001good evening i called to order this regular meeting of the scottsdale unified school district it is tuesday january 25th the time is 6 01 pm vice president cartwells can you please lead us in the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all we will start off with a roll call vote starting from my far right zach lindsay patty backman libby hartwells thank you we have all five governing board members present we do have a quorum at this time i would like governing board members to propose any changes to the meeting agenda are there any changes at this time seeing no changes i ask for a motion to approve the agenda as presented
002so moved board member beckman second seconded by vice president hart wells please note that public all those in favor oh sorry all those in favor aye aye aye vote passes 5-0 we will advance to part two of our agenda public comments notification please note that public comments will be heard after our superintendent's comments i want to remind all of our guests about our meeting decorum and i will read that before we begin our public comments section at this time i'd like to turn over our meeting to dr menzel to recognize our student and staff celebrations good evening president zanowski vice president hart wells and members of the governing board as scottsdale unified's 125th anniversary celebrations continue we are always pleased to be able to introduce to you some of the extraordinary students educators and employees
003of our district we are only ever able to present just a sliver of them to you but as you know there are many many more achieving great things in our classrooms every day tonight we would like to introduce you to a budding animator who has been invited to take part in a very special school right before spring break dr melissa sackos assistant superintendent for secondary education is here to tell us about her dr sackos thank you dr good evening president zanowski vice president hartwells governing board members and ms wagner i'd like to divide up invita from saguaro high school student annelise jones and math and science academy coordinator susan lindbergh to join me at the podium hi 15 years ago walt disney world resort created an educator mentorship program for outstanding high school students each
004year it invites 100 such students to a four-day camp in orlando florida to broaden their career awareness and create opportunities for teens from underrepresented community across the nation this year's disney dreamers will be introduced to an array of new immersions that are designed to continue to foster the dreams of young leaders including career building workshops networking sessions mentorship connections and entered introductions to future professional opportunities at the walt disney company and do i dare say to infinity and beyond okay okay as i earlier as i said earlier just 100 students from across the country are invited to attend the disney dreamers academy and annalise who is a sophomore at saguaro is one of just two arizona high school students to be named to the academy's class of 2022 [Applause] annalise along with the other 99
005students from across the united states will gather in orlando florida march 3rd through march 6. annalise is going to attend sessions on leadership skills effective communication techniques and networking strategies as well as in-depth workshops on diverse career paths with business entertainment and sciences and she will go she'll get a deep dive into her career choice shadowing and working with professionals in her chosen future field animation how can there possibly be a better place to do that than disney world congratulations annelise and we expect a full report if not a two-minute cartoon um when you get back and so before you go i would like to present you with um this foundation uh susd uh challenge coin in recognition of all of your accomplishments and hopefully you take this to disney world take a snap and
006come back with it okay yeah all right congratulations [Applause] what a wonderful opportunity for you to expand your learning analyse and find out about careers that are open to you and your interests we do hope you'll have a great time when you're in orlando the next celebration is something i think all of us look forward to every year and that is meeting some of scottsdale unified's most outstanding educators our director of teaching and learning dr kim dods karen has the honor tonight to present our national board certified teachers dr dodds karen thank you dr menzel and good evening governing board president sinaski vice president hart wells governing board members and ms wagner tonight we are here to celebrate a cadre of outstanding scottsdale unified educators these teachers have taken it upon themselves to go beyond
007standard requirements and have engaged in the rigorous process of becoming nationally board certified teachers teachers as i call your name will you please join me at the podium with your principal if they are here with you jennifer antrim who teaches high school courses for scottsdale online [Applause] and stay standing please abby bobbitt who is a teacher at laguna elementary school she is our reading specialist karen brisbane she teaches sixth grade math at kokopaw middle school [Applause] erin hansen an elementary school teacher with scottsdale online kurt robinson a second grade teacher at desert canyon elementary school stephanie shammy the k5 gifted specialist at laguna elementary julie sparks a desert canyon elementary school physical education teacher [Applause] shannon stapley from desert canyon middle school she teaches gifted social studies vert teveld he's a seventh grade science teacher
008he's also the coach for the mojave middle school robotics team karen weeble she teaches kindergarten at sequoia elementary school [Applause] and unable to join us tonight are kelly acreage who teaches fourth grade gifted students in redfield's comprehensive gifted program and kokopan middle school's danette emofiden who teaches in the shine program also arcadia high school math teacher jennifer ducolo is unable to be here tonight but national board certification is one of the most respected professional certifications available in our k-12 education system the certification process is designed to develop retain and recognize accomplished teachers and generate school improvement nationwide to tell us a little bit more about susd's national board certification is our nbc coach extraordinaire somewhere behind the masses susan leonard who is a physical education teacher at ingleside middle school susan [Applause] thank you madam
009president dr menzel board members and mrs wagner the initial path the national board certification takes one to three years complete i'm proud to say that susd has one of the new of 68 new nbcts in arizona it's truly impressive when a colleague chooses to put their practice up for review against the most rigorous of standards a process which which less than 10 percent of the teachers from across the united states even attempt and the achievement rate is about 50 to 70 percent of that number it's even more impressive that after attaining such a respect status an educator would choose to put their practice up for review again against these same rigorous standards i am pleased to share that scotland unified school district has 12 of the 100 educators in the state who have done just
010that and have successfully renewed their certification [Applause] susd's 83 nbcts ranks us as one of the highest numbers of any district in arizona but what is in my opinion the strongest evidence of the significant impact the national board process is having on our students is the number of nbcts who choose to renew the renewal process has evolved and is now referred to as maintenance of certification or mlc successfully meeting mlc requirements will extend an mbct certificate by five years from their current certificates expiration date the process ensures national board certified teachers continue to grow professionally while maintaining a strong impact on student learning mlc is intended to make ongoing certification engaging and professionally meaningful for mbcts in addition it communicates to both the public and policy makers the profes the professionalism is continually ensuring the
011knowledge and skills of its members of its own members it is a personal and public statement of their commitment to the profession and their students accomplished teachers recognize professional learning and growth never ends in closing i want to thank you the susd foundation and the scottsdale charles for your unwavering support of our teachers as they go through the process and your continued support after they achieve certification [Applause] and before we pass out your plaques to recognize this accomplishment we do also want to thank susan's team of current and retired susd educators that coach our teachers on the certification and recertification process some of our csps or candidate support providers are here tonight so if you hear your name being called you can stand we'll look for you tammy andreas from cochise elementary happy bob at
012front center who you've already met claren gutzky from chaparral [Applause] and waddington from cherokee [Applause] and two of our retired teachers who are not able to be here with us tonight um but bobby faulconer and mary's zagalant these dedicated teachers and our former teachers generously give their time and their expertise to our teacher candidates as they navigate this process for national board certification so we want to congratulate you all we are very proud of you [Applause] so please bear with us as we give them their plaques um [Applause] okay julie sparks jan safely are new nbc [Applause] bert savelle and we want to congratulate our nbct teachers we are extremely proud of the extra path that you've taken to bring excellent instruction to our students [Applause] that concludes our celebrations this evening awesome congratulations to
013annelise and all of the nbct renewed staff members as well as our new inductee very exciting and i know that is quite an accomplishment because it's quite a task that processes so at this point we are going to move on to superintendent's comments dr menzel thank you president zanowski members of the governing board i do have a few things to speak about this evening the first is an announcement regarding the coronado promise partnership we are excited to update you on the launch of the coronado promise for the past two plus years we have been working to identify how best to support the coronado learning community and position our students for post-secondary success this is a remarkable community collaboration between many of our greatest supporters and partners including the coronado foundation for the future the scottsdale
014charros scottsdale community college the city of scottsdale and other committed community members the promise actually is this together we promise to promote early aspirations of higher education provide funding for tuition and support achievement in higher education for the coronado learning community the community goal is to provide support and funding to eligible eligible coronado high school graduates for the first two years of higher education and our hope over time is to build on this across the the district for other high schools the kickoff will be here at coronado high school on february 2nd outside in the courtyard at 4 pm and we look forward to seeing all of you there and it is an open invitation to our community members i want to express appreciation for board member beckman's role in helping to ensure that this
015continued to move forward and we are really excited for the launch next week secondly i'd like to point out that january is school board recognition month and i want to take this time to thank you for your extraordinary service to our students and community this is a job that comes with a number of challenges and opportunities and sometimes can be a lot more than you might have anticipated when you chose to run for the office at the same time when we get to celebrate student success and our teachers and we see the great things that are happening every day i think you can also recognize that the rewards of being part of an exceptional school system sometimes are worth the challenges that you face this environment in particular has been challenging as we work through
016covid considerations as we work through developing a new strategic plan but each of you have come to the table and and provided your very best thinking as we work on ensuring that our district engages all students in world-class future focused education so on behalf of the scottsdale team we want to thank you during board appreciation month [Applause] as some of you may know monday was the 100th day of enrollment and so that's an important date in the state of arizona as we look at average daily membership and its impact on our overall funding it's from a actual student count we are down 219 k-12 students from 100 days a year ago but if you look at the average daily membership calculation which is a weighted formula we are up 615 adm over last year and
017so while we have not returned to our pre-pandemic enrollment numbers we are in a better position this year than we were last year at the same time in terms of average daily membership the next thing i want to talk about is national school choice week you may know that this week is national school choice week and we'd like to take this moment to thank all of those who choose to learn and work here in scottsdale unifying we recognize that our parents have many choices when it comes to meeting their child's educational needs 21 percent of our students are open enrolled from other districts in scottsdale unified another 24 percent of our students open and roll from within the boundaries choosing one of our many excellent educational opportunities for their students i often talk about being
018scout still unified but not scottsdale uniform and it's really nice to be able to celebrate the broader way of services and supports and educational opportunities available to our students we pride ourselves on being the premier destination for public education and have a 125 year legacy of student success stories to prove it another positive story in the news is that if you might have heard it this morning back in december we noted sadly that a former chaparral graduate officer tyler moldovan was shot in the line of duty today he was released out of the hospital and moved to a rehab facility and so we are grateful that there's progress there [Applause] three more things and then i will be done tonight teacher and staff support uh during these times is paramount importance and last week county
019superintendent steve watson convened a group of people for a town hall meeting around teacher stress there were really good ideas shared in terms of creative strategies to address the three areas that surfaced in a survey that he conducted around time trust and safety and our leadership team is continuing to identify opportunities to address how we might be able to relieve some of the stress on our staff as we navigate these challenges as was announced on friday one of the pieces what i'll call low-hanging fruit was that when we have district pd we can maybe take you know the requirement to participate off the table and so we've let our staff know that while the pd will still be provided it's optional teachers can determine how they want to use that time that will best meet
020their needs we'll make the pd available at another time in terms of recording so that it's it's there and all of the staff that have taken the time to put that together their work will not go unrecognized because that was important as well another thing that i hope will be helpful is that beginning next monday january 31st we will allow volunteers to begin returning to classrooms we know that that's an important support for many many of our classroom teachers and while we put the restriction in place at the beginning of the year due to the high numbers of omicron cases we are beginning to see those cases come down and the health individuals have you know the people who work in public health have indicated they expect that that decline will be pretty significant and
021we want to be in the place of being able to provide some additional support for our classroom teachers two final topics for this evening one is the aggregate expenditure limit and we've talked about this before but until the legislature acts we need to continue putting it in front of our community the aggregate expenditure limit is a constitutional provision that requires the arizona department of education to conduct a review of of education expenditures in the aggregate based on a formula that includes the number of students in the state and includes the expenditures and that formula has been impacted this last year by two fundamental uh changes one during the pandemic last year we lost fifty thousand plus students in the state and two prop 301 money which used to be outside of the formula is now
022inside the formula and that's roughly 500 million dollars that comes into the equation given the variables that are at play here the aggregate expenditure limit will be exceeded by more than a billion dollars that uh the solution to that it's not anything that any school district has done it's not a part of bad budgeting we actually built a budget based on what the arizona legislature appropriated and the governor signed back in june so if the legislature fails to override the aggregate expenditure limit every public school system charters are exempted because they were not in existence in 1980 when the constitutional amendment was passed every public school district will be required to reduce their budget by 16 percent so for the last quarter of the year april may and june every district will have to reduce
023its budget by 16 percent for scottsdale unified that would represent more than 27 million dollars this is not a revenue problem the state has the money they appropriated the money they don't have a problem for the local districts in that regard but the impact would be catastrophic for every district when you get to the end of a school year and you're asked to reduce your budget by 16 percent when 85 percent of our budget is tied up in staff compensation and benefits so this is not something that we are powerless to respond to our elected officials have the ability by may 1st to override the aggregate expenditure limit or march 1st not may 1st march 1st and and we have created a one-page talking points document so that anyone who wants to be able to
024explain it because it's a pretty complex formula but there are some key points it's on our website anyone can access that in order to be able to know what the issues are and to encourage our elected officials to act before it's too late if they don't act by march 1st the governing board is required by april 1st to adopt changes to our budget that address the 27 million dollar reduction in expenditures so this is a very serious topic finally the issue of afghan refugees in our community has been a topic of conversation and i want to point out a couple of things that are really important to note here first the refugees that are in scottsdale are here at the invitation of the united states government they were individuals who assisted the united states while
025we were and had military forces deployed in afghanistan additionally efforts are being undertaken to protect their privacy as much as possible because of the very real risk they and their families back home in afghanistan face if their information becomes public and while i know there are a lot of people who want to have a lot of questions answered with respect to specifics about these individuals we have an obligation to protect their privacy we have an obligation to provide a high quality educational experience to each one of them they reside within our district they're covered under the federal mckinney-vento act and we're going to treat them with dignity and respect like we will every single one of our students within the school district and we will continue to support our teachers and our staff as we
