SUSD Governing Board Regular Meeting - 12/14/21

001i called to meeting i called to order this public hearing of the susd governing board it is december 14th and 502 pm we'll start with the roll call from my far right viewers left zach lindsey libby hartwells do we have anyone in the cloud nope and julie sanowski we do have a quorum dr menzel thank you president uh vice president zanowski members of the governing board each december we have an opportunity to amend our budget based on information that materializes after the initial budget adoption i'd like to introduce shannon crozier our cfo to review the data and present the information this evening okay great all right vice president zanowski members of the board dr menzone guest tonight we are looking at budget revision 2 for this year as mentioned this is something we typically do

002every december and depending on what how much the revision is you're actually required to do which was the case for tonight as well as do a public hearing so by statute if you are reducing your cap your budget by one percent of the general budget limit which we are then you are required to do that by december 15th which is why we're here doing it tonight so the first thing we'll look at is the significant changes the big change which drives this is average daily membership uh one thing i will point out is our membership declines every year work we're kind of aware of that that that will happen with enrollment being counted on the as current year enrollment it's a little hard to always figure out how that's going to land the other thing

003that's playing a part with us this year is we have students that are enrolled in online learning um i'll point out that i mean looking at this this does this just looks at our average daily membership but what it didn't take a look at is also what's part of the aoi or online learning with that we know we have a headcount of 369 students and our aoe is 239 for what we're getting adm for so as you can see part of that falls into because those students are counted on minutes depending on how many minutes they log online can really affect our adm which i think is partly one of the things we're looking at here is that we have a lot of kids on aoy more than what we thought when we first did

004this budget back in june so we do have that reduction which means we have to reduce our m o so you can see essentially that total reduction equates to 2.3 million dollars there's a couple things that vary in there we have the decreased adm so that brings our revenue control limit down that brought it down 3.1 million that also reduces our immuno override but our carry forward was more than what we had anticipated actually quite a bit more so that offsets a little bit of this variance and then a small little variance in the prop 123 with what again we always estimate that until they know all student counts we don't know what for all of the schools in arizona we don't always know where that's going to land couple other changes classroom site fund

005that used to be three funds it's now one that one we do an estimate we estimated higher than what it actually came in at so there's a reduction of 2 million there federal grants increased about 850 000 again we do what we think we're going to roll over but we never know with grants how much we're going to fully roll over and some of them actually go until september 30th same thing with state grants increase there because of results-based funding so those are the big changes between revision one and revision two one of the requests i had at the last board meeting was to talk about the aggregate spending limit and what that would do for our district aggregate spending limit being a cap that the state puts on all school districts k-12 budgets the

006statewide has exceeded the amount that's the limit for this year if the state legislature does not change or override that limit by march before march we have to reduce our budget approximately 27 million dollars so one of the questions was what would we do and that is for this current year budget what would we do if that happened i'm hopeful that it won't but i want to be prepared if it does so if that should happen we have four million dollars sitting in unallocated we would wipe that out we have 15 million dollars that we project for carryover from frozen position or from positions and budgets that aren't spent we'd essentially have to put a hiring freeze on so that we make sure we carry where our carrier our ending balance would have been about

00715 million dollars additionally we would need to move capital budgets over we have money in capital we need to pull over four million dollars of that into our m o which would mean we'd be freezing all capital purchases that would affect technology um fine uh i'm sorry facilities so that would come to a screeching halt and really would be a what is our safety what do we have to have strictly for safety everything else would need to be swept over additionally we're in a good position where we have cash accounts so we could cover the remainder amount out of cash accounts so that would get us the 4 million now that means i could solve the problem for this year however we will create a ginormous problem for the future years because our budget for

008next year anticipates 4 million dollars to help bridge the gap for salaries and increases as well as carrying over 15 million dollars and moving expenses over to cash so whereas i could fix the problem for this year for next year we would see a 16 million dollar problem and that's where we get into we'd have to reduce staff we would have to freeze all vacant positions again we would have to move capital over likely 6 million and so that would mean no textbook adoptions no technology facilities again safety only at that point as well as moving more funds over from the self-insurance trust fund or self-insurance trust accounts to cover that that balance but the point of that is that when we if we were to wipe out our entire carry forward that affects year

009after year after year after year the ability to be able to do things for us for our schools that affects salaries that if i mean it could potentially mean that we have to go backwards in salaries and do salary reductions um to be able to to bridge that that huge gap so the point of that is yes could we pull scrape go you know get out there as much as we possibly could this year to cover it yes but the harms would would take us it would be harmful for us for the next several years if not longer so with that i will leave it open to questions okay dr hart wells thank you ms crozier for your presentation as ominous as it is um i want to just confirm my understanding on a few

010points the early projections on the mno that were made on november 30th were just that they were projections using estimates that in some cases were based on historical trends correct i'm sorry in november on november 30th when we were here a couple weeks ago that would be the that would have been the afr okay so so that was that would be expenditures from last year okay so this past fiscal year yes i was asking you about earlier okay that ties to these prop 301 numbers okay so since that presentation though the um right department of education you have the adm numbers from which to make the presentation this evening which is why we're doing the revision yes right and the public hearing just make that clear slide four is the current proposal assuming that the

011state legislature does not assuming that the state legislature enacts a fix to the current paradigm shift that's taken place this school year yes is that correct yeah this is that what we have as of we'd have this known as november so it's the facts of what we know at at the end of november thank you so on slide five this is i'm clarifying for the public as well as myself here okay slide five is the high level kind of peak at what is at stake if the state legislature takes no action by the statutory deadline of march 5th to address the gap the cap that's the aggregate expenditure limit the set in constitution for district schools only correct districts and charters no i'm sorry just yes just districts district public public district schools only charter

012public schools are not subject to this cap yeah correct good i've got a few what-ifs okay so even if the district were to receive prop 301 money that it has let's say this school year to fund let's say an academic intervention program including the important part of that program to staff it with great teachers the school couldn't actually spend those funds to help students because they may run into this expenditure cap it's not a budget cap it's an expenditure cap right so that's this possible scenario so yes essentially because we are not funded we are um we don't receive state aid we receive all of the fund the cash that we need through our state taxes we would still tax at the same rate receive the same amount of money however we would have to

013reduce our budget and reduce our expenditures down to that lower amount so that scenario could come true yes yes and i'll just also point out we don't receive all the money that we need um as it pertains to this aggregate expenditure limit my understanding is the prop 301 funds was originally a voter controlled fund because it was a proposition put to the voters right and the last year um just for the calendar year of 2021 the district susd spent had about 11.6 million in expenditures is that right yes okay historically when the voters controlled this funding that 11.6 million dollars would be excluded from the aggregate expenditure limit outside of that formula that the constitution lays out for cap on again district schools only is that correct yes and then in 2018 because that voter

014controlled fund was authorized for 20 years in 2018 the state legislature reauthorized this constructive use of taxpayer dollars right yes which means that that voter controlled fund then switched to a legislative controlled fund and when they did that the legislature's reauthorization did not retain the precedent set by the voters to exempt the prop 301 funding from the aggregate expenditure limit correct that's correct so practically speaking because i like to think that way for the upcoming 2022-23 school year or even for a fourth quarter of our current school year a district actually spending the prop funds in accordance with voter approved intent this may now mean that the district school while not having changed anything the rules changed and could be penalized financially for doing exactly what the voters intended with their money is that correct

015yes my last question are the s or funded funds from the federal government do they fall within the aggregate expenditure limit formula no they did not they do not thank you thank you any other board member questions for member stanowski vice president sinowski comment basically i appreciate dr hart wells's summary of the aggregate spending limit i think it's really important that and i know why she did this is it was to inform the public of the urgency of this having a remedy provided by our legislature and if not as i understand it there's there's not a fix to this by march 1st we will have to reduce our expenditures as of april 1st is right our budget will have to be reduced right and that that could that's a lot for our district to try

016to suck it up it's a huge amount of money okay so it's really important for our general public to be aware of this that the rules have changed uh midstream so i appreciate dr hartwell's bringing that into public comment at this section or at least board comments for the public thank you okay thank you are there any other board member comments or questions okay we will move now to item d which is our public comments on the public hearing on approval of revision of expenditure budget are there any public comments for the expenditure budget if you have any comments on the expenditure budget you may approach the podium we will have public comment in our regular meeting in a little while but if there are any comments from the public on the expenditure budget portion

017you may now come to the podium okay then we will move on okay um to 3a which is do i have a motion to approve the revision number two to the 2021-22 expenditure budget so moved where member shanowski makes the motion do i have a second second board member heartwell seconds all in favor aye aye motion passes four to zero thank you i moved to adjourn our special meeting um do i have a second second board member sanowski seconds all in favor all right hi our special meeting is adjourned at 5 17 pm okay now we will now call to order our regular meeting at 5 17 p.m vice president zanowski will you lead us in the pledge america yes into the republic for which it stands one nation without god individual with liberty i

018will have a roll call starting from my far right zach lindsay libby hart wells julie sinowski and patty beckman board member john michael greenberg is not present but we do have a quorum i move to approve the agenda do any more board members have changes to the agenda vice president i'm sorry board member hart wells thank you i would request item l of the consent agenda be removed please okay do i have a motion to approve the agenda as amended without consent agenda item l the ratification of expenditure sps plus architects for ho come elementary school yes so moved do i have a second second okay vice president zanowski moves um board member hartwell seconds all in favor hi hi motion passes four to zero okay public comment will be heard after item nine our

019special presentation please note the meeting decorum we will move now to our students and staff recognition and celebrations dr menzel good evening president beckman vice president sinowski and government board members those of us who are deeply embedded in the daily inner workings of scottsdale unified school district know that despite whatever else might be going on in the news our teachers and students are deeply committed to what they're at school to do 180 days a year and that is teaching and learning you may recall we suspended our celebrations and successes at our november meeting in order to allow more time for public comments and we have quite a bit of celebrations this evening and i think that you will be really pleased to hear all of the stories of success thank you for so many that

020we had to tear down some of them so this afternoon you're going to hear about accomplishments from the classroom individual undertakings inspired by teachers and from athletic success as well i'd like to start tonight by inviting dr honey got to the podium to kick things off doctor thank you dr mensel and good afternoon president beckman vice president zanowski governing board members and mrs wagner i can tell you from personal experience that arriving in the united states with little or no knowledge of the native language spoken here english is daunting imagine facing the situation as a sixth grader coming from colombia in south america or being raised in a family in which spanish is the only language spoken or coming from china as a high school freshman and not speaking any english those were the circumstances

021that were presented to three students we are recognizing this afternoon and this is not just an susd celebration but in arizona department of education recognition as well i would like to invite sarah sulueta chavera and her principal hat hughes to the podium police [Applause] sarah is an 8th grader at ecco canyon school sarah was nominated at student success story winner at last week's arizona department of education office of english language acquisition service hope that stands for helping our unique population excel conference in tucson sarah was nominated by her teacher kaya hart for her resiliency perseverance and dedication to her studies sarah comes to us two years ago from colombia leaving her mother behind moving in with her grandmother and aunt here in the valley and knowing almost no english times have changed since then sarah

022would like to read the speech that was delivered at the conference thank you all for being here today i'm grateful for all the support i have received and i'm happy to share this moment with all of you growing up in colombia i had many good times i love my beautiful country i love being surrounded by my standard family my mother my lovely grandpa even though you might think that sounds like a perfect life it was not colombia was complicated it was dangerous it was unsettling and it was confusing my mother is a journalist when i lived there with her she wrote about many political crime in our city which brought us many left learning difficulties i remember seeing some of the gang members from my neighborhood that my mother wrote about circling my school i

023knew they were there to threaten my safety and even though this wasn't the first time my safety feel threatened from that moment on the choice to leave colombia was clear coming to united states and leaving my mother behind felt terrifying and confusing but the right thing to do all at the same time i'm fortunate enough to have my loving grandma and aunt welcomed me into a new life in the united states i knew at that point i was given an opportunity that my friends that had left behind in colombia would only dream of right then and there i knew i could never take for granted the gift i was given i would work hard and do my and do whatever it takes to succeed my first day at my new school echo canyon i was

