SUSD Governing Board Regular Meeting with Executive Session 11/18/25

001Good evening. It's 5:15. I'll be calling the meeting to order and we'll do roll call. Dr. Patensky. Matthew Patensky. Amy Carney. Mike Sharkey. Donna Lewis. Uh and missing is Karen Warner, but we're expecting her anytime now. So, uh I would like to make a motion to go in executive session. Uh the governing board may recess into executive session pursuant to ARS 38-431.03A3 and 7 for the purpose of consultation with the attorney designated representative of the public body in order to consider its position and instruct its representative regarding negotiations for the potential sale of administrative buildings on Main Street in Scottsdale, Arizona. I need a second. I did have something first. So, Okay, the public knows that? That we're going to keep public comment open until the regular meeting? It's being noted that people can sign

002up for public comment until we return from executive session. All right, is there a second? >> I'll second the motion. Seconded. And all those in favor? I. I. All right, we will adjourn to the principals' conference room and return when we're done. Okay, we're back. I'd like to make a motion to adjourn executive session. I need a second and the time is 5:34. Second the motion. All those in favor? I. >> I. And a roll call for uh this part of the meeting, please. Matthew Patensky. Karen Warner. Amy Carney. Mike Sharkey. >> And Donna Lewis. And our first item is uh a board action item to provide uh direction to the attorney for the public body regarding the item discussed in 2C. Uh I'd like to make a motion that uh we move for the

003attorney to act on our behalf. >> [clears throat] >> Is there a second? >> I'll second. Thank you, Amy. All those in favor? I. >> I. Passes unanimously. And as we um call the meeting to order for uh the general session at uh 5:34, please stand for the pledge of allegiance. Ready? 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. Oh, I did roll call too early, didn't I? Again? Yeah, yes. Because of the Okay. Shall I call it anyway? I'll be roll calling. We're roll calling for the general meeting. I just didn't want to be disrespectful. We don't always have to go in the same order. Uh Donna Lewis. >> [laughter] >>

004Mike Sharkey. Amy Carney. Karen Warner. Mary Patinski. Thank you. All right. Uh I I'm going to make a motion to approve the agenda as presented and ask if there are any amendments. Uh for consent agenda 12D. Um for the uh one of the uh goals on there, there's a blank page for it, so it's Hold on. You're on 12H, I think. 12 Oh, is it H now? H. Yes, for performance pay for administrators. Uh there's one for one of the employees for Dr. Cruz. The first one is actually blank. There's a 5% allocation there, so I'm just going to move to move that to the row below it, which is um support retention initiatives. I will move that when we're in that action item. Okay. We'll wait. So, just pulling it from consent. Okay. So,

005we're The motion is to approve consent as as presented minus 12H. >> Sir, is it for clarification is 12H being pulled off completely? >> Pulled for a discussion for action. Yeah. Any others? Uh yes, I do have an item to pull, but first I'd like to make note that on October 7th I asked from the dais and by email for an agenda item uh for the October 28th meeting to discuss creating a planning and boundary design advisory committee. Uh has suc- as other districts have successfully done to ensure we have community input for better informed decisions on the repurposing and closing of our schools. I received no response and it was not on the October 28th agenda or tonight's agenda, so I want to make note of that. And I also would like to pull

006item 12I from consent agenda for All right, so we have a motion on the floor for uh to approve the consent agenda item as presented minus 12H and 12I. I need a second. Second. All those in favor? I. >> I. Passes unanimously. All right, we will now move to item 12H. Mr. Sharkey. No, we go to student staff recognitions. Oh, you're right. I keep wanting to do the whole thing in one. All right, we're on item six, student and staff recognitions and celebrations. Thank you. Well, Dr. Menzel. Good evening, Dr. Lewis, Vice President Sharkey, members of the governing board, Scottsdale Unified School District families, friends, school leaders, teachers, and staff. Welcome to our regular meeting uh for the month of November. It's an honor to begin tonight by celebrating the remarkable accomplishments of our students

007and staff, individuals who truly embody the excellence and innovative spirit of Scottsdale Unified School District. We're kicking off this evening with a very special milestone, recognizing five outstanding innovators who are making a meaningful impact across our district as recipients of the 2025-26 SUSD SUSD Innovation Startup Grant. To help us honor these trailblazers, please join me in welcoming Leah Mitchell, our Assistant Superintendent for Ed Services. Leah. >> [applause] >> Thank you so much, Dr. Menzel, and good evening, President Lewis, Vice President Sharkey, Governing Board members. It's great to see you all. I'm really excited at the opportunity to celebrate our innovators. So, it's my pleasure to recognize the recipients of the Scottsdale Unified School District 2025-26 Startup Innovation Grants. These grants honor outstanding educators whose creativity, collaboration, and commitment to hands-on learning are transforming teaching and

008learning across our district. This year's selected projects truly exemplify SUSD's vision to foster innovation at every grade level and across all disciplines. It is my honor to introduce the 25-26 Innovation Startup Grant recipients and invite them to join me at the podium. First up is Mojave Math and Science Academy, Scaling STEM Innovation across Mojave Middle School. Applicant, Michael Twilling, Mojave Math and Science Academy, will you join me up here? >> [applause] [applause] >> This project expands Mojave Middle School's Innovation Center into a school-wide hub where students can design, build, and collaborate across subjects. Grant funding will support essential tools and materials for hands-on interdisciplinary STEM projects that engage all learners. We are thrilled at the work and effort at Mojave. Thank you so much for being an innovator and leading the way with the Math

009and Science Academy. We are thrilled. Yes. So, congratulations from [applause] you. And there should be one for Paul, too. All right, thank you, guys. Our next recipient, Tavan Makers in Motion. Applicants, Katie Kahn, Susan Green, and Tavan Elementary School, please join me at the podium. >> [applause] [applause] >> So much enthusiasm. Tavan's Maker Space Initiative will give students hands-on opportunities to design, create, and solve complex problems through authentic cross-curricular projects. This space will nurture creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration, preparing students for both academic and future career success. Thank you so much and congratulations, Tavan. >> [applause] >> Next on the list, Laguna Innovators in STEAM. We're going to welcome up Stephanie Shammy, Diana Davis, and Brian Vogan from Laguna Elementary. >> [applause] >> This project will integrate robotics and other STEAM technologies into Laguna's Maker

010Space, creating innovative hands-on learning experiences for students in pre-K through fifth grade. Partnerships with local schools and organizations will further enrich the program and help build future-ready skills. Congratulations, Laguna. >> [applause] >> All right, we're not done yet. Now we have Coronado's Innovation Lab. Applicant, Jenny Kinsey from Coronado High School. >> [applause] >> This project trans- transforms an existing classroom into an inclusive maker space that features immersive augmented reality tools specifically designed for special education students with cognitive and motor delays. The Coronado Innovation Lab will remove barriers to learning and foster creativity, exploration, and meaningful engagement in STEM. >> [applause] >> All right, last but surely not least, Redfield's Unlocking Learning for Student Innovation. Applicant, Jenna Cummings from Redfield Elementary. >> [applause] >> Redfield's project will immerse students in collaborative problem-solving through gamified hands-on learning

011experiences. Tools and materials will be customized to support all learners, especially the English language development students as they build critical thinking, teamwork, and content mastery skills. Please join me in congratulating Redfield. >> [applause] >> Congratulations. Go ahead, you have more. I was just going to say thank you so much to the also the Innovation Strategic Action Team led by Dr. Dave Prensky. They put so much time and effort into reviewing the applications, making sure they're aligned with our goals and values, and just to see the students, the teachers, and the whole team really engaged in this process. Really appreciate the opportunity. >> Appreciate that, Leah. Thank you. It's really uh significant when we're able to support our staff with their creative ideas and then see how those can grow and impact our students in a

012positive way. Uh next we want to honor a remarkable student leader who turned passion into policy. His advocacy led to the passage of an update to ordinance 4689, which now bans vaping in the city of Scottsdale. An incredible achievement that's helping create a healthier future for his peers and community. To present this recognition, please welcome Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Education, Dr. Melissa Saco. >> [applause] >> Uh thank you, Dr. Menzel, and good evening, President Lewis, Vice President Sharkey, Governing Board members, Dr. Menzel, and Mrs. Wagner. Um right next to me is Mr. Sid Gupta from Desert Mountain High School, who should be a very friendly face to you. He's also on the student advisory board, so I'm elated to be able to celebrate um him tonight. Um he has uh executed remarkable leadership and commitment

013to public health and community advocacy, as you briefly heard from Dr. Menzel. But, here's the story. Um after more than a year of collaboration with the Scottsdale City Council members, municipal staff, and leading public health organizations, including the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, and the American Lung Association, Sid successfully spearheaded the revision of ordinance 4689. The original ordinance banned smoking in public areas throughout Scottsdale. Now, through the help of Sid's advocacy, it expands the language prohibiting the use of electronic cigarettes and vaping devices in public places and places of employment across Scottsdale. HELLO. YEAH. >> [applause] >> UH, UPDATING THE ORDINANCE TOOK MONTHS OF work and advocacy on Sid's part, including a petition he started in the in May of 2025 to modernize the ordinance. The revised ordinance, which was un- unanimously uh

014unanimously adopted by the Scottsdale City Council. I'm getting a little ahead of myself here. I'm a little excited. Um, reflects Sid's vision, perseverance, and deep sense of civic responsibility. It also stands as a powerful reminder of the impact um our students can have in shaping healthier, safer communities through advocacy and collaboration. Sid's work demonstrates not only leadership, but a genuine dedication to the well-being of others, a quality we deeply value in our Scottsdale Unified School District students. At this time, I'd like to invite up uh Principal um John Andrews from Desert Mountain High School to share a few words about uh Sid and his accomplishments. >> [applause] >> So, we didn't compare notes, so we kind of crossed over. So, I'm going to look in here and find some things I can share about you.

015One thing I'll say about Sid is you can tell he's become a celebrity. Um, so uh Sid, I just want to say congratulations. Sid is a remarkable student at our school. He serves on site council. He serves on student advisory board. He's going to give a presentation here shortly. Um, Sid is somebody that uh comes into my office and and uh just kind of tells me how what are some good ways to run the school and he always has really really good ideas, so I make sure to listen to Sid. Uh, future whatever he wants to be, but definitely could be a principal of a high school. Um, so I just want to say congratulations, Sid. I'm so proud of you and I'm so glad we have one more year with Sid at Desert Mountain.

016So, congratulations. >> [applause] >> So, thank you, Principal Andrews. Now I know why Desert Mountain is running running running well. So, so I had I had no doubt. So, Sid, on behalf of the governing board and the entire Scottsdale Unified School District, congratulations again on your achievement. Your efforts have made a long impact not only only on Scottsdale School District, but the Scottsdale community at large. So, this challenge coin is to recognize that >> Thank you so much. >> [applause] >> Congratulations, Sid. The first time I became aware of Sid's passion about this topic, he had prepared a PowerPoint slide deck to help educate middle school students about the dangers of vaping. And so, this has been a passion for a long time and and then resulted in the passage of the city ordin- ordinance,

017which was pretty incredible. Uh the next celebration we want to bring forward is a fifth grader who already knows exactly what he wants to be when he grows up, how he's going to accomplish it, and is winning awards telling others about it. So, to honor our next uh student, uh please join me in welcoming Assistant Superintendent of Elementary Education Dr. Christine Bono. >> [applause] >> Thank you, Dr. Menzel, and good evening, President Lewis, Vice President Sharkey, Governing Board members, and Mrs. Wagner. This evening, I am so proud to recognize one of our outstanding Scottsdale Unified District School District students for an exceptional accomplishment. Hudson Holy, a fifth grader at Desert Canyon Elementary, was one of only 20 winners of the 2025 Arizona State Treasury Essay Contest. This annual Dream, Write, Win essay invites fifth and

018sixth grade students across this whole state of Arizona to write about their dream job, how they plan to achieve it, and how their work will positively impact their community. There were 836 essays submitted with only four chosen from Maricopa County. Hudson is SUSD's second student in the contest history to earn this honor. Hudson's essay outlined his plan to earn a degree in sports broadcasting while pursuing his dream of playing Major League Baseball. As part of his jersey journey, Hudson highlighted how SUSD middle and high school programs will play a pivotal role in helping him develop his skills and achieve his goals. In his essay, Hudson also shared that as a professional baseball player, he hopes to give back by participating in charitable fundraisers and encouraging others to volunteer with organizations such as Feed My Starving

019Child. All winners of the Dream, Write, Win contest were invited to the Arizona State Capitol, where they were formally presented with the awards by State Treasurer Kimberly Yee. Winners like Hudson also received $529 towards an AZ 529 education savings plan. We are so proud of Hudson and his accomplishments, and we can't wait to follow his future as he continues to pursue his dreams during and after his time in SUSD. At this time, I'd like to invite Desert Canyon School Principal Kimberly Mills to come forward and share a few words. And is Hudson with us tonight? Oh, Hudson, come on up. >> [applause] >> We were So good to meet you. We were talking all about you and I wanted to bring you up. >> [applause] >> Good evening. Hudson is an outstanding example of what

020it means to be dedicated to learning and to the classroom community. He consistently puts forth his best effort, shows curiosity in every lesson, and takes pride in growing academically. He is friendly, encouraging, and always willing to collaborate. Hudson's polite and respectful attitude sets a positive tone for everyone around him. We are extremely proud of Hudson. >> [applause] >> Way to go, Hudson. And I told him he needs to remember us when he makes the major leagues that I want one of his rookie cards so I can keep it and maybe or not sell it to make money someday. Thank you, Principal Mills, and again, congratulation Hud- Hudson. Please accept we gave you your challenge coin and back to you, Dr. Menzel. Thank you, Dr. Bono. Congratulations, Hudson. I I if every fifth grader were that

021focused on what they hope to accomplish and could see the path forward, uh it would make life a lot easier for many of us. Um so, we're very impressed. Uh we have one more celebration this evening, and that is the Chaparral Girls Golf team. Uh they showed incredible dedication, teamwork, and competitive excellence this year to celebrate their state championship. I'd like you to help uh welcome Steven Cervantes, our District Athletic Director, and the uh representatives of the Chaparral Golf team. >> [applause] [clears throat] >> Got everybody? Yep. Uh thank you, Dr. Menzel, and good evening, President Lewis, Vice President Sharkey, Governing Board members, and Miss Wagner. Tonight, I have the honor of recognizing this outstanding group of student athletes for an incredible season, one that ended with them being crowned the Division II state championships

022in golf. At the state tournament at Aguila Golf Course, the Lady Firebirds uh turned in an exceptional team performance, finishing with a combined score of 611. Even more impressive, they claimed the championship with a 64-stroke lead, one of the most dominant mar- margins we've seen in recent years. Several players also placed in the fifth or top 15 individually, demonstrating [clears throat] not only strong individual play, but also depth and consistency to set this team apart. Their success is a reflection of their hard work, their commitment to the sport, the support of their families, and their leadership and guidance of their coach, Mr. Jason Spears. Ladies, [clears throat] on behalf of the district and the entire athletic community, congratulations on an incredible season and on bringing home the Division II state championship. >> [applause] >> As

023a symbol of your achievement and pride you bring to Chaparral, I'm honored to present each one of you with a challenge coin. This coin represents excellence, dedication, and the championship legacy you've added to the Firebird tradition. Congratulations on an amazing season. >> [applause] >> Thank you. Congratulations and well done. As we got ahead of ourselves a little bit, I did want to go back to 5E and have our meeting decorum read, Mr. Sharkey. Citizens attending and or participating in Scottsdale Unified School District meetings, either in person, virtually, or telephonically, are required to observe the same rules of order and decorum applicable to members of the governing board and staff. Unauthorized remarks or demonstrations from members of the audience, yells, outbursts, and or other disruptions are not permitted. Thank you. And at this point, we will

024go to our special presentation. Uh and Dr. Menzel, will you please introduce our student advisory board? >> have uh members of the student advisory board today. Uh president uh Fiona O'Reilly, Sid, who you've met before, and Max from Desert Mountain, and I'm trying to see who's behind you. Remind me your name again? >> Lindy Richard. Lindy Richard. So, thank you all for being here this evening. Uh I I have said in my reports to the board that my favorite meeting of the month is meeting with the student advisory board. Uh the ideas that they have, the energy that they bring, and and the commitment to doing what's necessary to make Scottsdale the very best district it can be is impressive. So, we're going to turn it over to you. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Menzel,

025for that incredible introduction. Um good evening, members of the board, Dr. Menzel. Um my name is Fiona O'Reilly. Um I'm the president this year, and I get the great honor of introducing our first student advisory board uh governing board meeting update of the whole year. All right. Uh so, what we'll be looking at tonight is I get to introduce our new SAB leadership, which is always very exciting. Uh and then we'll discuss the subcommittees that we landed on this year, what we really wanted to focus in on with our year ahead, um some discussions that we've already had with the student advisory board meetings of the last 3 months, and then our focuses as we go forward. All righty. So, this year uh our president-elect is Max Layer. Uh and then our senators, we have

026one from each school. From Arcadia, we have Kinsey Hunkins. From Chaparral, we have Olivia Doherty. From Coronado, we have Lindy Richard. Um from Desert Mountain, we have Sid Gupta. And then from Saguaro, we have Ashni Sahai. So, um every year, our senators and our president and our president-elect will work with their site administrators, principals, to really spearhead the Teen Town Hall initiatives, uh and get everything settled for our events in the spring. All righty. Thank you, Dr. Menzel. Thank you, board members, for having us here. I think it's so amazing that our district allows student voices to be heard throughout um our entire community. Um but today I'm going to be talking to you about our first two committees that we have. Um the first of that being student culture and school climate. So, this

027committee is really going to be focused on making sure that when students and staff come to school, they want to be there, they're excited to learn, um and that their ultimate goal um is their education, um but also they want to, like I said, be at school. Um so, we talked um our major goals um and what we talked about um related to this committee is the updated dress code. Um at the beginning of the year, our first meeting, we talked a lot about what that meant, what that looked like, student feedback on that. Um and then we kind of segued into our um discussion on the annual MLK dinner event. Um this is a an event that I haven't had the honor of attending, but I've heard amazing things about, and uh we were

028discussing how we can get more students involved um and more student voices to be heard at this annual dinner. Um and we also, with that, we talked about um diversity and inclusion across different sites um at this event and just overall. Um we also discussed um 9/11 education, the importance of it, um and the continued presence of it in our schools. Um and finally, we talked about, uh like I said, school um staff and student appreciation, so we can make sure that we are excelling in learning and having um all of our students at school. Um and then I'm going to segue into our other committee that I'm going to talk about is um safety, security, and facilities. Um as you can guess, we talked a lot about the bathrooms. Uh that's the biggest point

029of discussion um as you could all expect. Um we also discussed um about using our district Let's Talk feature feature, excuse me. Um again, to address bathroom and other maintenance concerns. Um and then if we all remember, there was one day where we had extremely rainy weather. Um there was lightning, thunder, all of it, um kind of like we're about to have now. Um so, maybe uh we talked about how we can learn from that um to improve on our protocol for those rainy days we where we are having to hold students after school. Um and hopefully we won't have that coming up in the next few days. Um And then we also talked about fire drill issues. Um I know we just had one Desert Mountain today. I don't know if that was planned

030or not. Um we did talk about how across our different campuses um just working to make sure that fire drills are um not go our the fire alarm isn't just going off randomly, interrupting learning, um and how that can be fixed. And finally, we talked about parking lot safety. We had a few members talk about almost getting run over in their parking lots. Um maybe that was figurative, um but I I hope it is. Um and we talked about how we can work with um our local police department um and our district staff to make sure that our parking lots are safe before and after school. So, thank you. Further on into our meeting, we talked about technology across SUSD and how we utilize our Chromebooks and our access to technology. We talked about blocked

031websites and how difficult they are to get unblocked, and how much of a process it is for educators to access sites like National Geographic. And we just want to have a more streamlined system to properly get those things fixed. Uh we also talked about the personal computers and how we feel that although they are very helpful tools for learning, they can also pose as a threat to the away for the period policy, and also because teachers just can't monitor them. We also wanted to promote the usage of IT supports and advocate to students how they also have a voice and can reach out to Google Help and other things that to get their issues with their technology properly handled. Okay. So, giving you guys a bit of a look forward into what we're going to

032be doing this year. So, we just had talked about each of our subcommittees. So, each of those subcommittees are going to create a wildly important goal, and that'll be the objective of what that subcommittee is going to be working on each uh month at our monthly SAB meetings, and then also independently if they need to um and sort of achieve a goal. We'll have metrics, um so actual numbers, and then date times on when we want to get stuff accomplished. Um as um senators and as members of the student advisory board, we hold Teen Town Hall meetings at each of our respective campuses. Um this is where we'll have district officials um sort of come either during a lunch period or during after school, and we actually get students the opportunity to talk with those

033district officials. So, um each of us is going to be responsible for setting up those Teen Town Hall meetings. Um we usually have food there, so we get a decent amount of students to come for that. Um then um we always have uh SUSD district-level officials come to our meetings. Dr. Menzel will always be there um for the first 30 to 45 minutes. We'll have director of facilities. Um so, we have a lot of district-level officials so that we can get our concerns um sort of remedied immediately. And we sometimes have guest speakers come on um for specific issues. And then finally, the main objective of SAB is just to make sure that student voices are heard. So, um as members of the student advisory board, we are all making sure that we're going out

034and talking to actual students at our school, making sure that we're hearing all the voices. Um and we have a lot of big student populations at each of our campuses, so making sure that we're going out and talking to as many people as possible, and then bringing those voices and those concerns um over to the student advisory board, where real action can be made on them. So, thank you guys. Thank you to the governing board. Thank you for all the people in attendance for your time. If you guys have any questions, we'd be happy to answer them. Thank you so much. We're really proud of you. Any comments or uh questions? Go ahead. Dr. Potenski. Just one. Um and it's one I hear a lot about with the bathrooms. Can you explain how Let's Talk

035and the bathrooms might connect with each other? I'm not not quite following. Thank you. Yeah, so uh a big discussion that we've been having at um board meetings throughout basically the inception of student advisory board, um is that students will find maintenance issues or they'll they'll feel like maintenance is maybe not up to snuff at their facility, but they feel kind of unable to address it. I mean, like when you walk into a facility that's like, you know, supposed to be clean or well-maintained, and it's not, it kind of feels like there's not much you can do. Um but Let's Talk would allow students to students and teachers to report um what what's going on. So, we just really want to ensure that students are not necessarily just noticing things which are going on, which

036is a big part of their job, but also being able to kind of move forward and get things fixed, because obviously, you can't be at every site all day long. So, yeah. Makes a lot of sense. Thank you. Mr. Sharkey. Uh I just wanted to thank you guys for bringing up uh dress code on there. I know we've attempted to address it uh here in the board this year. Um I'd much rather input come from you guys and your peers who are on campus every day. I trust that more than someone like me who's not on campus and is old and has no sense of fashion. So, thank you very much for making that a point this year. Great. All right. Thank you for your time this evening and excellent presentation. >> THANK YOU. >>

037[applause] >> THAT MOVES US TO GOVERNING BOARD REPORTS. Uh yes. Um so, two things to report. One is I'm excited to be visiting uh Chaparral as part of a conversation on whether we can begin to enlist students in enrollment marketing. I think there's a great opportunity for students to be to almost form as a club, kind of their own PR agency. And I can't think of anyone better to tell other families why they should choose SUSD than our very own high school students. And it would give them very practical work experience to use in college admissions or if they're applying for jobs in the workforce. So, I'm excited about those conversations. And then I am responsible for the Chaparral learning community. So, as I get close to, I think, the 1-year mark, I'm making a

038concerted effort to visit every school, ideally during site councils, but not necessarily during site councils cuz they don't happen every month. And so, I've had a chance to visit with Chaparral and Cocopah Chiefs. And I look forward to visiting with the rest of the Chaparral learning communities over the next roughly 6 weeks, I think, is how it schedules out. And that is it. Ms. Carney? Thank you. I want to tag on to that because a couple years ago I went to Chaparral to to do the same similar thing because four of my children graduated from Chap, and I was saying they need to come back after they graduate college, right? And and show students around, show families around. So, I wanted to add that in. But, last week I was able to attend Cheyenne's Veterans

039Day ceremony. And I got to tour the school with Principal Baca, and it was a beautiful morning out, and it was so inspiring to see so many moms and dads and grandparents there being honored for their service to our to our country. It was just beautiful. And then lastly, I just want to thank all of the parents and the community members and the employees who have reached out to us and who've taken the time to even meet with me personally. Putting in your thoughts and all of your input. I I take it seriously. I I read everything. I take notes. And I just want you to know that you are valued, your opinion opinions and experiences are valued, and I appreciate you being here and taking in your time away from your families. Thank you.

040Mr. Sharkey? I had the pleasure of going to the Expo a couple weeks ago. Just wonderful seeing all the schools. There were folks from where my kids were at middle school and elementary school and people who know my kids, and it's wonderful to see that and talk to the different representatives. Had a wonderful tour of Saguaro. Thank you, Principal Hirsch. I've been to Saguaro many times, but it was nice to go tour and got to see the cool weight room the football team uses. So, that was nice. Had many parent meetings as well as my colleague did, and just wonderful to sit down face-to-face and talk. Many are in this room today. So, thank you for taking your time to meet with me. And the last thing, just wanted to share a real quick story.