026prepare to welcome additional students into our schools thank you [Applause] it was a lot of good information thank you dr manzo apprecia appreciate you sharing the good and the necessary that's not always good the aggregate expenditure limit is something that we all need to be paying very careful attention to so i appreciate you bringing that into your public comment speaking of we are moving on to the public comments section of our meeting at this point okay just as a reminder our public meeting decorum states that citizens attending and or participating in scottsdale unified school district meetings either in person virtually or telephonically are required to observe the same rules of order and a quorum applicable to members of the governing board and staff on or and unauthorized remarks or demonstrations from members of the audience
027yells outbursts and or other disruptions are not permitted at this time i would like to call which time does he speak thank you for the reminders he's providing grace in my new role appreciate that each speaker will be given two minutes of time and if you go over the two minutes your microphone will be cut off and understand that just delays the process of allowing everyone to have input in our public meetings i will say the person who's coming up at that time i'd like the person to approach the podium and then i will also say who's next so they can prepare and be ready to come up for two minutes of public comment and please pardon any name mispronunciations rich hoffler is up followed by jill duncan first i'd like to thank scottsdale police
028officers for their work to protect our community and protect and serve our community and that's what i'd like to talk about tonight hate and intolerance of any form should not be allowed in scottsdale schools this should also extend to police and school resource officers i should not have to educate this board on the fact that there is anti-police programming in scottsdale schools glsen is an organization that creates content used in scottsdale gsa clubs has provided safe space training for teachers and has recently praised scott menzel for his support but they promote hatred of police glsen hides behind their lgbtq focus just the district frames any criticism of glsen as anti-gsa but has anyone on this board looked into glsen's radical positions glsen material claims systematic brutality of the police state and its supposed ties to
029white supremacy students are left with the impression that police should be abolished and that the general the policing in general is rooted in racism i don't believe for one second that the officers that are here tonight are white supremacists or operate in racist ways stu the yeah why should susd encourage students to believe this nonsense to hate these guys that are here for us glsen also calls for the elimination of school resource officers claiming that they marginalize they make marginalized students feel unsafe why should we be teaching this to our students plain and simple glsen engages in anti-police anti-sro hate speech this board is either uneducated about glyphs [Music] thank you for wrapping it up jill duncan is up followed by jeff stefan hate speech does not align with the district's stated values of integrity
030empathy inclusion and unity yet hate speech is being allowed in our schools and worse it's being supported and defended by our administration at desert mountain a teacher led a club discussion about intersectionality which is a construct that encourages students to judge each other based on immutable labels for the purpose of stack ranking their victimhood status and identifying their oppressors this type of teaching ultimately aims to segregate students by race and sexual orientation this is simply put racist this is hate speech how can a teacher be allowed to plant the idea in a child's mind that their ability to achieve is determined by their skin color why would a teacher shame a white child into accepting guilt for the accused oppression of their peers broadly applying negative characteristics to a group of people based solely on
031their skin color is the essence of racism this is hate speech so what's the source of this hate speech glsen and their gsa clubs and what's been done to solve the issue of racist hate speech in our schools well first scott menzel you attempted to gaslight this community by reframing curriculum critiques as targeted attacks on students and now the district's attorney is personally refusing to fulfill public records requests about glsen and the sexuality clubs i can only imagine what you're hiding perhaps the district's time would be better spent protecting our children from glsen's hate speech if the district is truly committed to an inclusive environment for every single student bliss glsen's racist programming must be removed scottsdale schools thank you for wrapping [Applause] up now is jeff stefan followed by michelle klann thank you board
032members everyone in the crowd it's great to see you i just want to read a bible verse proverbs 29 2. when the righteous are in authority the people rejoice but when the wicked beareth rule the people mourn and many of us are mourning in scottsdale due to your leadership and under joe biden we are mourning severely it is really bad i encourage all of you in the community if you are a godly man or woman please run for school board run for local offices we need godly men and women leading our country to take this back i also wanted to read in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth the earth was formless and empty and darkness covered the deep waters and the spirit of god was hovering over the face of the
033waters further so god created human beings in his own image in the image of god he created them male and female he created them i also wanted to share i am completely unvaccinated unmasked and unafraid i will never ever take the poisonous mrna injections that scott manziel always recommends and if you have kids under the age of 18 please never ever give them the fouchy fake vaccines they're absolutely terrible i wanted to ask the board if you could please remove cnn from all public televisions in our schools cnn is now a pedophile news network i also wanted to add uh please do not remove school resource officers i'm really worried about the thought exchange you guys emailed out last night we need cops they keep our kids safe they keep us safe god god bless
034the men and women in blue that protect our community thank you for wrapping that up up now is michelle clan followed by looks like ben watkins yeah um i put in a card for lee dundas first then choose number four that's when you could read it what is the name lee dundas okay i had i couldn't we couldn't read the name no that's okay so i was i put it at the end and i was going to say if any someone who put their card in okay so it's lee taylor thank you okay lee taylor is up followed by ben watkins i'm sorry yeah followed by michelle clan we'll get this human rights attorney lee dundas the fact that scottsdale unified district was until recently being led by a 28 year old male attorney still
035living at home with his father who misused his mantle of trust as school board president to allow for a collection of minor school children's photos in his district to be warehoused on a personal computer or g drive that he had access to which also included such information as their families states of birth property and tax records license plate numbers vehicle records divorce proceedings criminal histories financial records mortgage records and not least surveillance footage garnish from hidden cameras is nothing short of horrifying greenberg was elected to represent the families in this district not to allow for the warehousing of a kgb style dossier on drives he had access to what we the people want to know and what you as an entire school board should be asking is whether this little goat rope was funded by
036taxpayer dollars or school money monies because this goat rope is something that senator joe mccarthy would have blushed about and probably hitler's gestapo would have applauded further why in the heck is he still sitting on this board after this came to light and by the way who is bonding mr greenberg surety bonds for elected officials exist to ensure the elected official uh carries out their duties with integrity and fidelity pictures of little eight-year-old girls and ten-year-old girls being warehoused on a g-drive he had access to in his home is that how he executes his public duties with fidelity integrity there is one reason and only one reason i can think of that a 28 year old man would have eight and 10 year old photos of children in this district on a g drive he
037had access to and let me tell you friends it has nothing to do with integrity or fidelity if i were a bond company i wouldn't touch this man with a 10-foot pole and neither should you michelle michelle plan followed by ben watkins [Music] hi my name is mickey klein and i'm holding in my hand the agreement that you recently signed in order to obtain 30 million dollars in escrow funds from the federal government you've agreed to have you've agreed to enforce strict mass policies strict contact tracing policies free vaccination clinics for teachers and students and you've agreed to bring in federally funded social workers to enforce this agenda since receiving these funds the teachers have been encouraging our children to take vaccinations and that their age of consent is five years old really since when
038are any of these teachers in the school district qualified to give medical advice to children and since when in the history of our great nation have you ever wanted to take on that liability and who is liability if one single child dies of a vaccine due to this very unfortunate circumstance i stand before you today with a letter of intent to file a claim against your surety bond please be advised that you will be personally liable for up to one hundred thousand dollars per claim and i have ten claims if you do not resolve the following issues within the next five business days number one jan michael greenberg needs to resign number two remove all masking and testing requirements both on and off campus and stop recommending them entirely number three close down any and
039all vaccine clinics to stop and stop recommending them to anyone from this day forward it will be the sole decision of the parents to make health related decisions for their children number four you must renegotiate all of your terms with regard to the most recent esther contract moving forward every line item that you agree to must be voted on by all of the parents you must provide us are your books because in number five we will perform an audit with regards to school spending as well as the spending of disaster funds over the past two years and number six you must and i mean you must remove all the books in the school libraries or curriculum that promote pedophilia underage sex abortion or any other unacceptable forms of sexual influence upon our children during every
040communist regime takeover in the country in the history of our world they've always used these programs thank you for wrapping it up it's time for ben watkins [Applause] [Music] no [Music] please have a seat please have a seat please have a seat [Music] ma'am your time is up it's time for ben watkins to begin thank you communism is encroaching on our country communist school boards are now indoctrinating our children with transsexual propaganda and teaching them to be racist against white people by teaching racist biden's critical racist theory i'm not white myself but i've dealt with racism and understand how dangerous and misguided it is to teach our children to be racist teaching our vulnerable children to be racist and indoctrinating them with transsexual propaganda was not the intent of our founding fathers when they fought
041and sacrificed for our freedoms so many years ago the communist creeps at our school boards are now taking our parental rights away by teaching our children that they can be vaccinated without parental consent this is a blatant destruction of the family units with the goal of undermining our society from the ground up communism must not take hold we must never comply with communist policies i am ron watkins running for congress in arizona's district number two [Music] sir it is time for you to sit down you need to ask james james can you pl please have him sit down thank you we have a meeting to put of my intent to file a claim against the bonds of this school board for enforcing unconstitutional policies so it's time for you to sit down if the school
042board does not immediately sir you need to sit down or leave followed by amy [Applause] just a reminder of our decorum expectation thank you oh my gosh that was rude i agree my name is andrea cohen and while my children are now college age as a parent living in scottsdale unified school district i want to applaud your efforts to further address the social emotional and mental health of our students and staff at a time when funding is being pulled from our public schools and content is being challenged i appreciate your desire not to ignore threats to our children cloven 19 has an increase the amount of stress felt by students and at a time when life is already stressful suicide attempts in children less than 15 have increased over the past two years it has
043never been easy being a child or teen and in this world with so much negative noise i appreciate you looking for ways to support both them at school and at home in the proposal by dr hart wells on tonight's agenda in the proposal by dr hart wells on tonight's agenda i want to express my support for increased suicide awareness training for teachers and administrators so that they recognize the warning signs as well as addressing known risk factors for suicide i also want to extend my support for the provision of educational materials to students and families to an evidence-based program on the safe storage of firearms approximately 5.5 million children living in a household with at least one gun that is easily accessible but research shows that up to a third of firearm related deaths in
044children could be prevented if adults safely stored their guns i'm asking the board to do everything they can to help our students navigate the stressful time in our lives when my children attended trian traditional school i was on the pto board i attended the funeral of for the son of my fellow board member hunter was in eighth grade when he took a gun from his father's home and killed himself i sat at that funeral alongside teachers staff friends and students and i will never forget that pain thank you for moving forward with this very important resource and thank all of you for the incredible work that you're doing you don't deserve the abuse that you're getting thank you [Music] [Applause] up now is amy dean powered by risso longnecker they're not going to tell me
045where i'm going to store my guns i'll tell you that right now just so you know you say amy b i did okay amy you're up all right well i feel very underqualified i don't have a fiery speech or anything to say tonight um as far as that goes um i did look at the agenda for tonight and i had some questions and just concerns about it and i think most of you guys know this because i did send an email i looked on the arizona school board association's website of which scottsdale unified school district as a member and it says the board's existence is based on the belief that lay control of public education makes schools flexible and responsive to the needs of the local community i'm concerned about some of the policy changes
046that have been proposed to the b policies and the fact that it takes it appears to take uh the center of control away from community members and it references the district which isn't defined and it also appears in some places to take control away from the board members in general and consolidate it with a single individual so i just i i would like to see more information on these changes definition of what the district means in these changes so that was mainly why why i was going to speak and then i did want to say some one additional thing that the first speaker brought up was about respecting our police officers and the fact that school materials are teaching our students not to so i just pulled a little excerpt from a book that my
047child read in fourth grade or was assigned to her fourth grade classroom and it has been officially i've been told that it is approved as appropriate so a police officer is interrogating a black man see the police know i'm right mr yao said taking their in taking their interrogation of hank as evidence that his theory about black people was valid he was wrong the only thing it proved was that the police were just like him the book does not correct this view of police officers and i don't think that's appropriate for our children that's all i have to say tonight thank you thank you that's now with risa long longer followed by patty o'neill okay um i want to talk about the changes of policy that you are proposing today um i didn't send the
048mail today but nobody answered well my answer was thank you for the email and i think everybody should aware what a right i noticed the some of the points that today board meeting include potentially a very significant change to the to the treatment our parents community voices on the decisions that this school board takes i will give you some examples the board operational goals these change the focus on the board duties from the community to the district i have here a meaning the water board meaning what it's supposed to be is in charge of local public school they base their decision on inputs from families teachers superintendent students and general public know where they say about district public participation and border meetings you are talking about the setup and change completely the voice it is
049in pro or against the things that you are taking as undulate repetitions or irrelevance who it is irrelevant okay it can be also your decisions can be relevant for some portion of this that the community and we are not making you silence your voice so but you are taking changes to silence our voice the poor powers and responsibilities again that makes change so that the board no longer answers to the will of the people but to the district still who is the district in addiction it is a proposal that the board might not be removed a board officer during during their terms in office i wonder why unethical behavior will be now not only permitted but rewarded uncovered i am expecting that a majority of these poor completely discharged thank you for wrapping up your
050public comment time for patty o'neill [Applause] followed by kane huzar evening um madam chair julie cenidowski and vice president libby hart wells and the rest of the board and dr scott mensel thank you very much i want to bring a big different tone tonight i want to thank you but first before i do that i want to i just want to recognize that amazing student annelise jones this is why we're here this is why you guys are here is to have students like that come through and be successful and provide them teachers that were recognized tonight and so i just want to thank you we have to remember that you are not paid and you shouldn't have to succumb to this kind of treatment this month i think dr menzel mentioned is national school board
051appreciation month and i don't know if anybody knows this but i found some little factoids of this board and what they've done so for the fifth consecutive year school year susd teacher salaries have gone up four percent did you know that it was this board here right at 83 susd is honored to have one of the arizona's highest number of national school national board certified teachers thank you for making that happen 95 percent of the school year in 2021 was in prison we got the students back in the classroom and made every effort to make sure that they stayed there and i just want to point out a couple more things highlighting your successes because they just don't get mentioned enough so ninety percent of the here's a good one ninety percent of the human
052brain growth occurs before the age of five which is why the usus is adding stem focus free kindergarten at navajo elementary school thank you and that's just to name a few i'm here to highlight all of your successes time is up it's time for kane bizarre followed by susan winder good evening uh congratulations julie solonowski i would like to acknowledge that out of the five board members you always return my emails and i want to thank you for that and in fact the first time i ever emailed you you invited me to lunch um i hope that you use that collaboration and that spirit to help heal and build and bring this community together c.s lewis said the reason for democracy is actually the reverse humans are so fallen that no one can be trusted