024so scared that i wouldn't fit in make friends or even be able to communicate with my peers and teachers to my surprise everyone gave me a lovely welcome and i quickly found comfort in my new community i had teachers who guided me and spent extra time with me to help me navigate my new language and the new ways of learning my new friends from mexico who also spoke spanish were one of the most important parts of the beginning stages of learning english and for this i'm grateful when everything started to feel like home again covet had other plans trying to keep up with the language during a pandemic where i wasn't able to socialize much was challenging it wasn't easy but i never gave up i gave my best shot at becoming proficient in english

025there were countless obstacles for example online school i wasn't the only one who struggled with it but i certainly did not take it very well i felt frustrated upset and sad too i feel like i did not even learn what i was supposed to i was distracted all the time and i let myself get lost for a while in all the stress of online school and i am not proud of that i knew things needed to change and i needed to make that happen for my future something that kept me going was my my dream of someday becoming a fashion designer ever since i was little i have a dream of becoming a fashion designer since i was 11 i often sat down to sketch my ideas dresses t-shirts anything that has that has to

026do with designing clothes makes me happy i have so many more opportunities here in the united states i have worked very hard every day to do well in school and to be able to attend college so i can learn and start my career i want to be able to succeed make money and someday bring my mother to this beautiful country nothing would make me happier than having her here with me i would like to thank my teachers my principal and family members for always being here there for me and helping me get through this difficult but amazing journey if i could give advice to anyone in my same position i would say never give up always smile work hard do your best and be strong there's always a way to get through hard times and

027always always be kind to others thank you [Music] [Applause] so today we also want to present sarah with our challenge coin coin of excellence in education we are so proud of you and i'm going to go off script here for a second we have grandma milady estrada senora miladas por favor felicidades this is grandma and let's congratulate [Music] [Applause] uh so we're told sarah's a leader in her class and assist other english language learners with their studies she is a wonderful representative of echo canyon sarah one more time congratulations [Applause] [Music] we also have more to celebrate i'd like to ask from mojave we want kimberly to come up here please kimberly salgado reyes and her principal dr asmussen if you could please come up [Applause] kimberly was also nominated for state recognition by her

028mojave english language development reading and writing teacher yvonne collin and received honorable mention ms collin tells us that kim who is a seventh grader at mojave does incredible things she is kind interesting motivated determined organized exceptional and has a great sense of humor she uses all of these qualities to excel in everything she does when kimberly arrived at mojave she was quiet but not shy about letting us know that most important areas she wished to focus on were speaking and listening skills she was determined to get better at them regardless of the discomfort of doing so she enrolled in the dual language spanish english immersion program and received services for academic and language support in math reading and writing last year kimberly was part of our orchestra she plays the violin and the goal she

029set for herself was to learn to play bavaro an instrument she had done her own research and found that usually the skill is for someone who is older regardless of this she set out to achieve this and accomplish it and her own in less than a year we are also very proud of kim and we want to present her with the challenge coin as well again this evening she is accompanied by her father jeronimo salgado and her mother esmeralda i want to extend our congratulations for [Applause] once again congratulations to you and your student give them another round of applause [Music] although not here with us tonight we also want to mention desert mountain high school senior ye your sack or he goes by when born in china zack became an susd student four years

030ago he was not able to join us this afternoon but all indications are sac was has a great future ahead of him in no small part because of his susd education and support from his english teacher richard vernice zack has been accepted to asu's barrett honors college and has applications in harvard and mit as well and we expect we will be hearing great things about him in the future aside from these students initial inability to speak english when they came to susd the other thing they have in common is the support of the district fabulous eld coaches jamie white laurie kelly and jody claude do we have any of them here tonight let's plug up and give you a nice shout out [Music] the investment this team makes in our english language learner is truly

031impressive and we are most grateful for helping these students and many other just like them that also have that hurdle of an angle of a language barrier but they still have those opportunities that we give here at susd which equals their success thank you for giving us the opportunity to celebrate some of our really awesome ell students we appreciate the time [Applause] congratulations sarah kimberly and zach you've worked so hard at learning an incredibly difficult second language we're very proud of you and that you've taken on the challenge of moving to a new country and learning the new language with such determination we're also proud that you've chosen to make scottsdale unified school district you're learning home next up i would like to invite to the podium dr sackos who is going to tell us

032about an ingleside middle school student who has done something most 7th graders have not become a published author dr sackos thank you dr menzel and good evening president beckman vice president zanowski board members and ms wagner the celebration i'm here to share with you this afternoon is one of our middle school students i would like to invite bo donovan seventh grade english language and english language arts teacher mr liam kloss and their principal dr junior michael to the podium gentlemen the behind the vision writing contest for middle school students and high school students inspires them to create poems and essays rather than writing on a topic they rather than writing on any topic they wish they all get the same topic or prompt in bose case he wrote about butter yes butter was it salted

033or unsalted butter it was just butter we'll still stick with that i'm not sure how i would write about butter if i had to write about it but with the tools beau has learned from mr clause's class and the bravery of a seasoned author beau took on this challenge as a result beau's essay now appears in a recently published anthology of student poetry and essays mr claus would you like to share anything with us about butter or bow i don't know how much i have to say on butter okay we're going to talk about um i think i maybe i share this characteristic with a lot of people here that i find it very easy to romanticize teaching um and so i very often feel naive in front of 13 year olds and their scrutinizing

034eyes but bo when everybody just like erupted into applause for you wasn't that awesome wasn't that like so cool in our little fifth period classroom can we give him like another one anyway i feel kind of rude uh speaking of here when you were the one who did all the work but still you created something that was obviously so full of creativity and word flow and excitement and very off the wall and that wowed a lot of people and that's such a cool thing so if there's any lesson that i can yank out of that and emphasize for you it's i guess that you know sharing yourself and sharing your work is so worth it it's so important and crucial to us and i'm so glad that you did it and i hope you carry

035it with you forward most of your life [Applause] so congratulations beau and as we celebrate beau as a state and national winner of behind the vision writing contest i would like to offer you one of our challenge coins on behalf of scottsdale unified school district congratulations this is the coin in your hand and we are looking forward to seeing you on the new york times bestseller list in the future would you come back and talk to us all right good job congratulations bo and thank you mr claus for your uh effort to inspire our students creative writing in your classroom the next celebration you may recall that at our meeting a couple of weeks ago i mentioned that mojave middle school would be hosting a first lego league robotics tournament on december 4th and it

036really was truly something special to observe those fourth through eighth grade students working through challenges on the fly with their robotics especially our 10 teams from scottsdale unified school district that were part of that effort here to tell us a little bit more about that experience is mojave middle school science teacher and robotics coach mr bert tevel bert [Applause] madam president madam vice president members of the board dr menzel mrs wagner community friends over a decade ago pioneers at several places in the district recognized the potential of robotics navajo elementary embraced a lego-based program as a part of their new steam curriculum students were directing a tiny bot rolling outside their lab as they were as if they were nasa engineers steering a remote mars rover at saguaro students started a club and founded mr

037brandt a dedicated teacher to guide their exploration so dedicated was he that he was even willing to give up some of his time on his beloved golf course marilyn williams at tivon stretched the brains of her students in ways that truly prepared them for real world problems susan lindbergh steve geislinger k king the teachers at navajo and many more schools are carrying this program to this day dedicated teachers who routinely spend way more time with their students than they are paid for and supportive community members have carried our teams to multiple state championships and trips to worlds i kicked off a program at mojave and kiva the students there would come to mojave to meet prompted by my experience in industry prior to teaching i knew that students have little opportunity in regular classes to

038truly deal with failure stuff that doesn't work you know real life to collaborate effectively depending on your teammates to communicate timely and clearly to use critical thinking for robotics that's just everyday practice it's world-class future focused learning and that is what really is happening at scottsdale unified school district today we celebrate the saguaro sabre cats for their growth and success about six years ago daniella mara then the sabre cat president and i shook hands on the saber cats taking over organizing the annual first lego league or fll regional tournament an event that usually is run by adult volunteers at susd we put students in the lead and that's how the magic happens i've been fortunate to work with a string of exceptional leaders during the past few years and i'd like to introduce the current

039leader of the saguaro sabre cat robotics natalie foster to tell us more about the recent tournament and the activities of our club oh and those navajo robo buffs they're still at it just listen natalie [Applause] hello everyone my name is natalie foster i'm a senior at saguaro high school and i'm the president of sabre cat robotics over at saguaro high school so as mr tevelda said we have taken over the fll qualifier for the last multiple years and this year i was lucky enough to call myself the tournament director helping orchestrate the mojave tournament for over 14 teams now our team saw this as a amazing opportunity for us to give back to the robotics community that gave so much to us and we wanted to use it as a way to help get kids

040interested for future years in robotics and stem which is an increasing field which is always needing more people to come into it now we were really excited to be able to have the tournament in person this year as we had to have it virtually last year but we were still able to reach hundreds of students i had many coaches and students come up to me this year saying that they were so happy to be able to compete in person they were able to work with the other teams rather than just relying on themselves they were able to cooperatively work together to reach their goals and do better in the tournament we were sure to strictly enforce covet protocols ensuring that everybody was safe and we were sad to say though that this year our tournament

041we only had 14 teams we're usually somewhere between 30 to 34 teams kovit unfortunately did disband many teams but we at sabercat robotics are working to try and go through our elementary and middle schools and really revamp those teams making sure that they can come back together and experience the joy that robotics can provide students now as i mentioned out of these 14 teams one of them was the navajo robo buffs and this is actually really special to me because i was one of those students and i actually competed at the mojave qualifying tournament was that when i was in the fifth grade we were able to make it to state just like the team did this year so it was really a full circle moment for me is showing me that i was really

042able to give back to my community all what they gave to me and i would also love to say a special shout out to dr menzel and vice president zanowski who are actually able to come and see our tournament in action and it means so much all the support that you guys give to us as well of all of the saguaro faculty members and all of the susd faculty who continually support us and all of this also wouldn't be possible without the wonderful high school volunteers that dedicate all of their time to this and now i'm going to pass it on to sydney lowry who i awarded the volunteer of the year award this year [Applause] hi my name is sydney lowery i'm also a senior at saguaro high school and i work with soharjo

043robotics i just want to say something really quick that as a volunteer who helped to organize and manage the teams at the fll qualifier this competition was an overall success all the participants were very kind and really professional and natalie along with the many other coordinators for this event did an amazing job in making sure that the event ran as smoothly and as efficiently as possible and i really look forward to seeing how this event branches out and grows in the next few years so thank you [Applause] i want to thank mr tevel natalie and um sydney for all of your work it was truly impressive to watch the students critical thinking their problem solving tackling the challenge in front of them and and it wouldn't have happened without the senior leadership from the saguaro

044sabre cast so thank you for what you've done so excited to watch this the future success of our teams that are competing at the arizona ffl tournament at arizona state university the weekend on january 15th and want to wish uh success to the navajo elementary's robo buffs team as well as cocoa paw middle school's community team called the electro bots as they compete in that state level championship i also want to highlight a few other things we have so many good things tonight but i think it's worth the time because it's why we're here so if you ever wonder how far and wide the influence of susd's teacher goes you'll remember that a few months ago we had a surprise visit from a student who's attending yale to recognize a former counselor of hers from

045chaparral high school we have another story this evening to share and i'm going to invite dr sackos back to the podium to share that story thank you dr menzel students accepted into the university of chicago's class of 2025 were asked to nominate an educator whose guidance has helped them along the path toward intellectual growth one such educator educator hails from right here at coronado high school yes you can go please welcome ap government ap macro economics and ap us history and economics teacher mr justin slover to the podium along with his principal miss amy pellitucci [Applause] and if the little slovers want to come up that would be awesome too we welcome him to the podium if you want to do that to yourself oh no he wants to run up here he's welcome too

