be. They have increased the amount they give per student the la- um, a couple of times since that changed, but they haven't they didn't change it the last two years. What they did is gave just a a set dollar amount per student to each district, which is those one-time funds that we received. So we may or may not get them. It it it depends on how that's addressed in the budget. So this could look differently as we get closer to the proposed and adopted budget. It

068just depends on what we start hearing and things that are coming out um, from the state and what's in the budget or not in the budget. I guess I'm trying to understand, are we conservatively assuming that things that are not guaranteed recurring are not part of our top line, even if in practice, while they're one-time, they just happen to be one-time every year. Um, or are we making an assumption that one-time things that do have a pattern of reoccurring will reoccur and it's just not an increase to them that we're going to get. I don't have confidence that it will be there next year. I could be wrong. I don't I don't know the answer to that. I I I am hesitant to include something of $800,000 that may not be in the budget, at

069least at this point. Um, Even if it is in practice been in the budget the last several years. It's only been in the budget this year and the year before. >> Just the last two years. Okay. And then on the student enrollment count, um, so we are and again, I know it's the ADM and the the ratios. But we are conservatively assuming that because we took closed two schools, that we're going to see a little bit of an increase. >> Yes. Um, can you quantify the dollar amount that that increase represents? Is it 5,500 per student? But then we're in the ADM land, so I can't really do the math. Yeah. Um, it it I don't want to give a dollar number right off the top of my head and give a a a bad

070dollar number. I would say it would be um, the additional bump would be um, several hundred thousand. Uh, but I again, don't want to throw a number just off of the top of my head without actually looking at it. Um, we are projecting higher because we we just don't know how many students >> will will, you know, be here next year and what that can look like. Um, if we get farther down the road and we start looking at it and go, well, it looks like next year is is looking better than than what we anticipated, we can make adjustments. Um, I I think part of the to keep in mind is that while we know that there's at least 7.7 million that we have to address this year, there's really an additional amount um,

071to be addressed that if we came back and said, well, it's a little bit better than what we thought, like I said, we do have we know that the budget deficit is really more than 7.7. It's just we know that that's the number we have to address this year. Um and I think there's also room when we're talking >> of like a down payment on the next round Yeah. of reductions. >> Exactly. that we would need to make. >> And and I think that the two-year framing is really important here. We had the conversation previously. Uh I think at the November 18th meeting on do you accelerate phase two and try to get this all done in one fell swoop and uh for some I think very good reasons we said, no, we need to

072look at a two-year uh process. And so, that's the the recommendation that's coming forward here is on the the uh you have to do in order to uh have a balanced budget for next year this amount of cuts. We anticipate a comparable savings for the next two buildings that we uh repurpose um for the 27-28 school year. That's another uh 2 and 1/2 million. So, over the two years you have 5 million in ongoing uh savings resulted from uh closing the two buildings and repurposing them. At the same time, you're making some other adjustments here that allow you not only to address moving those um staffing costs from cash accounts to M&O, but also building in a pay increase for staff. And and so, that's the other part of the variable here. If you didn't

073include a pay increase for staff, you'd have to reduce expenditures by a lot less. Um so, there's going to be some element of a difficult decision when you're tackling uh this kind of challenge. And so, that's the balancing act, but from a structural budget perspective, uh I would encourage people to be thinking about two years. If you have more savings, um that uh just accelerates our paydown on what that structural deficit is uh and may make some of the decisions in the 27-28 uh budget a little bit easier, um but not easy. Uh I don't think it's easy for us. I don't think it's going to be easy for the state legislature because the revenue projections for the state, the amount of funding we get from the federal government, all is up in the air

074at the present time. And so, as much as we might uh hope for more, uh there's no guarantee we'll get it. And the other part of the state budgeting process that's relevant here is we have to approve a budget um June 30th or no later than July 15th. The legislature typically tries to get it done April or May, but for the last couple of years they've pushed it uh much later, the end of June. And so, we can't wait to make these kinds of decisions until we know what the state's going to give. And so, making the kinds of recommendations that we're talking about now are necessary because of the timing of the state budget allocations. And uh that's not optimal, but it is part of our reality. One of the things that is possible

075in an IBN process is if suddenly you discover that there's more revenue available from the legislature, you can put a provision in in the agreements that would allow for um incorporating that into what you provided for your employees. Uh we've talked about doing that before. So, there are some things you can do from a formula basis, but the timing is a challenge because of when the state um makes its decisions. Well, and I would add that makes it a juggle uh you know, we're juggling too and that uh Dr. Cruz and the HR department um is juggling though. We've got to get certified contracts out. We've got to get um notices out to employees. And and having that done within a timeframe when we're still gathering more information and waiting to see what all is

076is going to be in the budget or not in the budget makes it even more difficult. The um the 57 FTE paid out of cash accounts. Um I'm very aware of why decisions like that happen and how they just eat at you every year. Um I know you addressed, you know, we're not going to cut those positions, but is there a effort to move those to M&O so they aren't and I know that has a cost in of itself. You know, you got to you know, shell game with those. Um but at some point, if we keep them being paid out of cash accounts, we're going to run into this every year. Um is there an effort to move those to M&O even sort of piecemeal so that we can get out of that? Is

077that been happening? Is that a planned? That's the what we're looking at right now is if we we would be moving the bulk of the Would be over that way. Okay. Yep. And then getting the rest. There there'll be a you know, one or two in there that'll stay that can stay there. And and that's okay. Um but but really it's getting those positions back out of of the cash accounts and into M&O. Okay. And fully funding insurance. Okay. Uh second question. Um The you know, moving DAA money, we're sort of up against walls on both the east and the west side, right? If we don't move it, then we've got more cuts we have to make. If we do move it, we risk some financial metrics looking like, "Hey, you know, you're in the

078red because you moved too much money." Um Are any of these potential moves in you know, of that, are they things that would put us on the radar for like, "Hey, your balance is too low." Um what are some of the things that we would see? Absolutely. Um I mean, there's there's multiple factors that will impact what um what the state looks at as a risk assessment for us financially. Um but there are also things within here that will impact, you know, should we um should a bond be a passed and we start selling bonds, that'll impact our ratings. Um so, those things really do look at our is our enrollment going down? Unfortunately, it is. Um one of the other areas looks at, are you moving capital to M&O and how much are you

079moving? We've started to do that. Um and a third area looks at your your balances, your M&O balances and other balances, and are you bringing down those carryforward balances? And we are. Um in some case I mean, those are decisions that we um you know, enrollment, we, you know, are trying to address, but some of those are decisions that we've made that are trying to balance the budget, but are also trying to be able to provide everything we can for our students without making some of the really hard decisions. Um but they do absolutely impact our how, you know, our financial risk with the state, but they'll also impact um what our ratings will look like uh down in the future when we do bond ratings. Thank you. And you know, I just think that's

080that's a business decision that, you know, hopefully we're okay with, right? We've got to we've got to pay on one side, either we cut more things from this list or we put ourselves potentially in the red on that side. And you know, I I think, you know, some are better than others, but I think we're still impact there's still going to be impact from that. And so, I appreciate that knowing that, you know, when we see, "Hey, this metric is in the red." Yes, we knew that and that was something we took on knowingly. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah, I I think that the 5.4 million from DAA is the biggest concern I have and I think that echoes what Mr. Sharkey's saying. And I think that's what your next slide was going to break

081into. So, I'm ready to hear that if you're ready to move on. I don't know. Dr. Potensky, go ahead. Well, and if this is actually it's the cash account side if you can go back. So, Whoops. we have funded we've had a structural deficit for a while. We've masked it to a certain extent or funded it by using cash accounts that are not as sustainable that are not sustainably funded. So, it's sort of like well water, eventually it gets depleted. Um where are we? And there's multiple of these. They're not like there's not a single piggy bank that we're going to based on where the cash comes in from. Um can you just spend an extra minute help me help us understand how depleted is that well water? Yeah. And why have we decided this