053with unchecked powers some would argue that parents who choose to come speak before this board to air their grievances and to put checks on your power that somehow these parents or these community members of the community are being divisive or that they come to pour gasoline on the district's problems i'd like to challenge that notion and i'd like to offer an alternative point of view the members of this community who come to speak to this board whether in support of your work or in critique of your work both perspectives are valid and they are needed you should know when you get it right and you should also know when you get it wrong when parents speak you should choose to listen and welcome any challenge brought before you that offers feedback about your work because
054we not only have a right we have an obligation i have an obligation as a mother to check the work of this board you represent us and you answer to us you answer to the community that's why we elected you the only way that we can help correct the wrongs is by allowing those that you represent the stakeholders to be a part of the conversation you must allow the check of your work so that the broken things superintendent may be fixed we come before this board because you are responsible for the decline in enrollment for other things and it is my responsibility to hold you accountable and it's your responsibility to take ownership of the things that are wrong and broken thank you very much susan winder followed by tim curtis a good evening and
055thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts my name is susan winder i'm a retired educator with an advanced degree in curriculum instruction a taxpayer in your district and a grandmother to students at 10 year middle and high schools what i'm holding up for you right here tonight are two workbooks from the middle school for the i ready program which was purchased with esser money for the purpose ensuring our students didn't have gaps in learning due to covet i have researched this program it is based on excellent research and it's actually developed pre around when this covet started for the main purpose that you purchased it to keep the learning gaps not there and i thank your excellent curriculum department for picking this here's the bad news see these pages they haven't been started
056they haven't been finished instead the teacher and unfortunately she was given an award tonight is using this material my favorite dislike of the page is the one that says youtube videos where they can go find how to do the things in this package here i am sure these packages do not correlate with i ready first off because they approach in an entirely different fashion and at the bottom of that there is no publication which always publishers put when they have things that can be reproduced my my grandchild got these the first day he went to middle school and was told to take them home and save them also applying with this is a book he got this week no way it's going to be used before the end of the year and as a matter
057of fact he was told to save that one as well this is very disturbing to me because number one this is thousands of dollars that are going to be thrown into the trash number two it's probably going to leave our students with a larger gap in money than they already had this week my grandchild came home to me and said the math teacher and said to him um i'm tired of all these apps and all the emails from the parents i find it very disturbing that principals will allow this abuse of this excellent curriculum that our tax dollars have paid for and that you um thank you for wrapping it up tim curtis is up followed by bert teveld and tim curtis followed by bert teveld good evening yeah i'm tim curtis i'd like to
058thank you for your public service after last year it seems like we've been taking some steps uh in the right direction um seems like we've all been so focused on medical science that we lost a focus on behavioral science behavioral science and that i think would have kept us all from creating some of our own problems so this year there's no need to spend your time categorizing people and making parent opposition lists that's behavioral there's no need to tolerate colleagues that make this list these lists that's also behavioral there's no need to take sides no need to take uh or to drive a wedge that's all behavioral there's no need to overreach or mandate things when you can educate especially when it comes to people's bodies is unmanageable it's unsustainable and it's personal no need
059to send healthy kids home again and no need to keep them away no need to create an animosity you are very busy with the academic agenda you've got better things to do so thank you for your time [Applause] up now is bert teveld followed by sarah dorn good evening tomorrow i will not be in my classroom instead i will do my part in shaping a strategic plan for our district and to ensure that teachers are recognized and supported as the professionals that we are we know that teachers together with the school staff and in collaboration with the adults in the lives of our students form the basis for student success this is how parent voice counts i'm able to do this work because a guest teacher also known as a sub is in my classroom
060substitutes are not always available memes are flying around the internet with jokes about sub shortages except it is not a joke in case you forgot teachers are people too we get sick we have emergencies and we need to take care of ourselves to sustain our service it is not a viable option to have colleagues covered during their prep time which happens way too often so substitute teachers are essential please if you can get a sub license do this is how parent voices can make a difference and then finally there's the political reality of a financial cliff on march 1st we all of us need to speak up and make sure that archaic 1980 rules do not impact our students now call your legislator and urge them to pass the legislation to release the spending cap
061by march 1st parent voice is essential community voice is essential in concert with educational professionals to cover when teachers cannot be there and as voters who make sure that their voice in support of our public schools is heard at the capitol finally i was recognized as a national board certified teacher thank you i would like to recognize you as a governing board since you were celebrated this month as well thank you for your service good night sarah dorn followed by christine marsh good evening thank you for letting me speak tonight first i'd like to thank dr manziel for allowing volunteers back on campus that is much needed and will be greatly appreciated by the teachers and the parents i would ask that you rescind one last coveted restriction the poor elementary school students lunch they
062are still forced to sit three to six feet apart in assigned seats these kids have not been able to sit and talk to their friends all year long in the meantime both middle and high school lunch can sit crowded together at tables my middle schooler sits with 15 other children every day at lunch smooshed together happy as can be and my poor fifth grader can barely talk to one friend i've brought this issue up many times over the last few months and i've been told continuously well it's because they can't get vaccinated yet well that time has come and gone there has been plenty of opportunity for anyone who chooses to get their child vaccinated to do so so why do we continue to torture our poor elementary school children with these restrictions and i
063think you can look at your data there has been no large outbreak in middle or high school that can be traced back to lunch so at this point it just seems like an unnecessary requirement in addition uh one last thing as i was reading the agenda tonight i noticed that there are policy changes that are being suggested and it seems to read to me that it's removing the board's obligation to the people of this district as well as altering the manner in which public comments are given or even having them be allowed at this time when the trust and public institutes is at an all-time low and i know it's hard to sit up here and listen to people you don't agree with but having that ability for parents to voice their concerns actually adds
064to more trust and helps bring our community together thank you our final speaker this evening is christine marsh good evening board members dr menzel gladys wagner who i have not had the pleasure of meeting yet um i'm state senator christine marsh i represent a district a legislative district which has quite a bit of overlap with scottsdale unified and i've taught in this district for almost my entire career which is 31 years as many of you know schools across our state are currently being threatened by the aggregate expenditure limit an arbitrary limit on how much our schools could spend that was set in the 1980s and it's unchanged since then if we don't override it by march 1st that's 27 million dollars of already promised and appropriated money here in scottsdale unified gone and i realize
065that both dr menzel and bert teveld have talked about this but as i tell my students sometimes redundancy is necessary in my 28 years of teaching in scottsdale i've had i've seen class sizes rise to unsustainable levels it used to be that i'd have 150 contacts in a day which is to say 150 students i'd teach for the entire day in my last pre-coveted year i had 185. now instead of moving to bring that number back down this aggregate expenditure limit threatens to send it flying upwards that's not even where the problems with this arbitrary limit end our schools absolutely must remain open but without two-thirds of each legislative chamber many across our state will end up closing there's a bill i'm running which would provide a one-time override to the aggregate expenditure limit called
066scr1022 i urge you to get in touch with your legislators and urge them to support that bill otherwise uh school board meetings won't be discussions of curriculum and covid and the wonderful parents and community input that we've had but rather it'll be figuring out what getting by looks like thank you for wrapping that up thank you that concludes the public comments section of our governing board meeting this evening are there any corrections that any of the governing board members would like to make in regards to misinformation directions to staff or superintendent to add to future meetings i would like to add a few um one of our speakers mentioned the use of our instructional materials i would really like for us to delve into that a little bit more and make sure that the resources
067that we are spending to support our students are actually useful materials and then i would like for there to be a consideration and look at the elementary lunchtime period because i do value social skills and i do understand that sometimes kids come to school for those social opportunities and those include lunch and recess if there are no other additions we will be moving on to our information and discussion items at this time i will turn this over to dr menzo thank you president sinowski as you know we're moving into our budget planning season and shannon crozier our chief financial officer is going to present the preliminary budget information for 2223 with appropriate backup information to explain where we are at at this point in time shannon vice president dr hart wells members of the board
068dr mental and guest this evening we are looking at the imminent um sorry the mno projections for next year as well as the district additional assistance and capital override budget projections first we take a look at the budget estimates we we started out with a student weight count reduction of 507. dr menzel mentions this a little bit and i'll bring it up again our student count our adm is different than student headcount students that are in aoi seoul online programs are based on minutes so whereas we could have higher headcounts because those are classified by minutes it affects what our adm actually looks like in addition to that all of our programs have student weights there's student weights for students in k through 12. there are also additional student weights that affect group b weights
069which would be like special needs programs so that being said when i say reduction of 507 that doesn't mean a reduction of 507 students it takes a look at what our adm projections could be for next year with those added student weights which does amplify that a little bit the other part i would point out with that is that we're up students this year we're still getting students back from our pre-covered years and so when i'm looking at the budget projections for next year i'm trying to be conservative because what i don't want to do is have to come back to the board next year once we get into school and say we were really off and we've got to cut the budget by millions of dollars that's not to say that you know we
070we could find something different for next year but we do when we're looking at these estimates we try to be conservative of what we're looking at when i looked at those estimates what i took was basically where are we right now with our adm and what is our average been over the past several years again past five years again covered year being a dramatic cut in what we saw and so that greatly affects our adm projection so i just wanted to kind of put where that was at and why we came up with that number the great news is that we have an estimated inflation of of two percent so that's what we're projecting right now that equates to about eighty eight dollars more per student uh based off of where we or the state
071estimates for next year additionally and more great news is that arizona state retirement system has come out with their amounts and for next year amazingly that number is going down that percentage that's a savings for the district of about three hundred thousand dollars that's also a savings for our employees because we both contribute the same percentage um so that percentage will go down to twelve point seventeen percent again that's exciting news for for both us and our employees so when we look at our projected budget for next year we have our total student weight count of 26 909 students our base level increase of two percent puts us at four thousand five hundred thirty four dollars we receive additional funds for teacher experience basically what that looks at is what is the experience of the
072teachers in our district as compared to just uh teachers throughout the state we have thankfully a higher amount of teachers with more experience and so we get a little bit of additional funding from that that number has been staying flat we don't know the actual percentage for next year but like i said it's been relatively flat so we anticipate it staying at that same amount additionally we receive funds for our audit that we do every single year that's requirement and then funds for transportation which gets us to our revenue control limit of 133 million we uh have passed an over mno override which is 15 of our revenue control limit so we estimate that to be 20 million dollars for next year continued decent funding for 7.3 million continued dropout prevention stays the same at
073221 000. one thing i'll point out is budget bounds carry forward we have that listed as 15 million dollars two things with the budget balance carry forward one that is money from this year that will not be we anticipate not being spent from this year's budget and so it is budget that we can carry over into next year it is more than the six percent that the the board had approved for a minimum maximum amount for carry forward a large portion of that is because covid we just didn't spend the you know expenses were down considerably last year um so we're anticipating that being at 15 million and we're purposefully trying to bring that down we worked on that within this current year budget is we need to bring that down that's too high of
074a carry forward and so that plays into the bottom line and i'll talk about that in a minute we have water savings transfers that's pretty much for our performance contracts and then prop 123 funds that's based off of this lawsuit with a settlement with the state that provides all districts with additional funds we are also looking at continuing to move funds to cash controlled accounts bringing those balances down and so therefore when we look at where we think our budget will be for next year kids looking at a budget for this year we see a change of 514 thousand dollars um i want to point out that doesn't mean we've overspent our budget that doesn't mean that we're short budget what what that number comes from is we look at this year's budget and but
075we think next year's budget will be and there's a difference of 500 and that 514 000 our budget that we carried over are coming right over into this current year was 16.2 so when we reduce the budget carry forward by 1.2 million dollars that's going to bring our budget difference down again does not mean we've overspent our budget are all over spending our budget in any way so we go into that we know that between the two differences and budgets were 514 thousand dollars less for this year additionally we know we have program increases every year that take place we know that there are certain services that will go up in price as does you know most services we also know that there may be additional programs or opportunities we want to provide to our
076schools that generally is around a hundred thousand dollars so we factored that in the great part is we have a savings of three hundred thousand dollars based off of the state retirement reduction additionally uh the governing board at the last meeting approved reopening yavapai when i say reopening we never really closed yavapai we combined them so there are some expenses with with separating those two schools out again at the governing board meaning the last time you will see that that amount was nine hundred thousand so if you're wondering why am i saying four when we talked about a different number at the reopening it's simply because some of those expenses for for doing moving that program are capital expenses and we're only looking at mno here so the m o portion of it we anticipate
077being about 400. and then property casualty insurance that fee is about 2 million dollars per year it's paid from our self-insurance trust fund the last two years we have opted not to contribute to that because there is just an excess of cash in that in that account and that is one of the accounts we're working to bring down and so we have chosen not to fund that but not continuing to not fund it at all means at some point we're going to have a little bit of a cliff when we have to start putting two million back into it so i'm recommending that we fund that at half which would be a million dollars that's back into the budget since we took it out the past couple of years um so that's why you see
078that there so that leaves us at 1.7 uh deficit that we need to to fill the gap on and so we have a couple things for that one of them being like i said our self insurance trust account is very flush with cash more so than what we need our self insurance trust board is talking about setting minimums and maximums but as a part of that we believe that we could easily reduce the contribution from the district to health insurance by a million dollars that does not affect our employees that doesn't change the premiums it doesn't mean that we're pushing expenses onto employees necessarily it means the district itself is not going to fully fund the 11 12 million dollars that we normally put into medical insurance will hold a million dollars back which frees
079up the million dollars in mno additionally we have the same thing with workers contr workers compensation again we're trying to reduce those balances the recommendation would be to limit that that contribution from the district freeing up funds within mno and then right now i talked about we have 15 million dollars in kerry ford that's not money that's just sitting unallocated that we're just not using that's money that's here that we've used to pay for positions that we just didn't fill that are vacant positions or budget items that we budgeted one amount they came in less however we do have four million dollars right now sitting in unallocated and so we would utilize that four million sitting and unallocated to then help support with salary adjustments for next year for our staff um as i mentioned