046i think that was a no oh no okay we'll get him up here later mr slover was recently selected um recently selected a university of chicago's outstanding educator he was nominated by his former student anthony minjavar calixto who graduated from coronado high school this past may here's some of what anthony said about mr slover in his nomination slover comes to class every day with an honest drive to teach and educate always communicating complex ideas through interesting examples and through assigning projects that are very enjoyable that build upon his remarkable lectures and create a feeling of goodwill in his classroom being highly respected by both his peers and pupils he is an alumnus of my high school and gives back to the community which made him not only through the enrichment of the youth but also

047through his dedication to extracurricular activities at my school he runs the national honor society to provide support directly to the community as well as running on the field when he teaches softball goodness sakes that's a lot through this through through this year has been hard for many students although this year has been hard for many students at my school they can rely on mr slover whether it be for extra help on an assignment or just help from a friend he is always there in good time to explain the con complex relationship between government policy and the real world effects on the economy while cracking plenty of jokes along the way he is above outstanding i don't think anything i could possibly stay say can top that endorsement and i am content to leave it to

048that congratulations mr slover there is no more high praise than that of a former student let's see let's see if many slobbers changed his mind um but if not um i mr slover i uh please accept this challenge coin on behalf of the scottsdale unified school district they're supposed to be like a secret handshake [Applause] vice president zanowski thank you vice president zanowski wait natalie don't leave please um actually if natalie and sydney could come back up to the podium i'd like for them to give a quick psa of other things they're doing for students in our district specifically dealing with science all right um the first thing that comes to my mind uh as well as the work that i do with robotics i am also the president of the sisters and stem initiatives

049that's right sisters in stem was created in 2018 by three female saguaro sabre cat robotics members i have been lucky enough to call myself the president for the last two years we've seen major major growth in our program over the last few years we've reached over a thousand parents and students over the last three years with our program and our message of really just trying to show girls that stem is something approachable too many people view stem as this field that only geniuses can go into and we want to show them that stem is approaching approachable and fun for any and everyone and while our event is targeted towards girls we are sure to incorporate everybody we want to create a nice environment surrounding stem for girls boys really anybody sisters in stem we are

050currently working we just had our in-person event hosted at sohara high school at the very end of october and we are continuing to do monthly virtual events for students on the first friday of every single month now this just ensures that we can reach all audiences and something that was really really interesting about that in person event is that we were able to reach students from six different cities in arizona which is something that i didn't think was ever going to happen that we would reach kids all the way from paradise valley to gilbert and glendale this just shows the power of our district and the power of stem and how much we can work together to really just provide opportunities for students to help show them that any and every door is open to

051them they can go into whatever field they choose that is again one of the biggest messages of our program is we want to ensure that no doors remain closed to any students if we can help it and i would like to thank you for your service as well as your leadership as a student that's really important so thank you thank you very much [Applause] thank you so much we do recognize that you may have exams to prepare for so you can leave and and we do appreciate your leadership i feel very confident uh that you will be successful going forward and i'm so looking forward to hearing future success stories thank you for your commitment to the work that you've done now i want to turn our attention from the world of the classroom into

052the world of high school marching bands an invite to the podium michelle marvin please come and tell us about the amazing marching band achievements in scottsdale [Applause] thank you dr menzo president beckman school board and gladys are very very excited to actually talk to you today we do have a few members from one of the groups that we're going to mention that exceeded uh all expectations uh i do want to do a quick shout out that i appreciate so much your support of our fine arts programs and how you allowed them to as much as they could during a pandemic year we had four of our five high school marching bands in the state championships and scored in the top seven in the states so that's super exciting but i've come actually to talk about

053these beautiful people next to me right here i come as an arcadia teacher 27 years ago which is kind of crazy we had a band program and it disappeared and this wonderful director over here jan gardner hiding behind them has brought this group to a new level when i took this position i had the honor of presenting the same people who received the same awards which is outstanding i believe it's jan's vision of unifying his district he has the band being coached not only by himself as the arcadia high school band director but zack saldo the hopi and tavon band director and dana maribel the ingleside band director so creating that complex build is just amazing so these kids stand here because they won both circuits of the marching band competitions first place one of

054those circuits had 41 bands competing in it and they received first place in the azmba and they've received first place in the abodea which is the arizona abandoned orchestra directors association and to achieve both is incredible in fact no one else has done it that i know of and i had the honor of presenting them this two years ago pre-pandemic they went through a pandemic year of no competitions and then these kids came back and won the same two awards again when they first had the chance to competition i know that their principal dr j would like to say a few things but i just tell you i am so proud of you guys and jan you're amazing so thank you [Applause] good evening um one of the things that was a challenge for me

055watching was they start at 41 and they work backwards and so as we got down to 10 and then down to five it just kept the anxiety kept building up and i was there watching them and when they announced number two they obviously know who won so it was it was pretty awesome to see so these are great students here they've worked really hard i've watched them seen them practice they practice harder than than anyone i've seen and they have an amazing staff that is very unified that work together to bring about um this championship and when you think about it uh this is number seven champions seven state titles so uh pretty amazing most people go their whole life without ever experiencing a state championship and to to win two and one in one

056season and then as a as a program to win that many is just excellent at its best so congratulations titans [Applause] thank you very much i appreciate it congratulations to all of you thank you for coming tonight we know you also have exams but we appreciate you being here we're so proud of your accomplishments and look forward to hearing another great season next year so thank you so much [Applause] so we've been able to celebrate academic excellence we've been able to celebrate excellence in the arts and now i'd like to invite our athletic director for scotland unified school district nathan slater to the podium to talk about success in athletics nathan good evening president beckman vice president sunowski members of the board dr manziel gladys thank you for having us this evening we had a

057tremendous fall 2021 season in athletics we had several teams win state championships as well as several teams that were runners-up our badminton team at chaparral was second place in badminton they lost to perry in the finals congratulations to them our golf team at saguaro also was second in their division in golf the chaparral football team unfortunately lost on saturday at noon at asu against highland in a hard-fought game but that was a tremendous accomplishment as well to make it to the state championship game as well as chaperone boys swim and dive they actually as these guys come on in we'll get to you see how big they are uh the chaperone swim and dive team for the boys lost out on a state championship by just two points uh the chaperone girls you guys can

058stay here now it's okay you don't have to go back just the chaperone swim and dive team for the girls won their state champion for the eighth consecutive year and a desert mountain yes eight years in a row and desert mountain won the state championship and boys and girls swim and dive this past season so congrats and now without further ado we do have the 2021 open division football champions huawei saber cats in the house congratulations to the soil saber cats [Music] we have the soil principal ann oxinger uh athletic director matt harris assistant head coach and a legend mr frank rubin assistant coach louie ramirez and mr milligan i thought was here there's mr milling come on mr milligan come on up here and then also team captains parker brailsford thomas deteresso ridge dochell

059javen jacobs and cannon siegel so congratulations again to these guys as i tell you about the season the sabre cats had an amazing season they went 12-1 they defeated california powerhouse sierra keen to 24-7 they defeated cactus high school in the open division quarterfinals they defeated hamilton who is nationally ranked the number one seed in the tournament and also five-time defending state champion chandler high who were both nationally ranked and for those of you that don't understand football in arizona the 4a 5a and 6a take the best eight teams out of their respective conferences and put them into the open division saguaro qualified yet again for the open division and not only were they one of the top eight teams in arizona they beat the best teams in arizona and won their 13th state championship

060and this was coach monza's seventh state championship as head coach so congratulations to those guys for tremendous accomplishment on that and coach mons he is unfortunately unable to be here today and the reason why is after the game mickey mouse came out and said coach mons what are you going to do now that you won the state championship and his wife but his wife voted in and said he's going to disneyland so literally he's driving home right now from disneyland yeah so with that win saguaro is now currently ranked by max preps as the number 13 football school in the nation athletics is obviously important but so is academics saguaro football had five first-team academic team sports 360 az first team six honorable mentions for that organization they have 12 students in the program that

061have above a 4.0 gpa and 36 with above a 3.5 that's almost 50 students in their program with above a 3.5 gpa which is amazing they also have many individual accomplishments they have 14 student athletes that were first team all region in the san tan region three honorable mentions they had the offensive player of the year and javen jacobs they have the player of the year and tristan monday who was going to be here this evening but is felt fallen ill and was unable to attend and yet again the coach of the year who's built just an amazing program coach mons and we're so sorry that he couldn't be here today but he was the coach of the year for that uh for that region and as always the saguaro sabre cats produce many many

062student athletes that move on to the next level to play college football division one division two division three and so again guys amazing accomplishment to win a state championship is amazing but to win the open division state championship going through the the gauntlet you had to go through with cactus hamilton chandler and beating the very best of the best to prove that you are the best of the best congratulations well done and we're very very honored good job okay and with that guys i think we can go out this way really quick thank you mr slater and congratulations to the entire team having been on the sidelines on on saturday night it was both an entertaining performance and a compelling victory and we're very proud of your accomplishments both in the classroom and on the

063field dr miz if i could really quickly i'd like to thank the governing board for the tremendous support of athletics in scotland unified school district last monday night we had our our big athletics banquet and four of you were in attendance to that which is very much appreciated three of you were at the uh the game on saturday night zach you were there at the game in the in the morning so i've not had this much support in my in my time in 28 years in the scottsdale school district so thank you all for your tremendous support and zach and scott you've been at more events athletically than any leaders that i've seen in this district so thank you very very much [Applause] so that concludes the in-person presentations but we're not done with the

064successes and celebrations so there are a few more i'd like to highlight this evening the first is having been able to attend several high school theater productions already this semester i can truly say that i'm not surprised that our programs received significant awards last month at the arizona thespian festival first off chaparral high school's advanced in theater 3 class received a superior rating for the one act play tracks directed by students kylie glazer and annabelle washburn and was one of 10 superior ratings chaparral received the troop also once again received gold honor group status for its community service performance and activities year round and excelled in tech challenges such as light hanging and not tying congratulations to chaparral and teacher director ed cuomo for their recognition the desert mountain high school theater program took in

065significant recognitions as well earning a ranking of all-state superior for its fall production of the odyssey and its first ever gold standard award for directing acting and design you may recall our having watched a video of student tristan davenport's entry last spring to the national shakespeare competition while she's at it again receiving an educational theater association scholarship so congratulations to the desert mountain troop and the new theater director chad willingham not to be left out the saguaro theater program made its mark at the thespian festival as well with student andy arnold and francis royal taking first place in the props changeover tech challenge spencer waring was chosen to showcase her original 10-minute play on the main stage in front of the entire conference so congratulations to our saber cats and director tim mccandless as well

066as you know teamwork whether it's in athletics or the performing arts is pretty significant and it's a skill that will serve our students well long after they leave scottsdale unified school district there are two more stories that i think are important to share this evening sust students are challenged and inspired every day to extend their learning to question and to think critically one such teacher who has been doing this for some time at saguaro high school is art teacher michelle peacock and we did not want miss peacock's retirement at the end of the week to go unnoted she started inspiring susd students 13 years ago at what was then called a nlc or the arcadian neighborhood learning center which you now know is echo canyon school from there she moved to mohave middle school for

067four years and finally to saguaro where she called her art home since 2008. along the way she's created the kind of learning environment all teachers should aspire to one that supports students and colleagues alike one that inspires students regardless of their art talents to imagine and create she has been recognized by arizona arts educators organizations as well as in national art educator circles she created the saguaro learning community's annual springtime art show led the mural project to decorate the school's auditorium walls and was a key inspiration in saguaro's recent canal convergent project which if any of you were able to see was pretty amazing i want to take this opportunity to thank michelle for her contributions to the education of thousands of susd students over the past 13 years she leaves behind an inspiration for

068all of us to be better and do better we wish her well in her retirement and and finally a great holiday story to tell uh you know i get a lot of emails uh some of them are more positive than others but this one was definitely worth sharing so on occasion our transportation department um buses and bus drivers are conte contracted by various community organizations to support their events last tuesday philip miller got behind the wheel of bus 416 and drove 78 children from the boys and girls clubs of greater scottsdale's hartley and ruth barker branch which is just across miller from from us here at coronado to go holiday shopping at the target store at the pavilion shopping center last week i received an email after that event from the boys and girls club's

