SUSD Governing Board Regular Meeting 10/3/23

001thank you at this time I'd like to call for a roll call of all the governing board members starting from my far right Amy Carney Zack Lindsay liby Hart Wells Karen Warner and I'm Julie sinowski all governing board members are present that is a uh Quorum um moving on to the approval of the agenda I'd like to poll 7K um and that is a Personnel if you're looking at your agenda that is the Personnel action items from September 12th to October 3rd and when we get to that point in our agenda I will ask um Alexis Wilson to address that concern are there others um board member Carney U thank you president sinowski yes I would like to amend the agenda moving item nine governing board reports back to its regular spot on the agenda

002as item number four before public comments ments and I would also like to pull from consent agenda item G approve the sole and or single source procurements for 2023 2024 fiscal year for prisms of reality okay uh board member Warner I'd like to pull 7 I from consent agenda please um board member Carney can you please please repeat your first um issue thank you I I'd like to amend the agenda to move item nine governing board reports back to its regular spot on the agenda item number four before public comments are you making a motion to do that right now yes I'm making a motion to amend the agenda is there a second to that particular motion second seconded by board member Warner all in favor say I I I oppose say no no no

003no that motion does not pass the agenda is as it is amended with items g i and K pulled for further discussion all right we're going to move on WE to approve the amendment so the separate one to rearrange we have to adopt the agenda those okay so we are going I'm going to make a motion to adopt the agenda as amended at this time is there a second second seconded by Dr har uh is that Dr Wells yes okay thank you Dr Hart Wells all in favor say I I that motion passes 5 the agenda has been approved as amended we're going to move on to our student and staff uh well actually I'm going to um make a statement about our meeting decorum before we go any further I'm going to read our

004statement of deorum citizens attend attending Andor participating in the Scottdale unified school district meetings either in person virtually or telephonically are required to observe the same Rules of Order and a quum applicable to members of the governing board and our District staff unauthorized remarks or demonstrations from members of the audience yells outbursts and or disruptions are not permitted members of the public are not allowed to approach the Das at any time while the governing board meeting is in session without express permission from the governing board president I'd also like to add to um the decorum uh statement that it is not appropriate for any person to single out anyone else's individual child through public comment or our employees by name we have mechanisms in place to deal with complaints about employees and in regards to

005our students making false statements about others based based on hearsay or assumptions is flat out wrong I want to just remind our community that we set a precedence to our children we serve through our actions and I'd like our community to respect our challenging work and our um view that our children's needs through the lens of empathy we respect all individuals needs of our students in our district we respect the rights of our parents to make decisions on behalf of their own children and we are committed to protecting the Privacy rights of all of our students and their families and with that I would like to move on to our student and staff recognition and celebrations Dr menel well good evening president sinowski vice president wner and members of the governing board uh I want

006to begin by noting that October is National principles month uh we are appreciative year round of the many ways in which our principles make Scottdale unified our schools and our students better we are pleased that an entire month is dedicated to celebrating them and their work Scottdale unified's 30 principles are committed to their students and their success and to their staff the parents and the community they never lose sight that their leadership has a defining impact on their campus culture and climate and it's not an easy task to be sure yet our principles adeptly juggle their many roles they are there at zero hour in the morning to pop uh in in the morning they pop in on classes greet chat with and read direct students provide professional advice to teachers and staff lean over

007to pick up a piece of trash and get it to an appro appropriate receptacle and always always take great pride in their school's good standing in their Community long after the stadium and stage lights have dimmed they go home answer emails put their own children to bed or just kiss them on the head if they're already asleep rest their own heads for a few hours and then the next morning they get up and do it all over again it's an exhausting and grueling schedule the bottom line is that scota UniFi would not be the excelling organization that it is without the Frontline work done every day day after day by our building leaders and I want to take this opportunity to share my gratitude for them this evening I'd like to invite the principles I've

008seen some in the room tonight that are here to please stand so that we can thank you for what you do for Scott sale Unified thank you we truly appreciate you the next celebration is going to be an emotional one but fantastic to be sure and I'm going to invite District athletic director Nathan Slater uh to to share with us a compelling story Mr Slater president sinowski vice president Warner members of the board Dr menel Miss Wagner I'd like to invite Nathan hia his family uh the cornado admin team on up and also uh the firefighters from uh engine 601 the a group and the C the a shift and the C shift so everybody come on up as everybody walks up uh Nathan he get had a lifethreatening event here on campus at Coronado

009and he's joined by his mother Carmen and his grandmother uh Soul Espinosa and also we have principal paluchi if she's here somewhere and athletic director Robert via and as her a true hero uh is head coach Rick Benjamin and also the a shift is the shift that responded to the incident that occurred with Nathan and we have uh firefighters Patrick wolck and Nick brigh as well as uh Engineers Todd Williams and the Sea shift that just left is here to support their crew and also Nathan as well cornado varsity football team took the field the morning of August 23rd at approximately 6: a.m. to conduct walkthroughs for that week's games after stretching and warm-ups after stretching and warm-ups in helmets Nathan higo was discussing his blocking assignment with assistant coach Rick Wilson When Nathan dropped

010himself to the ground and began to present signs of a seizure laying on his back coach Wilson hollered over to head coach Rick Benjamin who rushed to Nathan coach Benjamine Benjamin immediately initiated the emergency response plan directed coach Wilson to call 911 told another coach to open the ambulance gate and turn Nathan on his side Nathan's best friend Dominic Jordan stayed with Coach Benjamin and Nathan while the rest of the team gave them space Dominic and Coach Benjamin gently removed Nathan's helmet to assist his breathing but after SE several minutes of constant eye contact coach Benjamin noticed that Nathan's agonal breathing was more shallow in his heart rate faint coach Benjamin flipped Nathan on his back and began administering CPR when the paramedics began to come onto the field Nathan's condition continued to worsen the

011paramedics arrived to care for Nathan the team moved back to the locker room and Coach Benjamin immediately began contacting Nathan's family engine 601s as shift with the with the gentleman I just introduced are from Scottsdale's fire department which was dispatched that day luckily the station is just south of the high school on Miller Road north of McDow the sorry I'm getting a little emotional dude the paramedics performed compressions and CPR for approximately 15 minutes this included the use of a defibrillator twice and three rounds of epinephrine until Nathan had a pulse and a heart rhythm Nathan was then transported to honor Health scale Osborne Hospital for emergency treatment and further assessment coach Wilson joined Nathan in the ambulance and Coach Benjamin followed behind and met Nathan's mother Carmen at the hospital at Osborne Nathan was

012placed on a ventilator and was then determined that he would be transported to Phoenix Children's Hospital via helicopter during this difficult time Carmen Nathan's mom stayed in regular communication with cornado athletic director Robert via and Nathan's coaches regarding Nathan's status the doctors determined that Nathan had a condition called wolf Parkinson White syndrome which is a rare heart condition present at birth that typically displays symptoms anywhere between the ages of 11 and 50 Nathan remained incubated until Saturday August 2 6 when the doctors were able to remove him from the ventilator and awaken him Nathan began his recovery and where they were able to complete an ablation procedure to repair Nathan's heart on August 31st Nathan was discharged from the hospital the next day nine days after falling to the ground at Coronado High School Nathan's

013strength grew daily and he was able to return to school on Monday September 11th his class schedule has been modified to allow him not to over HT exert himself and Nathan also is not going to be a part of the playing team but he is a part of the team and joined the football team that very week that he returned to school uh if this story doesn't put chills down your spine I don't know what will um uh sometimes things need to be put in perspective like wins and losses aren't more important than a young man's life and these fine individuals save Nathan on the ground that day as well as Mr Benjamin you're a hero coach Benjamin uh and Nathan it's it's great that we had an opportunity to celebrate you obviously and what

014you went through but also to celebrate the community that cornado is with your family with the firefighters that live right or excuse me that work right down the street and obviously with the Coronado admin team as well as our partners at honor health and our athletic trainers so uh it's a great celebration for you and for all of us so thank you and uh let for letting us be a part of what you had to go through and we're we're just happy that you're here uh give it up for Nathan again and as promised we have some Challen coins and we're going to go outside and take some photos so we can get those to honor health and and to your guys' folks as well that want them so thank you all thank you Nathan

015we're so glad you were able to be here with us this evening and so appreciative for the work of the fire uh First Responders as well as the coach and uh we look forward to hearing more of your successes in the future but thank you for being here finally when the board met last month I referenced that the following day we would learn the names of our seniors who are semifinalist in the 2024 National Merit Scholarship program competition we're pleased to report that there are 20 susd semifinalists their names are on the board and as they go through through the process we will be sure to provide updates to let you know how they're progressing through this through the process but we are truly grateful um to be able to celebrate these 20 fine individuals

016from our Scottdale schools and with that I turn it back to you president sinowski thank you Dr menel yes we have a lot to be thankful for of the work of our community members as well as our employees um it's important for us to be able to celebrate our successes um this putting in place measures that help students Excel is the purpose of our work and I recognize that many of the accomplishments that um do take place throughout our district do not always make it up to the dis here or in our business meetings however that does not make them less significant I've stated before that it's important for a governing board to be invested in recognizing our successes and supporting our superintendent and District employees and leading our district towards a better future and

017if you know anything about our superintendent you know that being in the spotlight is often furthest the furthest thing from his mind and um I'd like to um we have one more celebration I'm going to turn this over to uh board member Dr Hart Wells Dr to her Wells thank you president sinowski um first I want to thank the the Scotto fire fire department and Coach Benjamin that was not just uh a chill down your spine but really heartwarming and and I'm glad we LED with that so thank you um so on to our last but not least celebration this evening in my time serving on the Scottdale Unified School District's governing board Dr Scott Mensel has shown an unwavering commitment to all students to our teachers to our school leaders and our District staff

018to providing outstanding academic opportun unities to our students in excellent learning environments to the safety of our school campuses and to the well-being of all it's a remarkable accomplishment in just three years in your role the first of which you may all recall was during a global pandemic Dr Mensel has withstood challenges from within and outside our community and has done so with wisdom and Grace and if you ask him why he keeps coming to work every day with a smile on his face he's going to tell you it's because kids and it's for these reasons and many more that we congratulate Dr menel tonight on having been chosen recently as a champion of public education by the save our schools Arizona's super or and superintendent of the Year actually um and I want to

019thank we actually have two guests from save our schools uh Arizona this evening uh Nikki and dukovich thank you and Tyler couch who are here with us this evening and this is a nonprofit Community Based organization whose tagline is strong schools strong State I think we can get on board with that the organization's Community manager so thanks for joining us this evening and we want to thank you Dr menel for continuing to inspire us our students the organization and our community with your leadership so congratulations thank you for sharing that uh great information with us Dr Hart Wells and congratulations Dr Menzel and I'll also note that um he serves many roles as a professional in our state and even mentors other superintendent so his um excellence and in thought and ideas uh extend far

020beyond our Scottsville Unified School District thank you again um we're going to move on to agenda item four which is a public comment portion of our meeting I'd like to remind the public of the expectations following the decorum statement and also to remind the public that they have opportunities to communicate through emails to the governing board members at any time and um you will have looks like we have five requests to speak put in advance tonight and each speaker will have two minutes of allotted time um I'd like to ask that you um when you approach the podium that you state your first and last name and your association with the district and first up is Joel dunakin good evening I'm speaking tonight on behalf of parents who were afraid to be here um it