080we talked about the cash accounts and i know um board member beckman brought this up a couple months ago when we talked about budgets um so this is just taking a look at what where are some of our cash balances we have more cash accounts than this these are the cash accounts that are less restrictive and that we can utilize to help offset district costs which we've done we've actually in the past three years moved over four million dollars from mno expenses to these cash accounts we did not transfer any for this year this current year we didn't feel that was necessary however we do need to continue to look at bringing those balances down and so we are recommending that we move um 500 000 worth of expenses from mno over to our indirect
081cost account which will continue to bring that down some of those balances uh you know we're still looking at we know that our revenue and medicaid reimbursements or mips has gone down of recent and our expenses have gone up so that's why i'm cautious not to touch that account um we know our civic center has a pretty healthy balance and that's one we're probably going to have to look at however that's that's an account that um schools utilize as well and so we've been a little hesitant to take from school something that they're used to seeing but it is something that we might have to start looking at is that balance is pretty high um community education took an extremely hard hit during covet they had staff they still had to pay however they did
082not have the revenue coming in that they would typically have in a year um in fact we used we used funds last year to help them through that that that year as it was a very difficult year for them so again they're okay we think they're going to continue to be okay and that program will continue to grow but i i just don't recommend at this time putting any additional cost to them so that's why we really limited it to indirect costs as we go forward then we have the district additional assistance this is essentially capital funds that we receive we are fully funded through daw now so this was the first year that we were fully funded through daw next year will be the next um one of the things with that is does
083actually um based on prior year adm so we anticipate our doll actually going up just a little bit next year because it'll be based off of this year's enrollment which has actually increased or the adm has actually increased so that's a good thing for our capital programs and then we have a carry forward of about 3 million for that so that gives an idea of about we're thinking about 13 million for da and then our voters approved a capital override in november of 2016 which started in the 17-18 school year um that is capped at 8.5 million so that is every year we receive the same amount of money additionally we think at this point um about two million will be carried forward on that giving us about 10.5 million for capital override one thing
084i will say about capital is that um we have not had a capital five-year plan in i don't know how long years uh we are currently working on that we are working on what does that look like how does that look for our district and as a continual plan so we've been working with um employees in the district but also community members on what are the needs of our district when we start talking about capital what does that look like for the next couple of years so we know what do we need and where is it going to land and so we're better we're better better prepared in our budget for capital issues or capital things that we need um so we are still in that process we will come back in april and talk
085about the capital plan with a little bit more in depth but that's essentially where we are with capital um so the last part of this is just we talked about the m o this is the second time bringing up the m o um we will come back in february the end of february to look at proposed salary schedules and employee benefits in march we will come back for a tentative mmo approval so that we can move forward issuing those contracts move forward with the budget process and allow schools uh when we're ready to start making those orders for next year getting their their annual orders in then in april we'll come back with the capital tentative budget approval again capital items you've got to get those orders in early so we like to get that
086order that authority in so that we can start having our schools put those purchases in and then june is proposed and adopted in public hearings so we'll have the first meeting in june will be the proposed budget and then the second meeting last meeting in june will be public hearing and then budget adoption with that i'll take any questions at this time do governing board members have any questions comments yes um board member beckman sure with eggs well so we have we have emino we receive cash 4. but mno is a budget driven account so regardless of the amount of cash we have on hand we are limited to the the budget that is based off of the state legislative amount per student and so that and that budget formula which is utilized by all
087districts within arizona's um so we are bound by what the the budget amount is if we have way more if we have millions of dollars more in cash on mno it doesn't mean we have more money to spend because we are restricted to the budget limit that plays into it absolutely we are looking at that um our capital what we're looking at and i think we'll probably bring that back before april cap april is when we'll bring back our capital plan for our budget but i think we'll be back before then to talk about um the possibility of if we want to move forward with a budget uh i'm sorry capital override in the future we have our capital override now for two more years but we're looking at we would definitely need to if
088we wanted to continue it would definitely have to go to vote by november of 23. we're looking at possibly a year early being november of 22 um to take that out to voters uh just just so that we we know we've got that in place moving forward um so we are collecting data on that we are putting together you know with with the capital planning committee what does that look like so we know when we come forward with um wanting to take that out back to our voters for approval what exactly that would look like and and the dollar associated with it so we are talking about that again and it will be brought up i think before april okay i appreciate that one last thing um because i always bring this up just because
089there's continual confusion around the cash accounts there are two spots where we talk about the cash counts the first one is in the mmo budget which is what some of us call the 500 funds and shannon brought that forth tonight back in 2019 we established those first min and max that you will see and correct me if i'm wrong the minimum is 0.25 percentage of an annual year's revenue the maximum on hand is two times the annual year's revenue so if you the misconception tends to be if you are over that two years or that max that we're immediately just going to slice off that amount off the top and spend it in the mnl account that essentially lets us know that that is money that could be identified for other areas but it's not
090just going to be immediately spent the other area is the trust account cash balances those are a little bit more tied up they aren't that is not cash over there that you can just use if you run out of money in the m o and go right over there and use it that's a considerable there are three accounts in the trust account there's our working cut workers compensation our property casualty and our medical account all of which have to be used for certain expenses shannon does a great job every year if the m o is light like she showed us that what we can do instead of paying the premiums for something like property casualty she cannot take that premium out of the mmo and just let that premium draw down the cash that's sitting
091in the property and casualty account over in those three cash accounts if that makes sense but continually people come to me and say we have all this cash on hand over here why don't we just use it for things inside our budget and it can't be used for things just inside the mnl budget but last thing on that we are i'm sit on the truss board so we are working for towards bringing forth min and max for those three accounts that i just identified in the trust account as well so the public from a transparency perspective would know the maximum amount of cash that we would hold in there before we begin to look at using the overage amount for to offset other expenses in the mno anything that you need to add about that
092no i think that um that is a great description of what happens i think the other thing to point out when we're looking at this yes we're over on some of these cash accounts and we need to bring the balances down what i don't want to do is bring all those balances down right away and then have to come back and say okay well now we've taken all this money away but i've got to put five million dollars back into mno right now because we've used up all of our cash accounts we also know that there's some fiscal cliffs out there prop 123 will end eventually that's a million dollars we have an mno override that will again at some point need to be approved if we're going to continue with that funding i don't
093want to put us in a spot where i'm now standing up in front of the board or the cfo is standing up in front of the board saying well we spent all this cash and now you've got to figure out how to put 15 million or 10 million back into your mmo that would be really detrimental to the district and so we're trying to be slow but methodic about how we do it so that it's just not one big funding cliff that hits at one point we can we can slowly take expenses to it but we can slowly move expenses back to when we need an m vice president hurtwells thank you shannon i wanted if we could can we go back a few slides to the um the negative 500 000-ish that one so
094you talked about the prior year current year change um as about a half a million under and my question is and thank you for clarifying to the public what what that means and what is that um what we're looking at based on the assumption that the ael cap the aggregate expenditure limit cap will be waived yes it is we are we are making the assumption that it will be waived if that is not waived the current school year budget looks dramatically different this budget looks dramatically different so just to remind and make sure i understand and for clarity for our community of how important this waiver is is that all the budget projections you've presented are really based comp to this year or last year and so this year has the risk of looking drastically
095different 27 million dollars lighter which will have a ripple effect on next year's budget and consequent spending right it would have a ripple effect at four years not just next year it would ripple through for multiple years so we're not talking just a one-year consequence here is correct thank you for clarifying shannon thanks for all your good work any other comments from the board questions i actually have a few shannon if you would entertain me with this can you go over potential health care costs for our um that could be potentially altered for our employees and their families their insurance costs so we do not have the rates yet for what next year is looking like what that potential increase would be i mean we know that year after year the premium rates do do
096go up we haven't seen what that looks like for next year so we we're not sure at this time what that what percentage that would be the district the past couple of years have had the self-insurance trust has absorbed those increases there are real concerns you know i don't want to pass it's hard to pass those those expenses onto employees that's a hit to their wallet at the same time i don't want to get to a point where we've not passed that on for years and we pass on a sticker shock to employees when we can't continue to observe it and that will that will become a reality at some point where we can't continue to absorb all of those increases so one of the things we have to look at and we'll be looking
097at it with the self-insurance trust as well as what the governing board is when we have those numbers and we should have them soon they're working on them right now when we have those numbers what does it look like and what would be the appropriate balance if this is another year that we want to absorb those costs or if we feel like we need to start to you know make small changes to that that don't hopefully don't affect as much health insurance is expensive and it's expensive for our district we've looked at initiatives to try to educate employees as to choices that they can make differently that affects what they have to pay out of pocket but it affects we're self-insured so whatever costs are occurred we as the district pay for them so we've
098looked at education programs on how do we let people know that you know maybe this pharmacy charges a little bit more for that drug than this other pharmacy do you want to maybe switch to a different pharmacy things like that that they can do that that do that we also this year the self-insurance trust paid for a program called real appeal for our employees the last i checked which was about a month ago we had 70 plus employees on it it's essentially like weight watchers through united healthcare and so you have a coach you have weekly sessions that talk about how that are encouraging sessions on how to encourage employees through their their weight loss management you can have one-on-one sessions with that coach and basically it's just tracking just tracking what your goal is
099with weight loss and the part the point of that being healthier employees equate to less insurance premiums and equate to um you know less chance of getting things like diabetes which is extremely expensive and other health issues that can be costly for the for the employee that's great thank you for bringing that up and i also want to thank you for creating an understandable presentation on such complex items so thank you shannon any other questions all right at this time i i would like for us to move on to 7b and b per board policy governing board members can put forth agenda discussion items tonight we have two discussion items the next two were proposed and will be led by governing board members the first one 7b is the first read of changes to b
100policies and that is led by board member greenberg uh thank you president sanowski um as mentioned this is a proposal that i have put forward for several amendments to the b policies which govern the operations of the governing board itself as noted in the background information a number of these amendments or proposed amendments are based on the discussions the board had last year involving items such as how to place items on the agenda standing advisory committees as you know we have our audit committee but in fact current board policy would prohibit items like audit committees and then of course propose or possible changes to open calls to the public i did manage to write down a number of the concerns that members of the public had raised about these and i will address those i've
101also been kind of keeping track on our uh emails as they come in um there seems to be a decent amount of misunderstanding here um as a preliminary matter uh the first policy edit is policy ba school board operation and goals i just wanted to show here on the screen for everyone policy bb actually establishes the school board's legal status and makes clear as is stated in the constitution and in state law that school boards are instruments of the arizona legislature and derive their authority from the constitution so there are these there have been these comments that um you know we're supposed to be beholden to the will of the people i that is correct in a philosophical sense but is actually not how the governing board itself derives its authority um what we've done
102here in policy ba you can see the original struck out language here most of these elements are actually incorporated in the new policy they're just worded differently for example the governing board is responsible to the people the district and should be aware of the opinions and attitudes in the commit community two of our six or two of our six groups here five groups here uh specifically discuss the need to foster the district's relationships with the community partnerships and others and the impact of the district's operations on the community as factors that the governing board is agreeing to consider when making decisions the policy was broadly taken by general um you know from common law and statutory sources on the duties and obligations of board members in the private sector but modified given that we are
103a government board and so when we talk about the governing board's responsibility is to act in good faith in the best interest of the district as a whole with the paramount concern being the interest of each student the district is scottsdale unified number 48 that is the organization on which we are board members or for which we're board members and our obligation really is to make decisions in the best interests of the district as a whole i think the the what i believe the implied concept is that the governing board is supposed to simply do whatever majority of the of the community demands that we do or at least the loudest portion of our community demands that we do and that is wrong i would argue philosophically but also incorrect in terms of our legal
104obligations we do have to follow arizona law we cannot discriminate against student clubs and students of um from minority groups like the lgbtq community so artists you know our decisions really are made in the best interest of the district as a whole and uh here as i mentioned are just kind of the factors that i've pulled from various sources that we would be essentially agreeing to among ourselves to consider when making decisions like the long-term impact again long-term impact is actually listed here in the original language district needs and to require short and long-range strategies that are responsive within the budgetary limitations interests of the district students interests the district's employees the community and of course our academic and extracurricular standards so that's really um the the change to policy ba it's just a more
105beefed up version that doesn't simply focus on the opinions and attitudes of our community but actually expands what we're looking at uh to a a greater portion of stakeholders in our district are there any questions or comments about this vice president hart wells thank you um board member greenberg so just so i understand um the context for and we're talking solely about policy ba the proposed amendments that's at least that's what i'm looking at um but i want to understand the context of what you just described your proposed amendments are drawn from a variety of sources that are predominantly rooted in common law and statute and then you did make a comment about also looking at other operational goals and for boards in the private sector are those is that an accurate summary of where
106you indicated you drew um information from to arrive at the proposal in front of us yeah that's for policy va that is accurate generally speaking if you are a board member in the private sector you owe a duty of good faith to act in the best interest of your organization as a whole and you owe a duty of loyalty to your organization as well that doesn't really apply here because the duty of loyalty is mainly has to do with you know taking um business opportunities away from your own company etc so this is really the the primary focus is the the former the you know acting in the best interest of the organization as a whole thank you for clarifying any other comments on this first read and discussion on policy ba i would just
107like to add here that as a reminder we as governing board members are actually responsible for the decisions made for the district yeah that's that's correct uh board presidentsnowski you know again this is really just expanding more on the concept of school board operational goals i you know because we were i we had already discussed reviewing i think four or five of these policies already i just chose to kind of give a glance at the remaining ones to see if there are any updates we can make and i felt that the existing language in this policy uh was not in line with you know what what we actually do on a day-to-day basis as board members all right at this time can you lead us in your thoughts on policy bbaa yes uh or bba
