SUSD Regular Governing Board Meeting 5/24/2021 6pm

001okay i called to order this regular board meeting of the scottsdale unified school district governing board the time is 606 pm on may 24 2021 as a reminder the governing board of scottsdale unified school district number 48 is resuming its public meeting recessed on may 18th 2021 at the following date and time may 24th 2021 at 6 pm the board meeting is being held virtually members of the public will not be permitted to attend this meeting in person but they are able to view the public portions of this meeting online at the usual live streams live stream site through our youtube channel we will now move to the pledge of allegiance if all persons attending could please mute their mics vice president zanowski will you please lead us in the pledge of allegiance absolutely i'd

002be happy to i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you vice president sanowski we will now move to a roll call of board members present i will call on each board member and if you could just say whether you were present that would be helpful um board member lindsay president board member hart wells president board member beckman president vice president sinowski present all five board members are present and there is a quorum we will now move to agenda item 2d approval of the agenda are there any changes to the agenda as presented yes president greenberg i would like to pull item 8 n authorization of the expenditure tennis court renovation

003for saguaro high school thank you are there any other amendments that board members would like to make to the agenda as presented uh i would like to move agenda item 7a student advisory board may presentation uh arcadia high school and coronado high school to just before agenda item 4 student and staff recognitions and celebrations are there any further changes to the agenda as presented the chair moves to approve the agenda as amended is there a second second vice president sinowski seconds it is moved and seconded that the board approved the agenda as amended all in favor say aye aye the motion carries five zero we will now move to agenda item 3 public comments notification please note that individuals who submitted an intention to speak at the call to public on may 18 2021 will

004be provided an opportunity to speak by telephone or remote platform during today's public comments section if you could please call the dial-in number that we sent you uh during the superintendent's comments which is agenda item five tonight so that we can place you in the queue and that you may be properly called upon that would be greatly appreciated if we did not send you a call-in number you can please email the board secretary gladys wagner her email is g w a g o n e r s u s d dot org again that is g w a g o n e r at susd dot org we will now move to agenda item seven eight advisory board may presentation arcadia high school and coronado high school dr menzel thank you president greenberg vice president sinowski

005and members of the governing board tonight we are pleased to have the final presentation from representatives from the student advisory board uh we have throughout the course of the year had updates not only from the board but from our individual high schools and the last two high schools to present are arcadia and coronado so i would like to begin by introducing trex jones who is the president-elect of the student advisory board and he'll begin with their presentation and then he'll turn it over to his fellow colleague to complete the student presentation this evening hello members of the board um here's arcadia spotlight uh next slide please uh sorry thank you um arcadia has had interventions we've had interventions on saturdays from 8 30 to 11 30 a.m and pito has provided lunch for these um

006our breakfast for these students and it's all voluntary 50 to 60 students who go to it every saturday and we have also added afternoon interventions during the two thursdays and this has reduced failures from 2019 to 2020 by eight percent and we've also included an another program called fast at free after school tutoring it's three times a week this program was part of our school last year and it was very helpful i went to a couple times and it really helps students out now ap capstone next slide please um so we have ap classes um these ap classes are some are ap seminar and pre ap algebra or pre ap programs like outro one um so these are helping students like ninth grade students come in and are very excited about this because it's more

007options for them to pick classes and more opportunities for these students um and we're also partnering with college board to provide free ap programs for algebra one and geometry next year um so for lunch we have had concerns from copenhagen but these have been sold for with the alma run doctors these shares have been nice because before we had we had a lot of benches and a lot of tables that were bunched together but these shares that helped spread us out and be safe during lunch and are very nice to the campus and have been very nice to sit in um now next slide please uh this is the athletics um so palm has won state champions ships uh boyce our boys were first and uh sorry boys were first in swim championships uh the

008student was grant stoner uh the other the girls were state runner-ups and that was hayley chesnow and boys golf team were state runner-ups and volleyball was final four and for academics first semester principal's list we had 441 students recognized 92 seniors being recognized at senior award night and we're increasing to four dual enrollment courses for math next year also the seal of buy literacy 20 students have earned the 2021 fine arts proficiency sale recipients four students have earned the cd the cte distinction 163 students have earned three national merits finalists and one nation or one national merit scholar and now to coronado with gisele and anisha hi everyone good evening hi um my name is anisha no we can't see it so good evening to all governing board members my name is gisele rojas i'm