041You mentioned our kids coming back after they graduate. I mentor on the Chaparral robotics team. One of the kids is now a sophomore at ASU where I work. And I've had a number of them. I had them as student workers. I call them my robot kids. They're not robots, they're humans, but they come in ASU. And I had lunch with one last week, and he's doing everything right. He's a chemical engineer. He's meeting with professors, doing research, involved with professional organizations. And to see him from kind of a squeaky little kid working on rivets and motors and now see him in his college career was just great to see the progression. So, I just wanted to share that. It's just wonderful to see how our kids kind of grow and learn and develop, and I'm

042happy to be a small part of that. Thank you. Thank you. I too enjoyed a Hopi visit with Dr. Potenski for Veterans Day, and it was just beautiful. It always gets me teary. The stories and the the sharing and the the community feeling and the kids' sense of pride in in their grandparents or relatives who have served. I also am happy to report that I surprised Dr. Menzel by showing up in Washington, D.C. to support him at the AASA National Superintendent of the Year for Arizona, and he was honored there. So, it was a really beautiful event. >> [applause] >> And as we go into the first of the holiday No, I guess Halloween counts, right? But, here comes here comes Thanksgiving, and then rush into the holidays. So, I hope everybody will remember to

043find balance and peace and and beautiful time with yourself as well as your family as this Thanksgiving comes upon us. All right. One more. Oh, I'm so sorry. Go ahead. So, I I wanted to save the time for the people who came to do public comment today, and I want to thank everyone who came last at the last hearing and shared your ideas and spoke your truth. It's it's very refreshing to hear, and I'm so glad you're here today and to share your feelings and your thoughts and ideas. So, thank you. Okay, as we move into the Superintendent's comments. Well, thank you, President Lewis and members of the governing board members of the audience. There are a number of things to highlight this evening, but I'll try to do them quickly. The first is to

044express my deep gratitude and appreciation for all the people who made the second annual SUSD Education Expo possible on November 5th. Although I was in D.C. as Dr. Lewis just mentioned, the reports that I heard in terms of the level of engagement, even some of the testimonials from people who attended charter schools who are now coming back to Scottsdale Unified School District were compelling. These things don't happen without a lot of hard work and effort behind the scenes. And so, I just want to express deep gratitude for all those who made it possible. Secondly, if you didn't know, this is National Education Week. And we happen to be big supporters of public education here in Scottsdale Unified School District. And it's important reminder to celebrate the reasons why we're here. Tonight we've already been able

045to acknowledge and and celebrate success of our students in so many different ways. That doesn't happen if you don't have engaged families, if you don't have dedicated teachers, if you don't have support staff across all of our schools who make that possible. So, as we think about the value and the impact on our community of Scottsdale Unified School District, I join ask you to join me in thanking an educator this week for the work that they do to make that possible. One of the fun things that we do this month, shout-out to our nutrition services team, is that we have our annual turkey day lunch. And in the past we've done it all on one day. That was pretty challenging. So, this year we decided we split it. So, earlier today, nine of our schools

046had turkey lunches where we invite families to come in and enjoy lunch with their children. Thursday we'll have nine more of our schools participating in it. You may see some photos around of principals dressed in some interesting attire. It's a it's a joyful occasion to kick off the holiday season. We have a couple of events coming up on Thursday that are important to note. In recognition of Native American Heritage Month, Sheila C. Priss has organized a Native American Culture Night featuring the screening of More Than Frybread. We're going to have as a guest speaker the person who produced the the film. And so, if you're available, 6:00 Thursday night, Saguaro High School Auditorium, we invite any and all to come. There's no charge, and we'd like to have you engage in learning more about Native

047American culture and engaging in conversation. If you're not able to attend that, but you're interested in providing other support to Scottsdale Unified School District, the SUSD Foundation will be holding its annual holiday fundraiser at Porter's in Old Town from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. Feel free to stop in and show your support for the good work of the foundation. On Saturday, we'll be holding a ribbon cutting for the 68th and Oak athletic facility. That will happen at 10:30. Want to give a shout-out to Mr. Rayler, the the team that helped take this vision and turn it into reality. Not only will we be doing the ribbon cutting, which is a short ceremony, there'll also be a barbecue and an opportunity for people to actually experience the enhancements that have been made on the site of the

048former Tonalea Elementary. And then finally, I just want to say and express my deep gratitude and appreciation for all the people who make Scottsdale Unified School District so special. Thanksgiving is just a week and a half away. And and it's an opportunity for us to step back and think about all the things that we have in our lives and our experiences that that are true blessings for us. And when I look around our community, I know we have people who are engaged. We have board members who contribute time and energy in sometimes a thankless job. We have teachers who work in in tirelessly on behalf of our students even though we're not able to provide them the kind of compensation I believe they truly deserve. We have principals who are working days, evenings, and weekends

049to make sure that they're supporting their teachers across our entire district. We have great things going on, and so I want to express my gratitude for each one of you and wish you a happy Thanksgiving season. Thank you. All right, we're going to begin item 10, public comments. Mr. Sharkey, will you read the uh the statement? I'd be happy to. In compliance with open meeting law, the governing board may not discuss or take action tonight on any matters raised during public comments that are not on the agenda. However, the governing board members may respond to direct criticism, ask staff to review a matter, or that a matter be placed on a future agenda. Public comments will be conducted in accordance with policy BEDH. As a reminder, each speaker will have 2 minutes. The screen will

050indicate the time. Please be prepared to close your comments and relinquish the floor at the conclusion of your time. The board asks that each speaker please introduce yourself by stating your name and whether you live within our school district for clarity on the record. We thank you for your time and attendance here this evening and your cooperation in following the meeting decorum and protocols. I'll read the name of the speaker. When you hear your name, could you please come up to the podium? I'll read the name of the next speaker to be ready on deck. Once you start speaking, your time will start. And we'll begin with Debbie Schumacher and Kat Inglito, you're on deck. My name is Debbie Schumacher. I am Pima alumni, former Pima parent, and currently a Pima grandparent. I'm concerned that

051Navajo Elementary is missing from your list of schools being considered for closure. It is just 1 mile north of Pima, straight up Granite Reef. Why isn't it being considered instead of closing a newly built school that represents an $18.1 million investment? Navajo is an antiquated school. It has or has had asbestos. It has fire damage. It is poorly situated in the neighborhood. The pickup and drop-off of traffic around the area causes congestion. There is not enough parking available. When the school hosts an event, the parking overflow disrupts the neighborhood. The fields are small and unlit, as well as again lack of parking makes it not suitable for leasing to sports organizations, unlike Pima. Navajo is adjacent to Chestnut Park. An optimal solution would be to either lease Navajo to or create a partnership with the

052city of Scottsdale and merge Navajo and Chestnut Park, creating a community center that could include parks and recreation activities, classes, and community meeting rooms that could be rented, similar to those at Eldorado and Mountain View parks. This is a sorely needed resource that neighborhood needs. Because the Pima community was not notified of the board's intentions until just before the October 28th meeting, innovative ideas and suggestions such as this were not discussed with the communities being affected by your backroom discussions. Over 50% of our property taxes go to fund schools. We deserve to be involved in all discussions and decisions. SUSD has earned a failing grade with the community they serve. Superintendent Menzel, I invite you and the board to join us for the monthly flag and award ceremony at Pima this Friday at 9:00 a.m.

053This is an excellent opportunity for you to observe the spirit and values of Pima firsthand. I hope to see you there on Friday. >> [applause] >> Thank you. Kat Inglito, and on deck is Haley Fortney. Hello, board members. I'm sure you're familiar with my face by now. I'm Kat Inglito. I am a second generation Pima student and now a Pima parent of a third generation Pima third grader. Pima is definitely something that is It's a gift that keeps on giving. It's the only A-rated elementary school in South Scottsdale, providing specialized instruction through its unique K-2 ABC and success programs. This isn't just a building. It's a community and a home for specialized learning and the fulfillment of an $18.1 million taxpayer investment. For our students, our dedicated staff, and our resilient families, the greatest holiday

054gift that the board could give to us is the gift of stability and continued educational excellence, the gift of keeping Pima open. This school is where community happens, and we want you to see that magic firsthand. I'm inviting each of you, Superintendent Menzel and the board members, to our next monthly Pima Pima family flag ceremony. Come see the heart of SUSD in action before you make this irreversible decision. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Haley Fortney. On deck is Andrea Turmeratz. Members of the governing board, my name is Haley Fortney. I'm a Copper Ridge parent staff member who has served the community for 16 years. I'm deeply concerned about the proposal to repurpose Copper Ridge. Just 3 weeks ago, our staff was told in a meeting with Dr. Menzel to focus on increasing enrollment, collect data

055from our families on what they want to see for Copper Ridge, and that if we showed growth this year and next, Dr. Menzel could advocate for the board to keep Copper Ridge Copper Ridge, and that we were safe for the '26-'27 school year. We acted immediately, launching our all honors middle school program, expanding fine arts and athletics for next year, collecting quotes for improvements for fundraising, writing grants, and asking for private investors. We started our Second Steps social emotional program, surveyed the families, and created a marketing team with families and staff. However, we have since learned that the Cheyenne families knew about this proposal moving their program to our campus months ago. Copper Ridge staff and families have not have had no communication, no chance chance to input until now. This lack of transparency has

056left our community blindsided after we were told we had time to improve and were safe for the '26-'27 school year. Copper Ridge has had 13 administrators in the 16 years that I've worked there. Despite this this despite the constant change, staff and families have remained committed. Our principal, Ms. Walker, as she puts it, is in it for the long haul. She is a She is a former BASIS administrator and has the leadership, long-term vision, and grit to position us for real change. We need time, not displacement. Every possible cost-saving measure at the district level should be explored before closing and repurposing schools that directly impact families. If the board moves forward with relocating Cheyenne to our campus, our community needs answers. Will the Copper Ridge families like mine who don't want to move to Desert

057Canyon be allowed to stay and merge with Cheyenne? What will happen to the Copper Ridge staff, some who've been there since they opened or have been there for over a decade? Will the staff of all three schools affected have to reapply for their positions? With the state already losing a thousand qualified teachers this year, have you considered the highly qualified staff you will lose in this move? I respectfully ask that the board members visit Copper Ridge, speak to our families directly. We are working hard to grow and strengthen our campus. We need the opportunity we were promised. Thank >> [applause] >> Thank you, Haley. Andrea Turmeratz, and on deck is Angela Lucero. Good evening, governing board members. My name is Andrea Turmeratz. I live in the district and I have two children currently attending SUSD.

058I'm here to address Mohave's new grading and late work site policy, which states work turned in 1 day late receives a 10% deduction. Anything submitted blank is a zero with no chance to redo it. Anything more than 1 day late is not accepted at all. This directly conflicts with SUSD's middle school grading guidelines, which state the district follows best practice to ensure students can complete work and receive support to do so. Penalties for late work must be fixed, not escalating, and cannot exceed 10% after grading. The district also allows students who are absent to make up work, but Mohave's policy requires students who are present on the day an assignment was given but sick the days before it's due to still turn it in on time. A child who goes to school on Monday but

059is sick Tuesday and Wednesday is still expected to submit the assignment that's due Thursday with penalties starting Friday and zeros after that. Why are you asking children to do school work while they're sick? When I questioned Principal Ferraro, he responded they cannot know whether students are truly sick and suggested parents sometimes misuse sick days. He also stated students should bring a doctor's note to receive more time. This is an overreach of his position. Excused absence should not require medical proof for a child to get reasonable time to complete work. When I asked whether this site policy was approved by the board or Dr. Menzel, he told me I don't have to get my policies approved by them. This is very concerning. We have district guidelines for a reason, yet principals can create their own policies,

060even when they contradict district expectations, and no approval is required. Dr. Menzel and Dr. Saccos have been made very aware of this policy, and neither has done anything to stop it. I hope tonight you will consider reviewing the system now that you are aware policies are being created that do not align with SUSD's guidelines. If you need copies of the policies I've referenced or SUSD middle school grading guidelines, I'm happy to provide them by email. Thank you very much. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Angela Lucero, followed by Maddie Andre. Good evening, governing board members. I am Angela Lucero, and I'm here tonight as a parent of two students in the district. I'm also an employee in the district. I am fully aware of how important attendance is for my children's development and growth. I am

061also fully aware of the attendance goals in SUSD. However, I am also very aware that as a parent of two young kids, it is almost a guaranteed things will happen like illnesses, appointments, and so on, despite my best efforts to prevent it. I am here tonight to ask for a change in how attendance is communicated to parents. I receive what feels like nonstop notifications about attendance to the point of receiving what I would consider threats of an attendance contract, parent meetings, and more, even though all of these absences are excused. It sometimes feels like my children are just dollar signs and not children. Believe me when I say I want my children to be at school just as much as you all do, and it is so disheartening to continually get message after message about

062it. I know I called them in. I know they are sick, and I cannot stop illnesses or unforeseen circumstances. It is like putting salt on a wound when as a parent I already feel the guilt with every message I receive. Please consider the amount of communications being sent and the wording within them. I understand the efforts to keep parents involved and informed, but wanted to share some feedback on my experience and the feelings it brings. I do have a solution to this, and that could also help with the district's budget shortfall, and that is a four-day work week and school week. This would help with attendance and offer an extra day for those inevitable sick days, appointments, and more. There's a large number of parents that would support this, and we have many community partners

063that could help offset the extra day, such as the Boys & Girls Club, City of Scottsdale, and more. Please consider all options as things move forward in this process, and help me as a parent to receive less attendance notifications because I only need to worry about four days instead of five, and offer more time with my kids and a much-needed and welcomed gift of time as a teacher. Plus, you will save money for the budget all around. Thank you. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Maddy Andre, followed by Emily Schasel. Good evening, members of the board, administrators, and parents. My name is Madison Andre, and I'm a proud seventh grader at Copper Ridge School. Next year, I will be a graduate eighth grade trailblazer with the intention of attending an SUSD high school upon graduation. I

064am a second-year member of student government, and I'm a principal list scholar, and a mentor to many students at Copper Ridge School. Sadly, I'm here tonight because our school community is facing a a difficult moment. The proposal to close Copper Ridge, my school, our school, and move the students to a different campus is not just a logistical or financial decision. It's an emotional one that affects families like mine, children like me, and teachers like my mom and her colleagues. It's obvious that hard decisions must be made, so I'm asking you to see past the financials alone and focus on the human side of the proposal. These children are not just numbers on a projection chart. They are my friends and my family. I have two little brothers that attend Copper Ridge. I have three little

065cousins who transferred from Chicago just to attend Copper Ridge. My mom is a long-term guest teacher at Copper Ridge, and the students, their families, and staff have become some of her best friends. Copper Ridge is our home away from home. I know I don't have to tell you, but our campus is beautiful. We have a garden that us students maintain. We have murals with our handprints on the wall. We have a rock path that we created. We have sports banners hanging in our gym and a community that comes to support our athletes every home game. Our school is woven into the fabric of our little bubble. We have memories and stories and history at our school that many students have had since pre-K. Last Friday, we had our school carnival for all pre-K through eighth

066graders. We've had an award ceremony recognizing good character and academic achievements. We have pep rallies and school dances. Just this afternoon, my school hosted its annual Thanksgiving lunch. I sat with my parents, my aunts, my uncles, my friends' parents, and my neighbors. We would love to continue enjoying an amazing campus and invite other students to join us. THANK YOU. >> [applause and cheering] >> EMILY SCHASEL, FOLLOWED BY Andrea Andrea Bass. Emily. Hello. I wasn't actually planning to speak tonight, but I got convinced by many parents who've asked me to speak on their behalf. My name is Emily Schasel. I'm a concerned parent at Copper Ridge School. I have been a part of the Copper Ridge community with my three children since 2014, and hope to have our last child graduate in eighth grade like her

067older siblings at school. The news of the closure puts current students essentially out on the street with no path to a similar community, learning style, and curriculum. Although this news comes at our community carefully worded and posed as positive for the district as a whole, you've forgotten how this will truly impact those who keep these school doors open. If your plan is to continue down this path with all of your schools, many families will lose trust and continue to move out of Scottsdale as it loses its family-friendly status and leans closer to a 55-plus community. Do better by our kids. Consult the communities you're overturning. This decision is a massive disappointment and will push many families away from public education in Scottsdale to take their educational dollars elsewhere. We voted for you all based on

068your stories as parents who've had their own children in these schools. Please remember the words you used to get you elected into your positions. Please take your positions to make massive changes to our community seriously. Thank you. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Adrian Bass, and followed by Ryan Acevedo. Good evening, Scottsdale School Board. My name is Adrian Bass. I am a Pima, Supai, and Coronado alumni, and I've chosen my career in the Scottsdale Unified School District. Again tonight, I've come to ask you to keep Pima Elementary open, although I really could borrow from Copper Ridge's speeches about community trust and campaign promises and how the community is going to be affected by a closure in the school. But I would like to remind you about Pima. I'm sorry to be greedy. We are an A-rated,

069Title 1, minority-majority success campus. Please keep Pima open to continue serving our South Scottsdale community. Please keep the room for growth. I would like to thank Mr. Sharkey, Ms. Carney, Dr. Menzel for coming to meet with the Pima parents. Dr. Pedinsky, we'll see you on Thursday. Yes? My hope is that the board can collaborate with the Pima community and find a way to keep Pima open for the community in which it was built. We would like clarification on a slide that's going to be presented later tonight regarding how much money Pima is going to save if it's closed cuz we saw the number change, and it's now above 1 million, and we're curious about the data that you're using to arrive at that decision. But also, I am a teacher who wants budget cuts out

070of my classroom. I'm an Algebra 1 teacher who is relieved that the wig has been tabled cuz I have a lot of feedback on that, but I was focused on Pima. And I know that closing the school is not going to be in South Scottsdale's best interests. So whether it's a budget cut or whether it's putting kids into a math class that they aren't ready for or whether it's repurposing a success school that just earned an A rating, none of these options are what's best for kids. I feel that there will be unintended consequences from a decision that's made in haste. So like I tell my own students, slow down. Read what you've put down. Is this the best we can do? Thank you. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Ryan Acevedo, followed by Mike Bengert.

071Hello. My name is Ryan Acevedo. I am a Pima parent, and I live in the district. We were told that more than just enrollment numbers would be taken into account when discussing potential closures. Yet, this is the only reason Pima seems to be closing. I urge you to look at I urge you to look at the big picture. You want to close a recently remodeled school that cost over 18 million a few years ago, an A-rated, majority-minority, Title 1 school, and send those kids to neighboring outdated schools. How does that make sense? Let's talk solutions, not closures. One solution is a small school model for Pima. Pima can operate effectively by restructuring certain staff, hosting early education programs and community classes that will bring young young families onto our campus, building trust and deepening community

072connections. Backfilling it with administrative offices to assure that campus is fully utilized. We are asking for a two-year growth plan to rebuild enrollment. This opportunity has already been afforded to other SUSD schools. Pima deserves the same opportunity. You made promises to protect our schools, so protect Pima. Thank you. Thank you. Mike Bengert, followed by Sabrina Messenger Acevedo Acevedo. My name is Mike Bengert. Mr. Pedinsky, as a member of the school board, you are entrusted with the safety and well-being of our children. The role carries a tremendous responsibility, not only to the 19,000 students and their families, but also to thousands of taxpayers who rely on you to exercise sound judgment in decisions that will shape their lives and futures. Recently, you hosted a gathering at your home according to eyewitness accounts and photos, resulted in

073police and emergency medical services responding to the scene with teens reportedly transported by ambulance. Hosting, permitting, or failing to prevent an environment in which underage drinking and medical emergencies could occur is deeply troubling. It raises serious concern questions about your judgment and your commitment to the responsibilities you hold within SUSD. Tonight, you will be voting on matters as significant as school closures, decisions with far-reaching consequences for students, families, and the community. Yet, your own child does not attend SUSD. Instead, you serve on the board of a private Catholic school where you determined Brophy was a better fit for him. Under these circumstances, it is fair to ask, why should the community trust your judgment on issues so critical to our public schools? Your actions suggest a disregard for the safety and well-being of the very

074students you are sworn to serve. The community deserves a full and transparent investigation into this incident. Parents and taxpayers must know the truth. Given the seriousness of this matter, your ability to continue serving on the board is now in question. You should acknowledge this lapse in judgment, offer a sincere apology, and immediately resign your position. Thank you. Sabrina Messenger Acevedo and T.J. Buckley. Hi, my name is Sabrina Messenger Andrea I'm a Pima parent and alumni. Closing schools should not should be a last resort and not a starting point. Weeks have passed with multiple meetings and you have continuously failed to provide the community the information we deserve explaining why you are rushing to dismantle a newly built thriving school and now in the 11th hour you have finally managed to put together a PowerPoint after

075months. The way this has been handled is deeply concerning. Pima is a title one A rated minority majority school providing specialized education programs found nowhere else within the Scottsdale school district. It is a beautiful example of what public education should look like. Closing Pima would waste the $18.1 million investment paid for with our taxes. It would be more it would be a more financially responsible decision to merge an older nearby school into Pima rather than stripping the community of a new modern campus that has the ability to carry us into the future. You promised transparency, involvement, and a commitment to keep our schools open. With weeks before the final vote that promise feels unfulfilled. Honor your commitment support Pima by providing us a two-year growth plan and protect our schools. Thank you. Thank you. >>

076[applause] >> TJ Buckley followed by Patricia Pellett. Good evening. I'm TJ Buckley, president of Scottsdale Education Association. I appreciate the unenviable position you are in right now and I want to acknowledge upfront the difficulties of the difficult realities this board and our district face. We are dealing with undeniable demographic shifts and chronic insufficient state funding that places an immense strain on SUSD and other districts in Arizona. It is clear that remaining on the current trajectory is not sustainable and tough decisions regarding cuts, consolidations, or closures are unfortunately unavoidable. As representatives of the certified staff, your teachers, OTs, PTs, social workers, counselors, nurses, librarians, the the front line supporting education, you have a financial and fiduciary responsibility to make our budget viable. However, your primary responsibility is to the students of this district. As you evaluate

077the various options laid before you tonight, I urge you to look beyond the spreadsheets and square footage. These are not merely budget items. They are the structures that house the educational careers of our children. When making these difficult choices, I ask that you be guided by one clear uncompromising principle. What decision will preserve the highest quality of education and the greatest opportunities for the largest number of students. This means looking at the data on student needs, maintaining academic programs, and supporting the mental health and safety of our learners. Making cuts with students in mind means being transparent, communicating openly with the community throughout the process, and committing to minimizing disruption to to the learning. We recognize the burden of this task and we stand ready to support a plan that is fiscally responsible and most

078critically student focused. Thank you. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Patricia Pellett followed by Grace Strombus. It's just Strombus. Hello board members. My name is Patricia. I'm a I'm a mother of an SUSD student. The low birth rate and expensive city narrative is false. Scottsdale is thriving. The city council will tell you that with all the apartments they're building. Um these students just choose to go to other schools. The SUSD community elected board members who hired a superintendent who literally had a manifesto about driving away students and decreasing enrollment in the name of equity. I was shocked at the last meeting that two of his loyalists even spoke in support of closing these schools. The community continues to elect a majority of school board members who reward Dr. Menzel with hefty bonuses. This is all while

079the bread and butter, our teachers raises, don't even keep up with inflation. Petensky, Sharkey, and Lewis claim they had no contribution to these school closures. This is false. They recently voted to adopt a new history curriculum that is biased, racist, and anti-police. They were warned this would decrease enrollment even more. Meanwhile, Petensky just held an underage rave party for his brophy kid and friends. Security was hired and neighbors were alerted and ambulances took away kids to the hospital and the police had to shut it down. Why does the community continue to elect these board members unfit to represent SUSD? The community needs to stop voting in school board members who run on false campaigns funded by money outside of SUSD if they want to save our schools. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Grace Strombus followed

080by Jared McCausland. Good evening governing board, district leaders, and community members. I'm Grace Dombrees, retired SUSD principal. I reviewed tonight's presentation of vibrant and thriving SUSD and respectfully suggest there's a better path forward, one that avoids closing any schools. Shrinking our footprint through school closures is a quick fix, but it risks a death spiral. Families flee the district faster and our neighborhood schools, the heart of our communities, vanish. We can ensure SUSD's long-term viability without a single closure. Two key goals are clear. Keep all schools open and secure a sustainable future. Both are achievable. The first step must be to activate a budget committee to fully explore maintenance maintenance and operation costs and savings. Here are proven ideas we can implement now. Increase class sizes by one student to save the equivalent of an entire

081school. Reduce paid holidays by one for 12-month employees. Cut work days by one in lieu of salary increases. Roll back high school assistant principal contracts from 12 to 11 months. Adopt lean flexible staffing across schools and departments. Review and suspend bonuses and stipends like the Coronado initiative stipend and tills. Launch a campaign to boost tax credit dollars for athletics and fine arts transportation costs. These measures have worked in SUSD before, bridging financial gaps and buying time to innovate. I call on the governing board to honor the promises made by its members, to activate a budget committee, gather broad community input, and keep our schools open. You must have the courage to stop managing decline and start marketing our excellent. Expand choice-driven programs to attract families. Thank you for your time. Thank you. >> [applause] >>

082Jared McCausland followed by Jeff [applause] Rattey. Good evening members of the board. My name is Jared McCausland. I am a parent of a first grader at Laguna Elementary. I'm here tonight to urge you not to move forward with closing Laguna Elementary. In the movie Schindler's List, Itzhak Stern tells Oskar Schindler, "This list is an absolute good." I'm here to tell you today Laguna Elementary is an absolute good for the Scottsdale community. This school serves hundreds of families between our pre-K and K through 5 programs. It offers a rigorous, immersive, and diverse curriculum through STEAM. They are afforded a variety of engaging extracurricular after school clubs that my daughter takes part of as well as many other kids. My daughter loves her school. Her schoolmates love their school. The teachers love their school. The principals and

083the support staff love their school. She loves going to drama club with Miss Leite, Miss From, and Miss Miss Shamy. She loves going to school every day learning in Miss Pennington's class. Please learn the faces and the names of the people that you'll be hurting by doing this. This entire process should stop. I know we face challenges, but it should stop when you know that we're hurting the kids and the teachers, which are the two most important aspects of our community. It's reprehensible to kind of hear that basically you've put a dollar value on what kids' education, sense of community, and mental well-being. This would just completely uproot it. They've created friendships and bonds that would just be ripped apart. To SUSD leadership, the way you have handled this is very disappointing and showing a

084lack of transparency. Hiding the process of closing schools behind the word repurposing, these actions being proposed make it seem like you are corporate you're running US SUSD like a corporation and seem to view our children as expenses on a financial statement. We are the family that lives here year round. You need we need you to go to bat for us with the city of Scottsdale. I find it hard time understanding how the city of Scottsdale can afford to fund public education given there's a new apartment building go up on every single corner block. To this board, please do the right thing for our kids, for our teachers, and for our community. History will be watching. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. [applause] Jeff Rattey followed by Ellie McKnight. I spent 13 years

085as a full-time substitute teacher and 8 years as a paid coach in the Scottsdale schools. Also 13 years doing volunteer veteran presentations for the Joe Foss Institute. My problems began when a teacher at Arcadia requested I be blocked from the school. Although the substitute was instructed both verbally and in written plans to refer to certain students by different names, the students are transgender, the substitute repeatedly addressed and referred to these students by the incorrect name and gender that was on the roster, what is referred to as their dead names. I'm guilty as charged. It was not going to happen until I had the parents' written permission. The kids were solicited for letters to complain that they were severely traumatized as a result. I was told to stay away from the school until those transgender students

086graduated in 3 years. 3 years later, I was fired by Menzel for repeatedly arguing and verbally harassing the district staff about returning to Arcadia. I, in turn, spoke at this very microphone about the corruption in Scott Menzel's office. He retaliated by stealing my $1,800 coaching stipend and arranged to give it to a close personal friend of then President Sanowski. Both of these women were former presidents of the corrupt Democratic Union, the Scottsdale Education Association. A federal judge ruled that school districts cannot force teachers to call girls by boys' names. If you do, you are violating that teacher's first amendment right of freedom of speech, and there cannot be free speech retaliation. Menzel is the king of diversity, equity, inclusion. He signed a statement otherwise to keep the Department of Education from freezing his federal funds.