021is not okay to present children with blatantly false information about biology kids cannot change their gender they are not born into the wrong body to teach this and to force other children to go along with the ruse is a is a disservice to children to hide it from parents is Criminal but this is what's happening in Scott still Unified that gender is a choice is being taught as fact in AP Psychology some teachers promote pronouns as a choice in their email signature lines library books about gender identity are available for students students are recruited to unit toown and sexuality clubs that teach kids that there are more than two genders and now parents are reporting that students are being allowed to use the bathroom of their choice based on their imagined gender consider the liability

022when not if if a female student is sexually assaulted due to a school policy imposing this belief system on Scottsdale's children is also hurting enrollment women who came before us have fought for equal rights yet those who support gender ideology are undoing all the progress putting our girls at risk by removing sex specific spaces and allowing boys to take the lead in women's sports boys also have a right to their own spaces this board must act now to remove all gender ideology rhetoric from classrooms libraries and clubs Scottdale unified does not support all students when they ignore the rights and safety of girls nor when staff encourages a child to adopt false information and then affirms their beliefs education filled with rhetoric is not a worldclass education thank you Jeff R followed by Mike [Applause]

023banger Jeff R followed by Mike bengert once again this evaluation is completely falsified Schoolboard policy requires that I read this comment on it and it must be signed by myself and a district administrator that part is completely blank it was secretly placed in my personnel file without this form I would be subbing coaching and doing my veteran presentations in the Scottdale schools shortly after it was discovered the chief advocacy officer of the Scottdale Education Association noted that based on their perception of how this director operates there are likely scores of derogatory documents in teachers files that they don't know about we met in Dr manel's office he said he needed time to check it out I asked what is your timetable he said he would get back to us at a month that was a

024lie he never did a week before class began I received an email from Dr Manzel the district lawyer said you're an atwi employee so basically get lost isn't that right Dr Manzel I'm walking around with a trapnel in my head and this law firms telling you that you could put the screws to me because I'm an atwill employee and sure enough last January I was coaching at kcapa Middle School which I've done for seven years and your office notified the principal that I would no longer be a paid coach but I would be a volunteer for the next 10 weeks and it gets worse my brother is a legendary High School football coach he has nine state championships and for the past three years he's been the eighth grade flag football coach at cocall and

025I've been the seventh grade earlier this year the principal at cocaa notified both of us that we would not be able to coach at cocaa anymore this been data that you have covered up president uh sinowski with Dr Manzel is continuing now this is my fifth appearance at this school board meeting and the last two meetings you told the lawyer to touch get in touch with me and explain what's going on and she has ignored me Mr Banger followed by Nick sey my name is Mike Benard and I'm a grandparent here in The District board president chanowski at the last board meeting I spoke about how us susd was not honest with parents about the nature and purpose of the various extracurricular clubs and activities that susd endorses I mentioned Unown Min toown and how

026students are secretly being exposed to gender identity sexual orientation and social justice lessons after I spoke you said that parents had to sign permission slips for unit toown the implication being that the parents were in fact aware of the activities the truth is they are not aware so how can they provide informed consent if parents are informed then I would like you to explain an email from a parent to Dr H the email is posted on the Scots the units website but you might have missed it so I'll go over it here the parent had questions about unitown so she reached out to a counselor who said what a privilege it was to be invited and that it was a leadership training Retreat the counselor said they do not provide more info or sample curriculum

027to parents because they want it to be a surprise for the kids he said the biological males who identified as a female could be aign to rooms with actual biological females I quote if I had known that to start with I could have saved a lot of time I have some concerns about that Arrangement if the district wants to support those arrangements and Retreats and they don't think it's an issue they should be transparent it made me feel like they were hiding something from me and as a parent sending my kid on an overnight trip I should know these things some of the curriculum from that program was leaked out if the curriculum that leaked out is real wow I'm really disappointed in our district for not being transparent about what this program includes if

028the district invites kids on a retreat and there will be controversial subject matter and the approve of said subject matter they should have nothing to hide and be transparent with the parents end quote susd emails also show that Middle School principles have been working with high schools counselors to actively recruit middle school students to mini town of course being a trained professional educator and expert I'm sure you can explain how calling it a leadership training Retreat is really being honest and transparent with the parents of susd if the district is going to continue to offer sexual gender identity camps at least be honest about it parents in SD want true professional educator Nick sey followed by Susan [Applause] wer good evening president sinowski vice president Warner board members Dr menel and Miss Wagner I'm nille

029sethy a senior at Saro high school and I don't often take the time to speak but today I felt I must as many of us have seen in recent years some political voices have utilized a local National stages to take against teachers accusing them of indoctrination of students teaching students to hate and much more as many of us know from personal experiences these accusations can be further from the truth however though it seems to be caused by a lack of understanding members of our own Community have reinforce these inaccurate accusations at a recent board meeting I witnessed a fellow Community member accus a teacher of of fabricating a faulty curriculum because that teacher Tau material describing a basic political theory that they found upsetting I discuss of a common principle was turned into a battle

030card against this teacher something that has become somewhat of a regular occasion at these meetings while since such incidences may seem insignificant they contribute to the disrespect that teachers face every day though all educational material may not be fully understood by those without proper background knowledge there is no excuse not to speak factually and properly research claims before we make them continuously berading teachers only contributes to the loudness of harmful political agendas which SE seek to disrupt the place of public School teachers in our community I encourage us all to do better by taking the time to ensure our accuracy and by showing respect to the teachers who seek to better our lives every day thank you last up is Susan wer good evening Dr menzo and board members I'm Susan wer and my grandchildren

031ATT 10 your schools I am sure are you thinking right now that I'm one of those usuals and you would be correct and I will continue to be until SD and Arizona handles their education system much like Florida who chooses to respect in honor parent input and refuses to allows National political controversy to seep into public education what I'm sharing you is a book people of Pride 25 great lgbq Americans that is in the cocaa library and most likely in other libraries the sad part about this book is 99% of the people in the book are well known for be for not being lgbq but for their many talents and services they brought to the world first know that I have nothing against gay and lesbian people in fact when I was a principal I

032had three gay lesbian teachers two females and one male and they were three of the best teachers that I had ever encountered however the last thing they wanted was to be known by their sexual Choice as it would have bought controversy to their skill I wonder if there are any books in susd libraries about great white supremacists or about great obese people or about great people who were midgets even better I wonder if there are any books in the susd libraries about the disciples about Jesus or Pontius pilot I suspect the answer to these examples is no why do susd as a system allow totally controversial political issues to enter the classroom it takes Focus off of the teaching and learning of Reading Writing math and Civics which is cly demonstrated by your state test

033scores as well as the act and SAT scores lastly having such Books available for students under the age of 18 to check out infringes upon parents rights to ensure that such topics are not part of their students reading and learning it is my prayer that the election in 2022 4 will change the focus of the board members here in Paradise Valley School District and all over this state that concludes our public comment portions of our business meeting this evening and with that we move on to agenda item five superintendent's comments Dr menel well good evening again president sinowski vice president Werner and members of the governing board uh we do have a lot to cover this evening but I do want to note a few things uh to celebrate uh this past weekend uh the

034sisters and stem event was held at Saro High School uh it was my first time to actually be able to attend the event and and what a joy to watch our students engaging with Young Learners uh with Hands-On science experiences um I actually got to do some of them myself the upside down goggles did throw me for a loop um but so many amazing learning opportunities reinforcing the value and importance of Science Education so I want to give a shout out to all of the Saro students those in the MSA and those who were just in the school who wanted to support it and nille was one of those there working with our students it was really fantastic so I want to celebrate our students for that event uh secondly I want to um celebrate

035the Arcadia marching band I was informed earlier today that they placed first in a recent competition so their legacy of success continues and and it's uh one of those things where um we never get tired of celebrating our students and their success U the two other uh things of Note One as we're quickly approaching the end of the first quarter we'll be pulling together as a leadership team uh an update on our key performance indicators based on metrics where we can provide an update in terms of status so that you'll have that as we head into quarter number two and then finally because we are heading into fall break I want to thank everyone for their hard work in this first quarter it hasn't always been easy uh but it's always important work because kids

036and so I want to wish everyone a safe and Happy fall break as we get ready for quarter number two and with that I'll conclude my comments thank you Dr menel we're going to move on to our information and discussion items there will be no action taken on any of these items this is simply for information discussion as it states we're going to start off with our Native American programs update and Dr David Pinsky and Sheila Cyprus are going to be presenters this evening I believe good evening governing board and Dr menel glattus nice to see you all again um I'm doing my sorry I'm losing my voice I think it's from the smoke and whatever and allergies but this is um my biannual kind of update and this is a over our fall is

037dealing with over um of what we've done with um our summer school program and our numbers at the end of this of last school year and what we are at currently so far um not used to this setup here so I don't know if it does does it change on its own or ah there it is okay all right thanks um this is the 2022 23 School enrollment count um this was done by the last day of May 24th and as you can see with our Native American students in each Learning Community we had a total of 483 Native American students this is um you know it's we used to have a lot more before but with the pandemic that kind of decreased our numbers but we're slowly getting back up there so as of

038last year was 483 we took a look at our average attendance rate for each of our Native American students in these School sites and as you can see our percentages are not quite up at the high 90s like we would like to see them but our goal just like along with the district we would like to see a 2% increase of attendance starting from last year into this year so by the end of the school year we will revisit that and hopefully by then we will have at least the 2% which is what we're kind of um lining with our school district's policies so graduation rate um graduation rates are actually getting a little bit better so I've done the five-year study on this um as you can see in the very bottom the 2022

03923 school year we had a 90% graduation rate at Arcadia High School up from the previous year of 75% cherol high school was 100 it unfortunately went down a little and it was due to some students that we had lost that were in also aligned in with uh sped so they have the extra few years to continue their education degree so cornado we went up from 80% to 85.71% and Sor high school went from 70 up to 80% so all in all we're we're going up that's the one thing that we were looking at and the SSD summer school program we had it during we had first session and second session so the first session we had 41 participants had registered with with them three of them had withdrawal so we ended up with 38

040students total and out of the 38 students 100% of them all passed their summer school courses that they signed up for and as I've told you before these are not just students that have replacing an f grade these are also students that are taking classes to get ahead so they can do other sports or college Bridge programs in other areas second session we had 43 students one withdrawal and then we had a total of 42 which also the same thing we had 100% passing and I could not stress enough that this is not just from our kids working and parents being involved but it was basically from the staff people that I work with during the summer that work with our native students that go into the classrooms work with those kids work with the

041teachers and then they work with the kids outside we have an A we call it an after summer school program and also we notice with them is that they been coming in in between on their class breaks and they've enjoyed it because they we actually have little snacks granola bars water Gatorade for them to keep them motivated and keep their brains active so that's been but one of the things and I just wanted to express that that I would never would I just don't know how to express the gratefulness I have for these three staff members that work this summer and one of them was Miss perea from cornado She's the actual liaison there and then we all have Miss toy from Arcadia Le liaison and we have one of the Soro teachers that always