082is the year and at this level that we should reduce our water usage Sure. instead of a more graduated approach or you know, any number of other approaches? Yes. Um I mean, as you can see um over the last really five, six years, we've depleted it considerably. Um specifically the indirect costs account is the largest one that had the largest balance. It's down to about little over a million. What it really comes down to and why we're saying we have got to address this moving into next year is that the revenue coming in and the carryforward within those cash accounts will not sustain the expenses that we currently have in there. It like there is not enough revenue to cover all of the expenses that are in there moving forward. So, we have to address

083it at this point because there's it's it's it's not going to cover everything that we're currently paying for out of those accounts. Um there is a little bit more room within the rental account. Um and we have been working on um how can we increase rev uh you know, rental revenue. Um however, there's more flexibility within the rental account, which is why we've kind of staggered that a little bit and said we can move some for next we need to move some for next year, but we don't have to move all of it. Um within the indirect cost, we do need to move the two it's like 2 million to over 2 million dollars we've got to move out of that indirect cost. Um we take a portion of community ed funds. So, community ed

084has their programs. We take a portion uh 10% of their revenue and use that for business needs. There's a little bit of room in there, but it's again very I would say within a half million. Um and then the um Medicaid um and again, that was in the same situation as the indirect costs is we've been covering the additional costs within special need place special ed um contracted services. We've been really because it's so much more expensive than hiring your own staff. We've been using that account to really offset those expenses and it's the same situation. There just isn't enough in those accounts to continue covering the expenses at the rate we've been putting them in there. Thank you. >> I would just add that um prior board um established minimum and maximum ranges in

085those cash accounts because the balances had been so high. So now we're operating within that, but we didn't move some of those positions sooner even though Shannon uh for the last two or three years has been saying we need to start moving those positions uh because we also wanted to be able to provide pay increases for our employees. And so balancing how do you say you don't have money for raises when you have really high balances in those cash accounts was part of the reason why we didn't move sooner on this. Uh you can make an argument of the reason. Um I think Dr. Leary, you were um referring to the capital projections for where we are. >> Yes, ma'am. And had some questions within that. I just wanted to hear what was coming next

086because I I that's a chunk of change that we're still that's the majority of what we're banking on right now. And it makes me uncomfortable. So Um >> Soothe me. >> [laughter] >> I will try to do that. Um I don't think there's anything soothing in any in any of this. Um but as we move into the next part, it really looks at um what did we discuss with the IBN groups and what are the options that when we looked at with them, what are they um options that you know, might not love it. I don't think any of us really love any or like any of this. Um but what are the things that we are we feel like we can move forward with. Um as as they were saying earlier, the process that

087we took is we we listened um throughout the various board meetings that have been happening um and that were happening in the first half of the year as well as other recommendations that came through as to what are some cost-saving items that we can look at and address. Um some of them kind of have a domino effect, so you'll see like the first two close Main Street and close Oak. Um we, you know, there are savings there um to be able to move the um all of Main Street over to um you know, MD to this location MDA assumes that some folks from here are moving out to other locations. So there are a little bit of dominos that happen with some of these items, but um these really were generated by what did we

088hear from from um the IBN groups, what did we hear from from you all, what did we hear from community ideas on on what we could look at. And what we did is we first um sent that around to the um cabinet team and said, here are some ideas. What do you what do you guys feel like? What do you what do you think? And then we took that through the IBN process. And so what you see here tonight is all based off of those IBN conversations. Um and what they look at. And some of these have evolved some, so it was, well, I don't love that option, but can you give us an option A and an option B. Guidance counselors being one of those things. Don't love the option of going to that

089higher number, but what if we went with this number, what would that savings be? So we, you know, took some of those ideas, worked through them with different things and and came up with estimated savings. Um that in total comes to roughly 4.3 million for um MNO. There were some items that impacted other funds beyond MNO and and that's okay because we know we're talking about we've got to make reductions in all areas. Um and then some areas um outside that are just unique little funds. You'll see a couple of these items don't have dollar amounts in them, but I included them because um they're areas that we wanted to talk about more. Um so one of the areas was teacher instructional leaders and what the IBN group said is we think there might be

090some ways that we can find some additional savings there. We just need to work through that a little bit more as our group. So we left it as these are also items or areas that we're looking at, but I don't have a dollar, you you know, reduction quite yet. Um I I I want I don't know if this is the time Sure. but I want to talk about counselor ratios. Sure. It's what is it? 370 now? 375. 375. >> I'm going to go back. >> industry low for the state of Arizona. Yes. >> Ratio wise, right? Um It's higher than um I think what the guidance counselor national guidance counselor group recommends, but it is lower than what you'll see in other districts. Um and it is more in line with what we had in

091the past and I'll let Dr. Cruz also Uh the ASCA, which is the Arizona School Counselors Association state average is 645. That's based on I believe 23-24 data. That's the latest data we have. Thank you. And so we're still at a low number with 450. Nobody wants a caseload like that, but nevertheless. Okay, thank you. I just wanted that's a substantial number and I would just wanted to hear where we were relative to industry standard. Dr. Cruz And on that one, if we see estimated FTEs of 10.7, should we interpret that as meaning we're eliminating 10 to 11 positions and there isn't a pool concept for this other than if there were retirements? Well, I I will tell you that HR is in the process of working with legal counsel based on the direction from

092the board and action possibly taken at February 10th meeting. We will come back. We will have a plan by which to deal with that. Okay. Is this the time to ask questions about different issues? >> to do this now or relative to your case? So I I think there are a couple of slides at the end that that are probably important as final framing thoughts and then we can come back to this. Sure. Thank you. Um Yeah, here we go. Here we go. So um just a couple slides left on this. Um we we did want to share um you know, we have tried to the past couple years we've know we we've needed to to make reductions. We've tried to do things that keep that as, you know, away from the classroom as possible.

093Again, it's hard to do when your our sole job is in the classroom and teaching and teaching kids. Um but this just kind of shows what we have reduced within some various departments over the past couple of years. Um educational services taking the largest um amount of that for an estimated savings of 1.4 million over the last couple years. Um and then this is the last one and then I'll go back and we we can look through the cost savings. I'm just kind of give some timelines and next steps. We have um IBN meetings again um next week, January 26th and um February 23rd. Uh February 10th we anticipate more discussion on um at the governing board meeting um to get a better idea for what is um palatable so that we know which direction

094to move um when we start talking about salaries and issuing contracts. Um the March 10th board meeting, we will then bring the approval of the salary schedules. So at that point, because we need to get ready to issue contracts, that would be when we um have a idea and and are bringing forth this is what the salary schedules would look like based on information from previous meetings. Um certified contracts would go out March 23rd. Uh uh admin contracts, we tentatively have that for March 30th. Again, there's another governing board meeting on the 7th of April. Classified work agreements would tentatively be issued on April 20th. And then in June we do the um proposed and adopted um budget hearing and adopted budget. I'm going to go back to this and um answer your questions. Thank

095you for for uh bringing a little bit of the end to the statement. All right. Questions? All right. Yeah, can you speak to the community specialists? Um as I understand this, it's not like a ratio based theory. We're just saying we will eliminate five positions and then work backward into what the employed ratios are. Yeah, so the initial discussion is we had looked at um But can you first explain what they do? Oh, sure. Um I'm going to let Leah talk about what they do. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. Good evening. Um community specialists are incredible individuals across all of our learning communities. Their um chief jobs are really what is described in the position is to connect with the community. You'll find these folks at our parent-teacher conferences, sometimes translating, making home

096visits for attendance, working with attendance contracts, supporting families who may need some additional leveraged support with, let's say, um utility payments, really trying to make the connections for any families that are at risk, experiencing issues that they could receive support for. This group of individuals works hand-in-hand with families to connect them to resources, also to provide um feedback to schools. Sometimes it's helpful to have uh families who may not know the lingo of the schools having a a community specialist there to help navigate is often what we see them up to. Really within each of the learning communities and schools, they're up to different things based on what those communities need, but on on given day you can see um you can see them at Sequoia engaging families in volunteering to put on incredible theater