087Both Scottsdale representatives, Senator Kavanagh, and the state superintendent, have called for Menzel to be fired over this. The Democrats in the sport are cowards and are defying a direct order from a federal judge. I was called to an executive board meeting to deal with these issues. After waiting over 2 hours, I was finally brought in. I no sooner sat down and President Lewis and Vice President Sharkey voted to tell me to go home. The other three board members asked me to speak. When they returned from discussing my situation, they simply ignored me and exited the building. It was reported in the paper the next day that no decision was made. Menzel >> [music] >> Thank you. Ellie McKnight, followed by Randy Sales. Hi, my name is Ellie McKnight. I live in SUSD and I have

088two children, one currently at Pima. Um our question is is our community deserves real answers before any decision is made to close or repurpose any school. What is the actual breakdown of the savings? We hear estimates. Tonight you'll hear 1.2 million. We heard 1 million dollars. Other districts and specialists say 600,000, 300,000, 200,000. But there has been no verified financial analysis. Closing Pima saves a fraction of a percentage. Point 0.6% of the overall budget. But it disrupts many children's lives. Why has there not been a true stakeholders meeting with everybody in the community involved? Families, teachers, and community members were promised transparency and engagement, yet we have not been invited to truly collaborate on solutions. Why has there been no alternatives discussed? There are three options that are being given, and none of them are

089stuff that we have brought towards you. Pima and those in the community presented viable, cost-effective solutions from the small school model to early education backfill to arts and athletic magnet program programs, yet none have been formally considered. Why are solutions being ignored? Why is Dr. Menzel pushing for closure or repurposing without meaningful dialogue from the community or the stakeholders? Why are they pushing so hard to get Pima's facilities and the new $18.1 million? Our community deserves honesty, collaboration, and options, not predetermined outcomes. What is the goal of SUSD? Is it to run students out, to decrease enrollment, or is it to increase enrollment and increase the stability of Scottsdale Unified School District? Thank you. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Randy Sales, followed by Susan Winder. Good evening. My name is Randy Sales, and I am

090here as a voice for fund the front line. I am a proud English teacher at Arcadia High School, and I am a front line worker. Arguably, the two most important resources that impact the quality of life are time and money. Teacher pay, if you use our district um health insurance, which we need, um if you are one of those like myself, your pay is not only frozen, it has gone backwards. Your take-home pay is less this year. Where we are economically is not sustainable on so many levels. And pivoting can be uncomfortable. Please continue to ask the questions, and thank you to those of you who do. I'm asking the board to be innovative, to be measurably brave, and to have an open mind to maybe explore things that could possibly help us. And one

091of those ideas is adopting that four-day work week. Time earned, money saved. What are the wins and what are the whys? A four-day work week offers families and teachers the time for medical appointments and responsibilities that are impossible on a Saturday or Sunday. This could help bolster our attendance rates for both students and staff. A four-day work week could save us money. It's one less day for using gas for buses or electricity and etc. What if it helps support teachers' health and well-being? Less sicknesses could translate to cost savings for our health insurance. What if we became that district that could actionably show we can educate educate with excellence? Thank you. Susan Winder, followed by Jennifer Liebhaber. My name is Susan Winder, and my grandson attends Chaparral. Good evening, Dr. Menzel, board, and cabinet. There

092are many topics that I could talk about tonight, but I choose to address my comments directly to you, Dr. Menzel. You signed the document sent to the Arizona State Superintendent, Tom Horne, verifying that there was no DEI or SEL in SUSD. This was required due to President Trump's executive order stating that there will be no DEI or SEL longer allowed in the school districts. Sir, you lied to the President of the United States, the President of the United States. This is proven by the social studies curriculum the district approved for honors US history, and your publication of the bike clubs for third and eighth grade for transgender students. And now we hear tonight that the student advisory committee is going to be discussing diversity and equity. You are not an elected official, so what makes

093you think that you can lie to the President of the United States who was elected by a large majority? Sir, your political position should not be considered when making decisions for the students of SUSD. I don't care that you believe white supremacy exists, and I'm sure you don't care that I don't agree with you. That is unimportant in making education decisions that have impact on the achievement of our students. The only reason you can get away with this is the result of a liberal majority on the board. We will need to wait and see what Harmy Dillon decides about the lie. I would urge the three new board members to consider the lie that you have regarding the executive order of the President of the United States. Um I hope that this you risk losing

094federal money, and I hope that happens because I think it's the only thing that's going to change what you do. Fortunately, my daughter allows me to be involved in my grandson's education, so you will not be able to impact his belief, and I feel sorry for all the parents don't realize what really is going on. Thank you. Thank you. Jennifer Liebhaber, and followed by Laura Palace. Good evening. My name is Jennifer Liebhaber. I've been a part of the SUSD community as both a teacher and a parent for the past 25 years. Everyone in this room knows that our district, like so many across the nation, is experiencing a budget shortfall unlike every anything we've seen in recent history. I know that this governing board, in conjunction with district leadership, is having many many many difficult

095conversations. It feels like every option is terrible because every one is. Whether it's closing schools, or cutting positions, or laying off teachers, they all are awful. No doubt, you have heard sentiments that cuts should be as far away from students and classrooms as possible. I echo this, and want you to encourage you to consider a vital network of adults that support kids when they are at school, but are not in the classroom. We must protect our cafeteria workers, custodians, social workers, paraprofessionals, and fully certified teacher librarians, and school nurses. All of whom are the unsung heroes of our schools. These people serve in positions of safety and comfort for our most vulnerable kids. Specifically, our teacher librarians help instill a love of reading in our students because readers become leaders. Our school nurses deal with

096conditions and needs that require a level of expertise only an RN can provide. These non-classroom adults are vital to our communities because they serve as mentors and support to our students when they need it the most. In conclusion, please consider each and every option, each and every cut you have to make as if it were your child that were being impacted. It won't make the decision any easier. But like the old tale about the grandfather who throws the starfish back into the ocean over and over again, it might make a difference to someone, and that's what we're here for. Thank you. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Laura Palus, followed by Ziv Shaiman. Good evening. My name is Laura Palus. I'm a parent of three SUSD students, a long-time volunteer attorney, and Scottsdale realtor. After reviewing

097the materials that will be presented tonight, I'm asking you to pause and to rethink the options that are being presented. Not to avoid hard decisions, but because it is the only child-centered community protective path right now. I understand the deficit. I understand the enrollment decline, but I also understand something the data acknowledges, but cannot fully say. Closing schools in today's market doesn't reduce fragmentation, it accelerates it. Arizona has one of the most competitive education landscapes in the country. When a school closes, students won't neatly transfer to another SUSD campus. Many will leave the district entirely, worsening the very enrollment decline we are trying to fix. As a realtor, I see another consequent consequence that must be acknowledged. School closures affect property values. Well-established research shows that closing a neighborhood school depresses nearby home prices because

098families view a walkable public school as a core neighborhood amenity. When the amenity disappears, demand softens, and that impacts families who have invested in these communities. And as a parent, I know closures break routines, relationships, special education supports, and emotional safety nets that children rely on daily. These harms are predictable and avoidable. So tonight, I'm asking for the choice that does the least harm. Please pause closures and direct the creation of a child impact and property value task force so we can build stable, sustainable, community-centered path forward with a stronger option for that truly reflects our values. Thank you. Thank you. >> [applause] >> AND OUR FINAL SPEAKER [applause] is Ziv Shaiman. Good evening, President Lewis, members of the board, and Dr. Menzel. My name is Ziv Shaiman, and I'm an eighth grader in SUSD

099and the NJHS historian at Mohave. I've pretty much grown up in this district. I've started at 2 years old in the twos program at Laguna with Miss Blanca, who still teaches there today. Laguna is the place that helped me learn how to talk to people, handle stress, and get through anxiety and social struggles. Teachers like Mrs. Shaiman helped me more than I can even explain. That school didn't just teach me, it supported me. Laguna is special. It brings kids together. We have morning announcements, amazing teachers, steam learning, a maker space, a science lab, boys and girls club at recess, drama club, robotics, LEGO, and more. All things that make Laguna feel like an actual community, not just a school. But I'm not just speaking only for Laguna. I'm speaking for every school in this proposal

100because every one of those schools is someone's home. I know what it feels like to lose a school community. I switched from Mountainside to Mohave, and even though it was my choice, it was still really hard. One day I had all the kids I grew up with, and the next day, boom, they were gone. New routines, new teachers, new everything. It felt like starting over from zero. Now imagine thousands of kids from all these schools going through that at the exact same time with no choice and no say. Students deserve a choice. This is our daily life, our friends, our routines, our comfort, and honestly, our identity. Schools aren't just buildings, they're communities and raise kids. Did Laguna raise me and my family? Of course. And every school on that list raises someone. If these

101changes have to happen, please support us through it. Help keep friend groups together, give families options, and listen to the students who will feel these changes the most. Thank you. THANK YOU. >> [cheering] [applause] >> BOARD MEMBERS, ANY ANY RESPONSE that aligns with I didn't hear you. That was last one. That was the last one. Yes. All right. Miss Carty. Thank you, President Lewis. I could have many things, but I would like to um ask that in today's presentation, you you do address why you have chosen um to to for Pima instead of Navajo or Yavapai or any of the surrounding schools. Please address um that because we keep hearing that, and I don't have the answers either, so I want to make sure that is addressed today. I also would like uh the the

102speaker that talked about the Mohave late work policy. I would like uh the board have information if schools are allowed to make different guidelines than our district guidelines, or just an update on that situation. Thank you. Any other conversation? I I and I would also add to what uh Miss Carty just said in terms of the attendance communication frequency and wording. I just I I I remember that feeling. So I would like to just hear a little bit about it. It doesn't have to be super formal. Um thank you all so much, very much for being here. All right, that moves us to our next agenda item. Item 11, information discussion items. Our demographic study, 11A. We'd like to invite Rick Brammer forward and uh his his Kristen, right? And uh this is Applied Economics.

103They've done multiple demographic studies for us. Uh the board has in its possession um one dating back to 2018-19, which was pre-pandemic, and a number since then. We have updated information uh that reflects kind of the state of where we are and uh where you are analyzing where we're going. So we're going to turn it over to you. Thank you, Rick. Yeah. Thank you very much. President Lewis, Vice President Sharkey, members of the board, Dr. Menzel. Uh it's our pleasure to be here tonight to um communicate the results of the demographic update for the district. Um I don't see the presentation up. So and we can crank that up. As you said as you said, we've been working for the district. Actually, did the first study for the district in 1995 in the old office

104back on 44th Street. So it has been a while, and we've seen an awful lot on the upside and on the downside. And unfortunately, um every where we work is pretty much in the same position that you are, and everyone is struggling to figure out how to make it forward and and how to put the kids first. And so I'm glad to hear all of those comments. I think it's all important to make sure we don't forget who's number one, which is of course the kids. So uh go to the next slide, please. Our scope of work um basically um it looks at analyzing enrollment data, of course. All of yours and all of the alternative providers we can get in every way we can in terms of grade level configurations, geographic distribution, how that

105shifted over time. The next thing is looking at the demographics of the existing population. With over, you know, right around a a quarter of a million people living uh in the district these days, um what happens with the existing population is more important than what happens with construction for the most part. You have to build a lot of housing units to have much of an impact when you've gotten to this size and scale. And when those housing units that are being added um aren't designed or marketed to families, it presents an extra challenge. And so but the demographics are shifting as we talked about the aging. And everyone's aware that that's been going on in the district. Um You betcha. Um and then the residential development impacts um there are as as someone else pointed

106out, there's a lot of apartments being built, and there's a lot of other development energy in the city, and it's hard not to see that and wonder about the student populations that those might be generating. And so Kristen's going to talk with us a little bit about those projects and the nature of them and and who they're marketed to. And then I want you to understand the the the rigor that we go through with your enrollment projections. We actually run three separate models. We run a a macroeconomic top-down, how does the whole district fit into the northeast valley, into metro Phoenix, into the economic development picture, into the big picture uh issues that we're dealing with. We do a model for each of your communities. So it's an intermediate level model. Your district is so

107large and so diverse compared to many that it's really like looking at five different districts. And so that's what we do is we look at it as as if it was five different districts and look at the the trajectory that each part of the district is on. And then finally, we go to this level, which is what we affectionately call grids. There's 343 of those in the district. We know how many students do you served from each one of those areas going clear back to around 2010. So we have a lot of history in looking at how neighborhoods have performed over time and how that relates to housing and relates to the changing in the demographics. It's the strongest part of the whole puzzle is having that robust, small area, bottom-up sort of look that

108lets us go neighborhood by neighborhood. Next slide, please. So, we're going to start though with the big picture. This is the last 15 years worth of district enrollment. This is 40th day head count. It's not ADM. It relates better to demographic. In the decade before this chart starts, enrollment peaked in 2000 to 2000 and 2001 and declined about 1,200 students during the decade of the 2000s. Starting in 2010, the rate of growth or the rate of decline accelerated coming out of the Great Recession 2006 to 2010, charter schools took a little hiatus. They weren't able to build during the recession either. So, what happened starting in 2010 was they went back to work in creating new schools and and putting more and more seats into the market. And it wasn't just seats this time for

109high schoolers. Charters came from the concept of supporting at-risk high school students. They came back in force serving K-8 students with dedicated public or privately-held schools designed to make money. And they've done a very well they've done a very good job of making it seem like it's the place to be. However, academics don't necessarily support that. But anyways, since 2010, we've lost a total of about 6,200 students in terms of enrollment. That's about 24% of total enrollment. A big hit of that was of course during the COVID year. And I really it wasn't as big in numbers, but it changed the mentality and it changed everything going forward in terms of the the facilities that were available to home educate, online education. And it also built distrust with the districts and it put a lot

110of people on a in a different mindset relative to particularly district education. So, in this period, we've seen a year-over-year decline of about 1.8% per year, which is what is causing us to have to look at so many of these hard hard questions cuz we're not talking about a small decline. We're talking about a substantial one. Next slide. The misery loves company slide. So, every district that we work for in an established area is in decline at just about exactly the same rate you are. So, whether you're big or small, if you look at these lines, they're almost identically parallel to each other. Chandler, of course, was still in a growth mode clear through COVID. That changed its perspective, too. They had they were gaining students right up to that year. Last year, they lost

1111,800 students in Chandler School District. So, this is, you know, coast to coast nationwide kind of a thing, at least in terms of Arizona. And then of course, we've all heard the horror stories from Mesa of the terrible collapse they had in enrollment during COVID and what has happened since then. And we're going to talk about why I think their exact their impact since then has been a little more exaggerated than some of the other areas, but know that you're not alone. This is happening in every established community that we work for. Next slide. One of the other ways to look at enrollment is to is where it comes from. So, the first the first way to slice it, if you will, is the blue part of the chart are in-district students and the green

112part of the chart or the bars are out-of-district students. And so, what you'd see during this same period of time that we were talking about, in-district enrollment has actually fallen by about 7,300 students, not 6,200 students, because out-of-district enrollment has increased by about 1,100 students during this same period of time. I would note that during this particular time also though, about 5,700 new charter school seats were created in the district. So, you don't have to look very far to figure out where kids went. It's not a big mystery in terms of that. But as we talked about, we're now down, you know, 7,000, 8,000 students over this over this period. Next slide. We talked about the out-of-district students. I think it's important. I think it's it's one of the things that that does suggest that

113you are doing things right. I mean, there's not many districts that we work for that pull in this volume of students from outside of their boundaries. And so, particularly from the Paradise Valley District and then of course from the Creighton and Balsz districts bring in a tremendous number of students. And while you're serving people from outside the district, it does give you head count and that helps keep neighborhood schools open. And if it wasn't for these 5,000 kids from outside of the district, you can imagine what kind of decisions you would have to be making. So, it's an important component and you know, it's important to keep marketing that side of the equation as well. Next slide. Another way to slice it is to look at the at the grade structure. And so, you can

114see this is the average enrollment per grade in each of four groups, K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12. And you can see that really since 2000, we go back a little further on this one, that we've had an aging student population as well. So, the cohorts used to be much closer in size to one another. As I talked, charter schools suddenly had a bigger impact on K-8. A lot of the separation between these lines has to do with that and the fact that a lot of students come back from charter school for ninth grade. And so, it continues to prop up the high school numbers even though, you know, the K-8 numbers may not be behaving in the same way. These curves unfortunately follow each other. So, take one and count 13 years back and you're going

115to find the other. So, if you take the the 9-12 and count 13 years back, you're pretty much going to hit the K-2 number. And so, right now there's a built-in bias in the fact that you've got a much larger senior class than you do kindergarten class. And so, every year if we just think about we talk about roll up in the district. If nothing else happens, but you just move every kid ahead and you get the same size kindergarten class you had before. Well, our roll up is setting us up with a negative 5 or 600 students per year just before we even get started. So, the structure of the enrollment curve is contributing to our our, you know, our condition right now, too. And it's it's important to note. The only last thing

116I'll say about this is the last 3 years of the K-2. Notice K-2 had been more or less stable. It fell to its lowest level almost in 2014. It's been a long time since it's been at that same about level. Last two three years that are included on this chart, we can talk about empowerment scholarship accounts. And we can talk about how those are most popular have been most popular with people starting in the system. So, kindergarten and first grade students' parents are the ones that have, you know, come out, you know, in greatest numbers. And we're starting to see that have an impact especially in more affluent areas because choice takes not only time and money, but only not only money, but time and you have to be able to accommodate taking you know,

117advantage of those options. So, we see it here and we see it in Chandler and we see it in parts of Mesa, massive impacts, you know, from the ESA program. Next slide. We look at the geographic distribution of your students. And this is just the last 5 years. This shows for each one of the grids the enrollment change, K-12 enrollment change. And if it's red, there's been an increase and if it's blue, there's been a decrease. So, by far and away, except for where we've had some isolated housing projects, we've had district-wide losses. They've been more extreme in the north and the south for entirely different reasons, but basically losses, you know, not in just in one neighborhood or one school, but across the district again making the problem much more acute. Next slide. So,

118we'll we'll move from talking about enrollment to talking about demographics just a little bit. And this is an important concept for everybody to understand also. Is that if you look at the population of the state of Arizona, particularly the population under 18 in the state of Arizona, it grew steadily and at the same rate as total population all the way through 2010. And then because of our birth rates and the Great Recession and things like that, these the school age population under 18 in the state literally stopped increasing in 2010 and has not increased since then. And according to the Arizona state demographer, will not increase until after 2030. So, what we've been having during this whole period of time is we have the exact same number of kids statewide to educate and we keep

119bringing in more choice and alternative and more choice and alternative, which basically has the effect of taking the same size pie and cutting it into more pieces and perpetually cutting it into more and more pieces. And that's the real reason why we have seen, you know, the sort of the exaggerated rate of decline in districts versus, say, the entire school age population, which we now know is basically been holding steady. Next slide. Also talk about birth rates and I've got lots and lots I could talk all night about birth rates, but this one's really kind of puts it all together. It's kind of complicated. The the columns are keyed to the left axis and that's your that's your birth rate in Arizona versus the US and the squiggly blue line is the ratio between those

120two. And so you can see what happens if you go back to 2006 right at the start of the great recession, Arizona's um um birth rate was a good 20% higher than the US average. In that year there were 102,000 babies born in the state of Arizona. Last year there were 78 or 2003 there were 78,000 babies born in the state of Arizona. So we're down a full 25% in terms of the flow of new students into the system and now our birth rates are a good 10 or 12% below the national average. So this has been a dramatic, you know, demographic shift for our state and linked to a lot of different things, economic, immigration policies, lots of things fed into this decline, but it's real and it's part of why again why we're

121experiencing the kind of the misery that we are today. Next slide. In terms of the district's demographics, the top slide is is just population and housing units. So you can see they both continue to increase even though enrollment hasn't. Um the the red line on top of the on top of the first chart is the share of population in the district that's under 18. So that has fallen from 20% to to less than 15%. So that same 25% reduction in that inflow of potential students from the same number of housing units and even more housing units. The bottom shows the distribution of householders by age. We talk about the effect of aging. And so the red part the the red part of those columns represents householders under the age of 55 and the green is

122householders over the age of 55. And so what you can see is that essentially we've gone 25 years without an increase in the number of householders under age 55 who are the guess what? The ones who have the school age population and drive enrollment. More important or as important to me is the red is the blue line in front of that because that is saying what share of all households are homeowners, not renters. Nothing against renters, but homeowners produce a lot more students per unit than renters do. And so the share of households occupied by owners under 55 is the biggest driver for enrollment. And that has fallen from a full 35% of all households in the district down to 23% of all households in the district. And again, you know, huge negative impact on

123school age population in spite of the fact that we keep adding housing units and adding housing units. And I understand that's a difficult concept for for for people to understand and it's actually very hard to model. It's much easier when housing units and and population are correlated together. I'm having to deal with an environment where one's going up and the other's going down. And that's a much more difficult thing to do. Next slide. Kristen's going to talk to us about what's going on with development. This is the map of the development activity in the district during the 2024-25 school year via the permits. So the blue dots represent single family additions while the orange dots represent multi-family additions. And in the past 10 years there have been 11,000 housing permits issued and 75% of which

124have been multi-family. Um and so as you can see in the northern part of the district a lot of the single family additions are within DC Ranch. Whereas in the southern part of the district there's a concentration in the Arcadia neighborhood which is largely redevelopment of housing units meaning we're not adding additional housing units, it's just redevelopment so our number would stay the same. Um there's also a concentration of low density redevelopment around Camelback area. Um but as you can see the majority of the multi-family is in the southern part of the district particularly around Old Town. Unfortunately these are the luxury developments that we have been seeing. That's just development not actual residents. Count. That's the count of development by housing not the actual residents. It's another housing units. >> Permits. Housing units, okay.