069president marketing and communications audra holt about our driver he was nothing short of amazing he could have dropped off the kids and sat on the bus but he did so much more when the children were done shopping he helped roll the shopping carts out to the bus and carefully tucked their bags into the storage under the bus obviously each child had a pretty large bag and the bus was at capacity he carefully situated everything to ensure nothing was damaged and he worked tirelessly for over two hours to hear that kind of unsolicited high praise about one of our employees from a key community partner is just heartwarming at any time of the year but especially at this time of the year so i personally want to thank mr miller for making these children feel so

070special on that special occasion and i want to thank the boys and girls club of greater scottsdale for their generous donors for making such an event possible every day i am proud so proud of susd and this is just one more reason why [Applause] thank you dr menzel this is an extraordinary way to end our semester highlighting that our students bring excellence not only in academics but robotics the arts athletics and so much more we will now move to your superintendent comments thank you president beckman and members of the governing board my comments will be brief tonight and i would actually like to request that we begin with a moment of silence we've learned that phoenix police officer 22 year old tyler moldovan who was shot earlier this morning you may have heard about that

071on the news was one of our former students he went through cherokee coco paw and chaparral he was a member of the class of 2018. he's got an older sister who was also a firebird and we were praying for him and his family and thinking for of all of those who serve our community in that capacity so if we could just take a moment to send good thoughts to him and his family so thank you we are truly grateful for all those who serve in law enforcement the final thing that i'd like to say this evening before we move to our regular agenda is that we're at the end of another semester a semester that has been impacted by covid it's been impacted by any number of issues and challenges in some respects it was

072much much harder than last year as we navigated other challenges in front of us but every day our students came to school our teachers were there in the classroom to support our students our parents continued to work with our teachers as we navigate these challenges and we were able to celebrate earlier this evening so many student successes and it's a reminder of why the work we do is so important every day so on behalf of the administrative team i would like to say thank you to everyone who's a part of the scottsdale unified school district family whether you're a parent a staff member or members of the governing board and i want to wish each and every one of you a safe healthy and happy holiday season thank you thank you dr menzel we will

073move to agenda number agenda number item number nine now a special presentation from our student advisory board a presentation on arcadia high school chaparral high school coronado high school desert mountain high school and scottsdale online good evening well you think i'm going to introduce and welcome zach oaken who is our president-elect a student advisory board i'm actually going to introduce mr oaken as scottsdale leadership's jenkins youth leadership award recipient [Applause] a couple of us were honored last week to go on friday to the to the luncheon along with with dr hirsch to again hear about the amazing service um and academic excellence that our students um have and so with that i couldn't be more proud to to be there when zach received that award and i just wanted to mention that briefly um and

074yes i'm bragging a little bit um so with that i welcome zach okam open to the board to give us our monthly student advisory board update sir good evening president beckman um vice president sinowski members of the board superintendent menzel and ms wagner i'm here to get my name is zach oaken i'm the president-elect of the student advisory board and i'll start with the student advisory board update for the december board meeting so some updates we have is the thought exchange we recently got the results back from our school resource officer the preliminary results and we also have subcommittee hot topics that we want to share with you so for our thought exchange but our most recent one our second most recent one actually we asked what are the benefits of the school resource officer

075program and what could be implemented to improve the function of the school resource officers and on this thought of change we're proud to share we had almost 300 participants almost 300 thoughts and almost 4 000 ratings so this was a good turnout we would have liked more of a turnout but we still did get some good thoughts sharing so some of the major benefits that a lot of the students and people shared was that the sros help the community they help with crime prevention they help with the feeling of safety and emergency response on campus and to help cultivate relationships with police officers and help with social and emotional support demonstrated greatly by the crisis canines at chaparral high school and which we are going to get more at in other high schools and middle

076schools so then we also had some enhancements that people were bringing up and one of the biggest enhancements we want to make sure we get to is the overall awareness of the sro program so a lot of the people wasn't weren't necessarily aware of the sro program and everything they do on our campus and they do make up a big part of our campus we want to make sure everyone's more aware of that and also we want to get the sros to be more involved in the classes to be able to make sure the students know more about them they know where to go to for support and so the sros can be more impactful on their campus and communities we also would like to get more prices canines and more campuses which i know

077is something that everyone's trying to get and it's something that's very helpful to our community and then some other kids we're talking about more stickers and more awards so basically another way to increase involvement and relationships with the sro officers and students on campus so then we also were to make subcommittees so for our subcommittees we actually did the sorry the code of conduct subcommittee so for our code of conduct subcommittee we have a main focus of working with the code of conduct to update it making it stronger and more modern for the modern student and also work to address dress code stuff violations of the code of conduct and disciplinary actions we also have our college and career readiness subcommittee and on our intelligent group readiness subcommittee we want to work to provide education

078of education so worked with rotc colleges scholarships internship opportunities and job opportunities after high school to make sure that all the students on all the campuses are prepared for their future after high school sorry and also we have our communication subcommittee which is main focus is to increase communication with students from the student advisory board and from the district so one way we're trying to do that is through the use of social media and different doodle classroom different resources that we way we can share things more easily and more readily with students on campuses we also have a technology subcommittee which is working to change and kind of adapt the way technology blocked websites are working and also the way students can access technology and use technology and classes along with the cameras and the

079classrooms and all that stuff and lastly we have the next steps for the student advisory board so we want to work on extending our thought exchange with the sros and also worked on more thought exchange so we have our class rate thought to change and actually just ended i think last week and then we also have more subcommittee we worked we want to work on and make sure we're able to give a bigger impact to our community and students so thank you for your time if there's any questions happy to take i want to thank you you guys do a fantastic job and you take on some challenging topics so i really appreciate you coming together and giving us your viewpoint and your voice at these meetings thank you vice president zanowski i concur and

080i look forward to your subcommittee work especially on you guys working with the adults on the campuses and coming up with some maybe some revised dress code practices that meet everyone's needs better of course board member hart wells thank you i just want to add my thanks too and to you personally congratulations thank you outstanding student and in your leadership we appreciate you being here particularly after the last time you were here a lot of courage and we very much look forward to your feedback i like the idea that you're doing the subcommittees and kind of dig into some of these topics and i'm particularly interested in the technology ideas that may come out so keep us posted for sure good luck on your finals thank you thank you thank you all again [Applause] okay

081we will move now to agenda item 10. public comments gladys do i have all the cards submitted in the order they were submitted yes they do okay this is a call for public comment for non-agenda items and consent and action agenda items they meet these may be brought to the governing board's attention under this section of the agenda action taken as a result of this kind of public comment will be limited to responding to criticism made by those who've addressed the governing board directing staff to look into the matter or asking the matter be put on a future agenda no other discussion or legal action is allowed comments are limited to two minutes 60 minutes total one person cannot give his his or her time to another to increase the number of minutes an individual

082may speak okay our first speaker is okay two more rich hawker thanks former u.s supreme court justice potter stewart once said ethics is knowing the difference between what you have the right to do and what is right to do in response to community outrage about young michael's google drive filled with opposition research against scottsdale's parents dr menzel seemed to content to dismiss the situation with a statement that the scottsdale police found that there was nothing criminal on young michael's google drive is that the district's standard dr menzel will defend a board member's attempt to chill parental engagement through intimidation as long as it's not criminal what need does young michael have with cyber stalking parents what need does he have with parents personal documents what need does he have with video surveillance of parents and

083pictures of their minor children what need to for any of this other than an attempt to intimidate parents into silence young michael claims that the drive with his fathers that he had nothing to do with it he lives with his father has worked on discussing smear campaigns with his father allegedly shares a laptop with his father it's simply not credible to believe young michael's claim yet this is the story that dr menzel spun and gaslighted the community distract from young michael's unethical behavior it's not criminal the district and this board need to do some soul searching and take affirmative steps to regain the trust of the community beyond michael he needs to go and dr mental you should have some more self-respect and respect for the community that you serve i understand you can't do

084anything to remove young michael but as a leader of the district take a stand for to take a stand against ethical for stand up for ethical behavior condoning on michael's action call for his resignation and quit expects making excuses for unethical behavior thank you jill dunnigan in a recent statement to the community dr menzel framed parents as bullies for daring to voice concerns about the hateful curriculum that he's allowed to seep into scottsdale schools dr menzel asserted that student-led clubs should be allowed free reign of programming in the name of inclusion so let's look at some of the sexuality club programming that dr menzel is advocating for number one from glsen's inclusive meeting guide quote if you're discussing gender identity talk about the gender binary as a white supremist concept dr menzel how is that

085inclusive number two glsen promotes that children as young as third grade should be told you may identify as a girl or a boy or just identify as a person it's your brain you tell us what feels right so eight-year-olds who have a hard time deciding what to order for dinner are asked to decide their sexual identities number three glsen asks students to express a commitment to the abolishment of police use your privilege to not only document the police but physically shield black people from violence and death dr menzel is abolishing the police your idea of inclusion number four glsen also advocates that students steer away from the idea of the nuclear family structure do you hear that mama bears glsen wants to undermine your importance in the family now dr menzel asked parents to believe

086that the glsen programming was brought in by students for student-led clubs yet it's been exposed that all cocoa paw middle school teachers are required to attend glsen training training that coaches teachers to sneak glisten content into every classroom so dr menzel we parents aren't fooled by your gaslighting and we will not be bullied by you i call on you to remove all race-baiting cop-hating sexualized programming from susd school jack jeff gorkle i'm sorry i probably pronounced that absolutely wrong jeff garakal sorry you're fine i get it all the time thank you guys for having us let us in letting us have a chance to speak my name is jeff garaki i've been a resident of arizona for 50 years and i've lived in scottsdale for almost 10 years now i moved here when i met

087my and married my beautiful wife michelle and her two wonderful daughters i definitely married up thank you we are a good team we both enjoy serving our community we both done through our church our neighborhood work functions schools and now recently through our political affiliations in my past i've found failures and relationships and financial decisions several times i've had to start over this is the beauty of serving a god that forgives in a country that allows such mistakes though that all important lessons have been learned through it all important lessons have been learned on one of these dark days i gave my heart to the lord he is with me always some days he walks i walk beside him and some days i'm being carried this message is from mr greenberg just i say to

088him that um i say this all to him so that he understands that we're all humans that have failures i need him to understand where i get my strength and the level of my resolve i am not afraid of you mr greenberg berg in your dossier see while you were busy poking mama bears with your stick you swatted the hornet's nest that is just over your head i am but i wish i was here to commend all of you on the great job you're doing leading our children on the contrary i'm speaking for thousands of scottsdale residents and millions of my countrymen that have witnessed the disgusting conduct and the platform this body's put forward conduct that is inexcusable and so embarrassing these are our children this is our room and we have elected this

089body to serve us that mr greenberg is our chair that you're sitting in we telling we are telling you if you love and respect this body ensure in your end its constituents mister jeff please wrap it up surround by the wrong people okay thank you i just wanted to say god bless you this body and the community thank you [Applause] patricia patricia pellett well that other awesome mom stole my most of my speech about glsen and i do second it i want it removed from the platform of susd is divisive and racist at the last board meeting i was shocked when i arrived and there was a group of angry teachers and no idea why they're so angry they're yelling at me screaming at me bossing me around i had no idea what was going

090on i was very confused they asked me why do you want to defund me i said what are you talking about i still had no clue what they talking about they had signs about don't defund the teachers the recall has nothing to do with the defunding they also spoke on here on the platform about the defunding it turned out there was some fake news being passed around to the teachers to anger them about the recall very sad to see so fact check is the one defunding the schools is dr minzel by overspending the budget and the board who continues to not listen to the parents the outflow of students will continue until you listen to us thank you [Applause] thank you gentiles frank ugenti thank you for the record my name is frank eugenti of