108um policy bpa let me pull that up uh because in part policy bbas seem to be repetitive of policy ba concerning our powers and responsibilities um in policy bba the introduction paragraph makes reference to carrying out the will of the people in the district and the matter of public education that isn't actually uh what the board does we carry out our duties and obligations pursuant to the to the law uh which are set out in statute arizona revised statute section 15 30 21 in sequence i know uh the board is very familiar uh i believe it's uh 340 341 and 342 um set out our yeah i believe it's 15 341 342 set out the actual duties and matters over which we make decisions um those duties and powers and responsibilities are set out pretty
109explicitly in statute so it's not simply again if you know 51 or or the or everyone in our district uh uh the will of the people um being vague and ambiguous wanted us to do something that was absolutely illegal or not a power that has been accorded to us by statute or the arizona constitution we could not carry out that will at all so i felt that uh this change brought us again in line with the legal requirements um that we're bound to then down here we have the duties and obligations that exist currently in the policy things like to become familiar with the state's school laws regulations general knowledge of educational aims and objectives i struck that out in part because i believe that's pretty much incorporated in paul cba in terms of how
110we make decisions um but at the same time as i mentioned we are a government board we are elected officials and so some of these don't really balance in that to vote and act in board meetings and partially for the good of the district and to accept the will of the majority vote it may be that as an elected official you don't agree with the majority vote on the decision especially you know you may i mean obviously if the majority of the board votes to do something the board is going to do it legally but as a minority voter you may not support that and to be forced to publicly support that seems uh out of line with with balancing the interests of you know elected officials um and and the board itself so i
111felt that some of those were just not in keeping with with how things again are actually done on a day-to-day basis are there any questions or comments board members um [Music] vice president hurtwells do you have your requests on no no okay um any other board members have comments just to note um in bba it appears that you have shifted some of these topics to ba and i just want to note that the interest as it states the interest our actions should be based on law and the interests and well-being of our students that we serve so um can you board member greenberg move on to bbaa at this time absolutely and and just a reminder to our public um absolutely no vote is being taken tonight this is a first read and oftentimes we
112may have uh a third read even if further changes are are recommended after the second read so if any board members do have any thoughts after this meeting over the next couple weeks uh and they would like to change things or propose you know you know alternatives please feel free to um to email me or or gladys or lori um and and those can be incorporated into any proposal uh moving on to bbaa uh this is really just a strikethrough um this policy seemed a little strangely worded uh in terms of being board member authority and responsibilities we have this entire section about board member requests for information and what we've actually done is move that into a new policy known as policy bcc i know that the administration had raised some questions about how
113this policy should be balanced especially if you know there is a request by an individual for more than two hours of staff work how the board can then step in uh and that is addressed in policy bcc uh the new policy as i will show later so no real no real change here other than moving this language into a new policy can you repeat that last bit board member greenberg about being having shifted into bcc yeah i'll show you here um policy bcc let me just pop it up so the public can see what i'm talking about this is the new policy proposed and this policy covers requests for information in a little bit more detail than we have here and creates a system uh so that if a request is over two hours would
114require over two hours of staff work the superintendent is permitted to deny the request but the request will be placed on the app as an action item or a consent agenda item so that the governing board member has the opportunity to explain the basis and require and why the information is needed and then the board can weigh in as to whether as a whole can weigh in as to whether that is a good use of staff time and that information would be helpful to resolving a matter that the board is facing thank you board member beckman comment your microphone this comment really was for your previous comments i think it's important to also to note that the board received these and the red line versions less than 24 hours ago this is quite comprehensive and
115since i say routinely i don't play lawyer i would like some time with this i'm happy that it's a first read but to sit down with the district's legal counsel and get questions answered that i have personally about this but i just wanted to make that note for the public and the people that have emailed that we did just received this yesterday and while we may have questions board member greenberg we might not be prepared to ask them tonight so just okay well i would i would um i i would just like to make clear that that i did provide i don't i personally don't know why i think the reason why that these weren't provided sooner was simply because there was some cleanup being done but our board council in order to for a
116board member to propose board revisions before they're placed on the agenda they do have to be reviewed by the district's council per board policy um so that was done none of this uh has has been none of this is being discussed without uh legal counsel review and making sure that it is both legal under the state and federal law but of course this is a first read and you will have plenty of time to ask your questions of counsel over the over the coming weeks all right thank you um can we move on to bda please yes um policy bda uh board organizational meeting uh this concerns uh the election of president and vice president and when a vacancy occurs um first of all it's the existing policy started off with kind of an odd
117system where uh if the board president is not present for a meeting or for the first meeting of the year the organizational meeting um that there would just be a temporary election by the board um that doesn't really make sense because the board would have to have a meeting to then appoint a temporary president to then commence the the other meeting so instead this was changed that if the board president is no longer a member of the board or is not president the vice president would automatically assume that responsibility but if the vice president is also not a member of the board a temporary chairperson would simply be appointed by the superintendent um and that enables the meeting to proceed without having to go through all these um you know additional elections elections to elect
118essentially board officer vacancy the same thing here if the board president the current language as you can see is whenever there's a vacancy in the office of president the board shall elect a new officer that doesn't make sense since we have a vice president the traditional order of things is that the vice president would then assume that responsibility and then a new vice president would be selected so that's been changed we've also received questions about the board officer removal provision as a reminder to the public board members can't be removed from office only they can only be removed if they are removed under the grounds stated in arizona statute absent those grounds though the governing board itself cannot remove a board member from office they can remove a board member from their position as president
119or vice president um the issue here was that on the one hand yes in general in the private sector you may have a removal on the for for no cause on the other hand if you remove somebody for cause you genuinely they're generally afforded due process and some system to to challenge that we have no ability to really enforce that type of system so instead unless there's a vacancy again for one of the reasons grounded in arizona state law the view was taken that the president or vice president should simply remain in their office during their term unless of course they choose to to leave or not so again as a reminder the governing board cannot remove a governing board member um from the board it's that that's not something the board can do and
120so emails to that effect that the board should be able to do that and remain being able to do that is just not something we've ever had the power to do any comments from board members um i will note there are some i have some concerns with this particular one and i think there are some improvements here as well so i look forward to bringing this into additional discussion sure moving on to bde board committees as mentioned one of the issues currently is that the board cannot have standing committees like the audit committee um we did have a policy bdf that did discuss advisory committees basically what i've done here is i've taken the language from that policy bdf on advisory committees moved it into policy bde on board committees and then simply made it
121so that ford committees can exist as standing committees like the audit committee and as you'll see here because it is a board committee it must follow open meeting law and that is stated here as well i know that it's a concern that board members have raised in the past about superintendent and board committees how information from those committees is shared it is a legal requirement that board committees follow open meeting laws so in a jet that means there's an agenda issue minutes are taken those minutes are approved and posted publicly for the public to access meetings are open to the public so the public can attend them and all of that good stuff so um that's really the only change here is that policy bde now allows board committees and policy bdf which was all
122of this language uh is no longer applicable as superfluous and has and is proposed to be removed any comments from my colleague board members um thank you for clarifying the issue of quorum and and open meeting law i appreciate that because that was a question that i had with us sure policy b-e-d-b um pretty minor changes public comment the term public comment has been changed to open call to the public which is how it is legally referred to in arizona statute and then these matters on agenda items and all that we no longer have that distinct distinction between non-agenda items and agenda items and consent agenda items and differences in time when people can speak so that language is just struck as is no longer applicable in addition uh it's proposed that the president and
123superintendent can amend the the matters of business on agenda items um you know pursuant to arizona law obviously open meeting law always has to be complied with what that basically means is for example we sometimes have public hearings followed by a special meeting followed by executive sessions and an additional and all in the same day all in a row and so there are some items that may not be necessary uh for example we might not need to do the pledge of allegiance three times in a row uh we might not need to have superintendent comments one night because the superintendent might not have any comments to make we might not have anything on the consent agenda etc so this is just saying basically what we already do the superintendent president do not need to have
124every single one of these items on the agenda um you know for for you know either because there's nothing to be put on that agenda or it needs to be pulled or you know what what have you moved to a different item where it's repetitive and superfluous so that's that's really just the only proposal with bedv um i will note however that the board has board members have raised the question as to whether open calls to the public should be removed altogether so that proposal was agendized tonight if there's any discussion at this time as to that point um so if you look at the information discussion item for policy bedb it does say as an alternative the board may discuss removing open calls to the public altogether so that was put in there because
125that was specifically requested board members any comments um again i would like to ask for clarification from board member greenberg and possibly board member beckman with the past experience with the agendas as they're set as i was going through this i'm looking and the format is so different in the policy versus what the format that we practice so i wonder if you if anyone could explain how we ended up with what we have where it's a b c d two or we have one and then we have two a b and then we go through thirteen or three through thirteen versus a clear letter delineation of of the progress through the through the agenda um board president sunowski i've always known agendas when they're actually printed out uh to use a numeric system and we
126could actually amend this policy to use a numeric system so that it matches uh it aligns but you know in in general um my my feeling or my experience has been is sometimes there's a level of inflexibility in what the board president and superintendent can do before a board meeting um you know concerns about for example if we need to get a couple items out right off the bat you know maybe we need to have item j action items right after approval of agenda well currently under the policy uh that can't be changed uh unless as you see here unless changed by the governing board at the meeting which means that we then have to take a vote and have that discussion on the approval of the agenda so this is just hopefully a way
127to kind of fast track the efficient uh agendizing of items board member beckman you're my gosh my mic's off board member greenberg is correct that any changes to the agenda or at the top of the meeting voted on and that's that's the way i remember it and that's the way i think it should stay but i appreciate the discussion thank you board member greenberg can you proceed yes um following bedb we have um bedba this is about agenda preparation dissemination um currently we have a policy that if a board member requests that an item be placed on the agenda all they have to do is notify the superintendent five business days or five working days before the meeting and it must be placed on the agenda um that is not how things have been done
128uh in the past as i remember from my first two years being on the governing board it was extremely difficult to get pretty much anything on the agenda as not the president or superintendent this changes it though because that doesn't really work either if anyone could put anything on the agenda five working days beforehand then you know all five board members could each submit you know five different things and our board meetings would be ten hours long um this creates a system that i think is a workable system and of course happy and open to changes um but the requested items here would have to be placed on the agenda unless additional information is required in which case there's a 45 day working time to put the item on the agenda and 45 days is
129about uh gosh four uh three to four board meetings depending on you know kind of how the calendar is falling that's quite a lot of time to review the matter get any information needed to put the matter on the agenda and potentially resolve the matter off the agenda allowing the board member to withdraw the requests before it ever needs to even hit the uh agenda but this this just creates a fail safe that prevents a board president or superintendent from shutting out an item that a board member wishes to discuss board members any comments governing board member greenberg can you look where it says governing board member and it should say the word may i believe it was your intent withdraw the request at any time i think there's a exclusive yeah the board member
130yes the board member may withdraw the request at any time correct good eye i have two of them um how about b-e-d-d policy b-e-d-d uh this was a pretty minor change uh proposal saying that the board president may implement and enforce such other rules or order uh as may be necessary for the orderly and efficient operation the meeting what we're really looking at here is changes the board president may want to impose on the board itself in terms of the conduct of the meeting for example if you look to robert's rules of order in the simplified form in general a board member is only permitted to speak once on a specific item as an example so perhaps if the agenda is very full the board president may wish to state that they will only be
131taking comments from each you know one comment from each board member on each item as opposed to what we sometimes have or what we often have which is you know a back and forth discussion between board members so those those types of uh impositions may or may not be necessary but it just it could depend on how full an agenda is and how much business the district needs to go through again we're always looking to have efficient meetings that was one of the things that the board has been very clear about that they want efficient meetings and this is just another tool for how that can be done i do not see there are any questions or comments so can you proceed to bedh yes paul cbdh this is our public participation board meetings um
132again this is stem from the discussion we had as a board uh last year where proposals were desired to see what additional changes could be made to the policy to make our board meetings more efficient one change here is proposed that only interested parties uh are permitted to speak at our board meetings interested parties are as you can see here a persons who live within the district are parents or guardians of students who attend a district school or use a district service or students who attend a district school or use a district service or our employees of the district that's as far as i can uh pretty much any any interested party and pretty much everyone who speaks at our board meetings the only people who would not be able to speak at our board
133meetings on this policy are really people who have absolutely no connection to our district whatsoever don't live in it don't attend it don't have family that attended aren't employees here and we do have some commercial organizations as you all know that have been uh sending people to come and speak at our board meetings and i'm not sure that's something we want to continue happening because it is a distraction and pretty inefficient use of our time when we are trying to hear from members of the public who we do want to listen to members of our community that we do want to listen to and discuss the our council wanted me to note that the attorney general's office for arizona cautions against the use of these types of restrictions but they don't provide any citation other
134than to say you know it's it's not against arizona law but they caution against it is my understanding uh federal district courts and circuit courts that have dealt with this have upheld these types of uh restrictions again our meetings are meetings open to the public they're not public meetings so generally speaking in terms of trying to maintain an efficient board meeting these types of restrictions are held so long as we don't discriminate among interested parties an example being one district had a policy that allowed teachers who lived in the district to speak during public comment there are prohibited teachers who did not live in the district to live uh to speak during public comment that would not be uh permissible but um this this broadly falls in line with those types of restrictions that have