097shows and you may see some at Yavapai working in the registration area around kindergarten time helping families to collect documents understand those processes and procedures and so it really it can look very different but the proposal moving forward would be a reduction to have really ratio based on need but minimally one per learning community. Sorry, say that phrase again. Minimally ratio based on needs. So why do we believe because sometimes the amount of community specialist support can be driven by income eligibility and so there is a desire to retain one per learning community to make sure all families within each community have access but we do have some learning communities where income eligibility saturation is different. I guess I'm asking you why do we believe we can live without five? So the initial discussion around

098this when we and the dollar amount savings with the five is that our our initial suggestion was perhaps we have one per learning community and an additional one for the Coronado learning community. The group felt like they were comfortable with and that doing so would basically eliminate five of those positions. So there are 11 today? Yes. >> Okay. Yeah, sorry I missed that part. So the idea behind it was well we don't know that we want to exactly say you get one per learning community and Coronado gets an extra. We think that we should look at what is the appropriate ratio based on that. So it really got left with we are comfortable with this recommendation however we'd like to identify um what those positions are those the what we have based off of ratio

099versus saying well just everybody gets or every learning community gets one. If that makes sense. Yes. Okay. Yes. I I've seen these positions also funded from federal money but I don't want to mess up our M&O conversation right now. Yeah, so right now they're actually funded out of our D-seg which is within M&O. >> Okay. But Now I get it. So I have a question or I guess a concern related to the teacher librarians with the classified and I don't I want any of them to lose their jobs so preface it with that. But a teacher librarian can substitute, they can help in the classroom, they can do lesson plans, they can do significantly more in the library and so um I don't know if if the association wants to speak to it. So a

100decision to make to remove the teacher librarian and keep the classified resources. I just I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around that because just because of the amount of extras that the teacher librarians are able to do particularly with um um as things are getting tighter and teachers may need more help or or somebody to step in and so on which a librarian could do. Absolutely. Yeah. Sure, I can take an initial stab I at the response. You're absolutely right. The certified teacher librarians are in a a day-to-day operation of a school more of a utilitarian player because of their certificated status does allow them to substitute teach to supervise groups of children without other adults there which do then detract from the oversight of the library media center. So to the point

101of they are more utilitarian in being able to meet the needs of a school as whole absolutely. I think that in terms of the actual physical space of the library and circulating books those types of library duties that that looks very different in an elementary school versus a middle and a high school. So I think realistically the job duties will always look a little bit different. The types of people we have in those roles you you've pointed out correctly that when they're certified teacher there's many more jobs that they could be pulled away from their primary function to go support in a school and on any given day in a school there is a need for those supports. So building on Ms. Warner's question which had a similar observation similar line of questioning how does

102the process take into account the consequences of them losing that certification for example we're going to have potentially have higher sub costs if we can have sub costs or teachers will then have to take on certain responsibilities that right now the library is able to take care of. Like how does the IBM process understand kind of unintended consequences if not intended consequences and sort of holistically score some of these? I can talk a little bit about in the certified library when it comes to substitute costs in those I would defer a little bit to Dr. Cruz. I think overall in the conversations there is a strong desire to retain teacher librarians in our middle and high school. I would anticipate there was at one time strong feelings about retaining them in every one of our

103school sites. I think because some of our schools already work with library resource specialists circulating their books and running their libraries it was a little bit less of a jump to what would this look like if it was a classified position versus a certified teacher position because in currently in our elementary and K8 that is the functioning role. But there were not exhaustive conversations about the unintended consequences of the additional duties that library teacher librarians are pulled from their primary in order to support. So for example if they act as like a shadow IT organization if they're the place that students who don't have laptops come to to get set up if they are kind of our front line for AI adoption and training. I'm not saying that these things can't be covered elsewhere. It's

104more of a process question. How does the IBM process when ultimately putting something on the green list then kind of think through the 360 impact of it um which folks may not fully appreciate depending on who's in that particular discussion at that particular IBM meeting. I would say at the the table of IBM IBM conversations it was probably discussed more in generalities not as specifically to the point that you're making. I think there's because each school runs different what may happen at a high school bookstore versus in the library in a in a middle school may look very very different. So I don't know that among the whole group there's common and specific understanding of exactly the functionality at each one of the school sites. I also don't know that across the school sites so

105for example across all of our high schools and all of our middle schools the ways in which those roles are implemented is exactly the same. I think there is a layer and level of variance and so to to say we spoke very very in-depth to to your point around AI digital citizenship teaching children APA research skills all the things we know certified teacher librarians are truly up to with our students every day. We did not talk at length about each and every one of those roles. I would I would add that two other things that are I think relevant to the conversation. One last year when we were working with Desert Canyon Elementary and Desert Canyon Middle School and they had a retirement we did not replace the certified teacher librarian and we just continued

106with the support of the library resource specialist on that campus. The other K8s have all operated with a library resource specialist and not with a certified teacher librarian. None of my comments should be construed as not supporting the people who are serving in this role because I think they add value. I will also say that in emails that have been circulating with my colleagues today about some proposed legislation many of them said well we don't even have librarians. There's a bill out about librarians and membership in a library association. They said we don't even have librarians haven't had since the 2000s early 2000s. So so the fact that SUSD has been able to keep them for a longer period of time than virtually anyone else is pretty significant and special but it's also one of

107those things that when districts have been faced with budget challenges in the past that's one of the changes that they've made and they've still been able to uh to find a way to navigate some of those unintended uh consequences of of that shift. I mean Oh, please. Thank you. I've just got a question since you you brought that up that was a question I had. Did did you discuss or is it can is it a point of discussion that we could look at this consider phasing out the teacher librarians and attrition or is That's always a possibility that we could do things through attrition and with respect to the certified teacher librarians it's expected that every one of them would have a landing spot within the district in terms of a teaching position so we

108wouldn't have to lose the the people. But that's part of why we wanted to have the conversation tonight. The IBM process was done at a very large scale to get us to a big number and and we wanted and needed to know from the governing board if you want us to move forward with this with the modification of this if there's something that needs to move off the green and so that would be one of the things that we could could consider if that's the interest of the board. I'd like to know has a survey been done or is that possible that we could you know reach out to our senior staff and get their thoughts on on this or their concerns before making decisions that are going to fundamentally affect our schools? So, when

109you ask about a survey, it leads to follow-up questions. Do you want to ask about all of the proposed cuts because I can predict how that will play out. If it's my position that's being cut or my friend's position that's being cut, then I'm going to oppose it. I I think there's some value in understanding and I know that TJ mentioned earlier that he surveys his members. Right? So, the associations gather feedback from their members and do their best to represent at the table. I'm not sure how much a survey saying of this list, if you sent that out, what would be different if you've got to skate to the 7.7 million that we're working to reach for for next year plus the 3 million for the 2% increase. So, I I think that's the

110challenge. Not opposed to it, I'm just not sure what it will give you that's different. So, just sticking with the librarians for a minute. I I because I care about it, but also it's just a good way in to understand the process. So, for example, how do we score the impact holistically? Um when then in the decision-making process does the impact then actually get accounted for in terms of changes in responsibilities? Um You know, so for example, if a role of librarian is shadow IT, and now all of a sudden we don't have anyone on site who can handle that IT, we might then need to staff up additional IT. Like, I'm trying to understand the dynamics here. Like, how does that play forward? What's the order of operations for that? So, in terms of

111the the IT function, and I haven't looked at the job description recently. I know that LRSs have taken a lot of that responsibility on at the campuses that don't have teacher librarians. And to the point that was made earlier, I think there's differences of roles and responsibilities for the certified teacher librarian based on the needs of a building. In this again, I don't mean this disrespectfully, but in some respects it's a utility player. They're certified teacher, and so if my need is for a particular thing in a particular day, substitute to fill a classroom, you can backfill the library to have someone else be there when students are coming in with a a teacher in the classroom, and you have the the teacher librarian certifying. So, it's a utility kind of position. If if they're