042works and helps out with our program um Miss mandish she also helped out and so it's been really great having them there and I just wanted to say this is why we had the 100% because we all worked together for the 2324 School enrollment then this was taken as of September the 19th as you can see I broke them down into uh the learning communities and these are just students that are only uh identified as American Indian Alaskan native that is in their resolved race that they chosen we have 466 Native American students currently we went back and looked at the missing pieces some students who are don't hit a particular query when we look for our American Indian students due to the fact that they have chosen their resolved race as being Hispanic or

043two or more we looked at those numbers and if you can see it jumped to students so we've um are looking at these numbers and hopefully they get the identifying uh program forms that we need for them so that this will help in allocation of our grant funding so we I've had this come up because I've had um a lot of people have mentioned about why are they Hispanic but yet they're Native American well if you look at the history of where our people come from we have Pasay Yaki students that are on the other side of the Border as well we have toana aam that are also on the other side of the border so and a lot of the surnames and mexic Mexican Nationals that have been here have you know married into

044native families so they've taken their last names so that's where a lot of that comes from so we were very impressed when we saw the numbers this is something we have been trying to locate for many years and I could not express the thanks to the SR department for working out a query working very hard and getting this information for me so now there's more kids that I can go track down and and welcome into the program and welcome into our district our title six allocation this year is $2,489 this has increased by about $600 from last year as we continue we are still maintaining our full-time employee at Arcadia High School that is paid out of the grant but we also have the positions of Coronado and Soro we added on this year that

045are both funded through the desegregation fund so now we have a staff of three besides just me um we're still continuing the after school tutoring program to pay for any supplementals for that high school class fees summer school student supplies high school summer school staff as you can see we do quite a bit under our title six um we have cultural field trips um for some of the students we have speakers presenters we even also offer conferences if we have any of the other programs would like to know more about our our programs and so forth they are more than welcome to join any Workshop that um is specifically for Native Americans and we will cover that for them as well we started adding on this year was the school instrumental fees I did not

046realize that Elementary had these fees until we started looking um one of the teachers actually approached about can you help out a native family and then we kind of collaborated together and found out that we have a lot of native students that they didn't they weren't speaking up and that's just kind of normal they just don't say anything you know were're very quiet so we've also picked that up for them this year and we're also still continue on doing the PSAT testing fees for our Juniors that want to um try the test and also uh try for other scholarships and we're still doing our AP testing which this year I have I've probably spent two Grand so far on AP testing that's going to be coming up in May so that's a good positive thing

047our kids are reaching out and they're wanting to try something different and not just kind of be the norm of the stereotypical Native American student our second uh grant that we also allocate is our Johnson Ali this is our smallest pot this is 9,581 126 this one is the one that majority we pay for is our Sports fee for our students and as the numbers that we looked at the end of last year we had 30 Native American students who were taking uh football volleyball cheerleading wrestling so that was a big jump up from what we used to see so they're being participating they're coming in we have also playing for dual enrollment we've been encouraging kids to do a dual enrollment and we also know that this year CTE is also funding dual enrollment

048so we are actually uh Amy DS and I who is the director we also have been collaborating on this since the summer so we're kind of reaching out for that I have a few students that need instrument rentals through um middle school or High School we've also paying for some of them to do that and this is where our snack our snack funding we I had to talk to um State and tell them that this was actually beneficial because normally you don't buy food with our grant monies but we saw the need and we needed to continue this especially with high school kids high school kids generally like myself never ate breakfast so you you're starving by the time and your brain is not working so that's where all the little snacks are coming through

049and also um you know we've also had a few parents that just donated some to the schools for that so and then the jom conference is also paid out of this we look at the allocation of the funding is how we distribute if if we had more fees going to strictly kids we would not be going to the conference because like Dr Menzel's famous thing because kids these are what these funds are used for they are for the kids and we're looking at uh the 24 25 School year that they are going to um increase our funding so I'm hoping next year when I come do this again that hopefully this amount will be doubled so I'm keep your fingers crossed so that's uh and we've also asked in um because we I help out

050with Johnson Al with the state and with national level that they will they're unfreezing the 1995 numbers what Scott still had at 120 students to now the current numbers that we turn turned in for 2223 so and then after that a 6% increase of every year so we're hoping Washington will keep it up and keep fighting for this so we're hoping that we'll see some extra numbers we're continuing our partnership opportunity as uh we did last year we had native Health this year we're also having with Phoenix Indian center with the leadership programs and so forth native Health has been uh really helpful because of the fact we've been dealing with the sober living issues um that's just kind of handle across the state and they've actually stepped up and gave us some information on

051that so I was able to to talk to some of the families that you know that have family members that are dealing with that sober living so we're kind of just trickling down the information so that is part of our strategic goal with the community engagement and partnership and that's pretty much it for me for this time so any questions do any governing board members have questions or comments on this topic I see Dr har Wells requesting to speak Dr her Wells thank you board president sinowski thank you Sheila what a great presentation and encouraging needle movement in a lot of categories very nice um a couple of questions on the dual enrollment how many students do you have this year uh that dual enrolled for dual enrollment so far we have four that have

052turned in yeah they was a couple of them missed the deadline but they're in the process of working with Mar Community College to see if they can still get in because they're they're also going through um upgrades leaderships and so forth uh SEC is down to like the two people trying to run that whole department along with our College bridge program so they're a little behind so we're kind of using that to our advantage so but the kids are the ones that are actually contacting the school to see if they can still get in if not they've already told me that they were going to do it for the for the spring semester okay you know I I just recently um went through that dual enroll process myself as a parent for my student and

053was a little shocked at the price tag to be honest with you um so I'm wondering if this might be an opportunity for looking at you know at Grants around the state to help subsidize uh the students um Beyond kind of you know you have a a decent list there of expenses and you want that's only going to get right if if this all goes well as it's going that will only increase and um that seems like a real value ad for the students and so I'm just asked that maybe we make that a priority also you had listed PSAT fees the district pays for PSAT fees for the sophomores across the district so are these PSATs PSAT fees for juniors who are retaking yes they're for juniors that are retaking the class because they

054wanted to do better so when they go for apply for their scholarships that will help and increase their chances so we've had some kids that have asked for that so we just continued that through the grant uh the parents thought that that would be a a nice thing to keep continuing doing so that's what we've done and and so when the retake are they Juniors they're juniors M there be a reason to not be taking the act or the SAT at that point as opposed to the preliminary they have not expressed that they just gone with the PSAT but we do um encourage them to try for the and and so and SATs as well they just haven't we just haven't had any kids come asking for fees for that and they must be paying

055it on their own okay um that might that yeah I think that might be something we can look into and just make sure the timing getting the biggest bang for the buck on that one um great and then the last question um this is with respect to the attendance so um 2% increases is the goal I I understand the alignment with the kpis across the district what do you know whether it's anecdotally or not and or otherwise but what the contributing factors are for some of the less than 90% attendance is there something that you know understanding what those maybe you know what were the critical masses in terms of what's contributing to lower attendance what we might be able to do to deploy resources to help well um that's what we discussed in our

056state and federal programs meeting yesterday yester um we all as a group came together we all kind of had the same goal attendance um and I brought up the fact that you have to look I said unfortunately my kids will never be in that 95 98 percentile attendance rate there's too many factors already one the main one really is historical educational trauma that is the biggest thing because after speaking with a teacher friend of mine we we think of historical educational trauma or anything historical trauma as something that happened, 500 200 years ago but when you look back at it it really only happened back in this last century so a lot of these kids education is not for them to be here and parents don't push it because of the whole boarding school era

057so a lot of those kids they come from families where the grandparents were taken from their homes they were you know they were beaten for speaking their language their hair was cut there was a lot of trauma so that story just keeps continuing on and as much as we can try to mend that and not be that anymore it is always going to be there because we as a community are oral we're an oral Society we tell stories we don't have anything written so like my grandfather I was actually talking to a colleague today I'm very fortunate that my grandfather went through the boarding school era he ran away twice they found him they dragged him back they did everything they could possibly do to basically break the spirit as you know you know save

058the man kill the Indian that's what the that was the goal of the United States government so but his idea was he finally ran away got away had a fourth grade education but he didn't hold that Grudge he told us the stories this is what I went through but I want you to better yourself I want you to learn I want you to learn their ways is how he presented it and you know go to school do this be the change don't follow that stereotypical thing so a lot of that is the historical trauma you're not going to have parents wanting to to send their kids to school second a lot of us really look at it when you're speaking in large terms as well you know very educated terms parents don't feel comfortable dealing

059with that so if my kids's not going to go to school today my kids's not going to go to school today or there's a situation of family death something happened so they don't they don't call in and then by the time they remember to call in it's already past that deadline because you can only you know you have a certain time frame where you can turn in that absence so that's another thing and other things are just you know like we were talking the percentage that we have now is good because of the fact that maybe they have friends their friends are coming encouraging them hey come to school we'll go hang out afterwards so that's that's one of the things that we kind of look at so there's a lot of factors there's ceremonies

060coming up families leave for ceremonies some of them are dancers so they're in these in these dances they don't think that that's a thing where they have to call families you know or call to school hey I'm going to be gone for a week or work out something so there's a lot of lot of factors into it so at this rate that we have now I to be honest I was I was surprised when I looked at the percent I thought it was actually going to be like 60s and 70s to be honest so for it to be there and my goal is the 2% to increase to at least we could go along with District's kpis on this is a goal that I'd like to see and then maybe next year we'll do a

0613% we're just going to see where we're going to go with this see how we can do that but that's where a lot of this is coming from you know attendances and then transportation we still have families that still are dealing with the pandemic unfortunately that you know they never going to find the the money to go and get Transportation I've given out bus passes to kids that have asked them we've had some families that say oh my kid goes to your school they're out open enrollment we give them a bus pass they can get here I mean we can do the little things but we can't you know unless you want me to go and stand at every door and yank them out of their door or haul them in a car I mean

062I if I could do that I would do that I would take my little car and drive around and pick them all up but I also know that that's not feasible so but a lot of it is the historical educational trauma that these a lot of these families go through and the pandemic did not help because a lot of these kids lost their parents their grandparents somebody that they looked up to so but like I said I was very fortunate in my family that my grandfather told us what happened he told us the stories but at the same time encouraged us go to school be better make change this is how you make change well I like that attitude Sheila and I appreciate your efforts to rewrite the narrative and Dr Pinsky your efforts to

063rewrite that narrative and these incremental advances will potentiate into a Rewritten narrative um we keep pushing so thank you Vice President Warner so thank you for the update and it's always great to hear good news and that we're heading in the right direction I wanted to really recognize the students that participated in summer school I think it's always so awesome when kids take advantage of the opportunity to advance ahead I know I I made my kids take summer school and uh it was really was just for the purpose to keep them busy over the summer and uh and to advance forward so that you had 100% pass rate is absolutely awesome and congratulations to those kids thank you thank you for the good questions and commentary and thank you Miss suprus I have a question

064for you when is the um susd Festival planned my cultural event yes your cult I was actually going to meet with uh paluchi yesterday but I wasn't feeling well so I went home and had to cancel the meeting because I wanted to discuss what dates would work good for that but it is definitely going to be into November but we have planned uh cornado students the chant Club is going to have their Native American week in November and I think it's the 15th it's on a Wednesday we're going to hold our first uh kind of collaborative beating class and do it as a parent engagement with our our native parents so we're going to have that that night so I was going to try to tie in our cultural either right before Thanksgiving or it