135been upheld um another change is a possible change would be that people can only comment on issues within the jurisdiction of the governing board itself um so for example if somebody wished to come to a board meeting and decry actions taken by uh the country of spain that is not something within the jurisdiction the governing board and there's no reason for us to to listen to that in general again in terms of an efficient meeting um the questions of fact asked by the public when appropriate will be answered by the president referred that language has simply been moved here um and this language is taken directly from statute at the conclusion of an open call to the public individual members of the public body may respond to criticism may ask have to review a matter
136or may ask that a matter be put on a future agenda those those are the legal limitations that we have um and so that has just been pulled from statute the other possible proposal put forward are changes to the president's implementation of reasonable time manner and place restrictions including setting an overall time limit on the length of the comment period that is something that we've already experienced on a couple of board meetings setting a time limit for individual speakers we already do that and requiring that comments being limited to matters listed on the agenda we don't currently do that um but this would allow you to specifically state at this board meeting we're only going to take comments having to do with items on the agenda itself and any items off the agenda we're not
137going to be listening to that night um in addition there are restrictions that the ninth circuit which is what we are in is in arizona has identified that we can end an individual's comment period if the individual's comment disrupts disturbs or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of the board's meeting we saw a couple of those types of public comments tonight and the board president acted appropriately um we also have um including without limitation of an individual's comment becomes unduly repetitious or is extending a discussion that is irrelevant or falls outside the jurisdiction so again these are actions of the board president as the person presiding over these can take action on and again we we saw some of that play out tonight already and then finally the personal tax language i've never really been a
138fan personally of this language i already changed it once to to we used to have a prohibition which i believe i argued was unconstitutional courts have upheld the rule that you can't personally attack people but i think in general it's it's frowned upon as a possible by content restriction or viewpoint restriction uh on a public speaker so i i personally took that out and instead just pushed this down to policies katie and kp are for dealing with complaints um again you know this is a discussion that a couple board members including myself wanted to have um you know i think tonight is a good example of why this discussion needs to occur we received as a board an email from a seventh grade student as you all know who wanted to come and speak tonight
139but noted and i'll just i'll just quote um that um you know i wanted to speak about it and put some minds at ease at the next board meeting but i was then informed that the backlash speakers can receive when they go up there i would be okay with the backlash i would receive on campus for my peers but i have a younger brother and i don't want him to receive the same treatment so i will not be speaking and that that's from a seventh grade student in our district and i think that's that's a pretty unacceptable position for our district to be in that students especially students of front and families from minority populations like the lgbtq community or the refugee community don't feel safe or comfortable speaking at our public board meetings because
140of the actions of other adults in the room um i i don't know frankly what the appropriate level of restriction is on all the comments we've now seen public comments turn into a place where third parties use them for commercial purposes they come up they speak they get their you know one minute video and then they post online to raise money for purposes that are entirely at odds with the purposes of mission and our values as a district um and you know that if you look at other areas other nations other if you look to parliament you're not allowed to do that but in our country you are allowed to do that i just questioned whether that's really a valuable use of our time to allow people to come and use our board our board
141meetings for their own commercial gain that that seems wrong to me and not what the purpose of public comments are i personally at this point um given some of the pretty uh pretty gruesome anti-semitic and homophobic comments that we hear on a routine basis would not be opposed to getting rid of public comment all together i know that we have comments from another board member yeah that's that's fine i'm wrapping up sorry i just wanted this one happened to be in depth because board members wanted to discuss this so i put the proposal out there and i'm happy to take any questions um i know there's a request to speak from board member lindsey yeah i'd just like to hear the thoughts of dr menzel or laurie on these proposals should be dr menzel any
142comments first council bird board member greenberg is correct this one is not on that should be better board member greenberg is correct i have taken a look at these uh i haven't gone line by line i will tell you that overall they are in compliance with state and federal law that's not always where attorney advice ends but i will tell you that for the most part they are in compliance with state and federal laws i i understand it there is much here for discussion and so uh if you would like certainly uh perhaps now is not the appropriate time since you're not taking any action at this particular meeting but certainly it would be appropriate for an executive session or for further legal review and i'm happy to answer any legal concerns that you have
143if you just get me those questions i can then get those specific legal concerns answered and out to all of the board members noted and thank you superintendent menzel i i concur with lori byrd in terms of the amount of policies to review here the only other thing that i wanted to ask when it as it relates to the the policy review process first i want to say it's one of the primary roles of the governing board is to establish policy it directs the function of the organization and it's of critical importance it can also be very tedious um sometimes some people might say boring a good soporific to put you to sleep if you need but it's really important my question is a different one and that is the trust who we work with
144on a number of things is is launching a new policy service and they expect to be able to launch that this spring and i wonder whether or not we should um tap the brakes just a little bit to explore whether or not we're going to continue on the path with the current policy service we have or if maybe it might make sense to have a clean slate and start with the trust for a couple of reasons one our policies as they currently exist are a product of of time so you had the first policy adoption in the early 2000s then you've had modifications over time based on statutory changes some things get changed in a timely basis sometimes depending on the board and the context they didn't get changed and so the amount of policies
145we have may not all be current or relevant so the idea that we might be able to work with a new policy company that with lawyers that we already work with to establish a base set of policies has some appeal from my perspective to look at i'm not saying we should make the move i think we should investigate the move there are some other things about how they're approaching it that appeal to me and and laurie and i have discussed this one this lettering system is confusing as all get out it's not logical so a numbering system which is what i'm accustomed to makes it easier to follow then when you add it's easy to add in a way that makes sense versus which letter do i put next and i mean i get the
146alphabet works in a logical way too but it's still not as easy to follow secondly if you start fresh you start with the policies that are the most important from a compliance standpoint and reflecting the organization's priorities there are a lot of things here that would consume a lot of time if we're going to try to fix all of them i i do think that looking at board governance policies is a really good place to start because it really does address how the governing board functions roles responsibilities and priorities but i just wonder uh i have a meeting on friday with representatives from the trust we'll learn more about what their timeline is for this spring but i just wonder if before we delve into too many policy changes if the board has any interest
147in considering an alternative provider and then jumping into the details policies from any number of districts just kind of a random obviously i didn't go down the whole list on asba that's a really long list but i tried to do districts of comparable size and in our area and i will say that there is not necessarily a uni there although there is somewhat a uniformity of policy but it's not equal there are other ways as well through either regulation or on your comment form yourself which is labeled as e so if you have you know policy bde you'll have bde which will be an exhibit bder will be your regulation so there are also a number of ways to address the concerns of the board through other mechanisms policy as well although i do want
148to stress that i haven't found anything in these that are that is illegal or would be contrary to statute except for the one area that board member greenberg and i have discussed that would require a little bit more exploration in terms of limiting who can see thank you counselor board member lindsay yeah when were is more for dr menzel i guess when when were these given to us the redline version to the governing board today they were today right well those were yeah those were posted uh this morning so the summary was sent out ahead of time but the red line was this is summary yesterday yes we didn't get these to correct and the only reason that i found out these were available was from a parent and i just haven't had time to
149go through them i need more than six or seven hours to to read all of this and yeah and i will take some responsibility for that as board member greenberg noted there were and i it wasn't wording changes it was format uh changes uh to the policies and i'll be honest with you i just did not get to them until yesterday in order to make those format changes that needed to be made uh appropriately vice president hurtwells thank you i wanted to say i appreciate all the effort that has gone into a big picture view of the b policies i will admit i also have not made my standard critical review of these policies and of course i am not i would like to reserve the opportunity to comment substantively after i do that um
150and i have not had time to do that my apologies however given the importance of the content and the proposed changes in the merit for considering them i too would like to reserve the right for a bit more time to digest and have a conversation with council so i do appreciate the effort thank you yes of course i appreciate this discussion as well and i believe that completes this discussion item well uh board president if i may just quickly say thank you for the opportunity to do this i do i want to be very clear though that a number of these policy changes or proposals came about specifically because of discussions that the board has already had and asked that we explore and i'm i'm a little i'm a little concerned that the position is
151is that we request that a board member or somebody or counsel like lori bird take the time to do this work and then every time we bring it up especially because there is a second read so every board member has the opportunity to read this in depth over the next few weeks and discuss it with council and discuss it with whomever that the position may end up being that we're just going to delay and delay and delay for some other things so i just i want to i want to caution against that because foreign policy is our number one responsibility and i would rather not do all this work on a repeated basis if the board's position is is well they want to have these discussions we're never going to actually have them so i
152just want to point that out thank you board member hart wells i just want to reiterate i don't think the intent is for anyone to try to drag our feet but it is a weighty issue and there have been i have not kept tracks i've not been been able to keep up with the email today but there have been a number of communications from the community and i think it is incumbent upon us to take those into account and into consideration um and that's appropriate for all of us to do so um but again i appreciate the community uh proposal i i recognize that a number some of these proposals have been in the kind of reducing to writing some of the comments that have been made but nonetheless this is still extremely important and
153we should give it the attention it deserves thank you absolutely and before we move on to information discussion item 7c it has been requested that we take a break a break a bathroom break five minutes five minutes do i have a motion motion to recess for five minutes yes a second second all right i heard a second from board member beckman we will return here at 8 26 pm i'll reconvene our regular meeting the time is 8 29 pm at this point we will move on to discussion item 7c social emotional and mental health of students and staff led by vice president hart wells thank you president sanowski at first i'd like to start by sharing some gratitude to each of you not sure which camera this is but to each of you that are
154part of our susd community i want to say thank you regardless of what hat or hats you wear in our community you are valued and you are valuable and i want to extend a special thank you to those of you that helped inform this discussion item and its contents really over the last several months and the last couple of weeks has been more intense conversations but this has been several months in the making for me and specifically those folks include district staff principals program representatives both internal and external to susd police officers and parents and as you all know our current reality in 2022 has underscored what has always been the case the importance if not the criticalness of emotional social and mental health well-being at all ages for all of us while fewer children
155and youth may have gotten seriously ill with covet 19 compared to adults the pandemic has had major impacts on their lives like adults they are dealing with new challenges changes in routine changes in health care a sense of vulnerability and both safety and security and let's be clear these factors existed before the pandemic but they have been exacerbated by the pandemic and it took a respiratory plague for us to put social emotional and social i'm sorry social emotional and mental well-being into focus for all of us actions have been taken by the district particularly recently as for example what dr menzel mentioned and i recognize and applaud the decision to make tomorrow's district pd offerings optional for our staff so in the last year or so or more we've used the word resilience quite a
156bit and it's usually used in a crisis but this evening i want to offer a bit of a different perspective on resiliency a broader scope actually so to speak and that's organizational resilience a recent global report published by mckenzie and company was directed to organizational resiliency they describe it as the ability of an organization to stay one step ahead of circumstances and to follow through put differently vivid foresight and visible follow-through and what does that look like putting in place infrastructure systems that prevent or at least mitigate against serious impacts of crises so to that end the items that are in the discussion item this evening are directed to strengthening the systems that are already in place that mitigate against one of if not the most serious negative impacts of emotional social and mental distress
157and that is suicide the office of the attorney general of arizona's website refers to suicide in the following way quote suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem as detailed in the discussion items their information further provides that four out of five teens who commit suicide have been have given early warning signs and advocates that the time for hard yet open conversations on suicide is now in a recent informal but candid discussion i had with a representative of the prevention program at arizona teen lifeline i learned that while suicidal ideation of teens and young children young children in elementary school had always been a problem the pandemic is driving an increase at all age levels due to anxiety depression and isolation i asked what did you suggest and she said training parents teachers coaches
158are often the adults in these kids lives to whom they feel comfortable speaking but most of us when i include myself in this category are not well equipped with the tools to identify or head off where these roads of anxiety depression and isolation can lead as we heard a parent testify to this evening these observations are consistent with the u.s secret service national threat assessment center's 2019 report which advocates for proactive intervention to identify risk of violence or unwanted behaviors based on a comprehensive targeted violence prevention plan that includes exploring access to weapons it should be noted that in arizona between 2015 to 2017 over 70 percent of the deaths by firearms were suicides this report the secret service report published in 2019 makes clear schools parents and law enforcement must work together to prevent
159a child in distress from being able to access weapons susd has a long history of collaborating with the city of scottsdale and the city of phoenix police departments and their school resource officers a couple of comments just in response to the comments that were made in public comment and that was one the thought exchange that was sent out and dr sagos please correct me if i'm wrong that thought exchange was sent out because the inter-governmental agreement which is referred to often as an iga with the city of scottsdale police department for our sros is up for renewal soon and the conversation has taken um an approach that is informed by our current realities the crisis canine program is an example of that type of collaboration healthy collaboration that we expect to continue if not strengthen
160that was the point that's my understanding the point of the thought exchange is to get community input on how to strengthen that collaboration so in the same vein of working together with parents in law enforcement to prevent access to a different type of weapon the discussion item includes a contemplation of addressing unintentional suicides by counterfeit pills that are laced with lethal doses of fentanyl illegal fentanyl availability and access using social media as a means of distribution is increasing at an alarming rate and further illegal fentanyl is increasingly found in lethal doses leading to unintentional overdoses among teens and adults the severity of which has prompted the u.s drug enforcement agency in collaboration with local law enforcement to launch an educational campaign called the one pill can kill to combat the ready access to counterfeit pills
161laced with lethal amounts of illegal fentanyl as evidenced by the very recent seizure in scottsdale of a record number of fentanyl-laced pills by law enforcement in which nearly half of the counterfeit pills contained lethal doses of fentanyl part of any successful prevention of negative impacts a big part of organizational resiliency is to positively reward and reinforce and for that reason the discussion item also contemplates a report be requested that is directed to the existing frameworks that are in place at some of our campuses in order to identify best practices corresponding costs and to understand what of those best practices could be scaled for the benefits of students and staff so in order to address at least in part this is a a list of items that are directed predominantly towards suicide as i indicated which