112LRSs, it's going to continue. You still have a full-time person dedicated to the library. They're not necessarily going to be someone who could substitute, but they might be. Some of them have emergency credentials to be a substitute teacher. And so, I I think that um the things that you might be more likely to lose that we've seen in some of the emails that have been sent to us are the the different kinds of clubs and other things that the teacher certified teacher librarians are helping to support on a campus, the things that they're doing that are sort of ancillary, not assigned to a particular class, but it's one that you can assign to the librarian because of their certification. So, uh to the point that Dr. Dansky made earlier, when we're trying to staff efficiently

113with limited budget resources, >> understand. that that becomes part of the equation. So, there may be some things that we no longer can do that are nice to do. But how do we protect the core in this current environment is part of the question. I just one other thing to add is I would say we probably operated on some level of assumption that both the LRS and the certified teacher librarians are in some way, shape, or form operating as a shadow IT in their implementation of the school day. >> That particular example is something that we can >> That particular example, particularly related to device device checkout, >> all of that kind of stuff. I would say the LRS at Cheyenne may also have a a heavy lift in that same vein. Yeah. When we

114see dollar amounts, Shannon, are these average per role or did you look Let's imagine that every librarian was a 30-year veteran and so at the top of the scale. Yeah. Would it be So, >> their actual comp or is it an average? >> So, what I did on this is I looked at what are the the sal- what are the total salaries right now Okay. >> with the folks that are in there. Um teacher librarians do tend to have more experience and more education, so they are higher than their salary is higher than an average teacher would necessarily be. Um so, for the savings, I looked at what um what right now are the costs based off of who we have in those positions now and then got an and then took an average. And

115I did the same with the classified. What is the average classified um and and the difference between those two times the FTE to get that savings. Okay. Thank you. Julie, did you want to weigh in on this or you with being in the LRS and that's playing out one one of many examples of unintended consequences. The green button there. Thank you. I'm the LRS over at Pueblo Elementary. Um one of the clarifications I can make for you is in our job description, we are not IT. Um so, we do check in and out devices, but we are not doing IT. Um on my campus, teachers are trained to call the help desk for a work order to be created, and it is and that's auto-generated to me, so I know a student needs a device.

116So, I check it out and I put it in the teacher's mailbox, and they're good to go. Thank you. Just needed a little story there. Mr. Sharkey. Um You you've Dr. Dansky want to understand kind of where the wind blows in in this topic with the teacher librarians. You know, my sail is pointing in favor of, and the key for me is off of one thing that Ms. Mitchell said um when you brought up um research and sources and AI. And so, the I look at students I deal with at ASU and how they're impacted by ChatGPT and the ease by which they can get the information they need without actually doing what those of us who went through it would call research and citing and validation. Having and then we're talking about high school

117and middle school. So, having those five and five individuals who are not only trained in that, but can be a partner with a chemistry teacher and an English teacher and a math teacher to support them in that, that gap is only going to get worse and worse. And not having someone in that role, I think of the preparedness that our students will leave our halls with without having those skills, and that to me seems like we are not doing our job. And I think we're much more at risk for that. Um Not that the chemistry teacher and the math teacher and history can't do it, but for them to have a professional who focuses on that skill, so they can call them in and send them and send students there, um I think is just

118so germane to what we're preparing our students for. Um I think the other things are all valid points, but to me that seems like a gap that if we lose out on that and this goes to the what it means for our students and you know, yes, the teacher librarians might substitute and might work with kids, but they're not having a class themselves, but I think that impact is huge. So, just to give you an idea of kind of you know, where things um land with me, that skill set, that service that they're providing and supporting however many teachers there are at each school in that is invaluable. Can I ask a follow-up question on that though because uh given the uh cost-saving decision through attrition at Desert Canyon Middle School, now you're not staffed

119accord- properly if you're going to say you have to have a certified teacher librarian at every middle school and every high school. And so, is it a ratio-based discussion? Uh is it Do you want to have one per every high school or is it every high school and every middle school? And then what about the K8s? Now, I think an interesting thing is what's the impact been? Um I don't know how long it's been in place um since we um changed there. Um I know we have done it at elementary, um but again, it's sort of a different uh sort of animal there. Um a fair question on the K8s, don't have an answer right now. Um you know, I don't can't express how different it is in the K8 environment versus middle school, high

120school, but it is a fair question. Um but you know, of these things, that probably gives me the most pause of the list on here. So, appreciate the chance to share. At this juncture, I would like to ask each board member, Ms. Carney, Ms. Warner, Dr. Patensky, Mr. Sharkey, to chime in with kind of four thoughts as we send the staff on its way. Uh one, what did you hear tonight? Um what did you get out of it as we kind of process our own comprehension? Uh two, what holes in the work might there be that we would like to fill or know a little more about? Maybe they're they're not holes, but we just didn't process it yet. Um three, uh what additional data would we like that maybe wasn't presented or could help

121us a little more as we have the next several weeks, next few months. I'll repeat all these uh coming. And um as we become a part of the solution for this uh awful task to get to 7.7 million uh and we want to thank everybody for all their incredible work of vetting painfully. Thank you all at the table and in our audience and on our community members who are communicating with us. Uh what what can we do to to help and support this process? So, I'll repeat my four hopes as we go around the room and share. What did we hear tonight? What holes might there be or misunderstandings do I want more clarity on? Uh what additional data might I like? And uh how do we become part of the solution uh for this

1227.7 million? And I'll just open it up to anybody who would like to try to ramble through that. Ms. Carney. Thank you, President Lewis. I'm I'm just um going to speak to the to the board. At our retreat, we said we all agreed that we want our district to be the top choice for all families, right? And I think the quality of care uh for our students and staff in our schools matter. And so, therefore, the positions on our campuses should be the last absolute last thing that um to cut. And one thing that we have not talked about, and I've I've brought to the tables before I was even a board member, is the communications overspending in the budget. And um if you if you look at the communications budget, we still are spending

123$1.3 million um even though we've cut salaries, the purchase services are up, the other purchase every other account is up. We really need to take a look at that. We we just spent 98,000 on Davidson and Belluso, a marketing firm. There's a lot of money in here that I I've brought up in our one-on-one. I asked uh if you could please put some of that on here, and nothing's been done. So, I'm just bringing that to the table. That is a a gap. It's a hole in the work. I love marketing. I do it in my business, but it's it's somewhere we need to look at cutting before we ever start touching employees on our campuses. Thank you. Ms. Warner. Yes, so I agree um 100% with uh board member Carney. And I and I

124do appreciate the insight and the contribution from the associations. It was very very helpful. Um there's a lot of work to be done, and I would like to see a breakdown of the costs in marketing as far as the staff. I think that the entire board needs to be sent that. This has been something that we've been talking about for 3 and 1/2 years now, and it it needs to be taken care of particularly when we're talking about cutting positions that directly touch our kids every day. Thank you. Dr. Petinsky. On the question of marketing, I respectfully disagree. I think our goal is to grow, and we are competing in a marketplace, and we're competing against for-profit and nonprofit schools that I guarantee you spend a much larger percentage of their budget and on a

125dollar ratio uh classroom to to marketing. And so, for us to unilaterally disarm and just hope and expect that people will understand the value of our district, I actually think the opposite. That if we were a business, we would be investing more in enrollment marketing um relative to our goals of of growth. That said, I think where I'm a bit aligned, our responsibility is full and thriving schools. And I want us to be in a position of growth. I don't think we retain and attract students by diluting the experience they have at our schools. I think that's a recipe to a race to the bottom. Um when a family and yes, you could argue had they never experienced it like other districts may not have had teacher librarians or at least in memory may not

126have had teacher librarians. I understand that may not then pull at them. But if we're a district that people choose because we have registered nurses, then that really matters. It attracts families. They choose us because of counselors. That matters. Right? If they choose us because maybe they can't articulate it that it's a teacher librarian, but that their kids have a joy um of learning that comes through the library, and they're exposed to AI literacy skills, they're learning research skills. This will not make me a very popular person, but I think if our focus is on growth, it makes a lot more sense to close more schools than to dilute the quality of the programs at the schools that we operate. I do not believe that the long-term success of our district is driven by whether