065might be after Thanksgiving but great I look forward to hearing about it and sharing that with within our community thank you you just want some fried bread that's what it is it was really I actually had the burger oh you have the burger in the fried bread so it was real healthy and real good for me um but that was um an amazing event and you do great work so thank you all right uh thank you very much we're going to move on to our presentation on our M override District additional assistance override and bond fiscal year 2023 report from Shannon kroer thank you thank you board president president snowski vice president Warner members of the board uh Dr menel and guest uh tonight we are looking at the override and bond expenditures we have

066two overrides and a bond um and as part of State Statute um for having those additional funds we are required to share how the funds were used the expenditures from last year and the budget for this year so the first one we'll take a look at is the maintenance and operations override that was approved by the voters in 2019 it expires on June 30th of 2025 or for the um end of 2425 school year uh we as the board opted to go early to the voters to renew that um so that is on the ballot for November of 23 um if it passes then we'll start a new um cycle for the maintenance and override maintenance and operations override if it does not pass uh then the board has an option to um try a

067second time to have that approved before that begins its phase down period this is just looking at the current pamphlet for the maintenance and override uh maintenance and operations override um the things that the were on the pamphlet what the actual was for 2223 and the budget for 2324 uh those items I'll just go over them real quick we maintain current classroom ratios all day kind Garden as the state does not fund all day kindergarten music art World Language Athletics and co-curricular activities so that's um some of our special programs as well as our Athletics and extracurricular activities we have a couple of Technology teachers or computer teachers that that covers staff professional development that was really um adding additional days to the teacher contract so that they could come in before school starts have

068that professional development get things ready to go before school starts as well as Department chairs and then provide competitive teacher um pay as you can see the two biggest items within that are the maintained class current class size ratios as well as music art World Language Athletics and co-curricular activities um and then the others follow behind that with all day kindergarten staff development and uh compensation following um following not far behind those areas uh for the 23 24 budget it's pretty similar to last year percentage wise we have a little bit more in the maintain class size ratios um but most of the percentages are pretty much in line with with where we were last year um some of that ends up as to you know what do teacher salaries actually end up being what

069positions are filled um that kind of drives some of these when we get to the actual um but it's looking pretty much in line with what we've done uh in the past the district additional assistance override or Capital override was passed uh by the voters in uh November of 2022 that took effect this current school year so it started in school year 2324 and that will expire in fiscal year 2930 which seems an awful long way from now um so looking at how that was spent is that was to do curriculum materials school and District technology Furniture fixtures equip Fine Arts programs athletic programs Library materials and Equipment um the original one from last year was playground equipment for this the override that we passed for this year we added facilities to that the original

070for last year the budget was $8.5 Million it was capped at 8.5 million you'll see that we spent 8.7 the reason is we don't spend everything every single year there's rollover that happens um and so for 2223 uh we had 8 .7 in actual expenditures the bulk of that being in technology followed by uh Furniture fixtures and equipment for the 23 or for the pamphlet that was approved in November 22 that took effect for this school year now was the max was 14.5 we did not that's based off of a 15% of our Revenue control limit we did not get to the amount that we could um budget for was not quite 14.5 million was actually like 4 14.2 million um so this is just showing what the budget was in the pamphlet um what

071we have for the 23 24 year is based off of the full amount that or the amount that we could take based off on our RCL as well as carry forward from last year um one of the things I am really happy to say differently is that we've done moving into this year is instead of just allocating out budget to schools and saying spend as you will based on your um enrollment or your ADM we said you tell us what you need and then we'll develop the budget based off of that and allocate based off of that so schools received um a small portion of those budgets for them to do um fitting Within These categories um so like athletic programs received 250,000 that went straight to their schools for them to decide but the

072other part of that went into for the district to look at and see what are the high needs things that we need to do with those dollars so I feel pretty confident that we will actually spend more and carry over less moving forward um because the asks were much higher than the uh actual budget that we had to do to deal with and then the last one is the bond summary um we are nearing the end of the bond uh the bond had three items that it was to cover um one of them was pretty significant but to renovate improve and construct school facilities including major life cycle uh renovations to school facilities that was uh approved for $29.9 million as you can see we have uh spent almost all of that we're down to

073about $14 million for this year um we have finished up most of our major Renovations um we still have a couple things to do a couple life cycle projects to do but the big bulk School Renovations and remodels have taken place we have a little bit left in school safety measures um 82,000 and so that I will you be used up this year and then trans uh people Transportation $992,000 left in there um and actually they're looking at a couple of bus Replacements with that moving forward so I don't we won't get through all of that this fiscal year I don't think but that's where we're we'll we'll be down pretty significantly after this year with what's left uh just to share are some of the bond this is the Tavon outdoor PE space that

074they worked on um so they didn't get like a major renovation like some of the other schools did but they they had some pretty pretty extensive work done there and added a PE space for outdoors so that the students can be out there and enjoy the Arizona spring and fall weather and then again on the um left hand side is the Tavon canopy that uh goes into their Administrative Office and then our our final big uh big Bond purchase this year was Pueblo remodel so this is looking that parking lot is actually done now and my understanding from Dennis and poblo is that parking and getting through the queue to pick students up has improved dramatically so we're excited to hear that so this was just as they were finishing up that uh parking lot

075but the best pictures are of the P rebuild and um the beautiful new school that those students have with lots of bright colors and um and just better learning spaces um and then the final part of that that I think um I know Dennis is is pretty proud of and I'm pretty proud of as well is uh he has some um CTE high school students that come in and they take care of um taking all of the bond expenses and putting them into a document that is amazing um and into sway and I don't know I think I can click on this if you go to the district website um is it going to work hopefully if you go into the district website um under Bond and override it will take you to this micros

076Microsoft Sway and you can see everything it shows every dollar that has been spent from the bond along with pictures um it's down to like the individual purchase orders for every transaction we've done in the bond so um if you're looking for how more detail on how the bond was spent um this is a great place to go let's see we just pick a Arcadia it's going to go and you can see like I said pictures of everything that we've done since the bond started of things that have happened how the dollars have been used whatnot um so that's a great tool for our community members to see uh just exactly how every single penny of the bond was spent so with that I will open it up to if I can go back I

077will open it up to questions govering board members do any of you have any questions or comments Dr Harwell thank you board president sinowski thank you Miss kroer for your presentation it was a timely one so that the community can understand the the different types of permitted overrides versus bonds and the different two different types of overrides and can you just confirm as this question has come up as you know at some of the Town Halls um the spend by the district there might be a carry those are still within the permitted statuto statuto permitted expenditures under the rides because of the and the if you could and the alignment with the pamphlet what the voters actually approved yes absolutely that's a great question Dr Hartwell um we did the timeliness of it yes um

078it is actually required for us to present this information every year by October 15 so that's why we were doing it tonight um as for the m&o override every penny of the M override is spent that year we don't carry over M override dollars um um but it has to be spent exactly on those categories that were approved uh when it comes to the capital override dollars the same thing it has to be spent exactly on the categories that were approved by the voters those dollars do carry over and we roll them so if you don't spend all of necessarily your um if we don't spend everything within the PE category we still keep it within or athletic category we still keep it within Athletics it just it rolls the next year so there's higher

079amount within there but it has to be expent exactly within the categories of what's defined in the pamphlet thank you I have no other questions board member Carney thank you m Roser for your presentation um I'm just I really appreciate that great level of detail on the bond override and I'm wondering if we have the same thing for the M override or the daa that's a great question question um board member Carney um we don't for the M override because it's a little bit it's a little bit more difficult to separate that out um because when you're talking about additional compensation for teachers we have talked that we would really like to do so for the um the capital override um we have an vacant position in finance that if we could get that filled

080that would be one of their roles in responsibilities um would be to set up that same type of um smart sheets which is what is used for the bond for the capital override as well so it is absolutely something we want to do we've talked about doing um we just need to get a person that has the availability that can do it because it it's extensive to go through every purchase and and put that in there um so we're hoping to fill that position soon um and then that would be their role is to go back from what has been spent this year put that information in and then and then keep that going moving forward yeah because I think it's really important that we have that for our taxpayers there are a lot of

081questions out there on how the money is actually being spent and so I think it's vital that we have that information for all of the overrides thank you and I would like to just comment that um it's thank you for bringing up the resource sway because it does show with very fine granularity um how our money is spent and that is truly what transparency is all about so I appreciate all the work behind the scenes to enter that information so it's visible to the public thank you Shannon thank you there are no other questions at this time yep perfect U we're going to move on to six C it's a first read of governing board policy JS regarding student restroom Arrangement or accommodation Jennifer mclenon is in the cloud to introduce this and then board

082member Warner will um lead the discussion Madame President members of the governing board can you hear me okay yes we can great thank you um so governing board president um board member Warner has presented this first read of governing board policy JS it is a policy pertaining to student restroom Arrangement and or accommodation that would permit any Scottdale Unified School District student um to request access to a single stall restroom at their initiative and uh I would turn the platform over to board member Warner to provide any additional commentary that she would like to provide board member Warner yes so um I had no idea you were going to be here today Miss mclenon um so this policy is let me start out with it is really our duty as board members to be compassionate

083and support all of our students here in susd and SD is governed by Statute and administrated by policy and we have a policy for most things so when you send an email to the superintendent or to an administrator they will typically check with policy with whatever your question is and cite that policy back to you in their responses which is good governance uh we don't have a policy when it comes to restrooms and um site administrators have to figure that out each year and as we know the last few years we've had a lot of turnover in our site administrators and this would uh really make it simple for sites to implement Equitable accommodations or arrangements for students um that have reasons that their parents are coming forward that they need an accommodation for restroom

084use I worked with the general counsel Mr boo on this and uh I had originally submitted a policy and Mr boen uh circulated it to our cabinet and they gave some excellent feedback and uh we made some changes uh based upon the feedback and the final copy is what's shown up there today uh a couple of things I did request today a job description for our janitorial staff and adding a reasonable cleaning schedule for them to ensure that that any single use bathroom is is cleaned regularly throughout the day um all of our sites have single use restrooms whether it's in the nurse's office the front office the library and so on so it's something that's already there when a student has a reasonable need to to have an accommodation that is also requested by

085the parent um uh this would not have any excessive or any new cost to it as um there there's not a whole lot of accommodations happening right now now and I know that people know how to lock doors and all doors all of the doors on the restrooms have locks so there would not be a need to retrofit any doors um at this time so I'm open to questions and um um any anything that um other board members have to say about it thank you at this time I open conversation up on the topic for discussion Dr Hart Wells thank you board president sinowski I have a few questions um what's the impetus for this policy so there are many reasons that um a student would need this um and it's not our job to

086choose the reasons that would be between the parent and the site administrators and the students but there as um there are needs out there I've had conversations with multiple parents and um it's something that we have a policy for almost everything else in our schools and in my conversation with Mr bozen he did also agree that this is something that we as a school should have I'll ask legal counsel of their opinion in just a second um I'm asking what the is there a critical mass of students who are not able to get accommodations under the existing laws where accommodations are required so we do not have a policy for this so in order to get an accommodation they would have to get an right now they're under 504 plants which would require parents to