091three children in scottsdale school district it's necessary to say i speak for myself and nobody else it's pretty known my ex-wife the mother of my children is an elected official she can speak for herself and she will it's also unfortunately necessary to say i don't speak on behalf of my employer some folks might want to take what i say and disagree with it and try to cancel me or get me fired and that's just the tool of a coward but it's not something that anybody should do with that said i spent the last two hours outside your security wouldn't let me in this building because i am not wearing a mask i don't know what authority you think you have over parents to tell us we can't wear a mask at a public meeting in

092a public building but you have none i want to thank the scottsdale police who were very professional very nice with how they handled the situation i don't think their head of security had this in mind when he took a security job protecting our children shame on you guys your elected officials your performance is unacceptable the results of which are that you will be removed from your positions you will all be removed whether by recall or by primary next election when that happens and parents are sitting where you're sitting you will be fired you will be fired anybody that is found to have been a part of the dossier will be fired this is how we handle things when our elected officials misbehave or don't represent us these are the consequences thank you jason [Applause] good

093evening my name is jason brown parent of two girls who have attended susd over the last decade i would like to address mr greenberg's behavior and actions and implications on the board the district and the community the board loves to tout their values so let's review those values in relation to this behavior excellence part of that is reference to self-discipline clearly not applicable in his actions integrity the essence here around transparency and honesty empathy treating all with kindness and compassion inclusion treating all fairly and equally assumably those that even don't agree with your worldview unity well that's the exact opposite of what's happening here between this community and this board i ask you if the board members failed to espouse these values and in mr greenberg's case a failure on all accounts how is it

094that he's fit to be a decisive voice to make decisions on behalf of our children so what did mr greenberg do after all these accusations and and proof came out about his actions he did what after he drove a wedge between all these constituents and sowing mistrust in the community he did the illogical thing that any aspiring politician would do he filed paperwork for a new job so now the maricopa county community college board can suffer some of the same consequences that our children have lastly on a more personal level the most important people in my life are girls and women as a parent we sacrifice anything to ensure the safety and success of our children mr greenberg would cannot relate to this as his actions prove that without a doubt but the most inexcusable

095part is the way he attempted to intimidate and humiliate women and leverage his position of power to do so without condemnation from this board you are complicit in these egregious actions it's a lot harder to live those susp values than post them on a website now is your chance to prove that thank you mr barone okay bristle longnecker [Applause] hello uh my name is risa linbecker i am a paranormal student of sust and i second the gleason i leave it and i was part of cocoa power last year so i know exactly what happened inside there and my topic today is about the gpa on friday december 12th we received an email from an sust with the title weekly updates on the bottom of it was a very well hidden but very important topic that

096was eliminating the class rank to the latin owner system why wasn't this topic brought up at every high school family in susd why exactly are these unilateral changes bringing to the table what is not just an addition to the current system how can you compare required classes with those that are optional are we going to make our teams less competitive on national levels today finals on high school only represent 10 percent of their qualifications teams are being passed without warranty that they had a good understanding on the required class math or english high schoolers are not supposed to pass a student just because they are supposed to prepare them from a competitive way for a way a very demanding college life and globalized workplaces today i am starting to wonder how we give those a-plus

097to every school in scottsdale when we are ranking 49 on overall estate ranking it is irrelevant that we are 63 percent average this is still a 37 percent that the kids doesn't know what are you talking about accountability and rewards are qualified that i should be teach and emphasize on every aspect in our schools but zoo committees approach please wrap it up thank you okay thank you [Applause] karen warner we have some extraordinary students in our district i'm really hoping that we can keep it that way i wanted to acknowledge miss a and mr milligan at soir they're absolutely extraordinary people and administrators now i have two questions for you what legacy will you leave as board members and what will you be remembered for two of you are busy doing your busy work what

098i've noticed is that this portion of the meeting means little to most of you it really doesn't matter what the parents are saying some of you bring busy work as you can see to keep yourself distracted from what parents are saying some of you only check in when you happen to hear a key word that fits with your narrative or political agenda so you can chastise parents later some of you pay attention but don't have the confidence to take action being a board member i am sure you were told this would be 15 to 20 hours a week volunteer position when in fact it's pretty much a full-time job particularly in this divisive environment and a new dumpster fire is exposed each week horrible assault at arcadia did anybody follow up with that sexual assault

099at chaparral an employee in a propaganda video spreading lies about borders what she and her selected students said did not happen according to your counsel and when were you going to address that a curriculum that was adopted based on a sham committee with only one parent on it who no one seems to be able to find and admittedly was a mistake later a board member who lives with his parents and along with his father father collected information on parents on a google drive what is happening today is a reflection of you and your leadership you are clearly okay sitting next to a person who clearly violated the code of ethics what does that say about you and the district council when people look back during this time your names will be associated with the aftermath

100of the decisions you make today and the things you choose to sweep under the rug enrollment is bleeding academics are down not a great combo oh and millions over budget u.s board members are allowed to seek outside counsel however you have to pay for it or get a pro bono and i would assert that this is really a great time to seek outside counsel on matters that laurie byrd the district thank you miss warner amy carney [Applause] amy carney good evening governor board dr manziel i'm amy carney a mother of six students educated in susd as we wrap up 2021 i was hoping you could reflect on a few things as we head into the new year in the arizona department of ed parental rights handbook ars 15-102 states that it's the parents right to

101inspect the school district policies and curriculum yet recently i asked administrators to review curriculum that aligned with a novel that i'm reading for the middle school novels committee and i was denied the opportunity why instead of responding to parents questions about club requirements on susd school campuses with silence instead perhaps you could come alongside concerned parents and foster open dialogue and the narratives being pushed out and that most recent community email by superintendent mazzell are false and frankly upsetting ars 15-102 a6 states that parents may learn about the nature and purpose of clubs and activities that are part of the school curriculum extracurricular clubs and activities that have been approved by the school back in may i requested from you the board to request that all schools post their extracurricular clubs online after a coca-paw

102administrator refused to tell me what clubs they offered on their campus why what is there to hide so much for our susd values of truth and transparency rs 15 720 b1 and 2 states that club meetings for seventh and eighth graders must be initiated by the pupils yet the kokopan middle school gsa leader admitted in a gliese and award acceptance video that she recruited students to start the club and planned a day of silence for the entire school in april to cause division and disruption within the student body middle school should be a place where we invest in developing students interests instead of attaching labels and identities to them at the young ages of 11 to 14. many parents do not feel they are treated as partners in this district but instead there's a problem

103ars 1602 clearly states that the parent has the right to direct education thank you jake jake davis [Applause] good evening my name is jake davis i'm speaking once again i'm tired i'm literally tired i'm tired of explaining to grown adults what pedophilia behaviors are keeping files of underage children on personal work cell phone anything it doesn't matter where you got it it's wrong it's so tiring that i have to explain this to grown educated people at what point do we all just agree that this is wrong what is going on with the internal investigation we know the greenbergs skirted the law to do whatever they wanted to do to gain whatever information they wanted to gain what's the nefarious axe behind it why are they doing that there's been no threats that anybody has talked

104about towards the greenbergs they met me with a team of lawyers as i tried to file a restraining order to keep my children safe so if they're going to meet me with a team of lawyers they're going to come with hell hath and fury if someone's legitimately threatening them this has a lot of resemblance to the jesse smiley case right does it not we have accusations of threats and hatred and bigotry going on but as the dust is settling the only people with the hate the bigotry are the two cowards that aren't here tonight that's pathetic as i sit in front of a panel of people this is the most professional you guys have looked all year ms beckman i commend you on the fact that you make eye contact with every speaker up here

105tonight i think that's awesome i do think it's difficult that you guys have to listen to what's going on these two gentlemen who should have said that these two individuals thank you for your time like i said last time please do write by our children [Applause] emmy cardia [Applause] good evening governing board dr menzel and ms wagner my name is emmy cardella i'm here for scottsdale parent council just to inform you about the events that we have upcoming this coming month on january 9th we have an opportunity the special education committee is hosting another opportunity to meet the susd special education team at mohave district annex at 9 am marge rayburg and her full team will be there to discuss the different programs available within susd and then answer parents questions and take their feedback

106as well and that will be available on zoom for parents to interact that way as well then on january 9th at 9 00 a.m we have our monthly general meeting where dr menzel joins us for question and answer and then we have erin shurer the director of career and technical education for susd to talk to us about programs that are available to students throughout the district on january 27th at 9 a.m we have a pto round table for all the apts and ptos throughout the district to get together and collaborate together and then we are also trying to arrange for the 501c3 save our schools arizona to come give a presentation on the upcoming legislative session and different aspects that will deal with education so we're still working to schedule that thank you thank you

107tim curtis good evening yeah i'm tim curtis and i really would like to thank you for your public service but as i you know we go through all this i want to just remind you that public service is about being a public servant and not a master and and the service is what's really honorable you know i don't want to come here and ask you to do a bunch of things you guys have a lot of stuff on your plate so i'm just going to try to ask you to maybe stop doing some things that i don't think are particularly necessary you know over you know this whole covet thing not all of us are anti-maskers or anti-vaxxers but i think you could say that i'm an anti-lister and i know that sounds kind of

108funny what is that but you know stop making lists stop making parent enemy lists i trust that you will stop tolerating these lists you know it wasn't long ago that you were making lists of students that were in close contact with perhaps somebody that was exposed to covet or something and you were sending healthy kids home for days and i'm glad you stopped doing that this probably wasn't sustainable you know i trust that you won't be making any more new lists you know we're talking about getting rid of some of the mandates which is probably good maybe healthy maybe not but hopefully more on the healthy side but making a list of who's vaccinated who's not vaccinated who's vaccinated one shot two shot three shot booster shot waning shot one shot i don't know uh

109the fourth shot i just think none of that's sustainable just like the the previous list and i think it's picking sides and creating animosity so please build back the trust thank you okay we move now to our first information discussion item the strategic planning phase 2 update oh i'm sorry do any board members have a comment or question board member vice president sinowski yes i would like to make some comments about the public comments that were made and i know this is the appropriate time i would like to learn more about it was stated that it was required by all teachers at cocopa to go through this specific training glsen i would like to learn more about that it was also mentioned that by one of the speakers that we were doing busy work here

110i i would like everyone to understand part of our role is looking at many documents at once and i do take notes on public comment and the meeting throughout the entire meeting so that i can reference the information and potentially reach out to individuals in our community if it's appropriate so when my head is down i'm taking notes and making comments about potential issues that we can work on in our district i also would like to correct the information there was a comment made about we are millions over budget that is not true and then there was a comment made about individuals from this board who were cowards that weren't here tonight i would like to just clarify that board member lindsay left early to attend his daughter's school orchestra concert as any of us

111as parents would also do and then one last comment i'd like to make is um the comment about uh or the comment i'd like to make about a comment was parent enemy list i don't know anyone up here that is creating parent enemy lists so i just want you to know all three of us as board members are parents of students in this district and and i can speak for myself personally i do respect parent input i do respect the um the interests of parents and that was one of the reasons why i ran for this position so just to clarify thank you okay thank you moving on to information discussion item a strategic planning phase 2 update thank you president beckman and members of the governing board as you know we have been working

112on phase two of the strategic planning process so back in june you approved the mission vision values that was the end of phase one phase two includes focusing on our goal areas the goal statements themselves as well as specific commitments or in other language people often refer to them as objectives and then finally key performance indicators tonight what we want to do is talk very briefly about where we are in the process we had initially planned to bring forward a recommendation for governing board approval this evening but we're just a little bit short of where we had hoped to be at this juncture and what we want is to invite you as governing board members to ask questions make observations between now and january third when we come back the strategic planning design team is

113meeting again on that wednesday the 5th we'll we'll then if things go well be prepared to bring a recommendation for the governing board to consider on the 11th but certainly no later than january 25th so there are five goal areas that we're going to review this evening i don't know if we can put up the slide with goal one on academic excellence or not but we start there as a district our our focus is on teaching and learning and ensuring our students are prepared for success and and the goal statement itself is challenge and inspire students to reach high levels of achievement so they thrive as competent dynamic future ready learners equipped to pursue their passions and ambitions it's hard for me to explain in a way that maybe provides the great the right kind