162is only one of the negative health and safety impacts on our students staff and families the confluence of the factors that covid have continued to have on the academic growth and performance of our students as well as to foster a small supportive community i ask my colleagues to consider a request of the district administration to provide updates on the existing frameworks that support the mental social and emotional health of students and staff as detailed in the agenda item for which i have tried to make some cross references to context for you and with that i look forward to any discussion or questions you might have thank you board member beckman i appreciate you bringing forth a topic that's of extraordinary importance to our community as as we recall you know our number one priority is
163to to educate kids but i think we all recognize if those kids are at a deficit whether it's through emotional issues issues at home etc things they they can't quite get there they won't be prepared to receive the academic excellence or excellence that we're trying to provide so i know that through the years that i've been in the district and worked on the board we have many different um vendors organizations etc that we've worked with to help those children get to that kind of baseline starting point to receive the academic excellence for instance we work with unit town challenge day katie mcpherson not my kid trainings by the scottsdale police department jewish and family children's services many many many including having a tiered system where it has a tier one two and three with extra
164supports so i'm curious and again i appreciate the spotlight you're putting on this because it's very needed what when you sat down and had your discussions with about what we're currently doing where do you feel we we need extra support so when you're coming to the board and i read your proposal where do you feel the emphasis should be primarily beyond what we're currently doing or are we strengthening that yes please okay thank you i just breach any protocol there thank you board member beckman for your comments your observations and um in agreeing this is uh critically important social emotional uh mental well-being is synergistic with academic performance and i think we all do agree with that notion so the question was in my conversations kind of what did i take away is where we
165might be able to augment or do something different i appreciate first let me comment you listed a handful of collaborators and that is exactly what this proposal is drawn to is let's do more of that we don't have to reinvent the wheel we have some great organizations and a great collaboration with our law enforcement partners to address our current realities and that was the conversation kind of distilled into in 2022 january looks a little different than it did in january 2019 or january 2018 and it's a rethink a recalibration of how we think about support for our student and staff so that's an important component here is not just students but staff great organizations i think we've all probably read the good to great books are comprised of outstanding people and it's really hard to
166be an outstanding person in your job when you too are suffering from anxiety isolation depression in our circumstances as a community and as a state and as a country i don't have to tell any of you we're all living it have been very taxing and the kids are picking up on that one of the observations that was provided to me by one of my in one of my informational interviews was that the kids are picking up on that and that's driving some of their isolation is that they observe that perhaps the people in their lives who function as mentors for them are so overburdened that that conversation those conversations that could be healthy outlets let's say two years ago maybe aren't available because they don't want a burden out of love and compassion that adult
167and that's hard to hear i don't know if you are surprised by that but i was surprised by that observation and that's by someone in a position to make those observations uh which i am not which is why i drew on a lot of other people's expertise because this is not something i know a lot about i've learned a lot as a parent and it's i'm grateful that there are these organizations out there that are available to help and have better knowledge and how to guide us which is where the mandatory training expansion consideration came from that's actually already as you know required of neighborhood schools under state law so that's something the district already does and to broaden and the reason was for that conversation with the arizona teen lifeline which is basically a
168crisis hotline if you're not familiar and the district has collaborations with somebody and uses some of those programs the back of the student ids i know some of the high schools have the crisis hotline number on them and they should that's exactly what it's for what i didn't expect to hear was that the isolation and the depression anxiety is being driven particularly in our young people in the elementary age it's hard to believe board member beckman so one last one a request sure a request with this would be to somehow incorporate our teen town halls as part of you know which which we're going we have talked about many times making sure that we continue they're so important to hear from our kids specifically about these topics that you raise that are very worthy but
169um that was kind of the genesis of wanting those teen town halls to start here was to hear from them about the issues that you bring up that um you know what they're thinking and certainly now in the time that we're in there they could be different than when they began two years ago so that's my observation is i would love to see how we can kind of bring that back and incorporate those teen town halls in this whole overarching so thank you for this well thank you that was a very con constructive comment thank you i would actually like to thank you vice president hartwells for putting this together because you mentioned many things that are very important to the work that we do here in this school district and i think that it
170makes it even more important for our general public to understand the importance of our actions and our words that we use with one another in private and in public because our kids are watching they are paying attention and it is evident through this information aside from basic observation that kids do often pick up on the spilling over of burden and stress and they care for their parents and their their providers and they're they're usually the last person they would go to and that's the import one of the importance of our public schools is that all of our children are welcome all of our children are accepted and all of our teachers care about our students we also have many layers of support within our district and vice president hart wells can you share just a
171few of the conversations that you who you had them with in our district aside from those layers of organizations that we do utilize like who in our district is responsible for providing great opportunities for our kids other than classroom teachers and support staff of course classroom teachers and coaches are kind of first-line mentors for a lot of our kids um i want well these are the people i thanked i didn't want to name but i will miss crone and mr linz we had a very enlightening conversation and i want to applaud their efforts their great efforts and sometimes thankless efforts uh particularly um in the last year and a half and i it is also an intent of mine that this discussion item raise and elevate their work at the level of the governing board
172so that our community knows that we as professionals support those efforts in our community and see those as important they've done some wonderful work and i will just note that in the interest of at the moment the board policy does still say it can't be more than two hours but the report that suggested in the discussion item is my understanding there is how mr lens and ms krohn have been keeping excellent data on the multi-tier structure the support structures that the campuses that are participating in positive behavior programs and his frameworks so that should not be a time burden and i very much and i if nothing else is agreed to in a later meeting just so the public knows this is discussion there is no vote tonight but if anything i ask that that
173at least get through that we see a presentation on some of the great things that are going on campus and that we look at that with a critical eye to how do we identify best practices and scale those so that we can impact more students and staff and i can't emphasize that enough i want to not just draw a you know a pat on the back and and put some support behind their excellent efforts but also to expand the scope of how we think about social emotional mental well-being to include all of our staff does that help that does help thank you and i i know this is a discussion item and i think it really bears repeating that our actions actually indicate our priorities as a district so i would like for us to
174move much of these into future agenda items for action board president's now asking me i'd make a couple comments absolutely um thank you for remembering because this is a a very important topic um i reviewed your proposal and it seems based on your proposal in your words tonight that you are looking to make hopefully make some of these changes uh permanent such as information related to safe storage of firearms uh annual reporting requirements from the district these are things that i fully support we do have a board policy on instruction and training and suicide prevention we actually updated that policy as a board in september of last year and in accordance with arizona law we expanded that policy uh to place national suicide prevention uh lifeline and other prevention awareness information on student cards themselves
175when they're issued i did provide because i did not see a policy proposal amendment i did put this a number of your recommendations into a policy proposal and submitted that last night um that obviously could not be shown or discussed tonight because it's not agendized but i did want to make that noted um i don't think you meant to say this you use the term unintentional suicide and i just want to be clear that suicide is obviously an intentional act and overdoses are different but i do i do have to point out that isolation and covet are obviously risk factors that have increased childhood suicide rights rates as is access to weapons but there are a number of very important factors that the cdc child mind institute numerous organizations have listed and those are those
176whys are important because they direct how we address things of course barriers to accessing services and lack of social support are two critical risk factors associated with child suicide but so is struggling or being a member of a certain sexual orientation in an environment that is not respectful or accepting of that orientation that is a risk factor and i think again if i may reiterate the comments tonight are in no ways respectful or accepting of our students from certain minority minority groups including lgbq lgbtq plus groups and it is paramount as a district that we do everything we can to ensure that students feel included in our district and feel that they have a safe place to participate including in gsa clubs and i think to ignore these other risk factors like trauma like sexual
177orientation psychiatric disorders family history etc undermines the the progress that we could make with this discussion overall so i hope to see those matters also incorporated and i hope to see the governing board take a much firmer line against members of the public who attend our board meetings and make our lgbtq students feel uncomfortable and unsafe and unable to speak publicly at them thank you board member greenberg so in terms of including more i just want to comment if this was an exercise in me trying to stay focused in one area and in no way should that be construed as me assigning some value to certain aspects of trauma over others and if that was understood to be that then it was completely unintentional and i don't believe that at all but it i crafted
178this intentionally so that it could be one step one part to open up a conversation that's bigger that is more comprehensive this is in no way comprehensive and i don't pretend it i didn't intend it to be but i wanted to start the conversation and start with the highest impact consequence of suicide so this was a hope i hope this is a beginning and not an end to the conversation but i very much appreciate your comments and agree with him thank you the vice president cartwell harwell's in no way um was that my intent i think you you have rightly um started off on a really strong foot here and i was simply pointing out um that there is so much that can be discussed and added in which is why i appreciate that we've
179started this discussion that you've you've uh started it off again this year um because i do believe in what you're trying to accomplish here um and i and i hope by putting it into policy we can cement those changes not just for a one year period but for a lifetime until it until the board changes it i suppose but but i do think it is very important given the discussions we've already had tonight that we and what we've heard from the will of the community so to speak that there is that there are very firm lines that this board should be drawing with with the public so thank you thank you board member greenberg dr sackos thank you i just want to echo the appreciation toward dr hartwells for putting this on the agenda tonight
180to have a heightened awareness on the challenges that our youth are facing today and our staff is very important and as stated this students suffering from social emotional and mental health have a hard time accessing and showing academic growth so thank you for putting it on i'll try not to talk a lot tonight because i'm very excited about our multi-tier systems of support that miss kron and matlins have really been working hard to refine and there's always room for improvement but we look forward to bringing that presentation to you before the end of this school year or june 30 as it is stated and you can look forward to some invites to our mental health in schools networking event it is our 12th annual it is coming up in march we have an average of
18130 partners that come to this event and there are administrators from all over the valley and social workers and school counsel counselors and psychologists that come to our event that miss kron does coordinate so you'll get an invite to that and we're glad that we can have that back in person this year whereas last year we had to go virtual and you'll also be receiving some invites to our teen town halls at each of our high schools this spring as well so thank you and i don't know if miss kron wants to say anything but i'm sure she echoes my appreciation as well dr sekos may i ask you a question about some of the activities we have participated in with our students pre-coveted and i want to know if we're going to be bringing
182back the mini town and uni-town experience for our students yes our mini town and unit town are in its planning stages now and we've actually have secured additional funding from the scottsdale foundation um toward both of those programs so they will be able to go back in per in person um as of today um over that long president's day weekend in february yes we're knocking on wood and mini town as well super thank you welcome sorry i want to thank dr sakos and james door both of also who spent some time with me to help inform this document um and i appreciate your expertise and your collaboration and your your attitude towards uh strengthening the things in our support we want to support your efforts and that's effort thank you very much absolutely dr menzel
183do you have anything to add oh well i will so i just want to echo the appreciation for the topic being put on the agenda this evening for the reminder of the importance that this is for our students and our staff and that the acknowledgement of the hard work of our team that's ongoing but also i am a big proponent of scale and replicate and i think that's best practice for us and then being able to tell the story as we're able to celebrate successes so thank you any other questions or comments so that would end our discussion session of this governing board meeting and we will move on to eight consent agenda are there any changes to our agenda board member beckman no changes i just noticed on the agenda something that i just
184wanted to point out and say thank you for routinely when something is significant on consent that's a gift to our district we will call it out and on this agenda we have our annual charles gift of a thousand dollars per school and i just wanted again because they also had donated a check for forty thousand dollars for a social emotional last year that we do appreciate those gifts for each of our schools thank you i would actually like to if i may pull a particular item we need to check with laura if we can do it now because we didn't when we adopted the agenda yes so it's my understanding president thank you okay i'm told it's on okay so uh it's my understanding that you've already requested changes to the agenda and that no
185changes to the agenda were requested which would have been the time to pull an agenda item off of consent and into action so at this time i don't believe that the uh rules of order allow for an agenda item be pulled from consent lesson learned thank you board member beckman your ladies on did you request to speak nope okay um all right at this time then i would ask for a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented so moved and second second seconded by dr hart wells all in favor aye aye aye the motion passes five zero at this time we will begin with section 9 of our governing board meeting which is action items it's a review of strategic plan draft goals and commitments will be led by dr menzel thank you president
186sunowski members of the governing board the hour is late and the agenda topic is one that is not new to you we've had conversations about this before but just a quick summary the governing board previously approved phase one of our strategic planning process that include the district's mission vision and values phase two is wrapping up we have one more session tomorrow with the members of the strategic planning design team but what we're asking the governing board to formally ratify this evening are the five goal areas with the specific commitments these have been reviewed and wordsmithed and revised on numerous occasions the most recent meeting was on january 5th i would be happy to entertain any questions as are members of the team who were participants in that process we do have draft key performance indicators
187but we're not asking for approval of those this evening because that's still part of the final work and then we are planning to move very quickly into phase three where we put meat on the bones so this is the framing and then the specific action steps activities initiatives in order to deliver on this will be the the final part that we'll bring back to the governing board by june 30th which is of course part of the goals that the governing board has set for me but also part of what we need to be able to do to springboard into achieving what we've set out related to providing world-class future focused education for all of our students so our goal tonight would be to have the governing board approve this so that we can actually then
188pivot towards the real substantive work engaging our staff at all of the building levels in terms of how do we actually live into these goals and commitments in order to produce improved results for our students thank you dr menzel board member beckman okay so to be clear that's where you're going to get in cut to kind of the detailed strategies and the measurable goals and how we're going to actually achieve what you put through that that is correct okay and we'll be able to tell that story so just as a quick example during the last all admin meeting there was an exercise that took the each building principle looked at their school improvement plan and these draft goals to identify ways in which they're already addressing some of these in their school improvement plans and
189and opportunities for incorporating some of these for for future reference now not every single commitment relates to every building's school improvement plan but we've already started some of that work but this phase three is where we really put all of those details in into place and that we bring that back to you before the end of the school year okay thank you do any other board members have questions or comments no i would just like to comment it it does appear that many of our discussions um with this board and actions do support these strategic plan goals just wanted to comment that if i have no other questions or comments i ask that we have a motion to approve the review of strategic plan draft goals and commitments and seconded by vice president hart wells