125Thank you. Uh next slide, please. Uh this map shows the development potential in the northern part of the district um and it has the Chaparral and the Desert Mountain communities. Um but my first point talks about the district as a whole. So over the next 10 years we estimate there will be 16,000 additional housing units added to the district and half of these will come from infill and redevelopment which will largely be from multi-family developments. So that includes redevelopment of many of the large multi-family um housing in the district. So of these 16,000 about 3,600 will come from single family and a 12,500 will come from multi-family housing. Um so I want to talk about a few of the developments that I think could potentially positively impact the district. Um so in the Chaparral neighborhood

126the Golddust apartments on Scottsdale and Golddust um will be 215 apartment units and that uh construction has started and is expected to be completed in early 2027 and they are offering um uh month or two free for Chaparral students so this could entice families uh with high school students in the neighborhood and it will also be 10% workforce housing. Uh next slide, please. Uh this is the development potential in the southern portion of the district with Arcadia, Coronado, and the Saguaro communities. Um and so this is where we're going to see the vast majority of the future multi-family development and unfortunately a lot of these units will be these luxury older um people that we're seeing with the demographic changes. Um but a few of the exciting developments that could attract students, one of which

127is the Scottsdale United United Methodist Church over here on Miller and Indian School is proposing 82 affordable housing units um and this would feature a playground and a play area and this could be developed in the next three to five years. Um and then in the Coronado community which I currently live in um there is Southdale on the northeast corner of McDowell and 70th Street which could have 267 apartment units and expected to be completed in early 2028. So what does all that mean in terms of enrollment? Well, one of the things I wanted to illustrate and I probably put it put it put it in a different order uh but is since that school age population we talked about has been has been fixed in the state at at that at that um 2010

128level um you can see how the enrollment has has has varied public enrollment. So the red part of the bar here is is district enrollment and the blue part is charter school enrollment. And the green line is the ratio of enrollment that is in charter schools. So you can see about that you can really this really visualizes or the um that sharp increase in charter school enrollment that began in 2010 that really started the district on its downhill decline. It shows that the total number of publicly funded students has been nearly identical at least since since 2014. The only thing that's changed is how they're being served. And the other thing it shows is at the very very end is major slowdown in the growth of charter schools. And Curtis Cardine, a researcher out in

129the the total number of students in in charter schools in the state actually declined by a very very small amount, but it actually went down for the first time ever including during the year of COVID. So all of these things do have an impact not only on us but on all providers. And it's real. Next slide. So we looked at at at doing the actual projections. What's important to me is the size of the school age population and that is all persons living in the district age 5 to 17 whether they go to one of your schools or not and that is the green bar. So if we look back over the last 10 years you can see and I'm going to pull up my my slide so I get these numbers right because Rick's

130eyes aren't as good as they used to be. But uh we've lost about 2,500 persons from the school age population. Um but enrollment's gone down by about 3,900. Now during the same period of time the total number of students with ESAs in the district has increased by 3,600. The first year of the increase was the biggest and in that first year 22-23 a lot of the students who took a voucher were already in a private school. Actually 79%. And so the impact on charter or on on charter and district schools was not that great. But the two years afterwards that percentage has gone way up. And because you're in a fluent area and because people are, you know, taking advantage of that program um it's it's had a definite a definite impact. So um I'd

131like to guess we'll go to the next slide. yeah, actually actually don't. Can I Can I go back? Cuz the point was going to be that then the purple line here is the ratio of what we call the service rate. What share of the in-district population are you serving? And so during this last 10 years, that's gone from roughly 65% to 55%. It's a 10 about a 10-point downward slide. The equation tells you it's about 1% per year with a very high degree of of consistency. You go to the So then what does that mean for the next 10 years? Cuz what I really project is school-age population. I project the green bars. And so in the next 10 years, we're going to continue to have a decline in the school-age population, probably slightly less

132than it has in the in the previous 10 years. Birth rates are starting to stabilize, but it's going to take a long time to get that, you know, up through all 12 grades, but um And then when I looked at the did the analysis and I looked at that 1% per year that we've been losing over the last 10 years, and if I adjust that for the what I would call anomalous effects of COVID and for the initial rollout of the ESAs, if I put those two things aside, it falls back to really more like a half percent per year. And so in terms of my trend forecast, the the road that we're on now, I decided to model it at about a half percent per year, and I don't drive it quite directly that

133way. It's a little more complicated, but that's the way it came out. And so that would have our in-district enrollment um falling from about 14,777 down to uh 12,428 over the next 10 years. Um even as at least 9,300 new um households are added. So it's that quandary I keep talk talking about where one's going up and the other's going down. Um But if you go to the But that's a trend a 10-year trend based on 10 years of history during a very tumultuous time for a bunch of different reasons. And I also don't know that a 10-year, you know, projection can be done just using 10 years worth of history. So we have a lot of variables. So if on the next slide, what we do is we look at Well, what if the

134What if What if that service rate isn't what we think What if it doesn't stay on the trend? If it stays on the trend, you can see we fall to that 12,428 uh in-district, which would represent a decline of about 2,300 students over the next 10 years. If we can just hold the rate at 55.1%, then that's only a That's a That's a decline of just 1,000 students over the next 10 years. And then And I was made aware that there was an objective of the board to increase the service rate by 3% over the next 5 years. And so I took the liberty of making that 6% over the next 10 years, and that would actually put us, you know, in a position where enrollment would not decline at all. So all of these

135things are in the are in the realm of are in the realm of possibility because when you've got as many students as you do in your community that you're not serving, it it creates a lot of opportunity in terms of marketing efforts and the recruitment efforts. I'd love to hear about kids recruiting kids. Um Kristen and I were at a meeting the other night where we heard about a company who's charging a finder's fee to recruit students for your district. I have a little bit of a problem with that, but that's how desperate we all are to figure out how to build a better mousetrap, and it's hard. It It's not as easy to get kids back as you think. We only have one district that we work for that has an increasing service rate

136out of all the 30 districts that we serve in in the in the state of Arizona. So even holding stable would be an an accomplishment, I think, at this point. Next slide. A lot of numbers here, and we're not going to talk about very many of them at all, but we do end up doing projections of enrollment by not only just by school, but by school by grade. Everything in the green in in 2015 obviously through 2025, those are all real numbers. Those are all real enrollment numbers by school. And so, you know, not to pick on anybody, but at Copper Ridge, when you look at a decline from over 1,000 students, you know, um down to um you know, 440 students, it you know, there is you have a large very large facility doing

137very little, essentially. Doesn't mean it Yeah, I won't say what that means, but everywhere we see in the projections, I color code them just by the size they are. So blue means it's a little school, and red means it's a big school. It's getting redder, it's getting bigger. If it's getting bluer, it's getting smaller. And all we want to do is kind of highlight in particular um the the schools, you know, in the 3 to 400 range or below 300 because as we've worked for again dozens of districts across the state, there is an economy of scale that becomes very important at around 400 or so students. It has to do with the number of sections by grade and how that lays out with how the classes are loaded. Um doesn't mean there aren't small

138small school solutions, and in fact, I know Mesa's working really hard on those two right now. So that's That's a possibility, but the fact of the matter is when you have schools, particularly schools that are adjacent to each other, that get down into these ranges, then you have to really start thinking about consolidation for the most part. Um The next slide shows basically the same kind of information for the high schools. High schools have, you know, up till now fared much better better. The last 5 years has been tough because the 1,800 student decline in the K-8 that we had between 15 and 20 caught up with high school between 20 and 25. So high school enrollment's gone down by around 800 students over the last 5 years. It'll moderate a little bit over the

139next five as that bump goes through. Um And you know, there's there's only really one you know, one area of concern on this slide, and that is of course Coronado High School. And doing something, you know, to keep that neighborhood vibrant. And we know it that with high schools, it's not only just about economics, it's about the program you can offer when you have this number of students versus that number of students. Last slide is just kind of our overall conclusions. I probably have them So you have to push a button for every one of them, so I apologize. >> [laughter] >> But um unfortunately um I you know, K-12 K-12 enrollment is is probably going to decline over the next 10 years. The big question is how much. Is it 2,300? Is it 1,000?

140Is it zero? And of course, I don't know, and neither do you, but we all know that we need to make an effort, you know, with the service rates in particular because we're not going to change the demographics that much, but we can do we can possibly affect the service rate, and I think that's where the energy uh needs to go. Um There's no indicated increase in the school-age population. We saw the We saw the demographics, the distribution of householders by age, um and it's just not there. It's We're just not poised for any kind of a increase. Kristen talked about residential development potential. There's quite a bit of it, and there's a lot of active development. We go through and we get student data, you know, by address, and we actually do a survey

141where we look at apartment complex and apartment complex and apartment complex. I know how many units they are, and I can see how many students we're getting. And in the luxury units, we get about one for every 100 units. Uh literally, it's almost to zero uh impact. So when she's excited about 80 units that might actually have, you know, nor a normal [snorts] more normal population in it, it's because most of them just don't. Um We see the most you know, potential um unfortunately for continued declines in Coronado, um Chaparral North and Desert Mountain. Um The other communities have essentially stabilized. And if you dig into the 70-page report, we do we we do show those projections community by community by community, and you'll see what you know, what what what we're looking at there

142where um um Desert Mountain and to a lesser extent Chaparral are still going through the aging out of their original populations. While, you know, the other areas have already turned over a number of times, and we're seeing a great deal of stability. So um I know that's a lot to take in. Um But I'll take any questions. We'll take any questions you might have. Dr. Potenski. So as kind of part of preparing for what is obviously just an incredibly difficult [snorts] decision that the board is being asked to make, um I went back and asked for all your prior studies or some of your more recent prior studies. So I've read, I think, the last five or six I'm sorry. >> studies. Um Which Dr. Menzel, if you could help me, goes back how far

143is the earliest one that we recently Uh the one that we sent to you was 2018-19. That's the first of the five. >> one that we sent. >> Yes. So, can you I'm asking you, I guess, to do this off the top of your head. I apologize. But, for the benefit of the community and myself, can you talk a little bit about what's changed over the course of those studies? I have found them to be remarkably accurate. If you kind of look at what you said might have happened 5 years ago to where we are now. But, you know, are there things that you tended cuz we're making decisions not only for now, but for years from now in terms of their effect. Right. >> You know, are there things that you sort of under

144appreciated, over appreciated, where the dynamics were just give us a little bit of a sense when you were presenting to this board 5, 6, 7 years ago, how similar was the story that you were telling? In a way, it was it was fairly similar. And I think that's why the projections are as close as they are. However, COVID was on no one's radar. Sure. And that made a fundamental permanent change in in the way education is delivered and in the way people perceive districts and other providers. So, that was a big one. And then, the other is is that we knew that charters were starting to saturate. The growth in the charters was starting to slow in in areas that were already well served by charters. And so, the thing that was not on the

145radar, again, was the ESA program. That was that was no nowhere in a thought or a calculation at that period of time that we would have 80,000 odd students statewide that are, you know, receiving money to not go to your schools. And And where do you think that is in terms of your ability to forecast forward? Cuz it seems like the most recent liberalization of that program where literally any family just can take $7,000 Mhm. and do anything with it as long as they don't go to the public school. Mhm. How do you is that one of those unknowns that could actually put more pressure on our service rate It is. Although, it's beginning to saturate. You know, the growth of that program, whether it's even though it's not capped officially, the growth of the

146program has been tapering off. And the fact of the matter that for any option you put out there, there's going to be a group of people who think that's a good idea. And so, how big is that group? And once you're serving that group, you've served that group. And so, how big will it get, I guess, is the question you're asking. It doesn't appear I assumed that that the legislature may intervene, you know, and set some sort of a cap, but it doesn't appear that that's going to happen. But, in practically, how many people can stay home for $7,000 a year? I mean, it's, you know, it's better than not having $7,000 a year, but it's really not the same as, you know, bringing in an income. And so, again, there's a limited number of

147people who are able to take advantage of the program. And then, if I could just ask >> Yeah. a final question just while I have the mic. Um, it's not a very cheery presentation. I don't know if anyone's told you that. >> to feel like the Grim Reaper, to be honest with you. Everywhere I go, it's >> maybe it's just human nature or my own optimism, but I kind of again, one of the hardest things about this decision, well, the hardest thing is the human dimension. The second hardest is thinking across time cuz we're making a decision now with facilities Mhm. that 5, 6, 7 years later, I would hate for us to regret. Um, that 2035 So, again, I'm going to try to be an optimist here. Yeah. Um, forecast the birth rate start

148to go up again Mhm. and the school age population starts to grow. Can you just tell us a little more of what's behind that forecast and how do we then think about that if cuz 10 years really isn't that far away? And I understand there's babies at that point. >> particular projection was for the state. So, whether that's going to play out exactly when that's going to play out in the Scottsdale school district, you know, I'm I'm not really not really able to um, predict that. Right. One of the things that we do is um, I say is we talk about preservation of the land. So, you have to you may have to do what you have to do with facilities, but I would advise districts never to sell the land. There's lease opportunities, there's

149joint use reuse opportunities. There's lots of things we can do to hang on to that property cuz I feel like you do. We're doing this supposed to be doing this for into perpetuity. What are people going to need 50 years from now? >> Right. And I saw this play out in downtown in one of the first projects I ever did back in 1998 was for the Creighton school district who had torn down about half of their schools in the '50s and the '60s as the original population moved out and they sold those sites. And then, a brand new um, more diverse community moved in with larger household sizes and all of a sudden, they're having to buy land at retail prices in order to try to build schools. So, that's one of the big hedges

150is is is hanging on to the land. Um, um, and maintaining that asset. Mr. Sharkey. Um, thank you for this. Um, I read through it the other night and got lots of comments on it. So, appreciate the the in-depth analysis. You mentioned um, one district had an increase in service rate. Um, any attribution? Is that demographics? Is that marketing of that district? Well, what kind of did you see with that one district? >> a pretty unique situation. It's the Maricopa Unified School District. And so, originally, they only served half of their kids because everybody moved there from Chandler and they were driving their kids up and down the freeway every day. And so, as their district has matured, they've added new facilities. They just opened their second comprehensive high school. We've seen people make the

151decision to stay closer to home. Great. And it's pretty simple to figure out why that might be. Yeah. Yeah. On the um, you know, on kind of the the overall tone of this, I mean, you know, as I was going through this, the share of households in parentage population 35 to 54 dropped from 36 to 31% over 15 years. The largest growing age group over the last 5 years, 65 plus, increased 2.2%. New housing family units, I think the the wording you had in there was um, Uh, about multi-family apartments and low density, neither generate significant amounts of school age kids, like you said. Yeah. Um, I'm actually not looking at this as a negative and the reason is it's information that's known. Like, you've got a 95% R squared on your regression line. That's

152great, right? We know what the numbers are going to be. Taking uncertainty out of the equation allows us to plan. So, while I wish we were growing in the number of school age kids demographically, knowing what things are like really help us with the planning cuz we can take one variable out of the equation. So, I appreciate you guys bringing that to the table. Thank you very much. Uh, in the magic ball of housing development and the hope of it filling with that demographic shift in 10 years, is what might be your experience with infill that way? It I just It feels like a pure magic ball. I I will I will start, I guess. Well, um, it's interesting to me cuz I have been doing this work in the valley for over 30 years.

153And infill and redevelopment weren't even a thing for the first 25 of that. And now, it's really the focus of a lot of the a lot of the energy. And so, um, I think we're going to continue to see more of it. But, as I've seen it happen in downtown Phoenix and in here in Scottsdale, um, the history of it usually is to displace, is to remove affordable housing and bring in higher priced housing, which makes the street look better, but it actually has the effect of continuing to decrease the school age population. Well, the gentrification that Creighton experienced was exactly that. It did not yield more families. In fact, it it it increased a lack of affordability of housing. Right. And And right now, we're we're seeing Madison for the first time >> Same

154thing. >> starting just starting to deal with that. That the people that are moving into that district, you know, they don't have kids. Yeah. Did you want to say something? Okay. Board members, anything else? Dog gone it. And thank you. I would I would love to I would love to give you a better picture. I really would. I mean, I my heart goes out to uh, to you for having to make the decision and for the students who who have to really bear the brunt of it. >> Yeah. This is no help whatsoever. I appreciate that. >> you. No, seriously, appreciate the the the hundreds of hours and the and the statistical analysis with real data. Thank you so very much. Appreciate everything you did. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Ready for the next one?

155Our next our next information discussion item Sorry, I'm just taking it in, you know, I'm just really processing, is the potential creation of arts magnet. Uh, hope is in the air. So, I'd like to invite Jason Rose forward. Uh, Jason is a community member in the Arcadia learning community, a neighbor of Echo Canyon schools. And we've had a number of conversations about this idea. And uh, we've invited him to present uh, the vision for a potential arts academy here in Scottsdale. Jason, welcome. Thank you, President Lewis, members of the board, Dr. Menzel, Principal Hughes. It's been an interesting month since word got out about Echo Canyon. My name is Jason Rose and I'm here with my fiance Jessica Pacheco. We live at 6210 East Exeter, directly across the street from Echo Canyon. I'm proud to

156report that Jessica was appointed by Governor Ducey to the Arizona Board of Regents and is the incoming chairwoman in '27 and '28. So, hopefully what we speak tonight about has a a little bit of credibility and a little bit of behind it. Supai Paiute where I closed the school in the last class with board member Sharkey's wife. Tavan, Ingleside, and Arcadia. That was my journey in the Scottsdale Unified School District. I intentionally moved across from Echo Canyon because of the joy that you could hear on that campus. It's where I learned to play Little League baseball. And when I heard about its plight, I said, "What's the solution?" Heard a lot tonight a lot of about a lot of dilemmas that you have. Well, I want to start with another part of my story. 2

157years ago, a gallery owner on Main Street in Old Town called me up and said, "Hey, I've I've heard you've done some interesting things in life. You put some musicals in New York. You founded a polo event. You market and do PR for a living. I would like to create a great art fair for the Phoenix metropolitan area because I travel all over the country and it does not exist." I said, "Sign me up. We're going to be partners whether you like it or not." 2 years later, we put 106 galleries from 11 countries and 120,000 square feet at WestWorld of Scottsdale. This year will we we will do 125 galleries from 13 countries, making it the largest new American art fair in 20 years. It is possible to put the first musical in the

158history of Arizona in New York City. And we're here tonight to introduce the Scottsdale Arts Academy because it's time to start playing a little offense. We heard a lot of defense tonight. We heard about tourniquets. We heard about funerals. We heard about uncertainty. Tonight, let's talk about optimism. And talking about not just keeping schools open, but how we turn a school of 257 today to 400 to 600. So, we're generating revenues. So, with that, I would like to um one housekeeping item to go to the next slide, just say turn. Where is it? This is my favorite slide of the presentation. Echo Canyon is probably among the top three, five, 10, two campuses in the state of Arizona, not SUSD. And those of you that have had the pleasure of driving the PCH and know

159about Malibu know that it's probably the greatest piece of university real estate in America. Would you put a post office there? No, you wouldn't. And that's not what should be done at Echo Canyon. >> [snorts] >> It should be maximized to its fullest potential. It should not be where district offices are. It should not be where smaller programs exist. It should be the greatest vision possible to realize the full potential of that campus. Scottsdale, Arizona, the greatest art city in the state, one of the best in the country, a city of galleries, a city of collectors, a city of partners ready to step up, willing to help out. Yet, this school district has never had an arts magnet and we'll talk about the unlikely districts that have had them before. Why Echo Canyon? It's the

160confluence of a lot of beauty. Natural, art, you name it, Echo Canyon has it. In fact, since I became involved in this quixotic quest, I've had people reach out knowing that I was involved and telling me about all the arts elements at Echo Canyon. I had the pleasure of visiting them recently with Principal Hughes. It is a campus ready to become an arts magnet. And look what's around it. Is there any potential arts magnet in the country that has a better ecosystem? From the Smithsonian affiliate that's Museum of the West to Paolo Soleri's Cosanti to all that Scottsdale Arts has to offer, it is an incredible extended and internal campus waiting to happen. Now, I and others are sober about what you're facing. Echo Canyon has had decreased enrollment. Is the marketplace responding to it?

161Debatable. Is it a marketing issue? Debatable. But what we can do is potentially repurpose or combine uses at Echo Canyon with this compelling compelling vision. I would ask you, don't just triage the situation. Aim as high as you possibly can to play that offense, to create revenue, and not just play defense. Turn that turniquet into triumph. I mentioned marketing. I don't envy the marketing staff at Scottsdale Unified with the onslaught of competition, with all that you face, with what we just heard from the previous speaker. Frankly, it's not fair to your marketing staff to market two dozen, nearly three dozen schools with the resources they have. It's an unfair fight. That's why when it comes to this opportunity, we are prepared to contribute $50,000 towards a dedicated $100,000 to assist the district with specific marketing

162for the Scottsdale Arts Academy. In addition to that, my company will donate another $100,000 in in-kind services. We can work together, the public and the private sector, to do something very very special. Now, I've had to learn a little bit about arts magnets and I have become aware that the number of schools that see students leave rarely see them ever return. I've appreciated the dialogue with Dr. Menzel about this possibility. And he understands, I believe, the rarity of the return, which is why I think we put together a potential stopgap approach that could lead to this most promising outcome. It's also my understanding that your fine arts director, Michelle Irwin, has been working on a plan. I have not seen it. It exists. I don't know if you've seen it, but this isn't pie in

163the sky. This has been worked on because it has been desired, my understanding, by some members of the district over the years, by Dr. Menzel. But you don't start from scratch. You have it ready to go. And I believe the possibility is there to get up and running very very quickly. What you do with Echo Oh, sorry. What you do in the interim is your tough decision to make. This is hopefully again a positive tool so that you can see light at the end of the tunnel and the incredible opportunity that exists. And frankly, we don't need to look any further than downtown Phoenix, Mesa, and Deer Valley. How can downtown Phoenix, Mesa, and Deer Valley have thriving arts magnets and Scottsdale cannot at this location? That's a near impossibility. That is a near impossibility

164that those three areas can succeed with enrollments of 830, 1,037, and 711 and Echo Canyon could not as an arts magnet? This is a vision that has received initial incredible enthusiasm. Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, Scottsdale Mayor Lisa Borowsky, and PV Mayor Mark Stanton don't agree on a lot. But when I called them and said, "We're looking at a closing school. What do you think of an arts magnet?" They said, "You can use my name to say we support that vision." Some of you are familiar with great business leaders in this state, like John Graham has a history in the Arcadia district, in the Arcadia area. John Graham says, "What can I do to help?" There are many, many others in the list that we have provided you, both in the Arcadia area and outside the

165Arcadia area, in the arts community and outside the arts community. Your predecessors are on this list of supporters. Rose Smith, who is in the audience tonight, has been my partner in crime, and I thank her for in her enthusiasm and her encouragement. That's just a list of some of the members that were put together in 10 days. In 10 days. Imagine what we could do with a dedicated effort. Now, money is the issue, right? So besides the direct contributions that we offered, my commitment to you, and we have a track record of being able to raise a few dollars for productions in New York, for political campaigns, for all kinds of things. We will raise another $250,000 for marketing support, due diligence, the proper steps that Dr. Menzel and this district should take to evaluate

166whether an arts magnet is all that we are representing that it could be. There needs to be a sober, deliberate analysis of it. And you need to have the resources in the private sector there to help you. Facilities. I don't want to dwell on this further. You're familiar with the campus. It has facilities to have an excellent, thriving arts programs right now. Before I conclude, I just want to talk about next steps. In a recent conversation with Dr. Menzel, and I hope you don't give me too hard of a time for revealing those conversations, there was an original discussion about taking 2 years to see if this could work. I was pleased in the last conversation that Dr. Menzel was talking about taking a year and potentially having this ready if the board directed him

167to do so in the '27-'28 school year. I would ask this board's consideration that Echo Canyon be the preferred alternative for an arts magnet, the first in the district's history, for all the reasons that were discussed tonight. I would ask that the board please appoint a private sector advisory board on which I would be happy and proud to serve, along with many others. I believe that private sector assistance will keep everyone's feet to the fire and help provide the expertise and the resources to do something very, very special. Don't put a post office at Pepperdine. >> [applause] >> Take this turnicate and turn it into the triumph that will occur with everyone tugging in the same direction. Thank you for your consideration. We can do this. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Any comments? Questions? Let

168me start by saying thank you so much for all the hard work that you've put into the presentation, and I know the presentation's really the tip of the iceberg in terms of the depth of conversations that you've had with the district and with other stakeholders. So I just want to say thank you for all the work that's reflected here. I think this is really a question for Dr. Menzel, but if you have an answer, I'd love it. I just feel like it might be too much to ask of you. Do we have any data or any uh ways of collecting data to understand the level of demand for an arts magnet among our families? We don't have the data. We have definitely have ways of collecting the data. It's one of the things that Jason

169and I talked about is we need to have that data to know what the demand is and how solid it is in order to be able to to get to the target number of 600. Uh we absolutely, should the board charge us to move forward in in doing the due diligence on a project like this, that would be one of the first orders of business. And it would be too much to think that we could know the, you know, of the art academies that were described, particularly the Phoenix one, which I know folks have chosen that for their kids, the percent of Scottsdale families who are open enrolling outside of the district to pursue an arts education? This We don't get data that that No, I'm Dr. Bogner Dr. Bogner is confirming we don't get

170that data. So we we'd have to find some creative ways to identify that, but families talking to families, identifying people who are enrolled that live in the neighborhood. When you think about what Mr. Brammer talked about earlier in terms of capture rate, there is a universe of a population that you may be able to pull from other educational choices, not just from within our own ADM. And then the other part that wasn't mentioned here, but very important to me is where do you feed into? So if you create a K-8 arts magnet at Echo Canyon, I wanted to feed into a Scottsdale Unified School District high school, not into the Phoenix 6-12 program, because that ultimately doesn't help us, and I think there's a path for that. So that's one of the other components, but

171I think that there's a there's a enough school-age kids that have an interest and passion for the arts that would be drawn to something like this. We just need to see the data to support that. Thank you, and thank you. Uh one last thing I'd like to leave you with in this day and age of uh digital engagement, let's make creatives the new athletes. All right, Mr. Carney. We're we're we're we still have questions and comments. Mr. Carney? Um thank you for your presentation. Uh I really really enjoyed this, and and I just wanted to ask Dr. Menzel, on our No, I'm I'm good with you. I'm good with you. Thank you. You can >> [laughter] >> Um was that uh I think I feel like that was one of the options for parents on

172the culture climate survey? Was arts magnet art school, was that one of the options? So Cindy's saying yes, and Lee, maybe you can provide some more specific information. I sure can. In the climate and culture survey, we asked students and families the types of programming specifically that they liked. It didn't say um in reference to magnet schools, um but the arts were one of the options for families to select. Okay, maybe that's the some data that we could we could we could gather, cuz there's other information in there that I'm interested in as well. So if we could get the breakdown for all those options, that'd be great. Thank you. Mr. Sharkey. Um thank you for the the presentation. I'm very much in favor of being on offense, and I've said that before at our

173study session. Um I've said that other districts would um be in an enviable enviable position if they could have the resources that we had at Scottsdale, and you don't want to overlook that. Um you know, with our offerings, I had a conversation with Ms. Mitchell, um who previously worked at a school district with 100 schools, 25 of which were magnet schools of choice, including art schools, STEM schools. So our uh knowledge and our muscle memory to be able to do that goes deep, and I want to make sure we don't overlook that. Um one point of clarification, uh since you mentioned Mr. Graham uh supporting this, he did email the board and said his name was inadvertently on your presentation. So since it was brought up specifically, I just want to make it clear that

174he did email the board yesterday. Thank you very much for the presentation. Ms. Warner. Thank you. So Mr. Rose and Ms. Pacheco, thank you so much for taking the time and effort to put into this. I think that um looking [clears throat] forward and aiming high is what we need to be doing, and I do agree with you. Once we take kids out of a school, the staff out of a school, to get them back is nearly impossible. And so as we move forward with this, I think that we need to take a serious look at the option of going to pursue this, that we need to leave Echo open. Thank you. Uh I'm a I'm a beloved advocate of the arts and an active participant in the development of art schools in Oma, in

175Tucson, Opening Minds Through the Arts. We had just a marvelous development of social studies with opera as we integrated various forms of physical education with mathematics. It was amazing what kids did with their dance and their learning. I know in Cave Creek, we worked with Music Fest to have classical music played every morning announcement, and it just gave the kids put the kids in really a a neurologically strong place for learning. So the arts are are absolute passion for where we we need to think conceptually about our growth for Scottsdale. Thank you for the thoughtful presentation. We're now ready for our next agenda item, a vibrant thriving SUSD. Thank you to President Lewis, Vice President Sharkey, members of the governing board, members of the audience. I know many people have already gone online and looked

176at this, but I think it's really important to set set I've got I've got I'm going to I'm going to run the show. Um Thank you, Heather. Uh it it's one of those things where uh setting into context uh the conversations that we've had um with clear eyes with respect to the demographic realities, the historical patterns, the budget uh challenges that we're facing, and the impact on communities that you've heard from families at at Pima and Echo and Copper Ridge and other schools. But, tonight I want to talk about where we're going to. And it's not unlike what Mr. Rose identified with an arts magnet. It's thinking about where Scottsdale of the future will be. And so, it's titled a Vibrant and Thriving SUSD, reducing our footprint to increase our impact. And we'll unpack that

177just a little bit more here. But, as I go through the presentation, I want to always ground us in our district's mission, vision, and values. From a leadership team perspective, these are the things that we think about all the time as we contemplate the options to bring forward to the governing board for consideration. When we think about where Scottsdale Unified is and where we're going in the future. And so, we want to start and paint a compelling picture of where that is, but in the context of where we've been, understanding our current data and reality, and then thinking about potential solutions. And before I get deep into the presentation, I want to be very clear. What you see in these options are not proposals or recommendations. They're a potential of what could be. The only