009a sophomore at coronado high school and my name is anisha anderson and i'm also a sophomore at coronado high school and we're both here to present the points of pride for coronado high school next slide please okay so the first slide here is the model that we have on coronado campus saying every day at coronado campus we engage we empower we excel we elevate we enrich within a safe and supportive environment next slide please you can move on to the next slide i can't really see the google's jonathan are we having a technology issue so that we can let our students know to hold on for a moment yep one brief minute while they're working on getting the technology back up and running if i may add one of the reasons why we wanted to

010move this presentation forward is this is final exam week and we want to respect the time of our our students who are preparing for those final exams so they can do well and so with that i just will turn it back to our students to continue their presentation thank you all right so here at coronado a big one a must is celebrating our success we do that by giving treats for great attendance that can be pizza and ice cream uh during our a.z mary testing days back in april snacks after school i looked forward to that and also the chords for academics and ap participation and our senior awards um i enjoyed just seeing the joy on their faces and i'm also looking forward to that and the excellence in spirit and pride lunch-ons and

011dawn challenges peer-to-peer interaction positive culture and door decorating everyone enjoys that here at coronado next slide please why are they unmuting is it possible to play the video from within the powerpoint oh so it appears that the the slides were sent as a pdf and the uh video was not hyperlinked in the pdf when it was created so we don't have access uh to it do we have another file pdf file that we could send over and we can continue with the presentation and then move back to this because i would like to if possible see this video i think the public would like to see it as well i could ask one of the teachers if they can email it to me quickly okay yeah um do we want to do that i think

012that would be a good idea and if if we can't get it then we can share it uh publicly to everyone present later on in the meeting yeah perfect i'll share to you guys later on in the meeting so i don't really take too long thank you no please take your time thank you very much okay so this slide is pretty p and as you can see there's a video with all the students basically explaining their experience with the pre-ap program so the college board partnered with coronado to create courseworks for all english 1 english 2 and world history classes this program was designed to empower all students to experience high levels of success and also aligns with the coronado goals of implementing regis first best instruction every day to every student next slide please

013mentioned in the previous slide about pre-advanced placement hopefully we can get a look at that video but coronado has the largest achieving a college education ace program in the district with 25 graduates and we also at coronado we have jag it's only offered here at coronado and it's currently with 30 jack students enrolled made up with seniors and juniors and we also have a coronado foundation for the future promise scholarship with 13 students and all those are the names of the students next slide please so here are the activities that we have on campus this semester we had prom interrupt club nhs dance spirit club student versus staff kickball games so the pictures that you guys see below are from prom on may 1st which i helped along with my studio members plan for all

014the students they also enjoyed it they said it was the best to enjoy themselves basically for the last year even the seniors next slide please okay so this one is other pictures of other activities the first one on the left is the dance concert which i also participated in and the middle one is the senior signing day the last the third picture is the interact club first field trip of the semester and this is also the art club and the last photo is the nhs ceremony which giselle and i got initiated into next slide please this slide is athletics we have 167 total athletics and some sports that we have is girls basketball girls softball boys basketball boys soccer and girls tennis and below are the pictures of some of the activities that we had

015this semester next slide please so we are able to watch the pre-ap video and we can watch this video on gear up as well because it has been shared with us would you uh anisha and giselle would you like us to first play the pre-ap video yeah sure that's fine thank you uh kyle would you be able to pull that up the pre-ap curriculum has been phenomenal for our students this year it's given them an opportunity to challenge themselves but it's also given them a chance to slow down and really focus on specific skills we've increased the rigor of our students every single day and we've challenged them to ask questions and to build thinking that they maybe didn't have before our certain students are learning at a impressive rate they're doing learning checkpoints once

016a unit and every single time they're improving their scores we're really proud of the success of the pre-ap curriculum so far and we can't wait to see what comes with the next coming years the thing i like most about for ap is that we get to talk about like more relative topics like right now we're talking about vaccines and we're also going over legal cases that are relevant to things that are going on like in society today i like most about the pre-ap curriculum is the fact that it's so place slow paced and that there's checkpoints which other classes don't have the checkpoints are helpful because it helps us like know where we at and where we need to improve what i like about the pre-ap curriculum is the relatable topics that we talk about

017to our current situation in the world what i like about pp is that we can relate to our history and our our present and combine it and learn how history has changed over time and that some things are still in the process of changing but we like get to learn like a lot more like than my other classes oh what i like about my prepaid classes is that um it's like one of my favorite classes of that i have of english and um history because i get to like learn a little bit more about like stuff that's going on in the present day one thing i like about a pre-ap curriculum is i've been able to like read more like long texts and analyze them better than i could have before something i like about