114of mental picture of just how much work was involved in going through the words that are reflected on the page here and while there can be suggestions for improvement there were multiple iterations of how do we articulate academic excellence as a goal statement focusing on how we prepare our students to be successful in their future tied to their passions and ambitions so i want to just share some of the draft commitments and then even suggest what a key performance indicator might look like and as the governing board knows i've sent this to you electronically as well so that we can get your feedback but the first commitment under this goal is to provide learning opportunities that ensure all students graduate with a commitment to relevant and viable post-secondary experiences in in the words of stephen

115covey begin with the end in mind you know where is it that we want our students to go when they're when they leave scottsdale unified what do we want them to be prepared for and so that commitment is really designed to focus on that exit strategy and when you think about what possible key performance indicators might look like it could include something like increasing the percent of students graduating in four years increasing enrollment in career and tech ed classes and industry certifications increasing or enhancing the number of students who earn college credit through dual enrollment so and there are a number of others that have been suggested but that's where we have a lot of opportunity to say how do we ensure that as our students exit scottsdale unified school district and move on to

116that next phase of their life that they're prepared to be successful the second draft commitment here is to cultivate critical and creative thinking by integrating problem-based learning opportunities throughout the curriculum when we think about this some of the language that we talk about includes rigor and relevance how do we make sure that our students understand the application of what they're learning in terms of academic content to real world problems and situations the first lego league robotics contest is a good example of students working on a real world problem they were they were tackling the challenge of supply chain issues and how do we get products and goods from point a to point b and how do we perhaps use technology to make that better this was a great exercise with real world applicability and the

117goal here with this commitment is to infuse that throughout the curriculum so that students understand how what they're learning applies to the world in which they live and will ultimately lead potential key performance indicators can include looking at teachers that are trained in problem-based learning or increase the percentage of staff trained in critical and creative thinking and to look at the specific number of opportunities students have in problem-based units the third commitment under this goal area is to differentiate instructional practices to engage students at their point of readiness and interest this one's significant because the students come to us at all different levels of readiness and it's incumbent on our teachers in the classroom and all of those who support our teachers in the classroom to identify where students are and then provide the resources

118and support to take students from where they are to ultimately mastering the content and being successful and so we can look at specific indicators of success in terms of the the percent of students that are at or above proficient on district benchmark assessments or the percent of staff trained in differentiated practices or decreasing the number of students that receive a failing grade so there are a number of indicators here that really allow us to zero in on how we know that we're being successful on that commitment two more commitments that are drafted at this time under the academic excellence goal provide timely and effective intervention and monitor progress to inform teaching and learning that directly impacts student growth so the sooner we identify when a student is off track and the more responsive we are

119in that environment the easier it will be to get them back on track when students fall multiple grade levels behind often that can be demoralizing and sometimes they give up so part of this goal is to really put those intervention strategies in place to ensure when we see someone struggling and a student might be really successful in one content area and struggle in another that we're providing the targeted and specific support necessary for them to be successful then the final commitment area here is to provide and expand district early childhood opportunities and and while there are any number of things that could have been included this one is tied to the mark tucker's book on leading high performing school systems and recognizing the nine building blocks of those systems and it begins before students enroll

120in kindergarten so when we think about that continuum of support for our families and young children having high quality preschool experiences has been demonstrated through the perry preschool study and a number of others to provide significant uh positive impact on our students as they enroll in our traditional kindergarten through 12th grade programs so those are the draft commitments under academic excellence what we want to do is then invite some other members of our cabinet to talk about each of the five and then invite you to ask questions or make observations but dr sakos we'll talk about goal area 2 which is culture and climate thank you dr menzel in an effort to really maximize academic excellence we know that we have to have an optimal climate and culture within our school community and with that

121the goal area i'm discussing is culture and climate and specifically our commitment is to cultivate positive relationships to build an inclusive equitable nurturing environment that creates conditions for highly effective teaching learning and leading so in order to create that highly effective teaching learning and leading this goal really impacts our students our staff our leaders and our community so with that there are four listed commitments um currently within this goal number two while they are simply stated they are very purposeful and i would like to say very very mighty and important commitments the first one being to provide a comprehensive multi-tier systems of support to create and maintain safe learning environments you've heard me in the past talk about the importance of positive behavior supports for our students and those wrap around services to support them

122academically and behaviorally this commitment is also intended to ensure that we have the same supports in place for not not only our students but for our staff and and leadership as well so some of the performance indicators that the this committee or this subgroup had been talking about is increasing opportunities for training specific to our mtss framework to increase an emphasis on pbis programs at all levels to increase participation and positive outcomes in climate and culture surveys that perceptive data being critically important we've talked before about the arizona youth survey data that comes from our students and over a two year period we also had hanover climate and culture data that really was telling us to an individual's connectedness to the campus and perception of how a campus was doing that included students it included

123staff and it included parents and another example would be to decrease the number of office discipline referrals in our schools so we know by decreasing at-risk behavior provides more for that optimal learning environment and allow for teachers to really teach going on to the second commitment is to recognize and infirm each person's inherent value and specifically we talked about doing this by creating an environment where every person is seen heard and valued and we want to make sure that we have ways to promote connectedness wellness social emotional learning supports for students and our families and we also wanted one key indicator that we talked about is being able to increase the percent of employees who indicate that they feel seen heard and value a lot of this again will include that perceptive data that we

124talked we talked about for a key performance indicator such as again our climate culture survey similar to what we have done in the past and specific to students we talked about increasing percent of student participation in our co and extracurricular activities so those from athletics to club participation on campus to engage in the arts you name it we want to make sure that we increase that connectedness to the school and we know that is one way of doing it the third one is to cultivate positive relationships and positive relationships are critical so that we can be highly effective in teaching learning and leading and so some of the things that we talked about perhaps as a performance indicator is incr increasing the family participation and family engagement at our school and at our district events

125and we also thought it was important to think about increasing open honest and timely communication between stakeholder groups the last commitment under goal number two has developed and or sustained a trust-based environment with multiple opportunities to achieve success so we talked about in this overlapped a little bit with the goal number one with academic achievement is creating student-centered grading practices that allow multiple opportunities to demonstrate success so being in that environment where you feel as though you have those opportunities to achieve success and it's okay to fail forward it's okay to learn from mistakes and to allow our students to do that we also talked about again blending with goal number one the importance of increasing problem based authentic learning assess learning assessment opportunities for all students and we talked about increase the on-time graduation

126rate as well so again while those are four simply stated commitments they are very critical to ensuring the academic excellence as goal number one stated thank you dr sakos and while dr bowman comes forward to speak about goal three talented and qualified professionals i'd also like to point out we do have a number of our strategic planning design team members in the audience i want to thank all of you because because what many people may not realize is the hours that have been spent working on this and so i appreciate all of you who are here that contributed to the work that we're reviewing this evening thank you dr menzel governing board it's a pleasure to share with you the area of my passion and that's hiring the right people to do this work that

127we're talking about work we've made this commitment in our district about world-class system you can't do it without quality people so this area of the goal is so critical and so important one that has so much passion behind what i get to share with you tonight our overall goal area is talented and qualified professionals lots of nice words in here that took many iterations to get to attract hire develop support and retain highly quality highly qualified passionate and talented professionals the commandments we have six of them that we have that are very close to we've word smiths them down to this point the first one is to develop and utilize robust recruiting and hiring strategies the first thing that's so critically important is that we can attract talent to our district make sure that we

128not only have talent in the pools that we're going to hire but we also have hiring strategies that are robust that call out the best of the best so we want to attract the best of the best and we want to be able to hire the best of the best some of the possible indicators that we're looking at is are our pools demonstrating an increase in highly qualified candidates and also when you start looking at us how are we doing on filling our positions what's our vacancy rates looking like so for the positions that we do post are we able to attract the talent that we need to to be able to put that high quality person everywhere in our district i know sometimes these tend to focus and be teacher-centric this is for our

129entire staff we want the best of the best in every position throughout our school district the second commitment that we have is to build differentiated professional learning experiences based on input from all district staff we receive a lot of input and feedback about the critical importance of listening to our staff and meeting their needs rather than deciding from us in a professional level what their needs are so it's a it's a mutually benefiting situation to have those conversations together to make sure that we differentiate to meet people where they are to give them the opportunity to develop to optimize the talent that they bring forward to our district we will find out how we're doing that more than likely through some survey date and perception data those are going to be the best indicators in

130that one our third commitment is to create purposeful pathways for our staff and students to pursue education career interests that's within our district before i came here we had a tagline in our hr department says hire to retire so are we creating those career pathways for that person that we hire in their first year regardless of what it is for our neophyte teachers can they go if they stay in teaching the entire career are we promoting them to be national board certified teachers do we have a nice pathway that's laid out for them we want to make sure that we're doing everything we can to give them the opportunity to grow their talent do we have pathways for teachers to become administrators do we have pathways for classified to become teachers do we have those

131well-delineated pathways so this is all about the career pathway that's critically important for our system to truly give this profession and people in the profession the ability to begin and end their career here it's a destination district destination district we take that very seriously in that one um again we'll we need to track the staff members who do make those moves within our system we're still working on refining and we'll promote some of the indicators as we continue down this path the fourth commandment we have is support employee agency innovation and retention by offering a superior superior compensation package and having a delightful place to work so we um as we know we we need to stay competitive in the valley compensation isn't everything but oftentimes as we're attracting the talent it is critically important

132that we show the value to our employees and pay them and compensate them to the best of our ability being fiscally responsible at the same time we would we would hope that we can remain in the top five of our comparable districts in compensation that's one of the metrics that we discuss we also think that if we're doing justice in this area that we'll see a decrease in our re we'll see less teachers leaving our retentions rate will improve so we're looking at that the next one is our fifth commitment and it's develop implement sustained mentorship programs for all district staff what we currently have is we have some mentorship we don't have unified across all employee groups we believe that that's critically important especially when you go back to the original words and the

133goal about developing and supporting our staff so when we bring new staff in we know that oftentimes within that first five years that's when we tend to lose people one of the key research pieces out there shows that when we provide support structure coaching mentoring to our new staff the chances of them feeling supported and being part of us and then going to what dr sacko said about climate and culture that allows us to build that climate and culture to nurture our new employees to keep them our goal is to keep them and not to have them leave within those first five years critically important on a mentorship program in our sixth commitment is to develop implement and sustain professional learning communities for collegial support the professional learning community is a term that came out

134of the deforest both richard and rebecca defour centered mostly on what happens in the classroom it's what do we want all students to know and be able to do how will we know that they've learned it what do we do when they have it and what do we do when they've already learned it but that's the idea of the model of the plc however we want to transcend that to all employee groups to make sure that we're doing everything we can to promote the collegiality and spirit of working together again never losing sight of our ultimate mission here and that's to improve academic achievement and success for our graduates and that can't happen without having the right people at the right time and it can't happen without having high high high quality staff so it

135is my pleasure to share that with you tonight thank you dr bowman christine harrington will present goal number four around community engagement and partnership good evening thank you dr menzel i have to tell you one of the greatest highlights of this last week has been able to engage with the different stakeholders through this process and really hone in on all of our goals but specifically this one the community engagement and partnership that is to foster relationships with mentors volunteers and business partners to provide real world opportunities for students that enhance and strengthen our community and within this goal we have three primary commitments and the first is to establish and sustain and expand mutually beneficial partnerships within our community the reality is the strength of our schools and our community can both be enhanced through

136these collaborations and the collaborative community partnerships that we can forge moving ahead and within this commitment we aim to celebrate what we have and those new ones as they come on board at you know all of our sites across the district those who partner with the district and those who partner individually with our sites also our second commitment here is to provide oh i'm sorry in some of our kpis what we'd be doing is measuring the number of those partnerships that we retain and then additionally those that are new each year and again that will vary around the district so we're looking at this obviously um holistically and then our second commitment is to bride on and off campus real real-world learning experiences through business and higher education and community partnerships now this is an