178recommendation that actually two that have been brought forward by me and the administration to the governing board was first the framing of phase one and a phase two process for looking at repurposing schools. That was driven by the enrollment deep dive study session on April 29th, when we looked at our historical um enrollment patterns over time. And so, at that meeting in April of 2025, we talked about if the board was going to consider closing any schools, we would need to have a conversation about that in the fall with a timeline of December in order to give families and staff time to adjust to that reality. So, that was phase one. Phase two were schools that were at or below 400. And so, we've identified, you know, a framing in terms of the enrollment per

179building. What we have here are what some of those things could look like. So, the request that was made at the budget study session on October 28th was to say, let's not talk in isolation about phase one, Pima and Echo, but let's talk about where we're going as a district in the future and what that might look like so that we move from always being chased by the tornado, I think was the framing, to really thinking about how do we ensure we have full and thriving schools, that we're meeting the needs of our students today and our students of the future. And so, we're really working uh to address one, a financial reality of a structural budget deficit, and I'll talk about that a little bit more in just a minute, to create a solid

180foundation given our demographic reality, so that we have a long-term plan for a proper prosperous and vibrant educational uh system for students in our district. Some of this reiterates what uh Rick Brammer was talking about earlier, but we talked about this at the deep dive study session on both the 29th and on October of of April and then the 28th of October. The 6,000 students that we don't have that we had in 2010 would fill 10 600 student in elementaries or four 1,500 kid high schools. In that same period of time, in that 15-year period of time, we have only reduced by one the number of schools serving kids in our community. Arguably, boards prior to this one could have made other decisions. There's a reason why governing boards typically avoid these decisions. Public commenters

181repeatedly said it should be the last choice, and it almost always is the last choice because these are difficult decisions. It's not that it's never been done in Scottsdale. People remember that in in '08-'09, Aztec and Zuni merged to become Redfield. The graduating class of 1983 remembers they were the last graduating class of Scottsdale High. There are times where difficult decisions are made, but there's a long period of time in between those decisions because they're not easy to make. So, when we look at the trends, and I'm not going to go through this slide in detail, other people can look at it, but it just reinforces what Rick Brammer just talked about. One of the things that we often hear, well, you just try something different. Try something new. Before I got here, one of

182the decisions that was made in addition to rebuilding Pima Elementary was to say, let's make it the Cheyenne of the South. So, there was a unilateral decision made to make it Pima Traditional. But, even though it was labeled Pima Traditional, it did not grow and have the same kind of demand as Cheyenne Traditional. There wasn't the community interest, the enrollment didn't follow. It wasn't that there wasn't marketing that was done on Pima Traditional, but that demand didn't mirror what we saw in Cheyenne. So, it's important to note that you can have all sorts of ideas about what might work. There's no guarantee that it will work. Before Echo Canyon was Echo Canyon and implemented a looping process, it was Arcadia Neighborhood Learning Community. Right? There were different educational models. Still struggled to be a full

183and robust school um notwithstanding really good ideas. And and in every single one of these conversations, just because an idea didn't draw more kids doesn't mean that we didn't have good teachers or that there wasn't meaningful education happening for kids. Because at every campus across our entire district, incredible educators every day are doing amazing things with kids and families across every campus regardless of the enrollment. So, this is not a slight on any of those campuses. It's about adjusting to a reality in a state that since the mid-90s has embraced choice and charters. I had the same reality in Michigan. It's the same reality across the nation. And now it's choice charters and empowerment scholarship accounts, universal vouchers that are happening not only here, but everywhere. So, when you have a flat number of of

184under-18 population, which is what Rick said earlier, and you have a proliferation of the number of choices, it doesn't take high school math to figure out that your portion of the pie is shrinking. And so, that's part of the challenge. When we we and I want to talk specifically about the second bullet because I think this one's really important and it gets to part of board member Carney's question on the Yavapai, Navajo, and and that part of South Scottsdale. In '21-'22, uh if you remember the history, Yavapai was a really low enrolled school, and then Hohokam was one of the I think it was third or fourth in the rebuild. I don't remember, Dennis, but it was in that second tier. You had Hopi, Pima, Hohokam, and Cherokee, I think in in that order. So,

185it was number four. And and that rebuild was remodeling the school that kids were in. So, the other rebuilds were building around the existing schools. So, you could build a new school while students were still being educated. But, in the case of the Hohokam rebuild, they wanted to keep that the the physical infrastructure because of the design. And so, the Hohokam students moved to the Yavapai campus. They were co-located during the rebuild. And then in the first year of uh of uh opening the new rebuild, Hohokam and Yavapai students moved together. They were always coded separately from a CTDS standpoint, the way the state counts it, but they were co-located in a way that could have very well looked like a merged school. And so, one of our conversations, and we thought it was really

186important, was to say, should we take this opportunity to close Yavapai and keep them with Hohokam? We had that conversation. At the same time, there was a discussion around Tonalea K-8. Because, if you go back a little further in history, Tonalea Elementary School was moved out of its elementary because the building was condemned essentially, moved to Oak, and then merged with Supai Middle School to become Tonalea K-8. And when we were looking at the demographic trends, if you want to create a vibrant and thriving Coronado Learning Community, and we've got the maps up in front of you uh in part of the whole district, and then the expanded Coronado and the expanded uh North Scottsdale uh component, so that I can talk a little bit more about that. But, there was a pinch point. The

187Tonalea K-8 campus was full at middle school. You couldn't get any more students in there, which meant Coronado High School was capped at how much it could grow in terms of the feeder pattern. And so, instead of closing Yavapai, the board made a decision to say, let's decouple the K-8. Let's create a 6-8 middle school with the potential to grow so that we can fill Coronado and have Yavapai, Hohokam, and Pima as the feeders into Tonalea Middle School that should hopefully fill then Coronado. That was the theory of action. Uh what we've seen since that decision, so it's very thoughtful and and there were public hearings. And you can go back and and we sent this to the governing board, and I think there might even be um links at the end of this PowerPoint

188presentation. We we met on each campus. We met with Pima. We met with Hohokam. We met with Yavapai. We met with Coronado families. We surveyed staff and families before making that decision. There was a lot of community engagement. And that was the theory. What we know to be true about the Pima trajectory in terms of where kids go is that this year, 77% of going into this year, 77% of Pima fifth graders chose Mohave, not Tonalea. And so, when you think about the feeder patterns, it is much as the intent was to have three elementaries feeding into the middle school that would have a solid enrollment for Coronado, we have three quarters of the Pima kids going into Mohave. So, that's part of the demographic reality. It not that it was a bad plan, it's

189just when you have a plan and you execute, you look at the data and then you have to say what next. So, the fine arts magnet concept, for 3 years we've been working with Scottsdale Arts. We when Mr. Iron Man was the principal of Copper Ridge, we surveyed families. We I met with the student governing their not their governing board, but their student council and and student government, the students who were really active. There there was a 50/50 feeling about should we put an arts magnet at Copper Ridge. Part of the interest for Scottsdale Arts at Copper Ridge was you had vacant land because originally that property was supposed to have the sixth high school for Scottsdale. Thankfully, that was never built. But when Copper Ridge was opened in 2001, the district had 27,000 students.

190We're now in a very different position. So, Laguna became a STEM accredited school. Navajo became a STEM accredited school. One of those has grown in enrollment in the last four or five years and we'll look at some data slides in a little bit in this presentation that kind of show how much Navajo has grown and why it's not been part of the conversation because it's trajectory over the past three to five years shows about a 24-25% growth rate, whereas for the schools that we're talking about on the repurposing have shown dramatic declines in that same period of time. The Hopi and Echo merger conversation is one that's was very difficult in terms of how it originated and how it unfolded. And what I want to say here because I think it's important for the community

191to understand is that that conversation was never about preserving Echo Canyon as a K-8 school. It was always about a potential to repurpose and utilize that campus. Because at the end of the day, to have a K-8 school that has fewer than 300 students is not fiscally responsible. You cannot afford to be able to offer what students need in a campus that that small. Not with the guarantees that we've made for a nurse on every campus and a principal and assistant principal on every campus. There are other challenges associated with that as well. These are just some of the examples of ideas that have been thrown out, some of the things that have been tried. Not every idea works, which is why when I talked with Jason Rose about the arts magnet, I said it's

192really important to collect the data with respect to what's the demand because I'm a big believer that an arts magnet in Scottsdale should be successful. I want it to be so, but if we don't have more evidence about the number of students who will choose that option and is and we also need it to not be just the kids that we already have because if the only students who fill the arts magnet are students we already have, it doesn't solve the underlying budget problem. So, now I want to talk about the structural budget challenge. >> plan? >> am. If it's a good stopping point for questions, I'm open. So, the question that Ms. Carney asked is the question that I have as well and it's a question that we've heard multiple times from the community

193and I don't I think you sort of answered it, but I want to ask it in a slightly different way. You answered the question why based on Tonalea's enrollments versus Pima enrollments, would we choose, you know, Pima and not Tonalea? I think the spirit of the question that people are asking is if you zoom up to a district level and you don't view this as a judgment of one school or another school or another school, but just to ask I've got X amount of square foot in a broad region um I need to go from three to two and I just rebuilt this entire campus why wouldn't that rebuilt campus be the logical point of consolidation for some percentage of the three into two? So, um I will we're fast forwarding in the presentation. >>

194to wait if it's easy to wait. >> I'll jump into it now to to illustrate how that conversation unfolded. So, first, Navajo is in the Saguaro learning community. And and while we know 75% or 77% of the Pima students have been choosing to go that direction, a decision to try to make it Pima and not Navajo, you have two problems. One, neither of those campuses are large enough to accommodate the current enrollment in both campuses. So, you have a problem with a true merger. Right? If you had a campus that was large enough to accommodate both Navajo and Pima, then the new build would make a lot of sense. It's actually really hard full and counterintuitive for me to look at Pima and say that's the problem. But my other no build because it's the

195Granite Reef corridor. In my office, there's a 2017 Granite Reef corridor binder of the presentation that the governing board at that time had looking at this this slew of schools and back in the day and this is not only in Scottsdale, you can go to to almost any school district in the valley, they they had a school every mile. They were walkable. Uh that's in Mesa's got the same thing. That's why they have so many small schools. It's because you built them so that kids could walk to school. Navajo and Pima and Hohokam in that line, uh if you if you just think logically about that, Hohokam is the largest of all of those. Navajo is the second largest. Yavapai is the third and Pima is the smallest. And so, when you're thinking about if

196if the Coronado learning community is worth trying to preserve because we have people who suggested just don't do that. Move everything up to Saguaro. Have four learning communities. I don't believe that that is valuing the history in South Scottsdale and I'm not a recommendation that I was prepared to make. So, looking at logically with these four and where the enrollment trends were, if 75% of Pima were to choose to go to Navajo because they didn't go into Mohave like we have now, Navajo can accommodate 75% of Pima, but not 100% of Pima. And so, that's why we suggested that a repurpose of Pima that leaves it open for educational purposes in the district and to the point that you were raising with Mr. Brammer earlier, if the demographic tide shift, that school's available. It can

197be repurposed again. We're not proposing to sell it. We're not proposing to tear down classrooms and do major remodeling or reconstruction. We're talking about utilizing the space that's available to serve Scottsdale Unified School District students, but just in a different way. If if you would have a different set of problems to address if it's Navajo. Hohokam was just rebuilt, so it's the same argument plus it's got a whole lot more kids. And Yavapai, you're having to skip over in terms of where it's located geographically. And it's as a border school, that's the other thing when Rick talked about 25% of our kids are out of out of boundary, those border schools might be part of our future lifeblood in terms of being able to keep as many schools as possible open. So, if you if

198you just looked at what Rick said today, you could make an argument that we should be talking about a lot more than four schools. I don't think we should be talking about more than four schools because I believe we can get to the stabilization I aspire to the recapture that's in the wig, but I believe we can get to the stabilization. What I worry about is you can only spend money once and the more money you spend on under-enrolled schools, you either compromise the quality because you have to give up some things that have been part of the hallmark. So, nurses on every campus, the nature of support we're able to provide, the principal and assistant principal decision the board made previously, those decisions in terms of what we're going to guarantee regardless of where

199you are mean you have less money for other things. And so, if I can go back, Yeah, thank you. I didn't mean to take you too far off. >> Okay. That's that's the that's the reason why we're at the schools we're at. I just think this budget structural deficit is important to understand because just over 3 million of it relates to the decline in average daily membership. You know, our funding is driven by not only the students that are enrolled, but how long they're enrolled because in Arizona we're funded on 100 days. If they're here 50 of those 100 days, we get 50% of the funding. That's the funding model. So, it would be nice if Arizona did a few things to address school funding. If they went back to prior year funding, we could

200budget with certainty instead of the best guess that Shannon can come up with in current year funding. If we if if we didn't have this variability on the 100th day, any student that comes to us after the 100th day, we we educate, but we don't get any money for. So, when you look at our structural budget deficit, just over 3 million is tied to the declining enrollment. The other 5 million is tied to positions and other costs that have been paid for by cash accounts. And cash accounts are not are carry forward. Cash accounts are different sources of revenue. So, civic center funds are based on rental income. Indirect costs come from different sources. We charge them to grants and other things and we've been able to charge positions to indirect civic center funds. Community

201education is its own cost center, so it raises its own money and spend its own money. And it has a fund balance and it's there for a reason because if community I didn't make money, we couldn't subsidize it with maintenance and operating funds. So, those cash accounts have been absolutely amazing for Scottsdale Unified. They've allowed us to do really great things including because we've been able to pay for is it 50 people? Over 50 people with facilities, HR, finance, they've been paid for out of those accounts, which means we haven't had to use maintenance and operating funds for that. That means we can keep our class size ratios where they are. It means that we can do other things with M&O in terms of the pay increases that over time we've been able to provide

202more recently, not what we would like, but if you look over the last 7 years, the with Red for Ed and then the year after the pandemic, we had a 6% bump for our teachers, right? There were times where we were able to do some more things. Those cash accounts had really robust balances. They don't have those any longer. And we cannot pay for those positions with money we don't have, which means they have to go back into M&O because these are not uh nice-to-have positions. You want to get paid, so payroll positions need to be in M&O if we can't pay for them out of indirect. You need to have a functioning HR department. The facilities people that are paid for out of Civic Center funds, uh we expect that our facilities are going

203to be well maintained, both our athletic facilities, our physical infrastructure. All of that cost money. And so, the structural deficit is the combination of the declining enrollment and those cash accounts. Our increase from the state every year is pretty much 2%. The inflationary cost for doing business is much more than 2%. And so, we're dealing with financial constraints combined with the demographic reality that forces us to look at what are our options to ensure that we can have full and thriving schools to meet the needs of Scottsdale students. People say cut district admin, and we agree that that's the first place you should look. You want to start the cuts as far away from the classroom as possible. And these are not all of the reductions since I've been here because I know when I

204got here there was an executive director of teaching and learning, probably different title, and a director. And when those two people left, we collapsed that into a director level position. We didn't fill both, and we didn't fill it at the highest level. So, we've been making those kinds of changes since I've been here, but just in the last 3 years, we've reduced 25 positions for savings of 1.4 million. If you eliminated all of district admin, you still don't cover the structural budget deficit. That's That's the nature of the financial challenge. It's a big hole to fill. So, this was one of the concluding slides, maybe the concluding slide at the deep dive budget session on October 28th, with a little modification at the end to fit into tonight's presentation. The reality is we're down more

205than 6,000 students in the last 15 years. The cash accounts have been used to kind of buffer the impact of that decline. So, that's why you haven't seen schools close because you've been able to find a way to keep them open. But what Rick Brammer shared tonight is that that picture isn't going to get better in the next 10 years. We might be able to stabilize, but we're not going to go back to 26,000 students. There wasn't any scenario that shows our growth getting back to filling the number of schools that we had in 2010. What we've done, we've implemented more than 4.7 million in cost-saving measures since '23. You just saw what the district administration ones were, but there are a number of other things, special ed efficiencies when we gave the market-based stipend

206instead of using contracted services. That actually saved us over 3 million dollars as a district. So, there are no shortage of of ways that we have been looking at how do you get creative with the money that you have while not compromising the quality of the educational experience for students, knowing that what's happening in the classroom with our kids is the most important part of our business. Some things have been deferred or absorbed in in in uh in and positions have been combined in order to reduce overhead. And so, we've been intentional about that. The reality is that notwithstanding all of those changes, if you have close to a 2% decline every year, you're going to continue to have these discussions, particularly when you're paying to keep significantly under-enrolled buildings open. That diverts money from

207being able to invest in salaries and to have full and vibrant programs, even think about something like an arts magnet. So, then the road ahead. The way that we've painted this is uh looking at the numbers and thinking about the next decade, moving from 29 to 25 in a strategic fashion, is a number that I believe can be defensible based on our capacity numbers, and you'll see that later in the slide. I use the word repurposing versus closing because, like Rick Brammer, I'm not a fan of selling school property because you can't buy it back at at anywhere near where you got it. Uh I'm a fan of leasing or utilizing in a way that generates revenue so that we can continue to invest in our people. I I'm all for creative uh strategies and

208solutions, but I I think we have to look at all of those options in totality. And so, when we think about a vibrant future, 25 full and thriving schools, what you'll see in the options presented are not proposals, but they're ideas about what it could look like. My original recommendation for a timeline was phase one, schools under 300, because there's a sense of urgency when you fall below that threshold. You just don't have economies of scale. And I know when I talk about that, it doesn't feel like I care about the kids in those buildings, but I do. I've had experience with this back in Michigan when two full districts consolidated because of their financial stress. And they survived that, and more than a decade later, they have reopened buildings that were closed during the

209initial consolidation. They are still providing educational experiences in their community when they were at risk of the the the uh state taking those school districts over in Ypsilanti and Willow Run. So, there is a path forward, but they're hard decisions to make. We care about the kids, and I'll talk about how we would propose moving forward if the board is open to the repurposing, but in truth, we we chose Echo and Pima because of the enrollment trends over time and the fact that they're under 300. That is really um the the driving factor here. It's just not financially responsible to keep schools with that low of enrollment open. And if you grow by a few, and you got those from neighboring schools in Scottsdale, doesn't fix your structural budget deficit. The growth has to be

210people who are not currently enrolled in our system. And when you look at both Echo and and Pima, and you see those those uh enrollment trends over time, and you learn that 193 of the in-boundary families in Pima choose other SUSD options, and 140 of the in-boundary Pima families choose Pima, Pima has something special and magical. I've been to the flag-raising ceremony. I know how beautiful that is, and I know what the campus means. And it is significantly under capacity. Then phase two, what I outlined in October 1st in the source to all of our community members and prior to that to our staff, was a conversation that I envisioned starting in January that would be intentional and purposeful about what next. The schools listed on phase two were ones that were at or below

211400, and Copper Ridge, because it's a K-8, if you looked at their elementary enrollment, was below 400. And so, you have all of those listed here as the schools that were shared with people in October. So, the surprise that some people found out that when they read ahead in the slides, is well, how did Cheyenne get brought into this mix? So, hold on, I'm going to try something here. If I can get the microphone to work. Test, test. Test. It's going to work. So, in my office, I have a map of the district. It's up on the wall. I look at it every day. And I don't know, within the last year, somebody in my office said, "Have you ever considered moving Cheyenne to Copper Ridge?" And I dismissed it out of hand. I'm like,

212"That's a dumb idea. Cheyenne's doing really well. They would never want to move. We shouldn't even think about it." Then I had somebody else send an email and said, "Have you ever considered moving Cheyenne to Copper Ridge?" And I did the same thing. I dismissed it out of hand. I said, "That's a dumb idea. Cheyenne's doing fine. Why would we disrupt them?" And I don't know how many times I heard that feedback, including from people who work both at Copper Ridge and Cheyenne, including from people who were at Cheyenne before it moved to its current facility. So, then I got up and I walked up to my map, and I said, "All right, well, here's Cheyenne, and here's Copper Ridge. Cheyenne has over 900 students. Every year we've got 50 kids on a waitlist for

213kindergarten. We can't accept them because we can't fill the cohorts going up. But Copper Ridge, at one point, had 1,300 students. 1,300. And it can hold almost 1,600. I said, "You know, there might be something to this idea of considering what if Cheyenne were to swap places and move up to Copper Ridge? I live close to here. I I know how far they are. They're I mean, it's a little distance, but it's not a big distance between that. Copper Ridge, everybody who's at Copper Ridge knows it's an extraordinary campus. And so, I thought, "Well, maybe there's something there." So, when we get to those other options, I'm telling you the reason why Cheyenne is discussed tonight, but was not on the phase two list is because it wasn't necessarily a part of a plan or

214a proposal, but it is something that I think should be considered. And I think there are other options that could also work in this area, but what we know is that with Anasazi having 407, I think now, Laguna at 303, these are just the K5 numbers, Redfield at 376. And if you can see, Redfield and Cheyenne are really close to each other. And Cheyenne gets 275 Redfield boundary students. Right? Just looking at the numbers, we have more buildings, in terms of physical capacity, than we have kids to serve in this part of Scottsdale. So, that's That's the reason why Cheyenne was pulled into the conversation. The third part on this slide is that we're also talking about a potential sale of Main Street. Uh we're talking about um combining offices because then we can move

215HR and finance to the current Mojave District Annex. That shrinks our footprint. There are conversations about where we could move community education and nutrition services so that we can also close the Oak campus. Eventually, it would be wonderful if if a school like Oak could become a central campus program for EVIT. And you could have career and technical education across the street from Coronado High School with multiple programs, not just one program. But if you even just close that down for a year, you save more than $100,000. So, we're looking at all of the options in as part of this process. I think the data is really important, and we've been sharing the data with the governing board. It's not always easy for people to understand, and we certainly know that that uh just clicking

216on spreadsheets doesn't tell a story. But we do have a board member who's really good at data analytics, and and uh Mr. Sharkey put together uh the data that we were sending into some really amazing Tableau charts. And uh he I think he's going to come to the uh to the to the keyboard to do that. If we go back to the other slide, and we'll just let uh Mr. Sharkey run it from there. Because this is publicly available, and makes the pretty complex story easier to understand. So, I'm going to encourage you to to uh take a look at what he has to share here because this data is really important. Thank you. Let's do do. So, I'm going to share this information. The first thing I'm going to do is um put up

217the link to this, so anybody can view this if they want. Uh my whole point of this is Go back up. Uh my whole point of this is transparency. Um so, these are numbers that have been shared with the board that are publicly available. Anyone can go view these. And before I jump into them, I just want to sort of frame this. Um and I know Maddie from Copper Ridge was here. And and I think of two extremes of Maddie from Copper Ridge talking about it's a human decision about what we're doing. And I think of Mr. Bremmer and the pages and pages of numbers. And and those two things couldn't be farther apart on a scale. And there's comments about, you know, we need to, you know, treat our families like humans and make

218the decision and not treat them like numbers and data. I believe we're mature enough, we're empathetic enough, we're smart enough to hold both of those in our heads. And so, when I'm clicking through a few numbers here, I can understand how someone might be upset that a board member is here and just showing numbers and charts and not representing the humanity of our families and our kids. Um but I don't believe that's true. I I hopefully speak for all of my fellow board members that we can talk about both. So, um we have a few charts here. Um so, one is the enrollment trend. So, these match all the numbers we've seen. You could see the um increase and decrease. So, here's from 2018 through current 2025. You can see the different schools in each

219community and how many students they've uh grown or lost in those times. Um when uh Mr. Bremmer talked about the pipeline, so the early students, I could say, "Hey, just show me K through third grade." And you could see how many you were losing in different areas, which is going to feed on from years forward. So, just looking through here gives one the ability to see the trends school by school. Um you can use the second chart to do the same thing, but it's the raw numbers. Um so, you can see the raw numbers of students at each school year over year, focused by any community. I can look at just at the Coronado community we were just talking about, and see the schools, and see all the enrollments from there. So, this is a

220good way to see those trends. Um Dr. Menzel talked about capacity. So, capacity is given a school, given the number of rooms in that school that can be a classroom because some rooms are closets. Um given the number of rules rooms that can be classrooms, and using the capacity numbers we have for a student-to-teacher ratio in those classes, we know how many kids we could fit in that school without sardining them and squishing them in, going with the same number ratios we have. And you could see for any school here, um you can see I'll pick Cherokee, 641 students, uh capacity of 713. That means it's at 90% capacity. So, you could tell what percent full each of these schools are. Um if you go to the bottom, you look at all of our schools

221together. If you can see some are at 60 70% capacity, some are at 80. Uh in total, if you lumped everyone into one, we're at 66% capacity. Um to give you an idea of metrics, um if you look at what's the ideal capacity for a school, it's around 90% for an elementary school because they don't move around, you don't need a lot of extra rooms. It's around 80% for middle and high schools. So, 80 to 90% is an ideal capacity for schools. In total, we are at 66. We are 2/3. And you could see some are less than that. So, this lets you look school by school, community by community, how much space we have. And then the last thing I'll share is this. Um we talk about where the kids come from. So, um

222here's Chaparral as an example. Um for all of the students who are in Chaparral, how many came from How many live in Arcadia, Chap, Coronado? So, 51% of the Chap students live in the Chap area. 28% come from adjacent. I can hover over, and I can see the details. So, I can see that of for the Chap kids, 51% are from there. Um 22% are from the PV Unified School District. 11% are from DM. So, now you can look at each school. We talked about boundaries. So, if I go down to Coronado and look at Yavapai, um I can look at that and see um where it's pulling from. Like there's 10 P kids coming up from Tempe into Yavapai. So, this allows you to break down where those students are coming from. So, my

223whole point here is that this is something that's available to anyone. Um I am a big believer in sharing data and being open with it. Um so, hopefully this adds some color and lets you draw your conclusions from what you see. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Sharkey. And we're going to get back to the uh to the slide deck. I just I I think data is really important. Uh it's it's not the only thing, but it is a really important thing. And I think that shows the picture better than anything that that I've seen in terms of the data we're looking at. And I think Oh, there we go. So, and this this just reiterates the the uh phase one and the 300 schools and what those trends were over time as I mentioned earlier. And