127we have 30 schools or 26 schools or 22 schools. I believe that is an incredibly painful transition for us to make, but once it's made, and I live in a community, and I'm enrolled in a district, that is my new normal. Versus this kind of death by a thousand cuts that affects lots of schools um and in small ways and then eventually in cumulative ways, a family says, "You know what? I'm going to go to school B or school C or school D because of the environment that that school provides." Um again, I don't know that they'll ever notice that they went an extra mile to get to the school, but they absolutely will notice a difference in the quality of experience that they have in our schools versus other schools. So, I look at

128this and I ask myself, what is my kind of value in recommending cuts? And I think it is to have fewer schools that are as fully resourced with the maximum kind of learning experience that our families have grown used to than it is to maintain as many schools as possible and negatively affect the quality of the experience across those schools. Probably the only person on this board that is recommending that we expand the number of closed schools in phase two, but if the answer to your question is I would like to understand if we took a more aggressive approach and expanded the number of schools that we were willing to close, um what would that do to this math understanding that we're kind of dangerously low in our cash accounts. So, we may not have

129a two-year window in which to operate. The second thing that I would like to understand is a more explicit kind of staffing at the district level, which we kind of got here. Um you know, how many administrative assistants do we have at the district level? You know, really trying to understand these roles and positions, which I know is something my colleagues have asked about in the past as well. Um and then the third is to understand if we are more aggressive in site sales, uh property sales, which then goes into the capital only accounts, but then that sets us up to be able I understand this is not sustainable, but I'd like a little bit of a better understanding of what degrees of freedom property sales flowing into capital accounts, and then things that were

130in capital accounts being able to flow elsewhere or other things going into capital accounts. I forget the direction. So, those are the three that are still very much on my mind. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Sharkey. Um reiterating what Dr. Petinsky said, and I've said this before about not impacting our product offering is very important to me so that we don't get in a death spiral and cause more attrition from with our families. Um uh agreeing with um Ms. Carney and Ms. Warner on the the district side, um you know, looking at the items that are on here, um things that are from the district side um are more expense, not FTE. And I would think I appreciate having the list of district office staffing here. Appreciate having the last 3 years of where reductions

131were made at the district office. Um in the sense of everybody giving something um and what the associations talked about and what they've gone through, and agreeing to whether it was thumbs up or thumbs sideways on these decisions. Um I would think there's probably some more we could get with the and I know there's things like transportation on here and things that, you know, we we are already thin, but um I would think there's going to be um some uh FTE we can get from the district side um if everyone's coming to the table and giving on this. So, that's just my takeaway from going here. And um again, thanks again to the associations for coming to this list with some um deep cuts in many areas. Thank you. Uh thank you, governing board. I

132uh was at Arcadia today, where we have 58% of our students from out of the Arcadia area, and 50 of those 58% are from out of Scottsdale. And it was just such a beautiful feeling of joy on the campus, a culture of maturity among the students. The programs and the clubs were vibrant. You know, it's at capacity where they have waiting lists. It's just a beautiful feeling, and I thought, "That's what I want. I want that feeling everywhere." It was a joy, but to know that they are looking at cutting or have made a recommendation to and are cutting this very small population that's in their Japanese program and offering an alternative service to the Japanese services language services, world languages uh was painful to hear, but it an echo of what we're going through

133tonight. Uh I appreciate the macro perspective brought up by Dr. Potensky. I appreciate the three-year perspective of desire for for FTE understanding uh by Dr. Mr. Sharkey. I appreciate Ms. Carney's hope for positions last and Ms. Werner in agreement with the concerns over marketing. I There's a There's a swirl here of of alignment, a little bit of division on the marketing approach uh amongst us. Uh but I think and again, I'm uncomfortable with the DAA solution. I've just got to keep laying that out there, but I'm not going to bucket. I'm I'm going to support it. I I was freed on that one cuz that's where our answer is right now and I and I appreciate all the work of IBN and the the optics of painful cut suggestions to your friends and colleagues and

134our wonderful professionals who who touch the lives of children and support the lives of those who touch the lives of children. So, this is going to continue to be difficult. I think we can come together and Ms. Carney looks like you have your light on. I just wanted to ask if we could if the board could possibly get one thing um what programs and positions have been added since 2019? that are being paid out of M&O. That might help us. Great. Thank you. And that's more questions like that can be sent to staff or Dr. Menzel and he'll get them to staff. Um Any Any other hopes for data? Okay. Well, I I I want to say thank you, Shannon. I I just can't get over the quality of work. Thank you, IBN. I can't

135get over the hours and and depth of your conversations. This is an awful list and uh the work that it took to put it together was incredible. And your knowledge of of the state situation and the state of the budget and and your projections that are conservative uh are I think appropriate and I hope you're a little bit wrong. I hope you're a lot wrong, but you haven't been so far. Uh so, we we will continue to to struggle through this together. Any final words, Dr. Menzel? Well, I'd like to ask if um Ms. McLennan can talk about what we need to bring forward at the February 10th meeting based on um what we have in the proposal here, what we've heard tonight and uh what we need in order to be able to issue

136contracts in March. Okay. Or February Thank you, Dr. Menzel, Dr. Lewis and members of the Governing Board. So, um unfortunately, this analysis is not my first go-round this school year with the various school districts around the valley. What I would suggest um that the Governing Board do um is that there be separate agenda items on the February 10th to look at these in group settings. So, some of them are reductions of positions based on staffing ratios. For instance, with respect to the guidance counselors, with respect to the community specialist, with respect to the social workers. So, those would be grouped as an item and if the board wanted to pull one of those items from that action item, you could pull that. Um so that you would only approve partial reductions in staffing. Um we

137would also have an action item to go with respect to the changes in um in the months of employment or changes that would affect the bottom line of um the salaries and wages for employees. So, an example to that would be the transportation, um the security uh recommended changes. So, and then with respect to the stipend list, um there have been recommendations to remove some of the stipends. We could handle those in a separate action item as well or when you have the approval of your um list of stipends, which generally would come later, I would imagine, Dr. Cruz. March. So, that's in general the manner in which I would recommend that you address these. Some of them I don't think you need to vote on. For instance, moving Avid is a you know, it's

138a budget decision. You're showing the savings, but you don't need to vote on those. But other other items you would. Can I ask on matters of performance pay to the extent that they're contractual what do we actually do? I understand someone could voluntarily you know, forfeit, but I assume it's we're talking about a single year and do we have the ability to override someone's employment contract like that? Uh good question, Dr. Potensky. You have two matters that would affect the performance pay for your senior uh administrative cabinet and for your superintendent on this sheet. With respect to your senior administrative cabinet, I've already drafted the contracts for your review in February and for your senior administrative cabinet uh for your consideration and approval. With respect to um your superintendent contract, that contract is up for

139renewal this April. The Governing Board cannot begin discussions with its superintendent regarding any contract negotiations until April 2026, but that it is an item that could be addressed in April for the next year. So, what I didn't appreciate is these are annual contracts. So, it's not someone got hired three years ago and has a right to performance pay. Like we do these contracts every year. So, every year we have an opportunity to include it or not. Is that what you're saying? That's correct with the exception of your contract with your superintendent. >> With with the exception of Dr. Menzel. Thank you. So, the way I heard you lay out the action items, this is for Dr. Menzel and Shannon as well. Theoretically, if those are put as action items and the board says, "No, no,

140no. I don't want to cut this. I don't want to cut that. I don't want to cut that." We're going to end up short. So, that doesn't seem like a good way to go about it. Seems to me like you know, we have a bogey we need to hit. It seems more like there's a package A, package B, package C, all of which make the math work, but have different items. I would just hate to have these as action items and then again, theoretically, we all say, "No, no, no, no, no." And now we're in a bind because we're short. Well, that was that was I What I heard tonight was the thing that um there's most heartburn about is the the IBN recommendation on teacher librarians. I did not hear anything else that the