018pvp is the like the way it's formed like it's not too fast but it's not too slow either and the structure of it all it's really nice and it's like good paste um pvp challenged me like in the past i haven't gotten challenged in all my honors classes but few challenges the difference between my pre-ap classes and my other classes is that um i really enjoy my pre-ap classes on my english class and my world history class i find them really enjoyable and i feel like they're like not as they're not they don't stick to like the textbook like they could actually like be like talk more freely and openly about stuff i would have to say that the thing different as i mentioned before would be the checkpoints other classes are like rush things

019the checkpoints help us to understand like the specific areas that we need to focus on more which eventually help us over writing materials the difference between a pre-ap class and my other classes is that this one has checkpoints which relatively helps us understand more about what we're learning without forgetting it over time the difference between my pre-peak classes and other classes is that in other classes it seems like they just throw you the textbook on you and you have to figure it all by yourself when in my peer-review classes i get to hear other people's thoughts more understand people's like thinking and then combine it and then see like get a big topic and like understand it way much better oh they're like more advanced and like i get to like socialize more with other

020kids and like understand from their view of what the teacher's been teaching us and getting uh helped much better with the teachers as well my previous class is a little more um well paced compared to my other classes i'm able to learn at my own speed and be able to connect with the other students around me um a lot of classes they're like super fast and hard to comprehend but it's really nice to ask questions and do good that's what's good about this class other classes are kind of easy like they when i say it really challenges me like i struggle but in a good way like it's helping me and i see myself getting better every time we do like a multi-paragraph analysis greatest accomplishment my english class would probably be that i've improved

021my vocabulary and i have a like wider range and i've also like i've learned to write way better my writing has gone like from okay to like way better than it is now no better than it was before i think my greatest accomplishment would be being able to write a essay with fluent transitional phrases the thesis statement and the hook as well my greatest accomplishment in my pap class has to be being able to write much more better and becoming much more literate and learning new words as throughout the process my greatest accomplishment in my previous classes is that i honestly feel more confident about my essays and i feel like i put more grammar seeing how my essays have evolved throughout my middle school years and now in high school i i really think

022i've improved and i really like my essays now uh one of my greatest accomplishments has to be writing an essay by myself because i'd always be like struggling and like um doubting about like it was going to be good or not but like ever since having the pre-ap classes i've had like more confidence with myself my greatest accomplishment this year has probably been my ability to read and analyze texts as well as gain more independence with writing greatest accomplishment in english class is learning how to phrase a paragraph and to write an essay being a being able to write multiple paragraphs and i'm starting to get better forming a b16 what i like best about pre-ap as a first-year teacher is the accountability that it gives me to make sure that i am going slowly

023enough and hitting all of those building blocks that my students need it's easy to get off track throughout the day-to-day planning but pre-ap gives me the perfect framework for my students to make sure that they're understanding the fundamental building blocks of argumentative writing as sophomores i also like that the learning checkpoints give me an overall holistic view of the data that shows whether or not my students are growing and allows me to check in both formatively and summatively with them all throughout the curriculum it's a great way for students to see progress and to see them pushing themselves throughout the year in their writing in their academic vocabulary and in their reading of complex nonfiction texts my students have read things from non-fiction articles all the way to supreme court cases and the pre-ap curriculum

024has led them through that and scaffolded them to a point where they are able to do that and understand clearly the different elements of non-fiction text that they need in order to write and read argumentative writing so i think my favorite thing about bringing the pre-ap program to coronado high school is seeing our kids in our classrooms truly thrive they are engaging in rich conversations with one another they are using evidence to support their ideas and the other thing i really like about it has been the positive impact it's had on our teachers our teachers are collaborating they're talking about data with fidelity and they're talking about creating a better learning experience for kids our kids are so smart and they're so capable and this pre-ap program for english and world history has just allowed

025our kids to have the confidence to take their learning to the next level they are articulate they are respectful they use evidence and i'm just so proud of all that they've accomplished in every single learning checkpoint they have shown improvement they have shown growth and that's phenomenal here at coronado i could not be prouder of our first year as a pre-ap school and i am so excited to see what happens as we bring on more pre-ap classes next year thank you if we could return to the powerpoint presentation all right so next is gear up um all these bullet points are mentioned in this video so gear up helps connect students with different resources to ensure success after graduation this could mean a tutoring this can also mean speaking to an adult on campus after