087take their children to the doctor and and jump through the Hoops of um obtaining a 504 which I've done for done myself one of my students had a 504 and it's it's not an easy route and this would just simplify that and again we would have a policy that side administrators could go back to and uh it would just you know make things much more solid and simple I too had a student with a 504 so that same um I'm not sure that okay I I'm still a little confused on what the actual impetus for the policy that we need a policy for everything is not a reason it's a rationalization uh what about um is there do you feel based on the diligence you've done that their principles and the assistant principles haven't been

088accommodating students that we would need a policy requiring as a matter of fact I received a phone call just this year where they were asking what the policy was for um the restroom policy when someone needed an accommodation so one okay um and and the data that we actually received there's three uh students who have accommodations currently that that doesn't seem like a critical mass to me uh and then just and because you commented that there's no additional costs that that's contrary to the data that we received um that it would require costs in order to comply at the outset one and then two um so that's just a fact but the question for you is and I believe this was in the original request the uh what paragraph is it um the uh third

089full paragraph starting with any person who's written request um maybe for the community we could scroll the screen down so that folks can see uh thank you very much uh yeah the next to last paragraph uh that establishes a burden a legal burden of proof on the district um and my question for Mr buen is does that require a legal liability for the district or Miss mclinton thank you Dr Hart Wells and Vice President Warner uh members of the governing board um this is my first board meeting uh as general counsel and and I'm happy to be here um this was a policy that uh Mrs mclenon originally worked on and so we agreed that that she would be here to answer questions I don't really want us to cross swords with our legal advice

090for the benefit of the district so I would defer to her on that um fair enough fair enough Miss mlon yes Dr hartwell's uh board member Warner and members of the governing board I believe the paragraph you're asking about starts with this policy does not prohibit the district I no I'm actually asking about the um the burden of proof that the district um would be imposed on the District of the undue hardship which is not defined so the the concept of undue hardship is defined under Ada law under the Americans with Disabilities Act um and so my review of this paragraph would indicate that it would have the same uh connotations and definitions as as provided both in the regulatory guidance and the case law as what is an UND burden under the Americans with

091Disabilities Act which is a high burden to meet thank you Miss mcclinon so what I'm understanding then is there is overlap with existing federal law at least to some extent and and thank you and I have no more questions thank you thank you Dr Wells um board member Warner um to address your to answer your question about the um uh the cost so miss mclenon who were the people behind the district admin uh recommended that the locks be retrofitted with a occupied or vacant locks as opposed to just people locking the door Madame President board member Warner um so in reviewing uh board member Warner's request for this policy to be considered the uh District administration gathered some additional information um to present the governing board so that you can adequately consider this policy one

092of one of the pieces of information was what um the existing status of restrooms in the district is so which buildings have restrooms which um which facilities have single stall wrestling that are available um to the to any student who might request um under this policy and it was the recommendation of the facility management for the district that if restrooms are going to be accessed by both students and staff that that doors be retrofitted and so to answer my question who what are the names of these administrators no it's my understanding that that information was gathered by by Dennis roller okay thank you Mr raer would you like to weigh in here in this conversation so as I mentioned hold on I apologize I had no intention of putting you on the spot or having

093you up here I was just trying to gather a name of who email so I apologize yeah no worries yeah um president sinowski vice president Warner uh members of the board the um when we surveyed the schools all the single-use bathrooms have a lock of some kind some of them are very similar to the little hole in the lever set like at your home that you can just push something in and and so if and and many of those single use bathrooms are uh currently used by staff only and so if we were to put uh a situation in place where students were using those bathrooms as well we would want to do like we do in our public front-facing bathrooms if you look at any of our lobbies that we've retrofit for security and

094we have the front um that that bathroom right up front there all of them have the occupied vacant um turn uh button to make sure that people know who's in there or that there's someone in there um rather than trying the door knocking on the door you know it's just one of those things that it would just if we're if we're mixing adults and children which we really don't like to do in in the bathrooms um we would make sure that that's happening so and and the cost depends on the setup for the door uh there's something called a mortise lock it's it's a mechanical piece that's inside the door it's much more expensive than a simple lever set so the cost can vary the frame uh setup can vary so there's some some varied

095costs um but yes all doors lock currently thank you okay are there other questions okay then I will take my turn in our scottd school district we have always attempted to address the specific needs of our students whether there is a document requiring it or just simple common sense and human decency and I look at um the non-discriminative uh practices that are in place via laws as superseding any policies that we have in place in this District um we provide those Provisions not just through 504 accommodation plans or individual education plans known as IEPs but we make special accommodations in a respectful manner according to our students individual needs that's not open to interpretation by someone's opinion it's according to our students needs and I think our public has to be um very aware of

096the fact that our teachers and principls do their best to do the right job the right thing every single day um it seems right now that this proposal is uh truly in search of a problem I feel like we are meeting the needs I don't receive commentary um from principals from teachers from students from Neighbors from community members their concerns about uh bathroom use um Miss Warner has stated multiple times that her primary objective is really to improve student academic outcomes I agree with that then why are we spending time communicating about bathroom needs why is this considered to be a policy need um you know I think that this recent very recent conver ation in our society where people are concerned about the bathroom needs the genitalia of our students is super concerning the

097idea that we're going to be driven by fear or lack of empathy to make decisions on behalf of our families I think is absurd I do respect parents rights if my child needed special accommodations I would work with my building level to meet the needs of my student not require me as a parent to document for public record students needs my child's needs I think it's absurd to be concerned about this where 126 years in Scottville schools we have met the bathroom needs of our students I find it extremely offensive that members in our community or worse yet people coming from outside of our community to make this an issue I don't know about anyone in this room or watching tonight but when you use the restroom how many of you are concerned about who's

098in there my mother who is 82 years old I asked her has she ever been concerned about going into the bathroom and she said no I use the restroom I wash my hands and I exit so for those of you who raised your hand it's concerning to me it's concerning to me that you have these issues wanting to discuss other children's and other families rights to privacy and respect I feel we already meet the needs of our students without such track and monitoring policies in place and I realize that we are not taking action on this this evening but I feel like this is a huge waste of time um board member Carney uh thank you president sinowski I just have to say that I I think it's it's very concerning to me that you

099are calling a fellow board member uh I policy absurd and we all have a right to bring forward what we want and without ridicule from a fellow board member M I would like to say that please stop or we will recess our meeting until we can have we will continue with our business meeting without your interruptions or we will recess till we can feel we can have a safe and secure meeting environment but I I would just like to continue um like I said we are all allowed to bring our voice we have been elected to be here and bring a voice voice and to be calling another board member idea absurd is offensive and um I would just like to say that I think bringing proactive policy is what we need um we don't

100need to continue to keep reacting to things happening in our community proactive policy is what we need and parental permission absolutely is needed board member Carney I appreciate your um commentary um I don't understand who would benefit from this I was not calling board member Warner absurd I was stating that this is unnecessary policy and we have laws in place non-discriminative laws already in place that supersede any policy anyway board member Warner so I want to set the record straight a student's uh file is not public record it is their private information uh and I apologize for bring you into this Mr buan so I worked originally submitted this to miss mclenon and uh then I worked with it on with Mr Boo and we actually had an a really excellent meeting and discussion around

101the policy and at the time you know he is our general counsel uh he did say to me this is a policy that we should have and I I appreciate that and I appreciated his Counsel on this and um this is the first read and I appreciate everyone listening today and and we'll move forward is there any other request for commentary at this time Dr her WS thank you board president sinowski um I do want to clarify with the students have complained that they're dirty bathrooms so do think we need to acknowledge that uh I would like to ask Mr buan an opportunity give him an opportunity to comment uh you were um assigned an opinion could you please comment thank you Dr hartwell's and the members of the board it is my job as

102general counsel to meet by policy with individual board members to discuss policies it is true that I met with Vice President Warner to discuss his policy um the merits of the policy are for the board members to decide upon vote and my position which I believe I told Miss uh Vice President Warner in our meeting is that it's my job as legal councel to go through the legal ramifications of that policy and so I don't recall sharing the opinion that you stated uh today but if I did it would necessarily be irrelevant because it's for the board to decide matters of this importance you're elected to do that thank you for Mr buan for clarifying you did not give legal advice along those lines and your personal opinion is your personal opinion but that isn't

103your role here this evening thank you board member Warner so it is unfortunate that you don't recall our conversation and um it is what was said and I I took it to heart and I felt very comfortable after the meeting that we had and putting this policy forward had you not said the things that you had in that meeting we would have made further modifications before putting this forward thank you seeing that there are no other requests on this topic we are going to move on to our consent agenda um there is required board action on this but we're going to um first discuss the items that were pulled the first one was consent agenda item G approve the sole Andor single source procurements for the 2324 fiscal year board member Carney thank you president

104sinowski so I asked um for this item to be pulled for discussion because um I don't like and don't think it's good that we have single source procurements and uh and especially don't want to see us spend any more money on virtual reality math programming with prisms of reality we've already spent over $220,000 to try this out in six of our schools three of our schools Arcadia cornado and Saro have asked for the removal of prisms of reality headsets to be relocated the squer which two of them have been moved to Desert Mountain high school so that leaves Desert Mountain Mojave Engleside and Tania using them this year and I think it's important um I don't know if you read the teacher feedback um but it's important to read some of their feedback they said

105when we asked students more than a few of them said they didn't see how the VR tied into the math concepts and attempts to tie Future Days and Concepts to the VR failed frequently resulting in answers like we didn't learn anything that day another one says of the students who liked using the VR headsets many got frustrated once they had to start doing actual math and gave up he also said a teacher also said when most of the class is struggling it is very difficult to manage so instead of approving more money for prism's virtual reality I recommend to the board that we look at reselling these virtual reality headsets equipment we purchased to Public Surplus um the district stated that middle and high school math is a priority and we must put these funds

106toward educational efforts that have proven success thank you board member Winer so I had an opportunity to personally review prism myself and then also to observe a class used the prison um headsets and to listen to the founder Anna Rupa really um explain the her opinion of obviously she's the founder so she she finds the devices amazing um however I have some concerns because uh Anna Rapa said that it takes 45 minutes to complete the entire module and I understand that Miss DOD says that it takes 15 to 20 minutes I believe and um if they're not using the systems as prescribed wouldn't it be difficult if you're splitting the module into two days so that you're shortening the time on the devices it just seems that it wouldn't be effective I and given our

107test scores have gone down where is the evidence that prisms improved our students math proficiencies and their understanding and lastly what was what was kind of sad was when you when I'm sure that this is really fun for kids however when they took their headsets off they were rubbing their eyes their eyes looked exhausted from being in that headset for however long they were so are we are we taking into account the amount of screen time that our students are getting during the day so I actually agree with board member Carney about um um they we we should go ahead and sell the remainder of the devices and recoup some of our cost because I in my mind I don't think that we have the evidence that prison's reality was successful thank you Dr htws