224you can also see that for the phase two schools. Uh the growth in Yavapai there was when when they uh when we decoupled the K8 Tonalea K8, and those elementary students moved, uh Yavapai took a big uh grew pretty significantly. The capacity issues uh what we wanted to show on this slide, instead of all the schools, to show the ones that are essentially on phase one or phase two, or in in the neighborhood of. So, when you look at like a Cheyenne Traditional, um it's it's um maximizing its capacity. I mean, at at 14% vacant, that's a a good number. Uh but when you're looking at uh Echo Canyon or uh at um some of the other schools, that the um utilization rate is uh excess capacity. 71% at Copper Ridge, for example, is the

225challenge. So, those are things we have to address. We have to figure out as a district, you know, how do we fill our schools uh operating cuz the cost of operating a school uh is very expensive. And the more square footage that you have to maintain that you're not using, the more expensive it is. So, we've actually done what I was going to do here, and show you how I just stand and look at the uh the and think about the what ifs. And how might it look like? So, the phase one really is a projected 2.7 million. So, the first number the estimates so people ask about well, how did that how did that grow from about a million to now it's 2.7 million a million per building. What Shannon did once we knew

226we were going to have this budget conversation is really look at the the staffing that you would no longer be paying for that's specific to a campus. And when you're no longer paying for those people, now some of the teachers are going to be absorbed in another campus and so we accounted for that as well. But for the other positions that are specific to a campus, your nutrition service workers, some of your facility people, some of your office staff, principal and assistant principal, you put all of those in, they're no longer needed on that campus, that's reflected as a savings. The phase [clears throat] two >> Hold on hold on I'm Yes, go ahead. >> So, related to Echo and Ms. Bono sent us a spreadsheet. I don't think it's available to the public and

227probably should be. How many positions are you uh planning on with Echo um terminating that wouldn't be absorbed? So, how many jobs are being lost? So, Shannon, what I don't know what the what the total number FTE [music] was that's carried in your budget. Sure. Um when we looked at Echo Canyon we like like Dr. Mendoza said, we took a look at what are the positions we within MNO um that we know we wouldn't have. Um we then looked at where and obviously there's we don't know where students from Echo Canyon would would end up at, but where is a possibility of where they would end up at. Realizing that some yeah, we are going to have to there are teacher positions FTE from that school that's going to need to disperse to possibly to

228Tavan or Ingleside based on where kids could go. Within that, um we just and the and the difference between what we originally projected and what's being sent here is we looked at um if at Echo Canyon if that was reduced by five. That's just looking at FTE. That doesn't mean that those are now teachers who are going to be just completely displaced. We have teachers that we know that also um retire Move out of state, yeah. >> Yeah. So, it's my question is how many are going to not have a job at I'm just specifically looking at the spreadsheet for Echo Canyon. So, you're there's going to be teachers and staff that are moved to other facilities, but again here there's a significant amount of This the total right there looking at it right now

229is not quite 17 within MNO. So, you would you would terminate 17 positions that would not have jobs. We would move we would reduce our FTE by 17 for that school. The goal would be to put them at other locations and we'll need staff at other locations based off of where kids go. But it is a So, what I want to know is how many people are going to lose their jobs as a result of this at this particular campus. And you know, I'm just giving you one thing and I just one example and I understand that we have to do something related to the entire district, but Echo is here first and we have a spreadsheet on Echo, we have a spreadsheet on Pima and it's a simple question. How many people are not

230going to have a job >> I think it's been answered. Can I see if I understand it? You're saying that was it 14? Um within MNO we anticipated I mean, I don't know where kids are going to end up going. Yeah, but roughly 17. >> Okay, so what she I think is saying is that 17 positions for the district overall will be eliminated if that expectation is true. But I think where maybe the misunderstanding is that doesn't necessarily mean those 17 people lose jobs because in any given year we're hiring people. People retire, any number of things are happening. So, hopefully the district would have enough natural openings to be able to ultimately find homes for those 17 people. You know, potentially that's not the case, but I think maybe the confusion is you're asking

231about people and all that can be answered is about positions. Yeah, so there's there's not any confusion and and you tipped on it. So, there will be individuals who will not be asked back or absorbed by somebody else and I just want to I'm not asking you, I'm asking her. Is there will be positions and I just want to know what that number is because obviously I don't think any of us up here want to see anyone lose their jobs and I'd like to know what that number is and if you don't have it now, you can always email us later. I mean, I would have to defer to HR on part of that, but the goal is always to be able to take those staff and move them through attrition as we have in

232other years when we've reduced FTE to say how many might not be able, I don't think we could say that definitively right now because again, one we don't know what that you know, decision will be, but also we don't know where students will choose to possibly go and so I don't know that it's an answer that we could for sure say at this point in time. Okay. I'm sorry, just to wrap up and and my question is to Ms. Crozier and Dr. Mendoza and Mr. Tio. Um I would like to know that if you guys can take a look at that because it is very important that we ensure that our staff has jobs and right now there are teachers and their staff that are watching this and sitting in the audience and they don't

233know if they have the job next year. So, um I'd like to to know what that is. And and our goal has been all along to protect as many of the positions in terms of people that we have, but we can't guarantee where they'll be working and it is that that attrition cycle and we don't know. We can't know now what positions will be open, but we found and in terms of even our surplussing of staff, we have been able to avoid reductions in force, actual layoffs of people even though we've had to reduce the number of people that we've had, but we've just not filled certain positions and then we been able to assign people to different schools in order to fill the needs that we have in the district and so you might

234not be at the same building, you're probably at a different building. Uh and if I mean, the very last resort for us is to is to get to a reduction in force. Our hope is to avoid that. And we won't know that because we won't know who's going to retire. They need to let us know what by April 1st. I mean, so the timeline of some of those things uh for operationalization of of what you're asking is going to be in the spring. Yeah, and I apologize if I wasn't helpful. I mean, the reason why I chimed in is I am very sincerely worried about someone watching this presentation and thinking they're about to lose their job. When the reality is that when organizations eliminate some positions, it is quite common that those people remain

235fully employed. How many people in a typical academic year do we hire? Not new positions, but how many fresh people are we giving laptops and logins to? Right. So, we we hire between 100 and 150 every single year and there's there's lots of attrition. Um we have done lots of this modeling in HR. So, we are preparing for this. I I will defer to Ms. McLennan for further discussion. When we met with HR there, we estimate that approximately 60 to 70 employees would be affected if the board votes to repurpose. Um last year the district was able to absorb a surplus of upwards of 70 teachers through its surplus process. So, it would be the district's intention to reemploy every individual who is currently working at Echo Canyon or Pima. So, I just want to

236reinforce that because I think it would be a real tragedy if there are people who are watching this presentation and were to walk away feeling as if, you know, it's a high likelihood that they're not going to have employment in Scottsdale when I think it is much more likely that just because we're a big district, people retire, things happen that folks will be employed. So, so thank you for that question and the the discussion. Looking at phase two, I've talked about these and and I want to move into the repurposing conversation because that's been the other part of so, what happens to Pima and what happens to Echo? And what we've done internally is is spend some time talking about what could be meaningful utilization of those campuses that would benefit Scottsdale Unified School District,

237our students and our district. There is a rubric that the governing board a prior governing board approved to assess the relative benefit to a district for any repurposing proposal. There's no shortage of other ideas, right? Developers will email me and say, "Hey, I've got an idea for that." I've got a lot of people who share ideas. What we did here was identify a viable repurposing alternative to show the governing board that we're not going into this without a plan for what you would do in phase one. The level D special education school was explored because we spend over 2 million dollars in private placement of students with disabilities that have significant needs. And because we don't have capacity in our district at the present time to meet those needs, we pay an an amount of

238money that is more than we would need to pay if we were able to bring those services in house and offer them at one of our campuses. And so Leah and Dr. Williams and others spent time visiting other level D programs across the valley, understanding the structure, putting pencil to paper to say how much can we save if we bring our students. These are our SUS D students that are being sent out transported out of district every day for their service and we now serve them in our district. If we do that, we can spend a million dollars less every year if that program is located on the campus of Pima. That's one repurposing potential. It's a really good value proposition in the sense that we're still going to be serving Scottsdale Unified School kids.

239It doesn't take care of the hurt for closing a K-5 elementary. Two different conversations. But there is a viable path that has a positive financial benefit to the district. The relocation of community at an early learning I'm sorry. I have questions on level D. Can we go ahead Can we slow down now cuz there's Yeah, we absolutely can. There's a lot of questions and That's good. So I'd like to start with this level D special education school. I did email. You guys told me that we have 38 students that would qualify for this. I'm wondering why why Pima? Why not Cholla which is an is open? We have availability. We already have leases with special education students there. Why would you choose to put them in a in a functioning school with families already there

240and not in open campus of Cholla? So the the first part of the answer and I'll look to both Leah and to Dennis on part of the challenges with Cholla. But the the first part is when when looking at needing to reduce our footprint on if we're going to keep under enrolled schools open, then we're going to be talking about on the third option, what programs do you want to cut? How many people do you want to eliminate? How big do you want class sizes to be? Because those were the big chunks of money are. And so Pima was considered as an option for this because of its location, because of the demographic predictions that it isn't going to grow, that the people who are buying the properties in the neighborhood are turning those into

241short-term rentals. They're Airbnbs. They're not school age families. It's not a drive-by location because of where it's at on Osborn and Granite Reef. You have to go wrap around way to get there. And so it is an important school facility that we identified a strategy to keep it open. If down the road you end up with more school age kids, it's available for that. But this was a viable way to say we can cover the cost, reduce our overall cost on these level D program by putting it in a building here that would serve Scottsdale students. So that's that's why. Not that Respectfully, I'm wondering why we're not looking at Cholla for this type of school which makes more sense to to me. It's open. It's ready. We had a renter that left in September

242who did enhancements to the property. I'm just wondering is this something we considered before um So Dennis, would you like to speak to the state of Cholla? And while you're walking up there, I did I did drive by there this week to see and I'm it's it's very confusing because all the the SECA banners and signs are still up. There's still signage for the what was it? The Lex Lexis Preparatory School. The those signs are still up. So what are we doing with that property? Dr. Lewis, members of the board, Dr. Menzel. Um we have two properties that have not been school buildings for a very long time. Cholla and Apache. And we stretch our dollars as thin as we possibly can with the schools that actually have children in them. And we don't spend

243any money on the schools that are not schools. They haven't been schools for a very very long time. I dare say when I was asked to meet at Cholla with a potential renter that I'm embarrassed. I'm embarrassed to even show those properties because they are in such bad shape. They've not been schools like I said for a very long time. And we don't spend money on those properties. Now SECA came along and they spent like 50 grand and we put about 400 man-hours into the property on the inside to make it reasonable for them to use. They're the renter. They chose the site. They chose and knew what they were getting into. I let them know that the roof is a problem and the air conditioning is a problem and the plumbing is a problem,

244but they chose to go there. And so whatever circumstances caused them to leave, that's not for me to say. But those are not properties that should be inhabited by humans. I'm I'm being absolutely honest about it. Um You're in charge of our leasing strategy for our facilities. Well, um No, I I just get handed that on occasion. Um if it were up to me I would tear the buildings down. But guess what? That takes money, too. And so do I spend money tearing down buildings or renovating buildings that we don't have people in them? At one point we had Lexis Prep in the Cholla campus. They were about a $275,000 a year renter. COVID sunk them and they left. We had a plan to invest every dollar that they were going to give us in

245revenue to invest in that property. We painted the building. We put new hardware in the building on their dollar. And then they left. So that's the only investment that happened on those campuses. So they're there. Yes, they are. Why? I don't know. Apache closed like 20 some years ago. And for whatever reason the district has held on to it all these years. We have a bus barn there. We used to have a renter there. They skipped out on us and left us high and dry for 6 months worth of rent right around COVID. So those are not options. I can tell you without asking anybody else in cabinet, the superintendent as your facilities director, those are not options. They are not ADA compliant. They are just not options. Interesting. Okay, well I think it's important

246that we understand our full scope of properties. We talked about this last meeting at the at the last study session. Um and I had asked for an updated comprehensive report on our district owned facilities and I think we need to get that to understand what properties do we own, you know, what revenue is coming in from them. We need We need to understand the full picture of our district because we currently do not. I can get that for you. Thank you. And I did when I pulled up there, maintenance was there. I talked to to to the facilities guys that were there. So they're maintaining it in some way, but um I yeah, I'm just not sure and I'm not sure why we still have the other school banners all up and everything. It looks

247like a functioning school when it's not. Thank you. You're welcome. Uh last thing I had since you brought up the rubric, um are we talking about the facility land use rubric rubric? Okay, well on that rubric, um it there's a part of it where it says um what do students kids the part of that rubric is community input. What do students, parents, staff and community members see as the needs and priorities for the repurposed facility? And I feel like did we do that with Pima? Did we do that with Echo? Did we Do we have that community input that says yes, we are on board with these things cuz I feel like we do not. >> So So and that's why I said this what we did here is demonstrate one potential repurposing use, not

248the final because if the board is going to say move forward with repurposing two schools then we would open it up. Then you go back and you finish the process to say okay, what other potential repurposing options might be worth considering? You heard one tonight for Echo on the arts magnet. It needs to get run through that process of determining okay, does the data support it? What does the community say? What you know, so all of the things that are in the rubric. But if if the administrative team has to run every scenario before we know if the board is even willing to go down the road of repurposing, we don't have enough time and energy to do that. So we have one example to show viability, but there could be other options for those

249two facilities if the board is willing to go down the road of repurposing. Why don't we know those in advance though? Like how do we vote to repurpose a school when we don't understand what other viable options there are? >> So So I we've given you one to show that there is a viable option that if there are others that you would like to explore, we could. But if if we spend our time, we're limited on admin staff. We have reduced and quite frankly, my team needs to spend its time focusing on teaching and learning. How do we help our students achieve at higher levels? That's our core purpose. This is a part of what we have to do. We don't have extra time to look at three or four different options if we don't

250know that the board is going to say we should repurpose. So we're we're demonstrating proof of concept and willing to do the heavy lift of saying okay, this is one. We're not wedded to it if there's another one that turns out to be better as a part of repurposing. But there's a fundamental decision point that the governing board has to make before we go down that path. So it it makes sense to me that you would do this and I appreciate it because we get a lot of feedback by email and early on a lot of the feedback was why are we only talking about these two schools in isolation? Why isn't the superintendent stepping forward and articulating a broader view about what might happen after with these facilities and where there are successful programs

251that we could create more capacity for. The challenge of course is if you then zoom out and do that then there are members of the community very understandably who say wait a minute I had no idea I was even in the superintendent's brain or something that was phase two you know, could even be speculated to happen at the same time as phase one. So it's very challenging. The thing that has helped me is to always keep in mind that there's a difference between the site and the program. >> Mhm. The site and the program. So for example your one of your options is not to close Copper Ridge the program as I understand it the principal, the enrollments, the community, it's to relocate it to a different site that is more aligned from a capacity

252perspective to its rough size and then take a different building which used to be called Copper Ridge and make it available to a different program. And similarly I think the distinction here is you are not proposing as I understand it you are not proposing closing Pima the program simply to end the site of Pima having any educational use to the district. You're making two very distinct decisions. The first decision is do we want to close this program? If we don't it's on the site and there's nothing else to talk about. And if we do want to close that program because it's below a certain threshold whatever the arguments are then the next question for the board is what do we want to do with that site? And so as I understand the answer to Ms.

253Kearney's question it is yeah this is just one idea. There could be other ideas and we have a rubric that says before we go deep in any idea but it's not an idea worth any exploration if the existing tenant on the site which is the program you know, is still using the facilities. And again that's just like in my own brain like when we say like Cheyenne to does Copper Ridge and Copper Ridge to Cheyenne and then like most of us think of the site and the program is the same difference but they're not they're distinct. And so part of what we're trying to do is musical chairs and rearrange programs to the sites that are better aligned but very much keeping those programs alive and growing and I understand families will find a different

254site a reason maybe not to continue with the program if it's very far or you've got split kids. Um but they are distinct what we want to do with our sites and what we want to do with our programs. They are and the further you go um into phase two the more potential options you have. And that's part of the reason why my original recommendation was do it over a two-year period of time because there's not just one logical way to be able to reconfigure to get to your target. There could be multiple ways to do it. So I've shown one tonight that that kind of makes it easy to say well that's optimizing your resources because you're taking a full school that has the potential to grow and putting it in a significantly under-enrolled

255building and then you're you're playing some musical chairs with where Copper Ridge ends up and where Laguna and Redfield end up because they could go into a school that has more capacity. Like Navajo and Pima Redfield and Laguna neither school has enough capacity to merge with the other. Right? So that's part of our challenge. So Rick mentioned it other people talk about it. Merger sometimes become even though it's still not easy because you lose your identity and are creating a new identity it's two schools coming together as one versus what we're talking about with Pima and that's a re-boundary situation because some of those students will be boundary to Navajo some will be boundary to Yavapai. Parents have choice so no matter where they're boundary they can choose a different school. That's a difference in

256our environment but that's different than merging them and saying okay you're going to bring all of Pima and all of Navajo together in one building. If you had a building that was sufficiently sized that would make sense. We just don't have that. If Cheyenne were to move to Copper Ridge that building's sufficiently sized for a Laguna Redfield conversation. If they don't move then you have to explore what are the other options are because you have far more capacity than you have enrollment potential in that part of Scottsdale. So that's that's why it gets more complicated the further down the road you go and it's all predicated on the first decisions that the governing board is or is not willing to make. I want to make sure I'm clear on order of operations. Ms. Kearney I

257want to don't want to speak for you so make sure I hear this correctly. You made the comment that I can't make a decision on repurposing unless I know what we're going to do with it and what I see coming up is exactly the opposite. We are going to make a decision to repurpose Echo Pima period. A second decision which will happen sometime after that is what to do with it. Is that correct on the order of operations? >> Yes. So I just want to make sure I don't want to speak for you. >> Okay so why on the hearing did it say this specifically? The hearing was for these specific purposes. The public hearing? >> Yes. >> Because we had to provide an example of how it would be repurposed but that isn't a

258final decision. That was in terms of my conversation with Jennifer McLennan that was a part of what's required when you hold the hearing. So we have one potential option. I'm just saying that that doesn't have to be the only option. There could be another option. If you don't choose to repurpose Pima then then the options don't matter. If you decide to repurpose then you can say bring us two or three other options. Thanks for that. That's really important at least for me to know that a decision that will come up is repurposing Echo Pima vote on that period. Second decision sometime after is what do we do with those and I'm okay decoupling those two decisions. Okay so just so I'm clear you're saying December 9th correct is the vote? Is that the right date?

259Say it again. >> Yes December 9th is the vote. So now I'm That's currently scheduled for the vote. The board can always move that date. It's the date that we've set at the present time. >> Okay so now I'm hearing that we're going to be voting to repurpose but we don't know what that means. That means basically we're voting to close the schools. Yeah I I do Oh sorry I didn't mean to interrupt. With >> [clears throat] >> with no plan. We'll we'll vote on a plan later is that how this is turning out? So I do agree with the open comment that like repurpose does it's a euphemism. It just sounds jargony. I mean correct me if I'm wrong but again at least in the way my brain works trying to separate the site

260from the program we are voting to close those two programs. >> the elementary school yes. >> to close those two programs not repurpose because we could choose to leave the site empty right? Uh which means it's not repurposed it's unpurposed. So if that's a word sorry. Um we are voting I I don't mean to say this coldly but I think people want to hear us just confront the reality. We are being asked to make the very difficult decision to close two programs um because of where their enrollments are and because of what the demographic forecasting of what their enrollments could potentially be and to a certain extent in terms of why those particular programs because of how they feed into other schools and some of the answers that you gave um earlier and to a

261certain extent because the site that they're on is a smaller site than other sites in their programs. So we are being asked to do that. >> Thank you. That is correct. That's that's a fair framing. >> Yes. And once we do that then we will have the question what do we do with the two sites that were formally known as Pima and Echo Canyon? Do we want to entertain an art school program magnet at Echo Canyon? Do we want to entertain a cost-saving special education program at Pima or other ideas? Correct. Those schools and this was a question or feedback we got about the softball fields at at Echo Canyon. Deciding does deciding to close Echo Canyon the program mean that Echo Canyon the facility would no longer be available to the community >> No

262in fact >> for those programs. Mr. Raylor jumped on that very quickly to say there's no way we'd be shutting down those those softball fields and the access for the community on that campus. I mean our our hope is that we'd continue to be able to offer the preschool programming on that campus because you don't have sufficient capacity in the other schools to meet to meet the demand. Those fields are another value add to the community. No reason not to continue utilizing them. It's why we thought that the community ed location at that site would be of some benefit because it takes the cost of keeping it open off of the M&O budget. Now, that doesn't preclude the ability to continue down this feasibility study for an arts magnet. The reason why I wanted to

263accelerate the timeline, Jason alluded to that, is because if we have a bond issue on the ballot in November of '26 and an arts magnet you know, we get enough data to say, "Hey, this is feasible." There's going to need to be some investment in that site. That should be included in the '26 bond issue. So, if there's interest on the part of the board, I'd like to know sooner rather than later because we should be beginning the planning. As Leah Mitchell will tell you, the amount of startup cost that you have to plan for over a 3-year period of time is pretty significant. We need to look at all of those things in light of phase one, phase two, and a potential phase three that if we ever get there, tonight I'll talk about

264what that could look like based on demographics. But, that's sort of the order of operation. But, we can't get too deep into the weeds on the second and the third piece if the board's not going to make the first decision because then we will have just wasted our time. Could I go ahead and you I don't know if you want to go into the second part, but we went into Echo and I have some questions on that. Would you like to go ahead and finish that or do you want me to move with my question? I don't know how much more I need to talk about on this slide. If there's questions related to this, I'll I'll take it. >> questions on why can we not keep Echo as it is as a with a

265small school model and add the preschool, the early learning center, and the community ed offices? Why can we not merge the two? >> So, so the staffing model, even with the the looping concept, when you're down to I don't remember the number of kindergarteners we have now, but you are not at our ratios for what we have identified as our teacher to student ratios in that small school. You can't offer the kinds of electives at the middle school because of the numbers of kids you have. So, you fall below a threshold and you're not and you have one class per section. And then if five kids leave and you're down to 10 kids, well, that's wonderful for those 10 kids, but financially that's not responsible at all. Everybody would love to have one to 10

266as a ratio, but as a district we can't do that. So, it's you're below a threshold where you can say that it's financially viable at all to operate. Okay, but it's been below the threshold since you arrived here, right? It's been a while and we're and this is really blindsided the community when really this should have been talked about years ago. We've been as as the principal knows, we've been having these conversations >> has not, the board has not. So, you know, now we're having to be reactive because we weren't we weren't proactive. But, my question is is that feasible? Is it feasible for added you know, early learning center to come onto Echo campus? Is it feasible for for um Oakhaven's to come on while while there's an existing education going on at Echo

267Canyon? Is it possible or is there is there a reason why we can't do that? >> Dr. Bono has an opinion on this one. Thank you, governing board member pardon me, Carney. [clears throat] So, currently Echo Canyon has a preschool class for our 3-year-old students and a pre-K class for our 4-year-olds. Historically, neither of those classes have been at capacity. So, we're losing money and when we talk about how much it cost to operate our staff, right now they're doing okay. The pre-K class, one of them has 18 students, one of them has 23 with capacity at 24. We don't have a wait list. 78% of our pre-K kids, and this was last year's numbers and I'll correct myself if I'm wrong, if it's higher, over 78% of our current pre-K kids at Echo Canyon

268choose to go to Hopi for kindergarten and that's been pretty consistent when we ran the longitudinal study that I shared with you last year over the past 5 years. We don't have a wait list. So, there aren't there's not a demand currently [clears throat] of students who are seeking out additional early learning opportunities on that campus. Okay, so then why are we trying to turn it into an early learning campus? If I may, the the one thing we had talked about the one program we don't have on that campus is a toddler class. Right now, our only toddler class for our 2-year-old students is at Laguna. There I I do believe there would be a demand for a 2-year-old program at Echo Canyon. Perfect. Which we can add to the current existing We we could

269yes, we we we could we can add it to the current existing. The issue is um the the cost of operating a K-8 program on that campus is excessive. If you're going to have a full-time principal, a full-time assistant principal, a full-time nurse, all of the other things that we have that support our schools for 265 students compared to our elementaries that have 500 students, it's the same staffing structure. So, it's costing you a whole lot more to keep it open. If you were to put community ed and and because preschool is community ed, then it's not an M&O cost and you're using the facility. Because the facility is being used, it's going to be maintained. If it then gets repurposed to be an arts magnet, it has been maintained without using M&O dollars for

2701 year, 2 years, or whatever it is. You could slowly grow an arts I shared this with Jason, so this won't be a surprise to him. You could one model for a magnet program is you start by adding a few grades. You don't have to start with all the grades depending on the numbers that are there. There are structures and ways to approach expansion on that campus or repurposing from a financially responsible perspective with what we've outlined here that still allow for the opportunities in the future. I I don't know how you get around the fact that it's really inefficient to operate a K-8 school that has fewer than 300 kids. It just is very expensive. Yeah, well, I just um you know, we've heard a lot about the small small school model. I feel

271like this could be somewhere where we could implement that. Are we trying to implement that anywhere before closing? So, so we tried to even right-size the the ratio of APs on campuses and that was not accepted by the board. I mentioned a year ago to our staff what Mesa was discussing with respect to the small school model, which meant shared principals, shared nurses, shared teaching staff between buildings because that was the only way they could afford to keep them open. They did not make any moves on that and in my conversations with their superintendent, now the sites are wrestling with how they might make that happen. The problem is no one wants to make the $500,000 reduction in expenditures because it's going to mean larger class sizes or itinerant staff moving between buildings in order

272to keep it open. None of them are easy decisions and at the end of the day, do we want to guarantee robust educational opportunities for every kid in the schools they're in or are we going to is keeping the building open more important than the educational options that we can offer? We we brought forward just one small step of what it would take to get to small schools and it wasn't supported. Can just for clarification on small school, I thought small school was a school within a school, not just a small school. Can you clarify what small school is just so I know? Well, Mesa has been looking at this instead of closing schools is trying to go to small school model and how can they operate >> What does that mean? I don't I

273don't know. Well, that's what we need to be finding out. What exactly would that look like for us? It was one of the questions also for parents on the climate survey. Was are we are they interested in that? That's something that we would want to get um the the data on. So, so I've shared about the structure. The other thing in small school models is you end up with with uh combining grades. So, you may not have enough kids for a stand-alone first grade. So, you might have first and second grade combined and third and fourth grade combined, right? So, teachers are teaching two grade levels for the number of kids they have. This happens often in small rural and remote schools where you just don't have enough kids to be able to do that.