141board said should come off the green list. So, I wouldn't know how to go about creating an option B and C when IBN has put this forward and given there are more savings than the budget target here, if you didn't include the teacher librarians in this, we'd still meet the target for the 2% pay raise. So, I'm not sure what other option we would create. So, if there are other things that need to come off of this, we should know now because I wouldn't know how to create the the options B and C. Right. Right. I agree. It seems like we I don't know how this comes into play you know, as a board member, I'd like to obviously see it beforehand to say, "Hey, here's what we looked at on January 20th and now

142in advance of the February meeting, here's what the new package looks like." Um you know, whether it's in one piece or three pieces is kind of less important as what the total amount is. Ms. Carney, did you want to say something? Well, I just I just wanted to say that I was surprised that you were you were trying to end the meeting um earlier than hard you know, I I that's how I felt that you you were pushing the shut down the meeting before we could even have conversation around some of the other items like cutting the security guards down, you know, what there's a lot of conversations still to be had around some of these items and and I just felt like you you swept in and are trying to close the meeting before

143we have these discussions and that's concerning. Let's continue. Do we want to talk about the security guards? Well, we can continue down the line. I mean, we we we stopped Yeah, feel free. you know, at the beginning. So, I mean, I just think there's probably a lot of concerns with these. Um I can I mean, we can start off with the security guards. Um I just think I think there were questions on if this is something um you know, that's going to affect and Josh sent us back saying, "Yes, this is absolutely going to to be an issue." Um and I'm also concerned about that. That we we needed to add security guards to all of our campuses because that's what parents were demanding, right? That's what they wanted. Staff wanted that. Um and so,

144what's going to be the effect? Can you explain that if we do cut them from 12 month to 10 month? What is the you know, the consequence to that? So, the the consequence that we're most concerned about and Josh can speak more specifically to it, but we we moved them from 10 to 12 months in order to fill the positions. We were rotating through and we had many that were unfilled. So, So, the biggest thing is um if you have unfilled positions, that doesn't serve the purpose. So the 10 month makes sense from a this is when students are on campus. The challenge was with recruiting and retaining staff. I also just want to clarify real quick. The Josh's response in email was to cutting security guards at elementary as one of the yellow ones.

145That's the one I specifically asked about so that's different than ones in the green. Just want to make sure that's clear. Thanks. So two things. Yes, I responded to your questions directly but I also attached a memo that talked about the ones in the green which are the the 10 month to 12 month when I started here 4 years ago with the security guards were on the 10 month contract and we had 12 of 30 positions that were filled. The problem is while teachers are employed by school districts and this is their main source of job I guess. The security world is not a school based function. So we pay about what the going rate is for a security guard to go out in the private sector and get it. The benefit is that we

146have the retirement and so and so forth. However, if we cut back down to to 10 month our security guards can go out to the private sector and get paid the same thing or more doing the same job that they do at the schools. So that's one of the bigger the biggest challenges we have with going to 10 month. The other thing which I outlined in the memo that you all got is we have taken on a tremendous amount of responsibilities for the district over the summer. Which includes the student staff IDs, the student photographs for IDs, the threat and vulnerability assessments that are done every year, the just the normal lockdown and everything all the radio and updates. All of that stuff occurs on summer months. In addition for 2 years ago we had

147I believe it was 19 campuses that went all summer long with whether it was camps or summer school or other events and then this past year we had 14 campuses. Excuse me. So we just had all of the security guards are working all summer long both covering camps, taking vacations, covering summer school, covering all the activities on our campuses. So while school months are 10 months, the campuses go and Mr. Eller can back me up on this. We we literally run 12 months a year almost every campus all the time doing stuff whether it's student activities, whether it's sports, whether it's tutoring, whether it's summer school. So that's that's one of the biggest impacts to going to 10 month. Thank you. You want to go down a couple more? No, I I don't need to

148lead the whole conversation. I just felt like that you cut it short and maybe there's more conversation to be had. Let's let's anybody else? Yeah, I actually felt that way too a little bit. I didn't realize that silence was acceptance. Um you know, which which is how Dr. Menzel uh summarized it. Um so you know, I've articulated my concerns with the teacher librarians. Um I am also my concern about community specialist first is it is our most vulnerable families. And it's and I want and and it's not clear to me not because I don't think it's true. It's just literally not clear to me that the kinds of folks who are involved in IBN would necessarily appreciate the kinds of things that community based specialist do especially if that role varies by site. So I'm

149just a little nervous approving not an arbitrary but somewhat arbitrary reduction of five not understanding you know people with food insecurity, housing insecurity you know, just all the issues that our students deal with that we want to drive success and you know, their learning depends on success. I just it feels that one I'm flying a little bit blind on. Um and the third which I guess I don't feel super strongly about because I understand in the interest based negotiations there's probably everybody gives a little. Um but I don't love that our site leaders who play such a critical role in kind of leading our different school communities are effectively seeing their compensation cut um with the performance pay reduction. Um again, I can understand how if you pull on that thread you start to pull

150at other threads because that give is part of what made someone else feel comfortable. So I understand that. But I would say the two that I'm concerned about are um most are the community specialists and fully understanding the impact that will have on our families that are at greatest risk and the teacher librarians because I think it affects the qualitative experience that our families have. Um and my answer on how to handle K8 is to be honest, that's your that's your job not ours. I you know much better what the nature of that role is there than we would. All the others I hate doing just to be clear. Yeah. But if it's speak now or forever hold your peace, those are the ones I want to be on record those three. Other feedback or

151areas you want to kind of unpack? Do you want to summarize what you've heard? Or try Amy has her Oh okay, good. Sorry, could you just touch on the classroom site funds and where we were going to use those? What are we doing with those? Sure. Um the bulk of the classroom site funds goes towards salary um and then performance pay. One of the things we've done and we do have um a larger carry forward as those amount that amount per student has increased the last couple of years. Um one of the things we've looked at we've done is we added additional compensation based on years of experience or years of not experience years um with the district. Um so a couple things we've looked at is possibly increasing that some. And the other thing

152we've looked at is utilizing some of those dollars to help keep classroom sizes smaller at the schools that are impacted due to closures. So idea being that um if students from Pima are going over to Navajo we um we place some of those teachers at Navajo reduce the class size just a little bit more for a year to and then use those classroom classroom dollars for classroom class size reduction in those schools. It also helps with um having a familiar face on campus for those students as they move to a different school. Okay, so that's is it something that we could use to split funding to pay for the teacher librarians? Um you There so we have to be careful there's there's two parts to it. There's the planting that we have to be a

153little bit careful of. Um you can use it for class size reduction which is why we feel we're okay doing um you know, using it for for those schools that are that are picking up new students. I would want to talk to our auditors and maybe gain a little bit more um perspective on if we could do it for teacher librarians because they're it doesn't impact class size. I'm concerned that it might not be possible but it is absolutely something we we reach out to our auditors and we reach out to um legal counsel to say based off of what the statute says, do you think we'd be okay to do that? So that's something we could we could look into. That was just a solution that I thought of and because they do do

154instructional Mhm. and if that's a way to help us I think I think the one caveat and and maybe it's okay. It's absolutely something I'll check into could be because it's not the way we're using the teachers is um class size reduction for those schools. That wouldn't necessarily be but it's absolutely something I'll look into. Okay, thank you. Yeah. And that would be a bit of a move with the years of use of classroom site 40 40 20 or whatever the breakdown is. Uh yeah, they don't longer have that 40 40 20 breakdown anymore. It's all one fund. We've still for our own internal record keeping to keep performance pay kind of consistent. Kind of still doing that a little bit in the background um but yeah. Well, that's a good introductory idea though the

155flexibility there. Like I said, I really want us to try and figure out whatever solution we can to to keep our positions you know, that are on our school sites. Um I I would like I I agree with you. Marketing is important but to a point that is an area where we can cut um and we need to look at that. Is that Davidson and Blue so 100,000 worth it more than performance pay for our principals? I mean something has to give and um and that's just an example. May not maybe not even a good one but That is a good one. But I'm just saying something has to give and These pauses are not to rush closure. I just want to make sure everybody's got time to think. It's complex. >> Do we want

156to make any other suggestions to backfill areas of concern to be considered? So, Amy for Ms. Carney, for example, you know, suggested, you know, an alternative maybe in communications. Other suggestions that we might want to encourage to be considered to get to the 7.7. Dr. Potensky. Well, I've just to repeat what I said earlier. One is I do think we need this broken out, you know, one to two levels deeper in terms of the district staffing just to even be able to weigh in a little bit. That's part of why I was asking the question how did the agenda and IBN get set because What was the ideology of the original general? >> the IBN group, no to even know everything that exists at the district that could be on the table, so to speak.