190all in favor aye aye opposed board member greenberg did i did you vote well i moved it and i voted yes oh you did okay i didn't hear you from the cloud okay thank you the motion passes 5-0 and we will move on to the next item again led by dr menzel approval of selection of audit committee member per board policy we have two governing board members on the audit committee we've had a request of one of the governing board members to step down from that assignment uh dr wells has asked for the board to consider a replacement so this evening we're looking for a second board member to serve on the audit committee remember or president sunowski do you mind if i make a comment please uh superintendent menzel i our our policy die
191actually states that at least one member shall be a governing board member not two so i just want to clarify that we could if no board members were interested we could go out and find a fourth community member i appreciate that feedback board member greenberg and i i don't believe it's that they're not interested i believe it's that we are all stretched very thin so just want to make a note of that it's not a lack of interest no i i just that was forwarding you're absolutely correct yeah okay okay any questions comments hearing none or seeing none do i have a motion to approve this i'd like to comment okay i'm sorry i jumped the gun there dr hart wells i just wanted to add that i am i would like to be replacing
192the committee only because of time commitments this is not a comment on the merit of the committee it's an outstanding committee and the community members that are on and volunteer on that committee have done a wonderful job and it's an excellent certainly objective so i just wanted to make that clear thank you thank you vice president hartwells at this time do i have a motion to approve the non-selection it wouldn't be modified yeah for this table or go away so what's not what's noticed on the agenda under open meeting law and notice to the public is is the appointment of another member to serve if you want to do something different if you want to modify that that's certainly within the purview of the board as would be tabling this discussion to a later date
193if you want to have further discussion i am trying to pull up the policy here but i actually have the policy uh it says the audit committee shall consist of either three or five members that collectively possess sufficient knowledge of audit finance and specific industry knowledge information technology law governance risk and control at least one member shall be a governing board member so to that point we could like we do with other committees put it on the committee hub invite people to apply um review those applications and bring back a recommendation for a fourth member that's not a governing board member so the first question was whether or not we have volunteers from the governing board if we do not then the second order of business would be to recruit and then bring that back
194to the board for approval but but certainly it would not be good practice to go forward with doing nothing thanks board member beckman i think board member lindsay had his button pushed i was just going to say that i think it's a great idea to add another community member so can you repeat that i just think it's a great idea to add another community member thank you board member lindsay board member beckman so should we modify it or let it fail by no motion miss burn i'm going to exactly looking at exactly how the agenda item was noticed to the public all it says is you have to appoint a new audit committee member certainly if you're going to add a member of the community you're unable to do that at this time because you
195can't do that i would suggest in in this circumstance that you are not able to appoint a new audit committee member but that you can modify the motion uh and put a different motion on the table dealing with the cop the audit committee member uh itself because you're unable to name the person that will be appointed to that sure i would like to move that we table um 9b approval of selection of audit committee member at this time okay i'm sorry or you could modify and say and move for the approval of the selection of an audit committee member to be opened up to a community member on the don either of those options you can table it you can appoint a member of the board uh if you table it please remember that you
196can only table an item once without taking action on it uh or if there is someone on the board who is willing to step forward and serve then certainly you may go ahead and approve that person if they are willing to serve so yes board member beckman you are correct that you could motion to appoint a member of the community however you would not be able to name that person at this meeting a motion has been made to table the item do i have a second one last question if we table it can we proceed with picking a community member or opening it up on the committee hub to allow a community member to join i just want clarity on that if tabling this does not allow us to do that it's still if we
197table this we're still allowed to go and have it be on the community or the committee hub and community member can apply to join the audit committee even if we table this correct because you did not get anyone coming to serve from the board you can table it until you have i mean the other thing that could in theory happen is you will get no members of the community that want to serve in which case um you may have to come back and revisit it which is all tabling does is it revises this particular agenda item board member heart wells second the motion to table thank you we have a second from dr hartwells all in favor to table this item please say aye aye any opposed the motion passes to table item 9b approval
198selection audit committee member and at this time we will turn the show over to our in-house counsel lori bird for a second read and approval of revisions to policy b-e-d-d good late evening board members based on the [Music] conversation that was had in the first reading of the other policy documents that was had at this time i would like to withdraw my recommendation to approve both bedd and bedh because of the discussion that occurred previously it doesn't make sense to approve these items only to have a second read on a on the exact same policies uh at another meeting so at this time you could make a motion you know i mean you still have the option to approve these policies my recommendation is simply with ron that you do that but you can proceed
199to make a motion to vote on these items as appropriate i would make a motion to accept your withdrawal of the both the reads of bedd and b-e-d-h i'm not withdrawing the action item itself you're withdrawing the motion the recommendation the recommendation withdrawing the recommendation that is correct i would ask that the board do take action on this so that we can close the loop and not have a first read hanging out there with the second read i mean and then never do a second read so i would really like to close the loop and for the board to take action on this item is appropriate i'm sorry um council byrd do you mean to say that you would like us to table items 9c and 90 if we feel like doing so in order
200to ensure that that we don't then have another second read on the other changes follow up separately that isn't wasn't my intent certainly you could do that but my intent was for the board to take action on these items in light of the prior discussion that was had and determine whether or not they would like to go forward with these items or whether or not they would like to put them to their final rest so to speak in this particular in this particular format so either a motion to approve or to reject this particular version of those policies oh i see okay all right that's fine i make a motion to reject the 9c the second read and approval of revisions to policy bedd do i have a second okay thank you we have a
201second and all in favor of rejecting the second read in approval of revisions to policy bedd please say aye can you get clarity please yes so what you're doing is uh voting for approval or not approval of these particular agenda items as written here so a rejection would be a no vote correct okay thank you so you would just move for approval and if we reject it we vote no correct or one way or you may vote or you may make a motion to the motion was made to reject right okay approval to take action yeah yes or no on this particular agenda item correct okay did we you moved and you did seconded okay important michael greenberg seconded to reject the proposed changes okay so all in favor to reject the proposed changes at
202this time say aye any opposed at this time nine second read and approval of revisions to policy bedd has been rejected correct and just to clarify for the public these policies have not passed and will not be incorporated into the policies of the governing board and now on to 90 as well so i make a motion to reject the approval of the second read of revisions to policy b-e-d-h do i have a second second all in board member beckman seconded all in favor say aye aye any opposed the motion to reject the second read and approval of revisions to policy bedh has passed at this time we move on to section 10 future agenda items do any governing board members have future agenda items they would like to propose i'm sorry i am very sorry
203to interrupt this but i need a little bit of clarity on that last vote if possible because i've never voted to reject something before so um just for the record uh these policies when we did a first read were new so explain what we just did please so on the first read that was held way back i believe in november these were suggested changes from asba that were brought to the board by myself uh for consideration at the end of the first read there were some suggestions uh that were made to revise the language i went back and i revised the policy language as noted in your in your packet it very small wording changes based on board feedback uh you then reviewed the item as revised on the second read and then a motion
204was made to reject the changes to this policy and each policy it was a one section revision only uh and so you rejected those changes and the policy remains unchanged so the policies themselves were approved in november just refresh my memory no so we don't have the policy existing no no they were we do have the policy existing what was on the first read was a change in bed that change had to do with commercial presentations no that's b-e-d-h right and b-e-d-d the change had to do with adjourning the meeting right uh without a vote of the board in the case of an unruly or unsafe situation okay and so those additions to those policies will not go into effect but the policy themselves will remain as board policy until if and until changed uh
205by the board okay thank you can i give the effect today dr menzel so bedd had last been adopted or amended february 10th of 2015 before the review and bedh had been adopted august 6th of 2019. okay that's what i was looking for thank you i had called for future agenda items do any board members have future debt items dr hart wells i request that we turn the discussion item directed to social emotional and mental well-being into an action item at a subsequent meeting please thank you any others i i would for president i would like for that proposal to be in if assuming vice president cartwells agrees i would like for that to be in policy format because otherwise there's i mean it could change year from here um and by putting that into
206policy so if it is brought back i would like a policy change proposed that incorporates those requests did you want to come up i would just ask if we could if the policy draft that i understand is relaxing with you could be shared with the board at some point i believe board member greenberg indicated that he had drafted a policy that contained components of the discussion item if i understood that and i did not you have not been reviewed you have not reviewed that i have i mean okay and that's fine last night correct and although i have yes i have done a i've read it but i have not done a deep enough read to uh i haven't vetted it legally no fair enough um i just was requesting if we're going to look
207at this as a policy that we uh be able to see what what after your legal review miss bird uh if you could share that so that we could could look at that it'd be appreciated thank you for that thank you for that information so it has been proposed future agenda items dr hartwell's discussion item 7c social emotional mental health of students and staff be agendized are there any others nope okay on to 11 dates of upcoming meetings our next meeting is tuesday february 8 2020 at 6 pm that is a special governing board meeting at the mda followed by tuesday february 22nd 2022 at 6 pm and that will be our next regular governing board meeting here at coronado high school at this time we'll move on to 12 governing board reports board member
208beckman just a couple of quick things i think we were all very impressed um to attend those that did the mlk voices event i thought it was outstanding as it always is thank you to saguaro for hosting um a huge thank you to the students that that spoke we obviously had an incredible keynote speaker but the students for me always make make them make the event i mean they're they're brave they're inspiring and they're the reason that why we do what we do um so well done to our well done kids project prom is coming up again i want to give a shout out to scottsdale bella bride because they donated 50 dresses to me yesterday it was pretty fantastic so we're looking at the first weekend in march to host our event again district
209wide but housed at sarwara in the parking lot so that anyone in the district that feels like they need a dress for free to attend this event is welcome to come any student that shows their id thank you for clarifying that any mom that feels like going out no kidding any of our students that want to come and shop we we welcome it one last thing i am on the charles foundation as well because i think it's a worthy cause to as they do a great job supporting our district they are bringing forth a license plate just so you all are aware and the revenue from that will in part go to the organization which will then move on to supporting our students and the district so it's something to look forward to seeing on
210the street and i hope some of you get one for yourselves excellent thank you dr hartwells thank you i had the pleasure of participating in a few of the scottsdale parent council forums this past month one directed to the special education system of support and services i want to thank everybody who participated in that presentation also on our career and technical education course offerings it was a very interesting presentation and i will just remind folks that the evit expo is coming up this saturday and encourage you to participate in that i also want to thank the kiva elementary school mr gromick for hosting me in the past couple of weeks and dr michael at ingleside middle school middle school for also hosting me um you will it reminded me actually the parada del sol is
211taking place in a couple of weeks and you will see some of our kiva cougars out there in some construction gear that they're getting from their friends that are in the back building a beautiful new site for them um i thought that was cute i also had the privilege of participating in the mlk youth voices and i i was rendered speechless to be frank very inspiring to say the least and i i'm very impressed and it just reminded me of kind of what dignity looks like thank you and at last shout out to the desert mountain high school palm team for taking top honors in two categories in the state qualifiers last weekend so good job wolves great board reports any other great board reports nope well then let me share a little bit um
212i had the great privilege of joining many of you at the voices scottsdale community dinner as well as our fantastic voices celebration at saguaro high school i was able to participate in a webinar that i found to be very very interesting and appropriate it was considered it was titled building equity in a divided community um i was able to participate with dr hartwells in a scottsdale roundtable discussion and they're always interested in what's going on with our schools and when i say they it is community leaders of various sorts [Music] board member beckman and myself had a conversation through zoom to brainstorm and tighten up our actions with the scottsdale joint education committee that work continues and that's an attempt to work more collaboratively within our scottsdale community and then i'm glad um board member
213beckman brought up the gifts because we we are very we should be very thankful for all the opportunities that people give of their time talents and finances to our students in our district and just to note from tonight's board agenda jeff andina cutberth contributing to the cmass at arcadia high school again the scottsdale churros foundation continuously show generosity towards our schools and our students and staff members honor health i saw did support and giving extra donations to unitown and parent partner organizations throughout our district continue to work hard on behalf of finances for our schools specifically to note in this agenda copper ridge desert canyon elementary and hopi and i would like this has been brought up a couple times and i actually would like to share this at this point this is um a
214message from the seventh grader and a member of the kokopan middle school gsa which for those that don't understand or doesn't they don't understand that acronym it stands for great gay straight alliance his comments are very telling um i am here to speak about the concern about our school's gay straight alliance or better known as gsa gsa is not only a way for lgbtq students to feel accepted on school grounds but it also provides them a branch of support that they may not have under their own roof we do not understand that this topic can be too mature for some students but other students have experienced things throughout their lives or still do that have made them mature faster and that the average student allowing them to understand the concept therefore it gives them the
215opportunity to accept and learn about the lgbt community at their age as far as elementary students learning or identifying as a member of the lgbt community they should be accepted wherever they stand on the subject although it is a very mature conversation but if students don't believe or support the lgbt community that is within their right and no one from gsa will force our beliefs onto them whether it be a student or a teacher if students don't want to participate they don't have to middle school is known to be a hard time for young teens figuring out who they are but for the ones who already have they should be able to have a safe place on campus to ensure that they feel comfortable in a learning environment we shouldn't be taking that support system
216away from them struggling students as far as bullying goes most of the students who get bullied on campus are openly a member of the lgbtq community lgbtq students do not get barked at by students i'm sorry lgbt students not only get barked at by students but they get slurs thrown at them in the hallways and can sometimes be physically harassed at gsa students eat snacks and talk about things that have been going on in their lives gsa is an all-inclusive club that has straight members partake in these activities as well gsa does not harm to today's developing youth but it allows oppressed students to be themselves and feel comfortable on our campus again that is from a 7th grade student in our district and i think the message stands for itself compassion and kindness and
217grace are really important for all of us to show to one another and with that i call for a motion to adjourn this meeting do i have a second second board member greenberg greenberg it's been a long night second the the motion all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed motion passes 5-0 this meeting is adjourned you