274Goes back almost to like a one-room schoolhouse. It's a very different structure. At the end of the day, the question is if you do that, will more parents choose to leave because they want the other guaranteed and viable curriculum that you get in a school that can offer robust choices. If you if you get art, music, and PE at a less frequent level than you would if you were at one of our full and thriving elementary schools, are parents going to choose that? I don't know. If the board wants us to explore that, we could explore it. I don't recommend it because I don't think it's educationally appropriate in this environment. But, if the board wants us to explore it, that is an option you have. Okay, I'm going to end on this because you

275know, I think we'd we'd be here all night, but and we have heard numerous stories about how Echo has provided families a home where their child's been able to grow and succeed that that weren't able to in a large district school and I think that we don't want to lose sight of that. We not every school needs to be full and robust and that's not the best thing for all kids and I've heard that over and over from our Echo families and I think we need to consider trying something different before we know what something doesn't work. I am willing to to look at that. I would like to learn more about it. I just don't think that everyone wants their their child isn't going to thrive in a packed public school. They've chosen Echo.

276I've heard it over and over that they they love it. Their children have thrived and I just hate to see us uh shutter these two two schools cuz it's going to further hurt us. Mr. Dr. Patensky. Yeah, I'm equally torn about a decision to close programs that are so beloved by the families and knowing the impact that happens on the children. I think it's important that we recognize as well that our responsibility is to allocate resources on behalf of the all 18,500 students who are under our care. And so as we're talking about so what options are to avoid that difficult decision. What is always in the back of my mind is then what is the difficult decision we are willing to make. We weren't willing to have uh shared assistant principals a year ago.

277We weren't willing to give a 1% raise to teachers 2 years ago. We weren't even willing to consolidate two district office roles, the CIO and the head of corporate communications, which I still hate that idea, but we are trying to find savings. We have already gotten so many emails from families at every school in the district talking about the relationship of the nurses to their kids. And when 30 sites wake up and find out that because the district was unwilling to make a decision on two programs, potentially we're not going to have our hands serving 28 programs. Like these are really hard choices. So what I would just ask of my colleagues is that as we talk about them, we don't talk about them in isolation cuz it's really easy then to put all of

278the burden back on the district. And when they come to the next thing say, "Well, that's not acceptable." And the next thing that's not acceptable. We've had demographic studies going back many, many years. This is not a surprise. We did not suddenly wake up and lose 6,000 kids. This has been a slow burning challenge. And we've been able to get by because we had these cash accounts. And prior boards allowed those cash accounts to continue to get depleted without making any structural decisions. And I hate the fact I hate the fact that we are now in the situation where we have to make those difficult decisions. And I understand prior boards had other difficult decisions. I would hate to have been on this board during COVID. Um I would still take this over being on

279the school board, you know, during COVID and everything that had to be navigated there. But I just think for us to be responsible for our stakeholders, we can't only talk about what can we do to avoid this decision without also putting forward the decisions we are willing to make. And that's the piece that I'm thinking about as I think about whether I can support closing these two programs is are there other decisions that I would support because at the end of the day we do have to balance our budget. And I'm just going to follow up to what you just said because respectfully when we made the decision to keep assistant principals in those schools, there was no talk of if we did that it's going to affect closing schools. That literally came up. We

280can go back and watch the tape. I know it because I raised it. I said, "Guys, I'm going to support this, but I'm doing it in part because I understand that next year we are going to have to make a difficult structural decision. And the reason I voted for it is cuz I would rather have fewer fully resourced programs where those families have everything they deserve from Scottsdale schools than to try to continue to maintain the same number of programs and cut everybody's educational experiences a result. So I know we did cuz I raised it. Madam President, with respect I think we need to get back to the repurposing phase one, phase two discussion if we can. Thank you. Thank you, council. All right, please continue, Dr. Manzella. >> So I'm going to move through

281these slides very quickly. The public has access to them. I've discussed many of the components that are in these in the phase two options. Just to to reiterate, these are not proposals. This is one option that was designed to say and illustrate if you're going to move from 29 buildings to 25, here's a way to do it in a phase one and a phase two process and an analysis of the capacity of the facilities in the northern part of Scottsdale as a part of the phase two where that would be possible. This is probably the easiest path, but not the only path. Then phase three. Just because I think this is something and it won't be a surprise to the the principals in the Coronado learning community, but if you looked at Rick Brammer's presentation

282and you watched the feeder patterns, uh even with a repurposing, you know, closing of the Pima program and using the facility differently, it may not generate sufficient numbers of kids that would fill Coronado High School. He he called out Coronado High School specifically in terms of the other one that's a concern. So when we think about is there another model that could work in South Scottsdale, there is. Uh and that would be to go one step further and to have two elementary schools that could be K5 or K6, that could be decided later. And Coronado could be a 7-12 or a 6-12 building. In all likelihood, that would mean Yavapai would no longer be open and you would make Tonalea a K6 as well as Hohokam. And the reason for that decision would be because

283you've just made entered into a partnership with the Boys & Girls Club to create an attraction um on the on the western southwesternmost part of our district. And so that's a viable option and they've served elementary kids on that campus before, so it would be possible. And Hohokam was rebuilt. And Yavapai, if it was going to go offline, um is another opportunity for us to think differently about how you'd use that, but you could keep three open and in running our modeling analysis, a structure like that could create a viable strategy for a decade. But what we don't know and what we are hoping is that this first step, phase one, doesn't necessitate a phase three. But I was asked by the board to paint the picture of where we're going and the what if

284scenarios, and this is the other what if. What you heard from Rick Brammer tonight is that the Arcadia, Saguaro, and Chaparral learning communities have pretty much stabilized. Our biggest area of focus is Desert Mountain and Coronado. And between these three, that's what we're looking at. We also believe that we should be looking at the revenue strategies and so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this except for the last bullet, which I do believe the board should um direct this the the district to create a specialty school strategic action team that would focus on all of our specialty programs. Uh we had someone who got up and said, "Well, just eliminate DLI." Well, if you actually ask the question, how many kids do we have that are enrolled in Scottsdale because of

285the DLI program at Pueblo and because of the DLI program at Desert Canyon Elementary School, those are in the hundreds of kids. So if you eliminate them, people I mean, people left Cave Creek and and other places to come to our DLI Mandarin program because other schools closed them. So these are families who are demanding that educational experience and so to close a specialty program, to close IB, to close math and science academy, it may be self-defeating. But it is appropriate to determine return on investment, to assess the cost that we're spending, and then to consider and have a very thoughtful way of saying, "What about the the performing arts school that was proposed tonight? What about a gifted and advanced academic school?" That idea surfaced in a number of conversations. We should be very

286intentional about studying those options and thinking about where might we have opportunities to expand our reach by creating attractive alternatives that would cause more people to choose SUSD. So this is not just a defensive posture. We have a plan for how we can grow, but you can't do this bottom one if you have no money. And if we don't tackle the structural budget deficit, we won't be able to grow our way into these compelling options. And that's the balancing act that we're trying to address over the next 2 years so that our focus is on how do we build on whatever comes out of that last bullet point. So just to move through quickly and I know we have other questions. What was shown here in terms of accelerating phase one and phase two for

287the people who wondered about this acceleration at the IBN table and in some other conversations, there was a question raised about why would we wait if we know we have to make these decisions and we know that the structural budget deficit is 9 million and by repurposing four buildings, we're going to be able to save 5 and 1/2 million and and you know, rip the rip the Band-Aid off, do it quickly, and be done with it. Show us a model for that. My recommendation going into this was to do it in two phases because I thought that we needed to have some time to be able to do that. So you can see on the slide deck the benefits and the challenges of a rip the Band-Aid off approach and we've heard it, we've seen

288it where where people saying, "We didn't know, we hadn't heard." Even when we've talked about some of these things, that becomes an ongoing concern. It's fair. Copper Ridge, I was at the staff meeting. We had the discussion. And I said, "My recommendation is is that we have this period of time." She's not wrong in what I said, you know, grow now, figure out the strategy, and then if we don't see progress, I'm going to be in the same position I was with Echo and Pima when we get to next fall about what our options are. So, we would be leapfrogging what I've been saying to people, but it is an option that the board could consider. If the board considered this, we'd have to schedule another hearing like we did for Pima and Echo. We'd

289have to do that in January, or we could schedule the hearing in December for a time in January. You have time statutorily to make those decisions. I worry about the impact and the ripple effect on the whole community. And so, that's a conversation to have. What Shannon has shown in this is this is what you would get if you did all of the things on the on the the what if scenario of repurposing, and I think part of the challenge is these aren't the only potential configurations. And so, um if you take something off, let's say you said we're not going to make Desert Canyon Elementary Middle School a K-8. Well, there's 728,000 of savings that comes off of this chart, right? So, when you when you start mixing and matching, your bottom line number

290changes. The other thing that's important for the community to understand, for the board to understand is that there is some level of flexibility in terms of the pacing over the next 2 years because of the money that we have in district additional assistance. The board has discretion. They did it for the first time since I've been here, and maybe the first time ever to really move intentionally DAA to M&O. We moved 4.2 million, and Shannon's carrying that 4.2 million forward. We could allocate up to another 6.8, but that would be using all of the district additional assistance. Means any capital costs would only be able to be paid for out of the override. And so, that's a big investment given our capital needs and uncertainty about whether or not we're going to have a bond

291issue approved. But that's where the board has some discretion discretion. This year one approach shows using 5.4 million in this first year in order to be able to provide a 2% pay raise for our staff, get the savings by the level these special education programming, and not moving all 6.8, but only moving 5.4 additional in order to be able to get to a point of a a structural balance budget. Phase two, you're kind of spreading this out over time. We've talked about the pros and the cons. And so, you can see in year one, you still have a deficit of 264,000. That's something as Shannon and I talked about, that amount of money can be baked into reducing our carry forward, and it doesn't really negatively impact us long term. There are some other things

292that may or may not materialize during the course of the year. So, you could you could move into this with some intentionality, but you're going to still have to make some decisions and transfer of funding in year two. But it does after the end of year two show a positive fund balance. This is a slide that's the most painful uh when we get to the options. If you don't do any repurposing, if you keep under old schools open, and you don't make any other changes on the the kinds of staffing that are allocated to a school that's open. If you don't make any of those changes, this comes from people in in other programs. And we showed that list. Um go back to this slide. You're from from uh my conversations with Shannon, in year

293one, we have to do 4.4 million. That's the the amount that we have to hit. The the overall goal um I we shouldn't say that. It's 7.9 million in year one. Uh it's broken down between ADM reduction and the and the positions moved back to M&O. But you could hold off the full 9 million until year two. 1.1 could wait. But you're going to have to find the the amount of of reductions to get to this uh other savings over a 2-year period of time that comes from this list. Right? You can increase class sizes. Uh we always hear one of the things that people appreciate is not having large class sizes. I've been talking to other superintendent colleagues around the valley, and and they're talking about increasing to 35 in a classroom, and they've

294got numbers that are already far higher than ours. Um you know, that's not a a thing that people will warmly embrace, and it will have an impact on outcomes. Right? That's may cause more parents to choose not to come here. But if you do that, you're going to reduce your staffing. So, this increased class size by one means having fewer teachers. That's what it really means, but it does free up 1.5 million. The the the we talked about RNs or teacher librarians or guidance counselor ratios. The specialty programs, IB, Avid, math and science. The APs are shown here because all of those are the kinds of decisions that would have to get made in lieu of making the decisions that we're talking about in phase one and phase two repurposing. And those are just not

295easy decisions to make. So, from an administrative perspective, I think there's a a logical sequence to the conversation. We brought forward a recommendation on Pima and Echo that ideally we would make a decision on December 9th. These are the the bullet points are things that we've heard families say. We're prepared to discuss those. Uh do not believe we have time to go into that in detail tonight, but we'll send that out before the December 9th meeting. There would be a statutory process regarding boundary changes that includes another hearing. We did it in a two-step process when we re-boundary the last time uh related to Tanque Verde K-8. It has been our intention and conversation all along to create concierge level service for any families impacted by a repurposing. To designate a person assigned to contact

296every family at Echo and every family at Pima. To talk about what their child's interest, aspirations, needs are educationally. And to help connect them with a school within our portfolio of schools that will best fit their families' needs. And then we roll out the red carpet in those receiving schools to make sure that this is as smooth of transition as possible. The student who spoke earlier tonight talked about if it's going to happen, then make sure you're paying attention to that transition for the students because that's really important. So, that's our commitment. We can't start that process until we know if the board's even going to move forward on this because then that's again wasted energy if the board's going to say, "Figure out a different way to fix the structural budget deficit." I was

297I was criticized for telling families that they should look at options um when we had our expo before the board ever made a decision on Echo. And I I made the comment not to be callous, but to say, "Knowing that this is a potential on the horizon, I would be exploring what the next best alternative for my child would be. But if the board decides not to move, you haven't lost your space at Echo." What we would do is to take it to the next level and say, "We're going to have an assigned person who's going to be making those phone calls and helping with those connections." Just like if it's your hotel and you go to the concierge desk and say, "My interest is in skydiving or my interest is in these things." And

298they give you three or four options. That's the kind of service that we expect to provide to our families if the board moves forward on repurposing. We need to know if you want to do it in in a all-in-one fell swoop because that means retooling a lot of what we do and a lot of different conversations, or if we follow a phased-in approach over 2 years. And then we want direction on the repurposing. Right? How far do you want us to go in looking at all of the options? I've heard, you know, discussions about wanting more options. But if if we have any agreement on 25 29 to 25, then that gives us a sense of what repurposing we should be pursuing. And finally, if if there's not an appetite to make the tough decisions,

299tell us where. Uh because we brought forward recommendations before. We've shown you what the list of alternatives are, but I'm not prepared to make a recommendation to cut our specialty programs. I'm not prepared to make a recommendation to cut our nurses. I need to know what you want us to cut. What's the priority from the board's perspective? Uh I think we're at a point where the demographics and the historical trends and the budget realities require difficult decisions. I think there's a way to provide support in the process, but I don't think that there's a good way to be financially responsible and not make the tough decisions. Dr. Potensky. So, I've obviously shown a lot of sympathy to kind of the order of operations challenge that it doesn't make sense to do too much of this

300before. The one place where I disagree with what you described, and I think it's a big gap here, and it's an ask that we put a lot more attention to, is in your mind it may be a given that we would do what you call this concierge, but for the families at these two programs to not hear at the same time that we're proposing to potentially eliminate their programs, what we're going to do to ensure that their needs and their child's needs are taken care of does feel like a pretty big hole. And it's you know, I don't know, you know, for example, if I've got a kid in early learning, and then I also have a kid in elementary school, maybe it's easy to say that there's another elementary school X distance from where

301I am, but that early learning is filled up. And so now all of a sudden I'm going you know 5 10 15 miles, are you guaranteeing me that I'm going to get first shot at early learning. So I do think we need to be I would feel very uncomfortable voting to close a program without being able to look families in the eyes and say and then this is what it means for you. This is what we're going to do at a at a more specific level than you're going to get concierge service. I don't know what that means. >> So in board policy gives um preference in a school choice environment to anyone who is um impacted by a school closure. That's our board policy and state law. Including early learning? So uh Dr. Bono.

302Thank you. Board member Petensky, uh regarding early learning and I'm only going to use this as an example because it was discussed about this is no way am I recommending or suggesting. It's just an example. If we have an early learning program at Laguna, let's say, and an early learning program at Redfield like we do. If the board were to choose to consolidate those schools, let's say, both of those programs would stay. We would not eliminate. We we have no intention of eliminating any early learning programs as long as we have the parents who have expressed interest. I'm asking a different question. Would we guarantee families affected by a program closing their early learning center of choice? Yes. >> Would they skip the line ahead of every other family the way board policy says apparently?

303It depends because early learning and this could this could be um amended, our registration process starts in January. So in January parents will fill out a form expressing interest in one of our 30 classrooms, 28 classrooms, and then they we look at our priority groups similar to what do we do with open enrollment, and then we tell parents where they've secured a spot, whether it be Cheyenne. So for example, Cheyenne's class historically will fill that first day based on the priority group of siblings, 24 spots historically filled up. If you are at Laguna and you have a spot at pre-K and your class is moved, we can't guarantee you at Cheyenne. They don't have another space for another classroom. If we have a building where we had capacity for additional classrooms, then we we that

304would be our hope is to open up classrooms to meet that need if that makes sense. It it it does. It also illustrates why families at these programs would be very nervous that um the timing of decisions you know, for early learning relative to this process as well as the reality that it's not just making a commitment that you're going to get first dibs on any school because you have younger siblings, etc. We've got to look at the two of them together. I just >> want to go too down the rabbit hole. >> what that's why I wanted to say. >> I think we need to I think it would be irresponsible for the board to vote to approve closing programs without on being able to communicate to families very clearly how they're going to

305be supported in choosing a different site for their children. >> they're going to be supported is different than a guarantee that you can get whatever you want uh because while we can give priority, that doesn't mean that if you are full in Hopi, that every kid at Echo can go to Hopi because there's no more room. Every in-boundary kid can go to Hopi because they're they're entitled to that, but that doesn't mean everyone can. So it the level of service we can provide is there. Time is of the essence, which is why we said make a decision in December because then we can be ahead of the curve on the January open enrollment for early learning. We can be in the front of the line for those other decisions because some people haven't made their

306choices for schools and we don't know where kindergarten's going to be. So you absolutely get preference and not every family has the same need and so that's why we said concierge level service. Just drawing a new boundary doesn't fix the problem for families. It they need to know more and that's where we want to personalize that service. We'll prioritize them in the process should the board make this decision and when and where we can expand capacity, but there may be some places where we can't so you can't give a universal guarantee you can go wherever you want. In the name of reasonableness and time, I'm going to go ahead and bring this topic to close. I'll give each board member an opportunity to make a final comment or question. All right, Ms. Carney. You know

307when I'm looking at this slide, I feel like the the bottom three, this is should have been our first step. This shouldn't be our our like last thing we're looking at before we're saying to vote. This should have been brought to us early on so we understood what was in front of us, what our options are. Um and I'm just disappointed that this is now what's in front of us to to now vote on this on December 9th. It's obvious that we need to right-size our district. I 100% agree with that. I'm not afraid of making hard decisions, um but I am afraid of making the wrong decisions um for our public schools. I did not join this board, running for this board um to close schools as a first option. That's why I'm talking

308about a lot of them, asking questions because I feel like this should have been first. It wasn't Now it's it's last and it's put us all in an uncomfortable um bind and that's just my last thoughts on it for tonight. Thank you. Mr. Sharkey, anything? No, okay. Ms. Warner. Dr. Petensky. Sorry. I did have one last one, which is you presented eight other things that if we don't do this, it's we're talking about those eight other things. But those eight other things only represent 2% 4% of the budget. And you're obviously not you literally, the district leadership is always going to be smarter than the board on kind of how the district spends its money. We're never going to be as in the weeds as you are. What I hear from the community unfortunately is

309there's just a lack of trust. There's a lack of trust that if the district says trust us like we've scoured every part of our budget and you know, we really are at the point where you're talking about these marginal programs like you listed as opposed to the core base. Um and so the other thing I I and we're out of time so just want to ask you for the future we've had folks propose let's do a district audit. Let's you know, bring in forensic accounting to look at other options. You know, bring in some fresh independent eyes on how we spend our dollars to see if there are other programs. Um so that would be the other ask that you consider is how do we better articulate to the community the kind of level of

310true kind of almost like zero budget sort of approach that we've taken across the district to then feel comfortable that this truly is the decision of last resort. Thank you. Ms. Warner. Um thank you for those words. Um makes a lot of sense and I um I agree with you. So there's been a lot of ideas and suggestion proposed to us from the community and some of them were actually really good and I'd asked after the last meeting for you guys could to put them together and consider those and put them in front of us. Uh what we have today is just something that's very forced and it's what you want and it's what you want us to approve, Superintendent. And there has not been enough conversation. Like board member Carney said, it's like we

311should have started with this last slide and um we've just put in you know, put in a position where everyone's backs against the wall so it didn't need to be this way. And frankly, this this conversation should have started last spring so that um we really could have made responsible and positive decisions moving forward. Thank you. Thank you. Well, over the months of discussion that we've had and and as we've all uh grown tonight through the depth of the complexity of all the interdependence that that we studied this evening, I want to thank you for the work that everyone put into tonight's presentation backup documentation and this evening's conversation. The layers of systemic thinking has been um daunting and uh I I appreciate everybody's courageous backs against the wall feeling as we approach this uh

312difficult difficult uh time. Uh that being said, I will uh move us on now to um information item uh D review of board superintendent communication practices. Ms. Carney. Thank you. President Lewis, well when I asked for this to be on the agenda, I didn't realize what else was going all going to be on the agenda, but um so I will try and uh get through this and see what uh you all have to say, but I wanted to raise a concern about our current practice of individual board meetings with the superintendent. Um when three board members are meeting one-on-one with the superintendent, each one may receive information that other that the others are not privy to. Whether intentional or or not, this creates an uneven flow of information and raises governance concerns. Um this is

313a problem because it undermines the expectation that all board members operate with the same set of facts when making decisions on behalf of our community. Our ability to govern effectively depends on equal access to information, especially when we're preparing to vote on signi- significant items such as school repurposing or closures. Second, unequal information creates the perception, whether it's fair or not, that there's back channel communication or serial discussions. So, when three members of a five-member board have separate meetings, it can unintentionally bring us close to an open meeting law violation if information is being shared or interpreted differently across these meetings. And lastly, when board members are receiving different information in private settings, the public has no way of understanding the full context behind our decisions, and this lack of transparency erodes public trust. So,

314if information relates to the to items that the board will vote on, then all board members should receive the same information at the same time, not through individual meetings with differing content. So, for these reasons, I believe we need to review and refine our communication processes to ensure that all board members receive the same information at the same time, which is currently done through superintendent weekly notes and responses to our email inquiries, but we need to maintain the highest standards of transparency and OML compliance. Um so, I just wanted to discuss how you think we can strengthen our communication protocols uh to better support effective governance and public confidence. And I also wanted to ask um of our general counsel, what are the best practices for ensuring equal access to information for the board members?