108uh thank you board president sinowski I would like to ask uh Dr Mensel and if you would like to delegate the question but um a couple of comments now about kind of the outcomes and the impact could you speak to that think those are legitimate this legiate question I appreciate the opportunity and I would like to invite Dr dods Karen to come forward as well we have U people who have been working uh with the roll out of prisms this is our is that our third year and and so we are at the beginning of year three of prisms and so there's been a learning curve uh we had good an doal evidence after the first year where we were doing this in two schools cornado and tonala with respect to student engagement and then

109I will let Dr dods Karen talk about uh last year and where we are this year with respect to the training and utilization and the reasons why districts certain buildings made a decision not to continue and others invited uh this technology to support mathematic instruction okay good evening everyone uh thank you Dr menel I will try to capture all of those points uh Dr Hartwell Wells members of the board um we have been on a journey with prisms for about 3 years now um this was a new idea that came to us as we are always trying to think of ways that we can engage kids meaningfully in in learning as you all know we have a priority to shift the way that kids are thinking about math their demonstration of understanding is a goal

110area as you know through our kpis you also know that we have adopted curriculum and we also have supplemental materials where teachers can replace units of study with Alternatives that's where prisms comes into play no pun intended um the gamification of learning is something that is prime for our youth and I do realize there are concerns for kids being on technology on a long um longtime basis in a school day however when we talk about the amount of time that kids are in a module kids are going to experience a module in a three-part series typically a module takes place over the course of 3 days the teachers do to board member werner's Point U make adjustments with the use of the virtual reality so at first it's truly using it to set boundaries so

111you don't fall out of your chair because if you've never done virtual reality like board member Werner and Carney had not done like I hadn't um you put it on and suddenly you are somewhere else you are no longer in the conference room and I was an air traffic controller you were um in a hospital or on a um on a nature hike um and so there's it's pretty darn cool um to the point about teachers seeing that gosh there's a big shift in I was playing now I actually have to do the math the transfer so I go back to the supplementals our goal is to think about how do we introduce these Concepts to kids how do we engage them in that learning experience and then apply the mathematics because that way the

112teacher can say when you saw I'll be the air traffic controller when you were launching airplanes out of the gates you were going to the runway and you were getting somebody from from Seattle down to Florida without intersecting between somebody going to Minnesota from New Mexico what was that called and then you can talk about coordinate graphing and then suddenly it makes sense to them that vocabulary that academic vocabulary that is typically in a textbook in a yellow box highlighted that now becomes something that makes sense to them because they experienced it so back to the point of how did this all begin um Dr menel um was able to meet with Anar Rupa and for those of you who haven't met an R she's quite an engaging woman she went to MIT she was

113an engineer and she realized there were not a lot of women in engineering and then she thought what am I going to do to get more women in engineering so she became a teacher then she became an administrator because she wanted to inspire youth to pursue mathematics and Engineering she also realized we have a problem in America where we're going to run out of people to fulfill the jobs that are going to be needed in our country and we're going to have to Outsource from other places that are teaching advanced math and con and Concepts so hence the birth of prisms of reality we began prisms uh here at Coronado in an algebra support class and we also began at tonala in an advanced math class um we were testing it out seeing how it

114was going how could teachers be integrating it teachers were doing their best to integrate and then we continued our partnership where we really looked then at our Curriculum maps with Anna Rupa and one of the partners in her business and we met and we looked at our pacing guides as it related to the prism's modules to see what could a teacher do to substitute now um proud teacher we love our lesson plans we love our lesson plans and we don't like to get rid of them so it's really hard to tell a teacher that lesson that you always teach in November put it away and now let's try prisms of reality cuz they're like but I know how my November lesson's going to go they don't know how how prisms is going to go so

115that was one of our big hiccups in our first year and truthfully in our second year too is helping teachers see how can I actually buy Time by substituting with prisms of reality and so in our second year we continued here at Coronado we continued at tonala and we added on some other schools in doing that we realized that even though teachers were excited about it it did require a lot of time to learn it and think about how to integrate it into their classroom so now as we go into year three it's all based on choice we approached our principles they talked with their teachers and said what works well for the goals we have for our students as well as the vision for our campus for example Arcadia as you know last year

116the board approved Arcadia becoming an avid school with Avid being a priority for their campus Dr dansy really believed it would be important for their focus to be on that Avid curriculum they went to Summer Institute their teachers have their curriculum so rather than trying to learn Avid curriculum and layer in prisms they their focus is AVID um here at Coronado um principal paluchi thought you know what we're preap um some of my neighboring or my partner to schools um aren't going to continue it let's see if somebody else wants it Desert Mountain said we want it they have seven teachers so we've taken two sets of carts to go up to Desert Mountain so this year we launched a training um during an early release day we had a full day of training in

117the morning we gave Subs before the early release and Anar Rupa came and she provided professional development and she said when I visited mid morning she said wow um the energy is palpable and it we really think in this third year completely driven by choice and teachers who are thinking how can I do this differently in my classroom I mentioned earlier too that we have um a priority for increasing academic achievement I was looking at some data from our summer school with the um ASU Mac intelligent tutors they gave us a report that you'll see shortly in a um a board memo but when I look at some of the areas where kids even though they were taught and practiced didn't demonstrate Mastery I see direct relationships with our prisms modules so I see things

118like function inputs and outputs classifying functions and relations rate of change in linear functions initial value of linear functions um linear and nonlinear functions that where kids were scoring at about 40% Mastery rate these are things that we can bring to life in prison using an alternate curriculum different than our core text so I don't know Dr menel if that captured um what you were looking for but um I know that it has been something different we aren't the only District in the valy that is utilizing virtual reality to tap into the interest of kids um I also would say too I think that using prisms introduces kids to careers because you do exp explore math in another way so as an air traffic controller as um an epidemiologist you could be any any certain

119person when you're in that in that VR setting so even though a child might say I don't want to become a math teacher but I want to apply math in a unique way they could be introduced through the modules to a a future career thank you Dr dots Karen I appreciate all of that really good uh analysis and thanks for sharing that with us um interesting timing uh it's the first week of October which can only mean its Nobel Prize announcements s every one of those groundbreaking recipients suffered ridicule at the beginning of their exploration so I think that that's an interesting connection but thank you for answering the question thank you board member Carney um how much did we spend on the recent professional development for that would you like to just stay up

120there until we're de for a moment sure okay thank you uh our professional development is a package where we um are able to bring in presenters an arupa to come into our um schools to do model lessons as well so our entire package I believe is $1,200 1250 let me look at the invoice 1250 I believe um I'm sorry $155,000 for six six full day visits okay and then you mentioned um the other local districts are using this which school districts are using this yep that's a great question um a variety specific to prisms of reality Mesa Public Schools is using prisms of reality they have been using it in 78 like we have been in our middle schools they've expanded to 912 they also have the science but they have not access the science

121yet um others that are using VR but not specific prisms um Flag Staff uses near pod and act one as well those are two different products Paradise Valley uses Vive or Viv um and Oculus which is a a type of device um alhamra uses class VR which is part of their Verizon Innovation learning lab so they must have a grant through Verizon um also Mesa uses another called transfer okay thank you because I had been told that Mesa was not using uh prisms but um well that that was another question that I had because we're this is a sole procurement but yet we just named off other companies that are doing this work and I know we're already paying for near pod and they have virtual reality Pro math programming why are we so let

122me clar clarify that so Flagstaff is using near pod for field trips um Flagstaff is also using ACT one for fifth grade where kids are visiting places like Mexico Chicago Tucson again virtual field trips um Paradise Valley using the vi pardon my pronunciation of it an Oculus um it's used in a computers course with Juniors and seniors it's a computer science program and it's used to create the senior Capstone project and then transfer also used by Mesa is career exploration so not a not a math platform okay um I just believe we only have so much time so much money we have to be great stewards of of the funds and I just don't think spending more money $50,000 on prisms virtual of reality is a wise choice Board number one poter so you you

123did a great sales job um so having met Anna Ripa she is very compelling and she's very passionate about her her project and so I I would imagine that she did a great job for that professional development and engaging the teachers and so on my challenge with it is that we don't know the efficacy rate of the students using it and so spending more money on it just doesn't make sense until we have results and you know if it is if if kids are learning and they're getting more proficient and their understanding is increasing that's awesome then we could move forward but spending more money on it until we know that doesn't make sense um last question is it 15,000 for Anna Rupa to come or is it overall overall 15,000 thank you to wrap

124up the commentary on this particular item um I had engaged the last two years the very first year and then the second year and see this pilot EXP band um to other um places was interesting uh cuz there were middle school kids and high school kids both using the same resources and I also participated with the virtual reality and it was challenging there was definitely a learning curve to using the devices um and then afterwards I mean I had my own opinions about it but afterwards what I felt was really important was asking the teachers who were instructing the classes and engaging with the students afterwards and asking them from their opinions right then and there in the classroom and it was all positive of students saying they really liked it it was exciting it

125was engaging and the teachers to say to me there were students who would not typically engage in traditional math lessons that were highly engaged in um this prism's virtual reality I appreciate the fact that this is not a one size fits-all School District that we are allowing our teachers to choose supplemental materials to support their good solid instruction um I know um board member Carney pulled this item um is there would you like to make a motion Drells you I see you request to speak I'd like to make a motion all right go to approve item G I would second that all in favor say I I opposed no no that motion passes 32 moving on to 7i approve the award of request for proposal RFP 24008 inperson tutoring for the 2324 school year uh

126board member Warner pulled that go ahead thank you I I have a just a clarification on this uh this was something that I had recommended for an agenda item and It ultimately went to an RFP um and my my question is well number one I'm surprised that we we chose a nationwide company as opposed to a local company here in Arizona that really knows our students and and the needs here um but my question is is you know I hear a lot and and I did this for my own kids is teachers like to tutor and it's an opportunity for them to make extra money uh many Tut companies will fill spots with teachers in order to not only work with the students because their Hands-On with them already and they know the curriculum they

127know the students so it's very helpful and I think it's beneficial for the student um and it gives them that opportunity to earn more money so will Universal extend this option to our teachers that's my question so Roger spy is here he's our director of procurement he can talk about the process and what was included in the RFP and how we landed on the recommendation in front of you I actually didn't need all of that like I don't have a problem with universal I just want this was my specific question awesome good evening governing board president snowski vice president Warner uh regarding your questions um so one we did not ask them to look at our current employees as tutors uh they they do have 3,400 Regional employees available that they can choose from but

128when you talk about vendors starting to hire our staff we run into conflict of interest problems now every one of those employees would have a conflict related to this contract because they would have Financial impact based on the usage of this contract so while I really like the idea of our teachers tutoring I really would encourage us not to do that using a third party okay thank you that's all thank you Dr Benson go ahead Madam President and Vice President Warner I appreciate you highlighting that we do want to encourage and continue to encourage our own teach teachers to offer tutoring services to because that is still at play we very much know that research shows the relationships with our teachers and students and the consistency in working with them is very valuable and so

129that doesn't go away this is an additional layer that had been requested for where we've got maybe not enough teachers that can provide enough tutoring services so this is an additional in-person layer so we haven't replaced and would never want to replace the work that our teachers do with our students thank you for pointing that out thank you board member Carney thank you president sinowski okay so that was uh one of my questions is that we will be protecting the current teachers who are doing before or after school tutoring um prioritizing them my concern is that what happens when they learn that these University tutors are making more money are being paid more money than than them is this going to cause issues Roger are you okay with me taking a shot at this one