137area that was obviously rather hindered by the pandemic but now as we get back to normal you know i recall uh working with the charros or the scottsdale school district foundation and even the chamber working to establish real strong relationships lasting relationships with our business community as well as with non-profits in the community and providing opportunities for our students to get out there and to engage in the business but then also to bring some of those folks into our into our classrooms and onto our campuses so our students get the opportunity to really feel and engage in the real world application of what they're learning in the classroom and some kpis again for that would be looking to the opportunity to retain have meaningful and lasting relationships that continue to benefit not only our students

138but our staff too and then additionally measure the time talent and treasure that is shared with our students and also the way we are able to be beneficial to those businesses moving forward our students have a lot to offer as well our third commitment here is to expand opportunities for stakeholder collaboration and to inform school and district decisions so we talk about committees right and this is a prime example of just that um it was again maybe one of the greatest highlights of this last week sitting around a table and hearing from all different stakeholders that look through you know they each have a very different lens i tried to wear my district hat and my parent hat and we've got you know a little bit of everything around the table and so that was

139um a great opportunity to listen and to learn about how we can all really support each other for the benefit of our students our staff and the community as a whole and the way we would measure that is we already have a website and on the website we do have a committee page where we invite the community to engage to apply to participate and so we can track how many committees we have what that level of engagement is and continue to share out this information so even if you're not serving on the committee per se you can be involved in that you're kept up to date aware of how the committee is moving forward and what that decision-making process looks like um i can tell you i'm really looking forward to being a part of

140this team and helping to assess the partnerships that exist and helping to forge some new runs i think this is really going to go a long way toward enhancing that vision for world class future focused learning thank you christine and last but not least goal five is optimized resources and shannon crozier will outline the proposed goal and commitments for this area so as dr bowman talked about how human resources was an exciting one for him this is an exciting one for me because it talks about our resources and even though money is not our only resource we do have other resources that we want to be able to optimize our committee really talked about what are those resources we talked about time being a huge resource for our staff and for our families as well

141as the financial and technology so when we looked at those things our goal being optimized resources was to generate and utilize resources to maximize educational opportunities in order to ensure organizational health so our first commitment being utilize digital technology systems to increase efficiency and improve access for all stakeholders and where we really talked about on that part was that we want to make it so that the digital resources are accessible for teachers where they're communicating to each other maybe not having to do the duplicate work as well as for our families to understand i can go to one place and i can see everything i need to see be it my students grades whatever activities are happening um and really understanding what resources are out there for them to see to understand what's happening on

142campus what's happening with student grades so we talked about a kpi being increased staff usage and consistency of digital technology systems so being able to track to see what are staff members using what things work best and are we able to um get those things to you uh to integrate with each other so it's kind of a one-stop shopping for our staff and and parents as well as increased student and family usage of digital technology systems as tacked through parent and student view google classroom and school websites so just really tracking our parents going to our websites what are they looking at at our website are they going into parent view are students going into student view to see grades and to see what's happening within that classroom so really just tracking that to make

143sure that we're using those technology resources appropriately second one being develop and implement a marketing plan that showcases student employee and school accomplishments and that really feeds into partly the last commitment but it impacts our resources our resources being our employees our students and adm if we've if we've done a good job of telling the great things that we do here and we do great things here that impacts our adm families you know know what's happening and know that their kids going to get a great education have a great opportunity in fine arts a great opportunity in athletics that helps our adm which helps our financial resources so with that we talked about increased customer satisfaction as tracked on parent and employee surveys increased employee retention if we're doing a good job we should be

144continuing to return to keep our staff and then increased student enrollment obviously uh being an indicator of that as well third one being align district and site budgets with the goals and commitments and the strategic plan when we look at how we spend our money it needs to line up with what our goals are as a district and what our goals are through the strategic plan one of the ways to look at that is the annual dollars in the classroom report are those lying where we want them to lay and comparing them to other districts and our peers and our state and perhaps one area is higher than another and appear but if we choose to have assistant principals because that's something i we want as a goal that might mean we're a little bit

145higher in admin but knowing that that's that's the decision that we've made and and that we are using those resources the way that we um feel that are necessary and that are and that our parents want to see that money spent next one being ensure equitable distribution of resources to meet the needs of students we talked a lot about equitable and what does equitable mean and equitable versus equal and so one of the things we talked about is that increased stakeholder involvement in the budget process be it through meet and confer be it through let's talk thought exchange site council pto getting the involvement we've got to know what our parents and what our community want to know how to spend those dollars as well as talking to community specialists if we know that we

146need to put some money into a school because those students are below where we need them to be to get them up talking to community specialists are going to help us to understand where the needs are at home for our students to understand what we need to get them where they need to be to succeed and then the last one was prior to prioritizing time and resources in order for professionals to meet goals and commitments in the strategic plan and we talked a lot about this one because there's professional development that would need to happen and so one of the goals was understanding the professional development that needs to happen and making sure that it's the right professional development that we're not essentially wasting anybody's time by attending a professional development that may not pertain

147to them or maybe they've already done the other part of that being the time honoring their time of the six fifths um or their their planning period when we have to pull teachers out of that time to be able to teach classes to sub or to fill in because we need additional staff we haven't been able to fill that teacher spot that takes away from their time for their own planning and so we want to be respectful of that in looking at how can we make sure we're utilizing our resources to make sure those areas are covered so we're not having to to take away a teacher's time for planning to do other things so that was our five areas within optimizing resources thank you shannon i appreciate that final comment is if you think

148about phase one of strategic planning it's really setting the vision and direction where we're going that's the high level thirty thousand foot view phase two is if you're framing in a house it's it's the uh it's the bones it's the shell of what we're doing phase three is where we put meat on the bones in terms of how we're going to actually operationalize and make happen what needs to happen in order to accomplish these commitments so this is an absolutely critical part of the process when you think about where we're going as a district and what we hope to have and achieve for every one of our students now this part these five goals you'll notice that there was some overlap in some areas there was actually some arm wrestling about whether or not the

149marketing goal should be in number four or number five uh and you can tell who won shannon did actually her committee they were very insistent but at the end of the day um part of what we see is that it's the synergy between the five that will move us to higher levels of performance for all of our students and to accomplishing our vision of engaging all students in world-class future focused learning so with that i would invite reactions feedback thought and remember it doesn't have to be all tonight we can take it all the way through january third but very interested in questions and i know that any of the presenters would be happy to respond to your questions any board member questions or comments vice president zanowski yes um some comments and notations here

150i really appreciated this you mentioned the synergy between these different goals yes i could hear it over and over again it's great with goal number one when we talk about this particular goal i i really want us to make sure that this is reflected in our course planning guide because that is really what's giving our students the course opportunities to learn and then you know for us to be able to pull that into that academic excellence to make sure that it's future forward learning opportunities and and i know that we are planning guide and i brought this up before the way our planning guide is set it's like a year's leg time and i really beg that we revisit that and that if we come up with if we're asking our staff members our resources

151you know when we talk about this the i think it was the second um the third one but it was mentioned about pathways of our professionals i don't want us to get in this easy rut of saying the only pathway to improve as a professional is for our best teachers to become administrators because i do no offense to administrators i've i want to make that clear i've gone through the coursework it's rigorous coursework i appreciate all that you guys do but i want us to understand that the reason we're here and i know all of you here understand this but this is more for the public the reason we're here is for our students and we have to have the best teachers in the classroom for students to succeed and achieve that academic excellence so

152what i'd like for us to do when we talk about the the interests of our staff and their talents that we are allowing them to say i would like to try this this and this and that becomes part of their that leadership becomes part of their contract in our district if it relates to student success so i'd like for us to look at the path the career paths in our district a little bit differently and what's not to say that it's appropriate for an administrator to also play a role of instruction in our district and it could be business it could be teaching students about finance it could be guest appearances you know we have a lot of talent in our district so i don't want us to think that we're in this silo and

153this is our lane and we need to stay in it i'd like for us to practice zigzagging a little bit as professionals here i do want to comment about the committee structure because i do feel like the input that our community has given about our community structure has improved our structure that we have in place not just posting on our website these opportunities but the application process so the input is valuable it has been heard and we continue to improve as a district shannon i just want to just say commend your whole group for recognizing that our number one resource in this business is it's people and so whether it's little babies preschoolers or less past retirement that kind of thing it's beyond the higher to retire it's the birth to grave type of approach

154that i really would like for us as a district to really focus on and that resource doesn't have to end when a teacher retires we can bring teachers back we can have them teach community education courses i think we have that need in our community and so i'd like for us to be open to that i really appreciate the work of the committee members here on the strategic planning committee i know it's a lot of work one last thing i noticed in my notes there was a highlight over decrease in office discipline referrals i can speak my own perspective is students don't go to the office for office referrals unless it's a violation of a law or a real serious code of conduct violation most teachers deal with issues in their classrooms so what i

155don't want is for us to say that's our goal decrease referrals to the office but not addressing potentially the root of the reason why a student is sent to the office for for management classroom management maybe we're looking at class size maybe we're looking at various intervention strategies i know we're receptive to new ideas but let's make sure that in the strategic plan where as we're creating a better susd that we're including better systems to support our students not just academically but also down to the core of every child and what their needs are that's it thank you for the work that you guys have all done appreciate it board member hart wells i'd like to reserve my right to send questions in writing after having more time to digest um in light of your

156comments and your presentation kind of knowing who the person point persons are on the different goals so i will but i will say i want to take the opportunity though to thank all of the presenters of all the goals all the leadership at the district the teachers the staff the community members who have been involved and really harnessing a lot of what clearly was a lot of creative energy and distilling that into five goals and i appreciate thinking about actionable ways to implement those goals because that's what's going to make this happen so and that's not always very easy to do you can have lofty rhetoric or throw out phrases for to emote certain emotions but um you know really when the rubber hits the road we got to be able to do it so

157i appreciate that component of tonight's presentations i look forward to working with you to tease a lot of that out and then just broadly speaking since this is our last meeting before the end of the year and the semester is ending at the end of the week i want to thank all of you sincerely for all of your efforts this semester has been a little bit more of an unpredictable wild ride than i think we would have liked but your resilience and your poise and your leadership and determination to stay focused on your jobs is very much appreciated by this parent and this community member thank you i echo the uh appreciative sentiment as well i know this has taken a lot of time from the community members and everyone involved in this process one

158thing that was specifically brought up for goal two that i heard not necessarily defined by this verbiage but in different ways throughout every goal which is the family engagement piece when we talk about culture and climate i appreciate that you specifically brought out the family engagement but i think that can be applicable in almost every single one of those goals especially academics so i really would like us to to have those committed ways to to really involve family members whether it be through you know our english language learner families understanding how to navigate synergy all the way through every single one of these i think getting that buy-in and help basically in the home is and and teaching our families about what we have to offer in this district is is quite significant so there's

159a lot here to digest and unpack as far as the work that you've done um certainly well beyond our few minutes sitting on this diocese to pick it apart i mean i wouldn't even begin to do that i'm just very appreciative i too will take a deeper look at it and see if i can harness any questions that may help you in the process but overall thank you for your time okay we will move now to the consent agenda i moved to approve the consent agenda the modified consent agenda without item l the ratification of expenditure sps plus architects llp for ho ho come elementary school do i have a second second a second okay uh vice president sunowski seconds all in favor aye aye motion passes three to zero we move now to our

160action items the first one will be consent agenda item l as it was pulled by board member hart wells board member hart wells thank you dr minzel is mr raylor with us this evening he is he snuck in the side door you are back in the under the beautiful artwork all right mr whaler i just have a few confirmatory questions um the reason i've asked for this particular consent agenda item to be pulled was to um ensure there was no confusion by the community in terms of the difference between a budget and an expenditure and why we have this particular ratification what that means as opposed to expenditure versus budget so could you please confirm my understanding that this agenda item is not a new expenditure yes ma'am i can thank you see we can

161be brief right i like that nice very efficient all right so i want to make again because there was some misunderstanding earlier in the public comment about expenditures versus budget i would like to take just about 30 seconds and mr raylor please correct me if i am wrong but the agenda item is a ratification by this governing board to address a past expenditure and reconcile it to current policy the implementing practices that dr menzel and the current finance administration has stated publicly has been transparent in implementing even in matters like this one when they are then identified where we have such a deviation and all the energy is to a productive and constructive end that's been spent so far going through these kinds of expenditures and because judicious use of taxpayer resources is a priority