315Ms. Carney, thank you for the question. Um so, with respect to the concern about the open meeting law, as long as the board members aren't discussing the items that they discuss with the superintendent, you don't have that daisy chain effect, right? So, you're you're the risk is there when board members have conversations with the superintendent or if they come in and have I saw Mr. Sharkey in the office having a conversation with I believe Ms. Mitchell this week. So, that certainly is permitted as board members for you to be able to get the type of information that you need. It's the subsequent conversations that make it problematic. Um as far as best practices, I would say that your district has a solid pattern of communication from what I've seen compared to other clients that I've

316had. Um you certainly get the same information at the same time with respect to the superintendent's weekly updates. Um I know that staff uh including myself, when I'm asked to uh tries to if we respond to one question for one board member, we share the information with all. Um and so, that is good. The weekly meetings with the superintendent are a standard part of the operating procedures of every school district that I work with. Um that that is a pretty standard operating practice. Um because uh when I was asking around, it's many districts seem to avoid problems by having the superintendent just send the same memo to everyone rather than taking separate meetings. Um so, that it's ensured that everyone has the same information on items that we're going to vote on. So, I and

317I do again, you are required and should be getting the same information and you do for board meetings um for anything that you do need to vote on, but in my experience, I I have observed other districts having their chief operating officer meet individually. That's been my experience. Um but you know, it not every school board member does take advantage of those opportunities. I I know that in other districts, I've also seen board members choose not to, and it is a personal choice for everybody. Okay, so do fellow board member, do we need a do you think we need a policy? Can I just like to ask so, like the information about the phase one, phase two, phase three, did you not discuss that in your one-on-one with Dr. Menzel? Why would why would I

318discuss that? That should be discussed in public. There's nothing stopping you from discussing it with him. Because I we're we're going this is that's a prime example of what I'm talking about is because we are voting on that item. It should not be done in one-on-one meetings. It should be done in public meetings, not not behind closed doors. How do you get your information in order to inform yourself on decisions? Through the through the emails. That's how we're supposed to be getting it, through the weekly updates. That's all? You don't meet Do you meet with Dr. Menzel? >> If I if I want to, yes, we meet if I if I request a meeting. Yes, he'll meet >> last time you met with him? Um I just I just requested a meeting this week. >>

319When's the last When's the last time you met with him? >> That this has nothing to do with me meeting with him one-on-one. I I'm Actually, it's everything because that's how we get information. Like It should not be. I don't How else are you How else do you expect to understand? So, we brought up an an arts magnet, and um I understood that uh Ms. Mitchell had done that previously. So, I took time to meet with her to understand to inform myself what it takes to set up an arts magnet. I've become more informed in that. There was a question from families I met from Pima saying, "When my kids if Pima closes, my kids go to another school, what's the class size going to be? Are you going to cram my kids?" And I

320spent 45 minutes with HR to understand all the math they do to do projections of where kids will go, and I have a really good understanding of and I can go back to that Pima family and tell them. That's how I get my information. I don't wait all. That's a really inefficient process if all we did was say, "Tell me I'm I'm on the board. Please give the board a document with this information." Like the synchronicity and fidelity of a discussion brings that out. I feel like you're saying there's something stopping you from doing that. Why Why don't you get >> No, I've just heard you a couple times from the dais say, "Well, I meet with Dr. Menzel. I have that information." And it's like, "Well, I don't." >> What's stopping you from getting

321it? My job, my family. Um >> [laughter] >> I mean, I I I work full-time. I'm busy. Like Same here. Well, I I I can make the decision for myself. We are different We're board individual board members. If I want to request a meeting, I absolutely will, but I I don't I you see me I email all the time. You you see my requests come through email so that you all have the information. Uh in the spirit of do we need to address superintendent board communication practices? I'm not hearing guidance from counsel as such. Mr. Dr. Petensky. Yeah, I I don't begrudge. I happen to think that a core responsibility of being a board member is to do a one-on-one with the superintendent in any board I've been involved in. When I'm a CEO, I

322expect my board members to do that with me, and I'm on other boards, I do that with them. Um I don't begrudge a board member choosing not to if they feel like other mechanisms work. I would begrudge losing the opportunity to do that because another board member chooses not to. So, I would say if a board member chooses not to, you do you, and allow me to do me. And for me, meeting with the superintendent monthly is a chance to first check in on the superintendent, act as a board coach, check in on where he is, what are you concerned about, what's going on in the district. There's a lot of small things that will never get to the board that it allows me to touch base on as well. Um and then if there's

323something that I need to go deeper on, it allows me to go deeper as well. So, no, I would not support this policy, and I don't think there's a problem to be solved. Okay, that sounds good. And then maybe we just need to look at if if there are one-on-one meetings going on and and information is given on an item that we're going to vote on, that maybe that needs to be put into the weekly notes that all board members understand. You do that. To what level of depth? If I said I talked with HR about student-teacher ratios at the schools, period, end of sentence. Is that enough information? Or do you want the spreadsheet that we looked through cell by cell? Like what do you What level information would you want? Board member Sharkey,

324I've already told I've already told you we've all agreed that you can have any meetings with staff that you that you would like, and to bring any information to the board that you feel is relevant. >> You said to put put all meeting information in a summary so everybody gets it. >> when you're meeting with the superintendent one-on-one as an individual board member, and if you are discussing things on repurposing schools, closing schools, whatever it is that that's going to come in front of the board as something to vote on, that needs to be disclosed what was discussed in those weekly notes so that all board members, whether meeting or not, have the same information. That's it. Any other comments? Thank you. All right. Uh 11E, first read, revision of governing board policy DJE, bidding

325and purchasing. Um Any questions for staff in preparation for voting on that for action? Or did you Jennifer, did you want Excuse me, uh Ms. McMillan, did you want to introduce that to us? Madam President, members of the governing board, we have before you policy DJE uh for a first read and information. The uh the matter has come before the board because your policy provider, ASBA, had made proposed changes to this portion of the policy about what items are not required to be engaged in competitive bidding. Basically, they I think it was listed twice in their policy. It was here, so they moved it or uh took away the repetition. But in um proposing these policy changes, I worked with the business services department to make sure that we also incorporated prior past changes to

326policy DJE that had not been yet incorporated. So, for instance, these changes are new to Scottsdale Unified but were not recommended by ASBA in this last revision. Um this has been reviewed by the district's procurement specialist and it is available for I'm available for questions if you have questions about the language changes. Are there any questions? All right, thank you for introducing that to us and we'll put it on for next time for action. I'd like to make a motion that we approve consent agenda item 12 A through M minus H and I. I need a second on the motion. Second. All those in favor? I. I. Uh it passes unanimously. We will now go to item H, performance-based pay uh for the specified administrators and KPIs. I think So, on the cabinet goals document,

327there's a oversight error. It's for um Dr. Cruz's performance goals, the first one is academic excellence, which is the 75% algebra goal. Um there is no performance target outcome for that since the goal is a future one. Um and I don't think it needs to be included as a separate line item, so I propose just taking that 5% weight and dropping it to the row right below it, which is um under the climate and culture, the first. So, make the one below it 25%. Thank you. Any other comments about that? I don't have a comment about that. I have my own comment. >> Sure. You go ahead. Done. Yeah, so considering uh the conversations that we've had here tonight related to the board meeting and the cuts that are we're looking at at making ahead

328and some of the things we learned about, you know, principals only getting $1,500 performance pay and clearly they deserve more. Um I in good conscience am not going to vote for your pay for performance today just out of respect for all of the staff and the people that are going through turmoil right now not knowing where they're going to work next year. So. Thank you. Any other comments? Dr. Potesky. >> I think respect for staff is if someone has as part of their compensation a performance component, that we tell them what they need to do to earn the part of their compensation that's performance-related. Did you want to say more? Mine was not for discussion. I just had a comment, that's all. >> Okay. Just comments, okay. And so it's been proposed to modify uh

329Dr. Cruz's uh uh just to omit it, is that right? The 75% piece. Okay. Any issues with And then approve all the rest as presented. So, I have a I need a motion to approve H with the modification to Dr. Cruz's uh KPIs. I make that motion to approve all of the uh goals as is with the one exception of amending the 5% for Dr. Cruz and moving it to the 20 below to make that 25%. I need a second. I'll second. All those in favor? I. I. Those opposed? No. Okay, passes three to two. Uh we're now going to look at consent agenda item I, termination of J. Backlund. Uh Miss uh Warner Carney, you brought that pulled that one, right? >> Thank you, President Lucia. I just uh asked to pull that because

330I don't feel well I can make an informed decision on this agenda item, so I'm would like to abstain. Okay, thank you. I don't think in having no other questions, all right, I make a motion to accept termination of J. Backlund as uh as presented. I need a second. >> the motion. All those in favor? I. I. Uh and then any opposed and one abstention. Okay, passes four and with the one abstention. Okay, thank you. Uh we're now on action item 13, board action required A, approval of strategic plan including KPIs and wildly important goals, WIGS, for the 2025-2026 school year. This is our third review. Uh did you want to introduce it or are we ready to make take action? No, I have questions. Okay. Should we take questions? >> We'll take questions. All

331right, go ahead. Miss Warner. Uh so it'll be it'll be Leah, um but she's prepared to answer. We just Um so I have concerns. I had concerns last time, uh which is why we tabled it. Well, some of my colleagues here had concerns as well. Um could you tell me the logistic and the path of how the students from third, fourth, fifth grade, in kindergarten, how are they going to how is this going to be implemented in lower grades uh when it comes to the math? Um and to get them ready to where we can take them from only 25% uh of our students are taking algebra one now and we're going to move that to 75. That's a significant increase. And I also know that the national average is 36% and you know, my

332my student, my kids did algebra one in eighth grade and they happen to be math kids and I know not every kid is a math kid. So, I have concerns that you're leaping from 25% to 75% uh and now we don't even care if they get a C or more, now they just have to take it and and could fail uh based upon the changes on here and um and then there is a uh there was it was a you struck out the sixth graders enrolled in advanced math. So, if you could tell me the logistics of um how they're going to get there beginning in the earlier um grades. Absolutely. Thank you so much for the opportunity and um I also just want to say thank you for the opportunity and just the direction

333to go talk to so many of our math teachers. That was really an excellent experience and just having the opportunity to be sitting at their schools, listening um and hearing their feedback. They asked some of the very similar questions. Um and so the pathway starting in the earliest grades really does start with um first and foremost, our high-quality instructional materials adoption, making sure that we're selecting resources that do leverage those algebra standards that start in K, one, two, three, four, and five. And so right now our teachers are trying and applying some of those choices. When we then write curriculum maps after we bring that recommendation forward, whatever resource we should choose, our curriculum teams will then use those algebra standards that already exist at each grade and really pull them forward in the curriculum.

334Those are the predecessor skills. So, in kindergarten, let's say there may be four or five. In first grade, there may be seven or eight. And it grows over time. So, not only would those be skills be pulled out in um kind of showcased a little bit more in our curriculum, we would also drive content training for teachers around specifically, what do those standards look like in practice and how do they relate overall? Also included in there is measuring their progress on those precursor skills every single year. And so you'll see a strategy around uh an algebra skill plan where it's something that we're isolating those really specific algebra skills and then making sure that they're really concrete. Our evidence right now in our earliest grades, K one and two, through some of that algebra and

335even just IXL data tells us our earliest learners are actually far above grade level um and that is where we can capture them more. And so additionally, beyond just leveraging standards, having high-quality materials, and training our teachers, it's also opening expansions to accelerated math in elementary school beyond just gifted learners. Right now, some of our structures really do um hold uh that opportunity just for students who are identified as gifted when our data and evidence tells us we have a far wider reach of students we could be supporting. Um some of our initial data just from beginning of the year tells us that right now we probably had about a 100-ish, a few more than 100 kids in sixth grade who are already achieving almost at the seventh grade level we probably should have enrolled

336in sixth advanced. And so doing that earlier, second grade, third grade, and expanding those opportunities for integrated advanced acceleration actually sets kids up to enroll in sixth grade advanced so they're not doing some of that summer learning. So, the biggest part of the strategy is really doubling down in the elementary grades earlier and then leveraging online learning, continuous learning throughout the summer to still offer those on-ramps like so many of our kids do right now. We have a tons of kids that take geo in the summer or take algebra in the summer to get ahead um and we still want to continue to leverage those, but when we have students leaving each grade level with a much solid understanding of those specific predecessor skills that we would build skill plans and measurements for, it gives

337everybody a better picture of how ready are they? That really was one of the chief concerns of some of our high school teachers is seeing some of those gaps, um some of the holes in understanding, um even down just to basic functions, solving for unknowns. And some of those standards actually do appear earliest in first grade. And in talking with some of our elementary teachers, they're excited, but they want to know what does that what does an OA, which is how the standard is coded in the state of Arizona. What does that really mean in seventh grade? What does that mean in Algebra 2? And so spending time in those coherence of what those predecessor skills look like through training and professional development is a big part of this. And so our evidence in our

338students now and what even research will tell us over time is the investment in the earlier grades strengthening of algebra and having those systems of support and opportunities to accelerate in the early grades is actually what will help grow it faster earlier. Okay, and what are those systems of support? So the systems of support, some of what we have now, we have machine learning through IXL. We also have a direct services grant and um partnership with ADE for Khan Academy. So those are some of the services that help and strengthen those skills. We also leverage Indian gaming dollars to um have interventionists in some of our middle schools. So right now for example, we have a unique model at Mountainside Middle School where they're using some of those dollars in more of an Algebra Algebra

339support cuz they identified students who they thought could be ready but may need additional high dosage tutoring. So high dosage tutoring, additional machine learning supports, um intervention services through intervention specialist or teachers and also then ensuring that we have those highly qualified and appropriately certified teachers. Okay, so so that sounds really great and and beginning it in earlier grades, but you [clears throat] still have bubble kids. You have kids that are now in sixth grade and seventh grade that are now going into it and they're not going to be able to meet that or may not be able to meet that. So um who are you how are you and and do you intend to have other instructional support um people that are going to help them at other campuses? You just mentioned Mountainside, but

340what about the other schools? And what about going into high school? So currently each of our middle schools um is a awarded and afforded that uh additional support for mathematics. That would continue through Indian gaming should we um continue to move forward. In our high school over time what they would see is a smaller number of students needing that algebra in ninth grade would which actually could reduce their class sizes and offer additional layers of support for students. One of the other conversations at our high schools was a need to differentiate supports for newly enrolled students. So students that join our high schools not having been in K-8 with us and those who came in K-8. And what our teachers reported is they're seeing different skill sets in those students. And so sometimes reducing some

341of those numbers in our high schools also will help there to be more intensified instruction for those who may need further remediation um or intervention. So we also heard again tonight that there are people that thought this was being tabled again, which I think she just misread it and that there are concerns. And I have heard of many concerns that have not been handled through the meetings that you've had. And so um I I'd like to see this language be different or I may just not vote for it. I I absolutely believe that the intention is good, but I don't believe our mechanisms are setting our students or teachers up for success. I I'm particularly with with that big of a gap. And as everyone knows, I'm all for high academic standards and expectations, but

342I also don't want to set our students and teachers up for failure. I I can appreciate that and understand that. I would say systems um much larger than ours with very different demographics have experienced success with a much shorter runway than 5 years um with a much wider and a larger um hill to climb. And so we have leveraged some of those partnerships and conversations to make sure that we are being thoughtful and and recognizing and understanding um what are different ways and approaches systems different and bigger than ours maybe with more barriers have achieved this goal even faster than what we're promoting. And who are they? Uh Peoria, Illinois is one. Pasco County, Florida is another. The entire state of Minnesota um is a third. They have some different and varying results because it's

343really a state level policy. There were numerous um school districts in the state of Texas. Um some because in different states algebra is also required for graduation. And so what you can see is different states or different districts do some level of policy making around accelerating opportunities. And so you can see in some states where maybe a middle school may receive more grade points for having more students accelerated and that happens in a variety of states across the nation that there's a bigger press um and their students are achieving and they do have runways. Um I in looking at all of the data, even our longitudinal data data of our students in Scottsdale, every ounce of research and evidence that's on the market right now tells us we actually have the perfect preconditions for this

344goal to be achievable. So you just mentioned three states. You're saying that those are all over 75%? So Peoria, Illinois School District, I think they're at 73% in 3 years. It's a highly urban district. Um Pasco County, Florida this year is uh auto enrollment of all sixth graders in advanced and I think they're about at that 75. Um the state of Minnesota, it's just their policy. Um and then in a memo I outlined them and I think I don't have enough battery left on my computer to fully open it. Um but I can go through and and list each of those out, but there was a variety of different states and different outcomes. Um some at the state level, some at the specific district level depending on their policies and their practices. And what was

345the the math teacher and instructional coaches response to you when you were meeting with them? So they asked a lot of good hard questions. Um and over the course of the conversation, what we found is them seeing measurable targets year over year, what it would look like next year and the year after helped make it meaningful and um measurable. Seeing the recent research on what data tells us algebra unlocks for children was a game changer. And it was truly almost in each high school that the first half of the conversation was heavier and really meeting in the data and then it would shift to what other kinds of courses could we offer then? And it you started to see some of our high level teachers getting excited about ooh, the state right now is working

346on a data um a new data course, a data sciences course. Does that mean we could offer that? And so the teachers themselves through the conversation, I watched them sort of open up to oh, okay, then maybe I could offer this kind of course. At Saguaro we heard a teacher say, so that may mean that some of my engineering students who are dropping or who don't have the same opportunity to pursue this DE, they could have different options. And so it did sort of shift to what are the alternative options in those upper level math classes? Um and I started to see some enthusiasm there. I will say even though we did offer um five different virtual options for our K-8 math teachers and we scheduled around conferences cuz we knew that that would be

347like don't I'm an elementary teacher. Don't mess with us during conferences. We still didn't get a ton of people. And so our math team and myself are actually just replicating what we did at every high school um with our middle schools and elementary schools where we'll be showing up, having some of these same math chats so that we can hear more of their feedback and see how they're going. So um it's my understanding that there was language proposed um and you didn't take that into consideration. How do you mean? Uh related to the goal from 25 to 75. There's uh there there were a ton of different ideas that floated through each conversation. Are you talking specifically about a very specific language or I mean did somebody say what if we started with the kindergartners

348now? Others said what about 6 years? We did have some debates over 5 years is it which cohort of kids? Is it 5 years meaning 2030 2930 school year or 3031 school year? And so we did do some back and forths on that. I think our current data of our earliest learners right now in grades 1, 2, 3, and 4 sort of landed us in the space of like I think we could do the 75% by 2030. Um it seems measurable. It seems achievable. Uh we definitely have all the conditions here for that level of success. Yeah, I I'm not concerned about the the elementary school. I think it's it's great to put it in there and have them start learning that sooner, but the concern is for our current sixth and seventh and eighth

349graders and then going into high school that there's going to be um some significant problems there with students that aren't ready to take Algebra 1 at that age. And so um I do I do believe that there was a request to have it be not go from 25 to 75 because the national average is 36 and we're at 25. And so you know, is there some flexibility there to be supportive of our teachers and take a little bit of the pressure off? If there was a diet desired to lower that expectation, I think it could be considered. I would just say that uh it's a aspirational target and an aspirational goal. And I think when we set high expectations, every ounce of research in children and adults actually says we rise to high expectations. So

350I personally believe 75% is still achievable and actually I think we'll outperform that. Um but I also am one person. And so I also serve at the pleasure of the governing board. And should that be a consideration that you all had to adjust that metric or that goal, of course I would work in that favor. >> Can I chime in, Mr. Warner? Absolutely. So two things. One, what I really like is that there are year-to-year, grade-to-grade targets. So we will know next year if we're on track or not. Cuz there are numbers. So we will be able to say, "Hey, we said we're going to grow IXL proficiency in fourth graders from whatever 27 to 39%." If we don't hit that, we'll know then. So it's not like all or nothing for 2030. So the

351good thing is and I'm making a statement for you, but we'll adjust. If we're not on track, we'll adjust. My second thing with the aspirational, um I'm on board with that as well. Um I think in my concerns I expressed last month about this about the buy-in is any potential gaps between district and the schools. And so, what you and your colleagues the district are proposing and what is actually happening with the teachers, um, there is a chance that aspirational can be translated as if I don't make this number, I'm in trouble and something happens to me. I don't believe that, but I can understand someone seeing that. So, what I would ask is that in the like we have a good opportunity here to be able to continue to measure these and track our

352progress, and you may already have this planned, use those employees, use those staff so they can self-reinforce and track and we are on track or we are off track, not I'm in fear of being off track cuz the district will be mad at me. So, I think there's a really good opportunity, which I'm assuming you're doing, but I think that's a positive for this. I appreciate those comments as well. Um, it really would be the desire to build a strategic action team. Uh, of the other conversations came around appropriate placement and defining algebra readiness. And that is something a team should also do. What what are the data points we're considering for sixth grade placement and seventh grade placement? And that can't be something that we at the district office sit in a room and

353do. That has to be something we do with our teams of teachers. Same thing with the year-over-year targets. I have a built out target that does each cohort evenly over 5 years. Our data tells us our earlier kids could go faster and the older kids it may be a slower rate of growth. And so, I would want that team of teachers and educators to be the ones that noodle on that data to really determine these actually are the most meaningful targets. We have it if it was each cohort every year same or based on what our data says, what the snowball effect could be. But really and truly post goal it is having a team of educators really wrapped around. And we do that with any implementation of new curriculum, but this has a a

354higher level around a math pop powers possibility campaign cuz there's a whole element of mathematics conversations with families that this strategy is also stood up upon. Okay, and have you have you identified the members that are going to be part of that team? I haven't identified the members who have been a part of that team. When I talked to um, the high schools about it and the middle schools uh, and elementary teachers that came, many many expressed interest. And so, we would probably do a little bit of a open call who would be interested um, and see. I mean, I would be much more inclusive than exclusive. Uh, the more of the people that want to sit around a table and talk about mathematics for our kids, I think the better. Um, so what is

355the the goal for for next year? So, this is from 2030 good to take it from 25 to 75. And in a typical world I would be supportive of that, but the amount of feedback that I got from our staff um, is that that is a goal that makes them feel like there's a failure in that, you know, not in the in the in the elementary school, but going into middle school. And I don't want any of them to feel like that. They're they're working hard and I definitely don't want any student to feel um, that they're not succeeding either. So, what is specific to one year? Can we break this down to to what it is going to look like for next year and the year after or so they don't feel like they're

356failing. >> group of teachers because the data set could be interpreted a couple of different ways. I think it's really important to have a K-12 group of teachers looking at what is the data say, should the targets be um, heavier in the early grades and smaller in the upper grades? And so, that really would be the very next step is what feels like the most reasonable thing. For this year at the end of this year, the biggest goal would be to have a strong decision tree for meaningful placement um, that casts a wider net based on our data for next year. Right. And so, why didn't you have that leading into this instead of your road shows? You you said you wanted to have a working group together to work on this. But you didn't

357do that. Uh, I was following some of the patterns of behavior here thinking that once uh, strategic plans are accepted that we build strategic action teams in order to lift them up and move them out. It it I just didn't realize that putting together a whole team um, to build a plan for a proposed goal prior to it being accepted would be a beneficial use of everybody's time. Well, typically things get put on the agenda because there's an expectation they're going to be passed. So, I I would just um, again, I don't want our staff to feel like they're that are working really hard and in that such a vulnerable population of middle schoolers that they're going to feel like they're not being able to succeed. And so, um, and again, um, I'm going to

358leave it at that as I've expressed my opinion. I support bringing this in. I do believe it's a it's a pretty big gap and from what I hear from staff, they're not comfortable with it. They've come to you. They've asked for different language. It hasn't happened. So, I I'm just going to go on >> be really clear that nobody came directly to me asking specifically for different language or recommendations. I did get one email asking is the goal staying the same, to which I responded very similarly to what I've answered here. I did not have anyone specifically recommend different language. When I had those conversations with the teachers, they were robust conversations. I made sure each and every person had an opportunity to talk. I only listened and said, "What are your thoughts? Tell me

359more. Tell me more." Um, and so, that that hasn't come directly to me in a different recommendation. And so, if you guys have those, I would be more than happy to take them. Thank you. Dr. Petensky. I I think Ms. Warner raises a really important point, which is I fully subscribe to the theory of you set big goals. And then part of what those goals do is kind of inspire people to figure out how to accomplish them. And you don't necessarily know all the ways in which you're going to accomplish them at the start. Part of the point of the goal is to be a forcing function. For that to work, there then has to be a culture of support and also recognition that if we fell short, right, that that's still huge gains as

360opposed to we fell short by five points. Holy cow, we advanced by 30 points. And I think we have that culture. I think we have those humans, but I think it's a really important point. Um, I just want to connect this to the earlier discussion. The number one reason why families leave SUSD other than they move is academic rigor. And it's not that the academic rigor is too low, uh, too high, sorry. It is that the perception at least is that it's too low. So, if we want to demonstrate the kind of high quality learning that we can deliver, I think choosing algebra, taking this kind of system systems approach is excellent. And then to your point, one of the I guess it's not an unintended consequence, it's an intended consequence. One of the intended

361consequences is once we have that percentage of kids proficient in algebra at that grade level, it's going to unlock all sorts of opportunities in high school. And we know that again, one of the the number one reason why families leave is the feeling like there isn't the kind of rigorous curriculum available to them. So, it's not only going to be that they see that their kids are really progressing at whatever speed they progress in algebra, it's going to be that then in high school they're going to get access to these other classes because we've created that baseline earlier and lots of kids are capable of that, not just like basis looking great because they just a treat all the kids. So, yeah, you can look great if you get rid of, you know, 70% of

362the kids. Lot harder to look great by educating 70% of the kids. So, let's go educate 70% of the kids. Or more. Actually, I didn't come out right. Uh, let's educate 100% of the kids. Thank you, Ms. Mitchell. Thank you, Dr. Petensky. Thank you for the questions, Ms. Warner. I'm going to move the question uh, we mo- motion to approve the strategic planning including KPIs and wildly important goals as presented. I need a second. I proudly second. All those in favor? I. I. I. All those opposed? So, I support doing and putting algebra in and doing everything um, I believe it's a it's a great plan. I think that the concerns I'm hearing from the staff of hitting the 75% without you were not able to tell me the marker for the next year, I'm

363going to abstain. Um, and um, I'll continue to support this, but I also have to support our teachers. Thank you. Motion passes 4-0 with one abstention. Uh, action item 13B, approval of high school planning guide for 27 school year. This is a our our second or final review? Perhaps. Uh, this will be the final review. We did send that first in the board um, in a governing board memo. Um, and so, this would be the final um, I do have one uh, point of note on related to one specific thing, but um, I can hold on that until you uh, talk further about any questions you may have. Any questions from the board? Oh, this is the high school high school planning guide? Yeah, if you can go ahead and share our conversation, that'd be

364great. Sure. Um, so thank you so much, Member Warner. Uh, we had the opportunity to have a conversation related to I believe it's on page 20 in reference to students that are newly enrolled in SUSD and the acceptance of transfer credits. Um, our previous practices have been to non-accept um, transfer credits that are weighted honors courses if we don't have the identical match um, in our planning guide and to not really um, accept them in that way if they are electives. Um, and so, we had some conversations with planning guide around what given that we are no longer in a valedictorian salutatorian um, programming and we do have an Latin honors system meaning that any child who achieves a certain GPA is recognized for their accomplishments. Some of the need for that level of detail

365with transfer credits is not as necessary. In the conversation with the high school planning guide, we brought forward a recommendation in the original draft that uses the language we may accept credits and upon further reviewing conversations that leaves a lot up for chance still. It also leaves a lot up for conversations and so we would be recommending an amended language and I think in the board there is another document attached that has that amended language that is very like a small word, right? but it makes a big difference. And so we would recommend that the language reflect students transferring into SUSD who have completed honors courses will receive weighted credit for honors courses completed at their previous school. If the course is not offered at SUSD, it will be designated an electives honors credit on

366the students transcript. And so students who come with transcripts from other high schools that have honors level credit completed, this is saying that we would accept those credits. I make a motion to accept the high school planning guide with the amendment just proposed by Ms. Mitchell. Ms. Warner seconds. All those in favor? I. It passed. This is tingling on me. This uh it passes 5-0. Thank you. Approval for of introduction to statistics. We I'll make a motion to approve the introduction to statistics. I'll second the motion. Questions or comments? All those in favor? I. All those opposed? It passes 5-0. Uh action item 13D, approval of additional course for middle school planning guide. I'll make a motion to approve the additional course for middle school planning guide. I'll second the motion. All those in favor?

367I. I. I. I. Passes 5 to 0. Thank you. Future agenda items. I would just repeat the request I had made earlier that in the context of our um program closure discussions, that there be a more full some agenda topic on how do we what are the existing policies and the additional programs we have put in place for families who are affected by a program closure. I'm not familiar with what those policies are. >> Do you want me to write it? You got it. Okay, thank you. Um I would like the suggestions that that families and staff had come forward related to the programs and different programs options at our different locations be presented to the board and for a discussion to see if that we have some better options than what have been discussed

368today related to the first two schools that we've been discussing. The second item is the um um the booster handbook. I had requested it to be on the agenda for a discussion and in particular when it comes to fundraising, um one of the fundraising options in the handbook has been taken out which is probably the easiest and most most worthwhile fundraising options that help students who don't come from, you know, a high economic background and that is the raffles. What is cited in there is a an opinion from 1984 related to tickets Okay. >> sales. So I would like that removed. That law has been changed and I want the raffles to be in there. Thank you. Ms. Carney, anything to add? Mr. Sharkey? And I'm going to send something to Dr. Benzel on my

369hope for something after the holidays on financial literacy discussion and perhaps of overt curriculum development as a future agenda item. Uh dates for upcoming meetings. Our next meeting is December 9th at 6:00 p.m. It's a regularly governing board meeting here in the Coronado High School dais uh and I now make a motion to adjourn. I'll second the motion. All those in favor? I. We are adjourned. It's 10:37 p.m.