157Um, some presumably could, but most probably couldn't. Um, and and then yeah, I want to go on record to ensure that I'm ever only on this board for one term. Um, that I do not believe we are cutting as many schools as we need to. I believe >> Okay. that we are better served as a district making a deeper restructuring of our physical plant at the level of millions Yeah. to allow ourselves to be in a place where the sites that we operate can be resourced best in class to any school offering in the county. Um, and I understand that there are many families in the district who believe the last thing that we should consider is closing a school. I don't actually believe that as gut-wrenching as that decision is to make um, when

158you're looking at the families affected. I think we have to the needs of the many outweigh the few and I'm concerned that we are not um, still putting ourselves on a long-term sustainable Yeah. posture to invest in our schools for growth that then hopefully can allow us to reopen those sites, attract more families, but we're not going to do that with an 80% offering. And as I think about the guidance we get on school closure timelines, we'd really need to do that a year from now at fastest. Um, Madam President, I do, you know, I think the board did consider accelerating the timeline for phase one, phase two to this school year. You would still have time to do that. Um, but it it is definitely a two-month process as we've observed. So. Yeah, I'm

159not suggesting accelerating. I'm suggesting in the reason time frame that allows the community to be involved in the way that it should, setting a bigger target than what we're currently setting. That helps. But but again, I'm I literally might be the only person on the board who believes that that's the >> also appreciate to parlay what you were saying about district staff with with Mike, with Mr. Sharkey's, you know, perspective. Let's see the three-year cuts that have happened already, so we're not just oh, it's never happened. We we realized what cuts have Is that what you were asking? Yeah. They shared those cuts, so we've seen some. So, I I don't want to give the impression that district hasn't given anything to this that was purposely put in the presentation for that and I appreciate

160that. Just looking at the numbers, uh, like Dr. Potensky said, there's probably a a level deeper. I'm not in a position to do that. I'm not going to tell you and you and you and you where you should cut, but I would think as a group at a district leadership level, I would hope there could be some FTEs on this list of district office staffing that could help offset some of the things on the list that would not then come out of sites. That was my comment. Thank you. Okay, Ms. Warner. Yes, I'd actually like to see, um, see that myself, what uh, Mr. Sharkey just talked about related to the district office. And then my question is, uh, really to the associations, when you were going through the IBN process, did somebody from district

161office provide you with information of opportunities for cuts there or were you solely looking at each organization that you represent? I'm going to invite Mr. Buckley to come up and anyone else who would like to come on up. Janelle. So, if I could, um, as far as, uh, district level cuts, there there were some guidance on on cuts um, to the level that you're speaking to, um, no, but I do think that there were there were definitely times where district things came up and conversations were able to be had. Are you asking specifically to the ideology of this list? Yeah, like how you got here, how we got to this list and and we don't see much from the district level. Um, and I we learned during our our combined IBN meeting that you guys

162just negotiate for your associations and nothing happens at the district level in regards to what you can negotiate for. And so, for me, it's concerning that you guys are doing all the hard work and it's it's specific to the sites and, um, we haven't gotten anything from the district level of where we could have cuts to maybe offset some of the things that you guys are looking at uh, cutting uh, to make a more positive experience for everyone and sure that we can keep more of the programs that that serve our students. I can speak to the to the process and answer part of part of the question. Um, I think the secondary part I'll need some help from TJ with, but um, there was a brainstorm list that we started with Mhm. that, um,

163district staff had brainstormed here some ideas and here some dollar amounts that we're looking at and then we used those for discussion points and there were some that we didn't entirely agree on, so we discussed those and talked about alternate proposals and organized this into a color-coded list, so that I think addresses part. Yeah, and it as far as like to, uh, a district level cut, um, I think the the difference in perspectives in the room, um, I think it's one thing like for just for example, if I'm talking about, uh, a site level, there's like that understanding there, um, but like the ability for like a teacher the it was open, there's a difference in the ability of like for me, for example, to be like, well, I think that we should put a

164cabinet level position on the elimination. I wouldn't even know where to start with that, right? So, like there's just that level. That's not to say that they weren't open to it. It's just to say that like I don't have a depth of knowledge in the district daily running to even know where to take a stab at cutting and seeing the three-year cuts that were made, it was like, oh, okay, they've done this. Here are the positions within my realm of understanding that I can that I can work with and then in general, just to sorry to keep going here, but um, as an association, you almost play defense of like, okay, I'm I'm and I'm not in the business of like attacking. Right. So, I don't want to go in and attack district admin in

165the same way I would hope they don't come in and attack us. And so, trying to prevent as many cuts as possible, um, just didn't really have the perspective, depth of knowledge, also not necessarily my cup of tea to go in and attack somebody else's job. Understood. Could I add one more thing? And this is a conversation I think I had with you, board member Warner, before and I memory's a little bit fuzzy, but the conversation about district cuts does give me quite a lot of pause because you know, I think it's easy to think about, oh, you know, big district versus the district office so separated, but, you know, if I give an example of a recent cut, we cut our, um, new teacher mentor coaches. And when we do that, that work and

166responsibility of coaching our new teachers comes to me. Um, you know, and I'm happy to take that on, but that, you know, stretches my role and so when we cut, cut, cut at the district office, those jobs come back onto the buildings, you know, and we have to think about who who fills those roles. And so, I just, while I'm standing here, wanted to take a moment and say that. And I appreciate that and I appreciate the work you guys did and and I would still like to see from the district office, um, opportunities for cutting there that would not affect the sites or the principals or giving them more responsibilities because I see how hard they work and how many hours they work and they are salaried, so I I get that, but I

167would like to see just something to offset some of the things that we've talked about here today. Cuts in the last year or so that, uh, was it I feel like I have 800,000 or Yeah, the chart, Shannon, you can go back to that shows the certified, classified, district admin, site admin um, actual expenditures from last year and budgeted for this year. She's going up. Yeah. Um, so, yeah, we have and again, I want to preface this this expense versus budget. Um, but looking at the the two and what was budgeted, um, I think it's about two more slides back. Um, yeah, the amount budgeted for certified and classified for this year has increased where the amount budgeted for district admin and school admin was a little bit lower. Again, budget versus expense. Um, but

168is that what you're alluding to? >> Yeah. Okay. Um So, I mean, and I think I think that is representative also in the slide. There's another slide later on towards the end that shows the cuts over the last couple of years. Um And that's not to say that we won't continue to bring information forward, but I I think part of it is we've taken the the uh efforts to cut first at district over the past 3 years before we got to bringing this kind of list to the governing board for consideration. And so, um at some point uh to Dr. Dansky's um comment that that uh the work has to get done by someone. So, we we can compare and show the staffing and in the teaching and learning department and and and uh Leah

169will have that prepared for the governing board so you can see who's in what positions. But, uh since I've been here, we've we've gone from executive directors and directors down to just directors, and we've continued to compress and compress. More work is placed on the people who are left when you do that. We understand it. We'll show you what that analysis is. But, I think if you if you ignore the the historical uh trend since 2023, and it actually goes um earlier than that, uh it um is not a fair representation of how we have been shrinking the district footprint uh in order to be able to protect what's happening in the buildings. Yeah, and I I shared once before that the analysis I did of comparable districts, we were in below the median when