130so appreciate the question uh part of the complexity and maybe even the opportunity here is that this doesn't have to be just before or after school tutoring that this tutoring service can happen in small groups or during the school day and that's part of um the richness of this opportunity is that we have extra support that can provide and be helping out during the the contracted school day so the scope um and the amount of teachers or certified teachers that are available to help us out not just before after school it would be it can be contracted during the day for a plethora of areas doesn't just have to be isolated to just Ela and math can provide supports in other areas and we know that the high dosage tutoring that's going to work is

131when we uh situate those experiences small group daily repetitively so that's the kind of thing we're looking to schedule um in conjunction and in support of our teachers so appreciate the clarifying question not in competition of okay and this will all be in in person and how is this going to work with the um you know the virtual The Varsity Tutors contract that we already have and already have how is this going to work working with them so uh we're meeting Thursday uh pending board approval to uh schedule and structure requests that we've had from sites about what they'd like this to look like and we've already got Varsity Tutors up and running in certain areas as you know we have a cap a cap on that for 150,000 we are also using that with

132our student services team too so there's an there's a place for both and just being very targeted and thoughtful not random in our tutoring assignments across our schools okay great I think if the board could get a report on um you know both varsity and and uh all tutoring going on that would be fantastic so we can understand um I also Dr menel would like to see a survey go out to parents uh asking if their child has been using tutoring through the school or an outside vendor I think um and and asking what subjects they've been getting tutoring in and if they're paying out of pocket or how is the child's tutoring you know funded and what do they see as needs for their child I think um you know I hear from a

133lot of parents that they're getting outside tutoring or you know I just think it would be really good to get a pulse on on our families and what they're already doing and what they need um board member conney I really appreciate that that last sentiment that you made that it's important for us to realize that one size does not fit for our students needs some of our options and opportunities we provide to our students are 24/7 access sum are before school Su are during the the actual instructional time period some are at lunch and some are after school and I am I do believe that we have more need than um to for outside support than we have teachers um available to tutor our students is that correct Dr Benson I think I think that's

134a a Statewide problem um agreed uh teachers are working really hard and it's difficult to commit 3 4 days extra after school or before school a week we do have teachers that do it and we want to continue that but yes in terms of scope and availability um we there's a need to pursue and identify other tutors that can help us yeah and I do think it's um important to recognize what's working what's not and what the needs are of the community thank you for bringing that up um would you like to make a motion board member Warner yep I make a motion to approve agenda 7 I I second that all in favor say I I I that motion passes 5 Z we are going to move on to 7K um I pulled that

135item as a at the request of um Alexis Wilson um Miss Wilson would you like to make comment on it thank you president sinowski members of the governing board and Dr menel uh due to a clerical error we are re requesting a modification to the Personnel action items to approve all of the sections with the exception of the classified section under the employee compensation action section this will not cause any delay in employees being paid uh on time and accurately but thank you Miss Wilson um do governing board members does anyone have any questions from Miss Wilson okay pretty clearcut um at this time I'd like to make a motion to approve all sections of the personal action items with the exception of the classified section under the employee compensation actions is there a second

136second seconded by Dr hartells all in favor say I I I that motion passes 5- Z that time we have approved our consent agenda um and we are going to move on to to 8A action item approval of fiscal year 2223 annual financial report also known as the AFR Shannon all right uh thank you uh board member sinowski Vice President Warner members of the board Dr menel and guest um it's a night of financial updates uh for for last year for us so um I want to start out by saying um the annual financial report is a pretty massive report that the state puts out every year for school districts to report their expenditures and revenues and so um I can't thank our Director of Finance enough Lisa Martinez and her team she has put

137in uh quite a bit of time several weekends working on this report and unfortunately part of the report wasn't released by the state uh until late Friday afternoon and so we'll be bringing the school by school report uh to the board possibly later this week um as we were not able to get that complete with the time that it was uh released there just wasn't uh enough time to get that part completed into the board for us to present that part of it tonight so with this uh we have the annual financial report it is a detailed report of the revenues expenditures that their District had for last year uh it provides our state and tax paays with detailed information on how the the funds were spent and it is required to be uh presented

138to the board by October 15th just kind of an overview of last year our average daily membership was 20,1 3.76 again this is a ADM or average daily membership so that's why you get the odd 76 within it or Point numbers within it the base support level or an amount we receive for m per student is four was $477 127 so we had a m or maintenance and operations budget of uh $83.81 million and then Federal project of 37.7 million a big portion of that is the Esser funds um Esser one ended in September of last year but for last year we had Sr 2 and Sr 3 so we'll start to see those Federal projects go down pretty significantly um as we as we close out those Sesser projects um this is just a

139summary like I said the AFR is is pretty extens extensive there's lots of pages on it that go into a little bit more detail um and that will be posted on the website for um anybody to see this breaks down the summary of it by the different funds and you'll notice there's numbers up across the top and that's to explain how to read some of this as we go through the next slides and there's lots of funds so it's two pages all right so the first one um we have some accounts that our budget control which means the state says you get x amount of dollars per student for that or you get x amount of dollars within a grant and it doesn't matter what the cash balance is if you have more cash in

140M it doesn't mean that you get to spend more than what your budget was approved for the state says this is how much budget you have um so when we look at this and I'll kind of talk about how this plays into it m is a budget- driven fund so what our budgeted from our budget approved amount from the state and our expenses what we have carry forward is what we can carry forward um so last year we had uh $13.8 million budget we spent $69. million of that leaving a budget balance carry forward of $13.9 million we were shooting for 14 we're just slightly underneath that um after everything played out um that is about 7.6% of the budget which is within our um governing board approved regulation on minimum maximums for carry forward

141um we've talked a lot about what should carry forward look like how much should that be what percentage what dollar um and it's it varies 7.6 is pretty um consistent with where we've been percentage wise it's a dollar higher dollar actually it's lower than what it was last year but um percentage wise where um we see other districts I would say the carry forward is not like it's 13 million or $14 million sitting in an unac unallocated account that we could just reuse for something else we're carrying over that because we're not filling every single position within M um or we're not spending you know we we budget for utility we don't actually spend as much as we we think so we have carry forward not because there's a pot of money somewhere that we're

142just not spending it's because we're budgeting for all of these things that think we're going to do we're just not spending at all um as we bring that down then that means the following year we have less money to spend which means Cuts so we've kind of said 14 million seems to be the good area to be at we've kind of projected that for the next couple of years is what would um would be the the balance forward so the way we get that is if you look at this previous slide U uh column five and six is your budgeted expenditures and your actual expenditures that's what tells us our budget carry forward now because this is a budgeted account um you'll see on this prior page we're actually carrying our budget ending or I'm

143sorry our ending balance in m is actually $14.1 million that uh column s is literally looking at what was our beginning cash balance how much revenues did we get so column 2 column 3 minus column 6 to get that 14.1 million again that doesn't mean we have $14 million to carry over that means that's what our cash balance is the fact that our cash balance is pretty close to what our ending uh budget balances means we're we're right on target with our cash and our expenditures then we have cash controlled accounts so an example of one of those is our uh Community Education or Community Schools um Community Schools started out this last year with $3.6 million they had 7.5 million come in it's actually a little higher because they had a special Grant come

144in for some preschool programs uh it was a 1.8 million or so so that revenue is actually higher than normal or what has been in the past couple years um no transfers that's that's fine and then um $6.7 million of expenditures leaving their ending fund balance at 4.5 million that is cash so that rolls over there doesn't get moved somewhere else or swept somewhere else the balance of that 4.5 million stays with than that cash account so that's just kind of how to read that summary page and understand like I said some some things are cash driven or I'm sorry budget driven that's going to be your M account your uh capital account grants those types of things um your community schools plant fund Civic Center rentals those are going to be your cash accounts

145where you're looking at how much cash do we have and that is all we have this is just looking at an estimate on every year the auditor General's office puts out what's called the costro spending report for every District in Arizona it always comes out on um March 1st it's a nice little birthday present for me every year um and it tells us exactly where we are with our costum spending from the prior year as well as how we compare with our other districts one of the things we like to do when we're looking at the AFR is kind of take a look ourself and see where we think we're going to land um so with that in mind this is just looking at an estimate of what we think that will look like when

146it comes out in March we're generally pretty close I will say last year we were off a little bit it was Food Services and plant I don't know if something got classified differently than we thought it should have been but there was a variance between those two but um from what we estimated in the actual so we're generally pretty close I am happy to say that the classroom instruction appears to have gone up some we anticipated that to happen because last year it had gone down due to some changes we made with performance pay as well or with a 301 performance pay for teachers as well as we knew that um some of our more ex um experienced um teachers with longer years uh were retiring or leaving the field and they were being replaced

147with teachers with less experience we could see that in uh the change in our teacher experience index rate um it also shows when they do that classroom spending report they'll show you how many teachers you have in the first three years that number had declined for us last or in 2 fiscal year 22 um so that's why I brought some of that classroom spending down I am happy to say it's up or we think it's going to be up for this uh for last year um and then as a whole within total instruction so classroom instruction is strictly looking at the teacher in the classroom that is the only thing within classroom instruction um instructional support is your librarian instructional development that may happen and then student support is like nurses social workers guidance counselors

148um with coid money and some additional grants that we received we they were for things like guidance counselors so when you see like an fy22 that made a pretty significant jump in that area it's because we had grants that were designated specifically um for student support and this this classroom spending doesn't look at just m it's looking at pretty much every single fund there are a couple exceptions but it's pretty much every single fund within our uh general ledger so they look at that they combine those three and say how much is total instruction so good part is again we went up in the total instruction I think we can do more um we always want to strive to do a little uh to do better get that number up higher but I'm happy to

149say that it looks like it went up from last year so that's a positive a positive trend um Administration went down slightly um it's been in that nine% range uh pretty consistently over the last 5 years and the thing with the Administration is it's not like a director that's the administrator or a principal that is administrator when it's looking at these things like student support could also or I'm sorry instructional support because it's instructional development includes our curriculum department so like the director of curriculum would be categorized as instructional support when you're looking at Administration that's looking at every single person within a function group for General Administration so that's looking at principles assistant principles but also they're classified staff that report to them um the people in the finance staff who may not be

150administrators they're classified hourly workers but they're considered Administration um in this report Food Services has gone up a little bit I think that just has to do with food costs have also gone up um as we go as as we've progressed through the year plant operations I was really surprised seems to have gone down some and that was surprising to me because one of the things that um feeds into plant operations is security and and we know that we've been increasing our spend within security so plan operations isn't just our utilities it's not just the grounds Keepers or or facility upkeep it also includes that security part so the security guards any camera security enhancements we do there so I was kind of surprised that it didn't go up more or that it went down

151or appears to have gone down and then transportation again has been staying relatively flat within that 3% um but we do know that fuel costs went up this last year um so that's kind of the estimate of where we think we're going to land within that report like I said it'll be March 1st before that um comes out within M this just looks at how do we spend our money so within just our M expenses um salary and benefits makes up 90% of our budget or our our our expenditures um which makes sense we're we're you know we it takes teachers and people to support those teachers to um educate students and then utilities is 5% so really at 95% we're pretty fixed with the salaries benefits and utilities that we don't really have um