162not only for this board but for dr menzel and the administration which includes your operation mr raylor of facilities so with that i thank you i'd like to move to approve item l ratification for expenditure for hohokam elementary school okay board member hart wells makes the motion is there a second second uh vice president sunowski seconds all in favor hi hi motion passes three to zero moving on to our next action item 13a the pupil transportation school bus purchase are there any board member questions or comments i have one um mrs crozier would you mind uh kind of just going over where we are we seem to be buying buses talking about buses talking about transportation as we should it's a significant expense to our district but where we are in this process from when

163we we gained first approval okay so the bond that was passed in 2016 allocated dollars specifically for people transportation so because of that we have been purchasing buses wheelchair type vans wheelchair buses along along the way so at this point we have purchased 11 wheelchair buses six passenger vans two of which have lifts 15 84 passenger buses and 10 special need buses tonight we're asking to purchase another three buses along the way as we purchase these buses we dispose of the buses that are older and no longer what we want to use for transporting our students and so we have also disposed of buses as well we still have a little bit of money to spend as we go through we've sold the final bond and so with that we have about 1.5 million left

164to spend towards buses like i said tonight we're looking at three buses moving forward we are looking at purchasing four more buses next year 84 passenger buses as well as um three buses in the 24 25 school year and then the last one kind of depends on where budgets land um buses have gone up in price considerably especially this last this last year as ever i think everything's gone up in price um this last year with kovid um but in addition to that we've added some uh safety features onto our buses so they've gone up a little bit in price and so because of that we'll have to the last bond or the last purchase will really depend on what's left and how much um they've gone up in price to see where we land

165but we'd like to be able to buy it the last one another three more buses we'll see we'll see where that ends up at okay that was kind of my question is now that we've sold that last piece of the bond and the cash is sitting there we're paying interest on having done so is there a obviously it's you do this as needed but are we looking at kind of a analysis with regard to how far into this how old these buses are versus the cash just sitting there and potentially locking down pricing on these buses now yeah so one of the things that we look at which and brandon's here tell me hopefully he'll tell me if i'm wrong when i state this but um one of the things we look at with buses

166and and why we don't want to just go out and buy all new buses this year is that you want to stagger it a little bit because we know in the future we'll have to do this as well and so part of the theory behind it is staggering those buses and the years of service that they're in so that you don't get into a situation down the road where all of a sudden we need to buy 15 new buses right now because uh because of the age of our buses and the quality that they're in so that part of it when we do when we look at the bond and when we look at how we go forward with that is is staggering a little bit to see what are the years of the buses

167we have and making sure that we don't get ourselves into a situation where down the road like i said we've got to buy a bunch all at one time and so it's kind of a it's kind of looking at the aging out of those vehicles i appreciate that and i know you do a great job i just um you're obviously going to be watching because the concern i would have is the cash sitting there then all of a sudden becoming less and less as these buses go up in prices and we and we find ourselves unable to purchase what we're actually needing so i'll just let you report back in on how that how that's you know settling out as we move forward thank you for going over this though i do appreciate it okay

168are there any board member questions um vice president zanowski yes shannon can you i'm just curious what happens when you said we dispose of buses what do we do with them sure um buses as with all of the property that we dispose of if it's something that we can sell at auction we do buses being one of them so what happens is it goes through a process of recording what the asset is and then sending that over to an auctioneer company to to sell it and then we receive the profits from that and then is there a limitation on where those funds can be spent um it does go back into a disposal fund it is a little bit more limited so it's not like it's a place that we can just go in and

169buy more buses the other part of that is the amount that you get on selling those items at auction is not i mean it's something but it's not a great deal back on those items great thank you yep any further questions from board members okay i moved to approve the 13 action item 13a people transportation school bus purchase is our second second vice president sunowski seconds all in favor motion passes three to zero we move now to 13b approval of the superintendent's annual goals and performance pay plan dr menzel thank you president beckman and members of the governing board you know at the last meeting we had a conversation about draft goals and had some suggestions for modifying those a little bit getting a little bit more precise with respect to some of the performance

170pay goals in particular there's been an addition to that based on other conversations in my own recommendation so number one here under the broad goals what i would call priority areas of focus for the second half of the year conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the k-12 mathematics curriculum instruction and assessment connected with the new math adoption from 2018-19 in report findings to the governing board when we look at our data and and i have looked at a lot of our data we are not a failing school district but we have not optimized our successes across the board and if there's one area where our data indicates we need to spend more time and energy it's in mathematics achievement so then i learned as i'm looking through the information that we adopted a k-12 curriculum in

1712018-19 that leads to other questions so it seems to me that the first step in being able to assess where we are and what we need to do to improve outcomes for students in mathematics is to understand the curriculum that was adopted the level of implementation fidelity and then ultimately bring forward you know that review and suggestions for where do we go from here because we absolutely need to tend to this as critical to ensuring future ready students in terms of post-secondary success and success in in life beyond school the other uh four areas here are ones that were presented before now with a little bit more detail uh attached to that so the focus on addressing the needs of our english language learners as an area of priority plans for expanding high quality pre-kindergarten

172which aligns with one of the strategic planning goals finalizing the agreements with the three associations as you know we're in the in the midst of meet and confer but that's a new process um in the last five years maybe six since the last time we've done that and we're approaching it differently uh then in the past and then then finally expanding the external partnerships aimed at advancing the mission and vision of susd again aligned with what we see as as draft goals the performance pay the only thing that is a change here from what was proposed as an alternate was to drop the five percent or less of students two or more grade levels behind particularly when we look at the current data and even looking at historical data when it comes to eighth grade

173math for example the lowest performing category on on azmerit was 28 to 32 percent that doesn't neatly tie with with how many grade levels behind you are but it shows that we've been struggling in this area for some period of time so to get in the next six months actually five when you think about how long we have the students january to may and and take that cohort of students which for middle school is about 26 percent on the i ready assessment and and get under 5 humanly impossible and so we can and we do believe that we can show statistically significant growth in these academic areas i think the the core work is really reflected in in that first priority goal number one is to really do the deep dive on math because that's

174where you know there are some significant concerns and opportunities for us and and to build on what we see is already working because i think that we will see success when we look at our mid-year data from i ready i want to really be able to understand uh where we have our bright spots that should be replicated because that's an opportunity for us to learn from colleagues within the system so i i believe that the revisions here reflect the conversation that we've had the intent of the governing board to focus on important areas related to achievement for the next six months and then the performance pay is really tied to things that are also priorities of the governing board as well okay thank you dr mental do i have any board member questions dr hartwells

175this is actually not a question it's a comment i just want to clarify there seems uh i'll just make this comment performance pay is a carrot and not a stick so that is they were developed with that intent in mind and then secondly i'll just note what we don't have here but what did exist in the previous performance pickles was a percent of the total performance pay in terms of allocated to across the four performance pay goals and i wish if we wish to add those it might be instructive just to help implement on the goals because i have every confidence that you will meet every one of them so my proposal for that would be 15 15 55 15. can you question uh yes sorry um in terms of percents of the hundred percent

176performance pay uh goal one fifteen goal two fifteen goal three fifty five and goal four fifteen that is just a proposal i am certainly open to discussion dr mental do you have any comments with regard to that no objections here to that recommendation okay vice president zanowski i just would like to make a comment um i noticed the addition away from our basic assessments of mathematics and ela the inclusion of science thank you for including that for ell learners appreciate that doctor will have a quick question i know this is difficult you know we don't want to narrow it down too much but give me just some indication of what you would consider statistically significant growth i kind of speaking well dr bachna is available in the cloud to explain the analysis that they can

177run that meets the scientific definition of statistically significant growth i believe you're here dr bachna yoshi they're working to get the audio working so on another note dr hartwells i do appreciate you bringing up the 15 15 55 and 15 um with no objections from dr menzel i do believe it's a good idea and a good addition because you know from a quantifying perspective if we were to agree that partial or all were made it's a nice indicator of where our emphasis would be placed and when we were reviewing these so so i do i agree were you still working on dr bachna is it possible for dr bachna to um i don't know if if there's another way to get the audio working we can also do a a memo that explains what how

178she'll run that statistical analysis i'll be honest i passed my stats course in graduate school but i lost my stats course so my question to dr bachmann was can we demonstrate statistically significant growth in these performance areas and she said absolutely we can run that data to demonstrate whether or not the growth was not statistically significant so that means it could have been accidental or have we seen something that actually is is immeasurable and has a level of confidence to show that students have made the kind of progress right dr hockey got this statistical um for significance using various uh inferential statistics so that won't be a problem final question no i appreciate that she can do that but just for the the public and people in general i would like to see i mean

179how i would like to have us on the same page and understanding what statistically significant is i mean you i don't expect you to come and say 2.7 necessarily but from a narrative is there some sort of understanding so that we there's a there's a numerical understanding that i under that i get but from a verbiage understanding of what where we would be defining this can you do that it depends on the measure and it'll have to depend on looking at the different uh i haven't done enough of it on our particular data to tell you an exact percentage today so it could be it could vary based on our student population and how much of a difference there is between our groups okay so it could be it could be one percent it could

180be five percent i can't give you a set number um it just depends on the data i trust that you can do that and i would like a follow-up just on what you can provide the governing board that that would be defined as from you absolutely i'd be happy to do that okay thank you thank you vice president zanowski oh it's a mistake okay do you have any other questions from governing board members problem solving very good any other questions okay so i moved to approve the superintendent's annual goals and performance pay plan with the addition of the weightings in the performance pay goals that we would have one and two be weighted at fifteen percent three at fifty five percent and four at fifteen percent is that accurate board member heart wells yes okay

181do i have a second all in favor aye aye motion passes three to zero thank you okay we will move now to our future items do any board members have future items of course vice president zanowski yes i am going to make a formal request that we receive an update on the ball field lights at chaparral high school i'd also like to learn of the status of a title ix district athletic audit or analysis if but it isn't the appropriate term there i'm going to ask that shannon i believe is the appropriate one here to learn of our financial plan b as i stated should the jlbc projections related to the state constitutional aggregate expenditure limits come to fruition and surpass that one billion dollar mark creating that very large cut to our district public

182schools what that would look like specifically in our district if that does happen what our plan will be um [Music] i guess that is it okay any other board member future items okay now we move now to our dates of upcoming meetings the next meeting is going to be tuesday january 11 2022 at 6 p.m and the special at the special governing board meeting in the mba on tuesday january 25th 2022 at 6 pm we will have a regular governing board meeting here at coronado high school are there any governing board member reports yes vice president zanowski at this time i would like to like to share my appreciation to our community who has engaged with us respectfully over the past 11 months as a matter of fact many of our community members and organizations

183have demonstrated an interest of working side by side for years to support improving our academic and enrichment opportunities for all of our students to those who have offered their time and resources to assist our students teachers and leaders please understand that it is not always the loudest that leaves the greatest impact i need you to know that i see you and i appreciate your time and support over and over again in our district okay thank you any other board member reports no okay i wanted to we we covered a lot with our student celebrations but also just you know thank our our teachers in the arts we've had some incredible holiday concerts i was also privileged to attend the district coral exhibition and i was just blown away um what some of these kids do

184in our arts programs and some of the teachers that lead them there is nothing short of fantastic we are going to have and i will speak about this again in january the coronado promise kickoff meeting will for media etc will be on february 4th it's an exciting event to kind of talk to our community and officially launch the coronado promise scholarship when we speak about those collaborative partnerships the charles is a big supporter of this and actually the coronado foundation for the future as well we'll have many members of the media there and the city the mayor so it's something we're very excited about i hope all of you can plan on attending or at least tune in to see what it's all about all right with no other board reports i moved to adjourn

185this meeting at oh gosh 7 48 p.m do i have a second second vice president sunowski seconds all in favor aye aye motion passes three to zero the meeting is adjourned at 7 48 pm thank you