170it comes to our administrative expenses based on the auditors' uh you know, data. For me, it's trust and verify. Um and I don't think I'm doing my job if there's not the also the verification piece to it. And I also think by going through the process of being even more transparent here, I think it helps build, you know, further trust in the community as well. Point well taken, Ms. Carney. Okay, this is my last uh two two points I'd like to say. Since I know we've been cutting positions, I know we have been a part of that board who has cut positions. Um I'm most interested in the programs and the consultants and the coaches and the companies uh and the lobbyist, all these uh things is where I'm mostly where we can make cuts

171um to find to find money, and that's what I'm looking for. Uh what's been added since 2019? Um I wanted to I know I have uh I spoke last meeting briefly about it, and then I had emailed uh with Ms. Mitchell about the changes in staff, the ADE FTEs um from 2018 to to now. Um And I just wanted to read off a few of those cuz I think it's important to know um under specialist number 607 sports specialist, we went from 10 in 2018 to 20 uh now. Um other, we had under 606, we had one, and now we have 14.63 FT uh full-time. Total employees, 22. So, I'm not sure what falls under those. I think that's important that we we know what what the falls under those. I also want to point

172out um 219 reading teachers. We used to have 5.7. We're down to 1.5. And I think that's another example why we need the teacher librarians because we've already cut uh reading teachers. Um supervisor under classified is 037. We had 10, now we have 14. And last um I'll just say is um well, not last, second to last. 042 personnel assistant, we had six, now we have 12. And 052 under manager other, we had 6.8, and now we have 10. So, that's what I was just asking is what what are those positions, and maybe there is something in there that we could cut, but that's something that I've been asking for. Thank you. I have some um information. I appreciate you giving me those exact kind of what it was, and that's was very very helpful.

173I have a some information I can share now, and then what I'll follow up with. Um the 606s you were specifically referring to um moving uh to 14.3, that's actually funding for reading specialists. So, post ESSER um and with the implementation of the K-3 literacy grant, we um hired new or started to staff reading specialists. Um so, those are funded either through um IGF to offset um to further supplement non-Title I schools, and then the K-3 literacy grant, which also happened right around that same time. Um that is the the difference of the 606. Also, um one of the numbers you mentioned was 604. Those read um generally almost all as school psychologists, which you will see a a dras- a hopefully a more drastic increase in the past 2 years as we've moved and

174eradicated our reliance on contracted services for school psychologists. We're now fully staffed with our own, and so that's where you would see those increases specifically reflected. I do have um additional time looking into some of those 607 changes. Some of those are changes in the state set-aside of what's allowed through Title I. Some of those are Title I um instructional specialists, and previously how we were able to code those to schools or district, some of that has shifted and changed. So, I'll be sure I provide to all of you that line item. But, for those specific, the 606, the 604, those are particularly related to positions we they're gained through elimination of contract services, that's the psychs, or added new post ESSER where some of the reading specialists funded through IGF, and then K-3 literacy

175grant um provides for also a group. And these are individuals who work direct to students um with intervention in reading. But, more to come. I didn't I will make sure that I will follow up with all of those things. >> is important for everyone uh to get that information. And then that was that was my one point. My last point is how did you decide on uh the total indirect cost savings? You added the coins and the t-shirts. I know how I had thrown that out there talking about um areas I saw, you know, in the marketing budget that we could cut. Why did uh we just put those two in when there's you know, four-sided throws and fans and shopping totes and uh lots of things. How did we just come up with those

176two? Um that actually came up within the IBN process. So, um as we talked about, there were things that we came to them and said, um these are these are things that have come to us, possible ideas. Um that was actually at our last meeting last I don't know, last week is a little bit of a blur, but it was earlier on in the week, maybe Tuesday, um that um the IBN group said we feel like we should add these items. Um that's not to say that this is a you know, those are smaller dollar amount items, but that's how that really came about is that the IBN group said we'd like to add these additional items on. Okay. Cuz there's many more items, so I didn't know like why that, and I would uh

177just ask that we look into that and see what other areas we can expand on that that we can use that money for other things. Thank you. Just to give commentary on the scale when we talk about district cuts, like, you know, appreciate um Ms. Dansky talking about, you know, cutting too much has impacts. You know, looking at the numbers, the 379 FTE there there, you know, 100 of which are transportation, you know, the remaining, you know, 2% is 5 FTE. If that can get us to a point where we can say, well, we can save the community specialist line item because of those 5 FTE, like again, optics-wise, that comes to a good place to show, uh you know, I definitely want to make sure there's no uh inference of, you know, cutting to

178the bone or past the bone on this, realizing that there is work to be done and value in that work, but I think there's a little bit of room to give. So, I just wanted to add that as a commentary, having gone through this in my professional career a couple of times, unfortunately. Um it works out well when everyone's giving to that level. I'm reluctant to summarize >> [laughter] >> because it's gotten better, richer conversation. So, at this point, do you feel like you had a chance to talk through the things that are top of mind? And that you have a place to communicate if there's more that pops up at 2:00 in the morning or 2 days from now? Okay. Would you like to try to summarize the things you've heard from us? Well,

179I won't capture it all, but but um I'll start by saying that at the February 10th meeting, uh we will work uh through the IBN process to bring probably three different options forward for consideration uh based on what we've heard. Uh and we have a meeting scheduled next Monday, yeah, with the IBN team uh so that we can have some of those conversations. But, uh there was clear um discussion about uh teacher librarians, security, community specialist as part of that that, and uh we'll talk about prioritizing the positions that require governing board approval so that we can issue contracts timely. So, there are some of the things on the savings list that don't have to be decided by February 10th, and there are some things that do. And so, when we think about how that's

180structured, we'll put at the top of the list of things that will impact the that go out at the beginning of March. Um additionally, we heard uh for um more analysis on district staffing, marketing, and uh the potential for more school closures and what that would represent. Uh and so, we can do some of that modeling. Uh then there are questions about specific programs, coaches, lobbyists, things that were added since 2019 to identify what those expenditures are and what that might look like in terms of cost on a go-forward basis. And I think one of the recurring themes is is this notion of contemplating what the unintended consequences are of additional cuts. Uh so, for example, last year we combined the marketing and communications head with the uh chief uh communica- the chief information officer

181into one position. Uh that is a pretty heavy load for a single person into distinctly um different, in some respects, complementary, but different functions. And so, that's part of, as we balance these things, asking the question about the unintended consequences. We work to be the uh the best district not only in the valley, but in the state of Arizona and competitive across the nation. Uh but we need to uh capture more of the market share here. We'll gather that information for the board, but for February, expect to see some options that will prioritize the positions. And then some of the other things that are possible to to decide later on will have that still on the table. So, there'll be some fluidity as we get more budget certainty, or at least what looks like is

182more budget certainty as the legislature has more hearings. Typically, they don't get into the budget conversations what till April. Um cuz you do all of the other bills first, and then you get to the budget. So, um there's there'll be some movement here, but um that's what I heard. Leah, did you get comfort in the things that uh Ms. Carney uh mentioned? You did? Okay, you got the list that to bring to cabinet later and talk through it. I believe so. I may reach back out just to get There's a couple numbers that I wanted to double-check with you, but yes, I I got it. Oh, perfect. Thank you. Final comment? Final comment? Final comment or continuation? Um Ms. Carney, you okay with that? All right. Let me see where we are. Do I get

183to adjourn yet? >> times for adjournment. All right, I make a motion that we adjourn. Are we good? Go ahead. No, I'm just going to say thank you for letting us continue the conversation and No, thank you. You you raised the flag, and it was smart. Yeah, well, I didn't wasn't feeling too good about it, so. Well, now I'm still not feeling great about it, but at least we get to have a little more conversation. >> about it, but I appreciate the Thank you. extension. I I really do. Um much richer when we do that. All right, I make a motion to adjourn. I'll second the motion. All those in favor? I. I. Thank you, everyone. Terrible, good meeting. It was.