152a choice on on those utilities uh and then a small percentage goes to purchase Services I want to point out with that number um part of that is our contracted Services we have a lot of people who are contracted out uh via because they're we can't hire Paras or um some special needs teachers they end up being contracted out as well is we have a lot of Transportation contracted out that all fits within there and then we have employees who retire and go what's on ESI and come back in their same job and so that also fits in there so I was thinking wow that's 12.8 million for purchase services but a lot of that is because of our contracts that we are contracted services that we have out there for um for staff and

153then the last part I talked about is um we say that you know 85% of our of our budget is our expenditures our salary So within those salaries um 67% of that is certified 21% of that is classified and 12% of that is Administrative and again that includes principles um assistant principles and then other administrators so with that I'll open it up to questions thanks Shannon at this time do governing board members have comments or questions for Shannon on this topic Dr Hart Wells thank you board president announc um thank you Miss kroer I have a um can we go to slide eight please sure thank you and thank you for numbering your slides where does the Esser spend fit in here so Esser goes into all of this um you could have Esser spend

154within classroom because we have teachers through we added um Soul teachers with Sesser dollars when we expanded that to K8 so Esser dollars could be mixed in with instructional classroom um we used eser dollars to help with instructional support and so you can see it within there so it really um is going to vary I would say the majority of it and partly because S3 um the majority of it has to be spent on instructional or instructional support is going to be within those top three categories but it's kind of sprinkled in throughout um throughout this report so there's not one specific area that it would fall into but but could be within any of those okay so it's in the totals yes it's bur in the appropriate categories yes thanks board mcney thank you

155president sinowski thank you Miss kroer um I just have a couple questions on purchase services so I know I've been talking about this with you a little bit and would like to re see a report but I'm just concerned on uh let's take Central Services for example um that and and support services both have doubled in our spending since 2019 uh according to to these afrs what types of things are falling under these purchase services so um as I was talking before the purchase service a lot of that is going to be things like a contractor that we bring in to do um so if we like I said if we don't have a special needs nurse or a personal care nurse that that's required for an IEP we might have to contract that out

156um if we don't have um we've had to do a lot of peras because we haven't had Paras and so that would end up being um within the student support but it's it's a purchase service because we're paying another company for that the same thing we do well over a million dollars with ESI with employees that aren't um emplo you know they've retired from the district but they still want to continue to fill those those roles um and so it's really going to fall into the without going into the looking at every purchase it's going to it's there's a lot that we're doing contracted services for positions that we just can't fill with our own staff okay and cuz oh yeah custodial is a huge one thank you custodial custodial is um because we also

157added custodial um ABM cleaning custodial is like $4 million of that um we added we started during Co we're actually ending this year but we were adding in addition to our regular contract with them we added um additional cleaning at lunchtime okay so that's that's a huge portion of it right there is the contracted custodial okay and then within that report that you had sent the board um I like I said it was 500 and some pages I think so it couldn't get through uh too many of them but I just where I saw one of them was uh City of Scottsdale we're paying them3 $360,000 four times what is that for um we have the city of Scotto police for the sro's off the top I'm thinking that that's probably I mean generally what

158we're paying the city of Scottdale for is either um utility or there's a very it's over a million dollars for our sro's through that okay so that's so city of Scotto's likely going to be sro's perfect thank you yes Shannon thank you for um clarifying the different categories the expenditure categories um again for us and can you restate the the purpose of the practice of the carry forward what would happen if we zeroed out that number what would that how would that impact our district absolutely that's uh board president snowki yes if we if we decided we're going to spend our entire budget this year so um our budget's like 193 million 96 million if we were going to spend that entire budget this year and not carry that over because we've had that carry

159for year after year after year that 196 th million has 14 million in carryover factored in so you would start out next year $14 million less than what you had this year so essentially if we weren't if we don't continue to carry that over if we don't slowly bring that down then you're going to see a $14 million hit right off the bat um the following year sure thank you MH um and I would like to to really have us focus on creating plans to increase a direct classroom instruction spending level at least bringing it back up to the um 2021 level that is posted here um I know there are a lot of variants in that but I think we have the needs and we should be addressing those when we talk about um

160attracting and retaining best staff that's I good expenditure in my mind thank you seeing that there are no other um requests to speak I would like to make a motion to approve the uh fiscal year 2022 2023 annual financial report is there a second second seconded by Dr Hartwell all in favor say I I I anyone opposed that motion passes 5 Z thank you and i' um I need to apologize we did not approve the complete consent agenda as amended individually we approved the individual um topics that were ped but I'd like to make a motion at this time to go back and approve the amended consent agenda is there a second to that second seconded by Dr Hart WS all in favor say I I I that motion passes 5 Z thank you guys

161um we are going to at this time move on to 8B which is a second read and approval of governing board policy bed and Dr Hart Wells is leading that discussion thank you board president sinowski uh we've seen this in a first read and there was discussion at that time and I have nothing further to add I think the amendment speaks for itself uh and again uh is not like we addressed the concerns about being overly burdensome that it's really a safety net uh as guidance as a third tier where there is porosity in the existing law Andor policies and then secondly uh again an an effort at Civility and so I'd like to make motion to approve the second read and approval the governing board policy bed regarding Rules of Order as amended I'd

162like to make a second to that motion this time we'll take a vote on that all in favor say I I I opposed say no no no that motion does not pass it's denied 3 to2 we're going to move on to governing board reports right now that's nine on our agenda at this time uh just a reminder for all governing board members please keep your report to two minutes or less um are there governing reard governing board reports to share at this time board member Carney thank you president sinowski so I just uh I was fortunate to be able to attend Echo Canyon's Color Run uh last week and it was so much fun seeing the the school leaders teachers and parents all having fun I even got to participate and uh shoot the students

163with a chalk or whatever the stuff was we just had a lot of fun and I still smile thinking of uh assistant principal U Cadera how funny she was having so much fun and so I think that we forget too that you know our our schools are uh time to have fun as well with the students so that was that was a a lot of fun I also got to tour lagona uh Elementary and got to go um review the new Ela curriculum options and um I know the committee is narrowing that down to uh one curriculum tomorrow so I want to make sure that everyone knows parents know they still can go review the curriculum uh each weekday at lagona elementary um during school days and that information is on our website uh and

164then one other opportunity for parents um they do have the ability to sign up for the light speed parent portal which enables them to see see what sites their child is going on uh during the school day as well as control uh better control the use of their SD device at home so um Miss watt gave me the information and told me that parents can learn more and sign up by calling the IT Help Desk which is 480484 help 4357 thank you thank you board member Warner so I um took the opportunity to go to lagona and review the curriculum for our K through 5 Ela adoption and I agree with board member Warner board member board member Carney that um uh if you are a parent or a grandparent I highly recommend you go

165and review um it's eyeon opening how much things have changed and uh they are narrowing it down to one tomorrow so if you go after that um it'll be easy and they're open from 9:00 to 3:00 and you can just show up at lagona and Miss Murphy is amazing any others Dr hert Wells thank you board president sinowski um I would like to thank all of those folks in the uh Community who attended the town halls uh to learn the facts on the district's um request for a continuation of the Mino override and I actually want to thank the district as well for hosting those five Town Halls based on the three that I attended there were um attendees who did not have students in our district schools and they were likely the demographic traffic

166that you were targeting so I think that was actually very constructive and a good use of time and particularly for those of you that attended on the staff after hours was a late evenings a few of those related I wish to thank all of our community and Business Leaders who have taken the time to share your thoughts as contributing editors uh on the M override our local newspapers and I want to thank principal only and the cocoa staff for hosting me a few weeks ago and I got to listen in on some of the planning for the student assembly with the student student leadership observed some of the positive paths on the back for our students who went above and beyond and many many positive comments I actually stood with principal only as the students

167were leaving that day and there were numerous students who came up to him asking about teachers and giving compliments to teachers it was really hard foring uh I realize I am a guest and a visitor when I make those visits uh and I appreciate sincerely the time that the staff take um to plan those visits ahead of time um that all of our all of us make actually and that's that is a little bit of an imposition so I'm grateful thank you thank you Dr Harwell um and I would like to share my appreciation for the many organizations and individuals in our community who continually work on behalf to improve the needs and interests of our students our employees and the future of this community um yes to Children is one that's been around almost

168a quarter of a century in in this community and they work diligently to try to secure necessary funds which provide us a chance to attain our goals on behalf of our students and our employees we are better together and working towards our common cause and that is because kids um at this time I'd like to open it up to governing board members for future agenda items are there any requests at this time board member Carney thank you president sinowski um I would just like to ask I know that we uh amended policy bedb the agenda agenda policy um to only go to two minutes for board governing board reports but I would just ask if we could just be respectful of that time and not actually run a timer on the elected officials that would

169be um appreciated board member Warner sorry board member Warner um I would like to see a study or uh research search so we can get some type of idea how much our students are spending on screen time so whether that is computers it's virtual reality and I know the smartboards are also screen time now the lights are dimmed and so on so um I think that parents would really value knowing how much time their children are spending on screen time just to clarify uh to clarify you're talking about while they're in school correct while they're in school okay thank you um Dr har Wells thank you um I would like to request an update on the cornado Learning Community efforts there was a phase one um and now I'm assuming we're still in a phase

170two um but if we could also include in that update whether it's a memo or a presentation whatever is your choice um but expenditures uh on the phase one as well as the efforts and the budget for phase two including impact on enrollment which I think was one of the state of goals uh including specifically the number of students that are moving from buildings from 5 to 6 and then from 8 to 9 within the Learning Community uh and then of course it would also be I think appropriate to round it out with academic achievement um elements as well thank you all right um everyone's had an opportunity to I see some lights on again everyone's had an opportunity to uh board member Carney thank you sorry I'd made a comment and I didn't continue

171on with my uh what I'd like to see on the agenda item I would like to see the uh report that I asked for last uh meeting on social emotional learning programs that are in the district and that are um at each School Which social emotional learning programs are they using what curriculum and I know Shannon cron was I think looking into that working on that didn't we receive thato I thought we received that already okay I thought we received that information through a b memo with all the seal programs it's in draft okay we're close okay thank you coming to you soon all right um seeing that there are no other requests at this time I'd like to announce the upcoming meeting dates our next governing board meeting is Tuesday October 24th 2023 6:

172PM um that would be here at oops that I'm sorry that is at the Mojave District Annex because that would be a special governing board meeting and then Tuesday November 4th we have a regular governing board meeting back here Coronado High School yes 14th I'm racing through this sorry um and then Learning Community Town Halls Wednesday October 25th um there will be one at chaperel High School in the auditorium at 6: PM Tuesday November 7th 6 p.m. Coronado High School auditorium Thursday February 22nd 2024 6 p.m. Desert Mountain high school library and Wednesday March 20th 2024 6 pm. swarrow High School Innovation Center also to note we will have a special governing board meeting um through teams on Thursday October 5th that's 2 days at 5:30 to approve the school by school plan um at

173this time I'd like to make a motion to adjourn this meeting is there a second Dr Hart Wells second seconded by Dr Hart Wells all in favor say I I motion to approve the adjournment has been made