026education after high school gear up maintains his contact students after graduate graduation in order to help with transition periods uh a transition period could be very confusing and just not knowing who to talk to but europe has opened doors for all of this information and they also elevate the level of success reached by our students gear up also helps students throughout their time at coronado finding their spark and figuring out what they want to do after graduation gear up stands for gaining early awareness and readiness for undergraduate programs we provide free services to coronado families with the goal of preparing students for post-secondary education this program is designed based on the five ease of equity engaging students starts day one of freshman year building a strong foundation of skills like time management and study strategies

027set students up for success throughout high school and beyond we empower students by providing financial aid advising in order to help them see that college is attainable regardless of their socioeconomic status we help students excel by encouraging them to enroll in appropriate rigorous courses in the pre-ap ap and dual enrollment programs gear up also encourages students to connect with support resources like tutoring when needed gear maintains contact with students after graduation in order to provide transitional support and elevate students in their first year of college through parent and family workshops advising and community engagement our goal is to enrich coronado with a college-going culture that will last beyond our programs grant despite covid our students have risen to the challenge and exceeded our expectations we want to highlight the work we have done in the

028past year and what students have accomplished take a look [Music] and then we have a teen town hall a coronado hosted different community agencies to address mental health healthy relationships substance abuse suicidal prevention and students have the opportunity to express their concerns with topics meaning they can ask questions to the different community agencies and meeting with the creative leaders next slide please and me and nisha want to say thank you for listening and if you guys have any questions and comments thank you uh anisha and giselle are there any board member questions or comments yes vice president zanowski and then board member beckman yes i'd like to ask our students what they think we could do as a district to improve the outcome and the process of the teen town halls i think like what

029you guys should do is like monthly keep on having those things because i feel like it will give the teens more opportunity to come and talk to you instead of like having it every year just every month where like we can just come and talk to you guys but thank you for your feedback appreciate yeah it would say i would say more awareness for the the town halls and with more advertisement that's about it thank you trex uh board member beckman i appreciate that question it's nice feedback um i just quickly wanted to say thank you in this year which i know everyone is talking about was a little crazy and having you guys present to us in times when we actually hadn't seen students for a while was the highlight of most of our

030meetings so i do appreciate your time and all of the effort that you put into these presentations thank you and thank you for moving us up on the agenda are there are there any other uh board member lindsay yeah i just want to say thanks to you guys tonight i was blown away by these presentations um learned a lot and thank you just in general to the student advisory board for all the work you guys did this year and also a big thank you to caroline carter the outgoing president for all the work that she did this year as well thank you for remember lindsay board member hart wells just going to add my thanks my grateful thanks to all of you for participating particularly this year and i want to wish you the best

031on your finals and i also want to say thank you to you all because if you guys didn't come to the decision of allowing us to have events it basically it would be boring a boring semester but all the students enjoyed the opportunity of going to prom and basically enjoying themselves from the last year well um i would just like to to join my colleagues and say thank you um i do have one comment for coronado reps or one question for coronado reps and then and then just a brief comment but um with the pre-ap programs that you have the ace and jag and all those great uh programs that we got to watch today really phenomenal are there any other programs or courses of study classes that you or your fellow students have said

032you know this would be great to have here at coronado and trex the same question to you uh for arcadia not um not any more ap classes but more hands-on stuff more like old trade school kind of things i had a few friends talk to me about it they wanted they're more like like how we used to have mechanical and wood shop more just trade items and trade opportunities uh anisha giselle dude do you hear anything like that no not really mostly like the pre-ap that's the good one like all the students enjoy they really like a challenge um i'd like to add on that we should um try or kind of like welcome in like the idea of having like different unique electives just because i know that during um covid and there's a

033lot of like new things online and a lot of like new interests from students um i had a classmate she mentioned how she would want something with fashion and all of that just because she you know got the interest and yeah just unique and different electives in this upcoming school year thank you i really appreciate that feedback and and i would just say um i i really loved the presentations tonight i thought it was wonderful seeing the students in the prep course i'm glad we got to watch that video i think that pre-ap course that video really spoke to what i enjoyed as a student and it seems like what you all enjoy as students and that is the ability to work with your your fellow classmates and talk about interesting ideas uh current events

034discuss your ideas formulate essays and research topics argue your points and i think that really goes to uh what we hope to do as a as a district and i'm sure all sailors and that's you know provide you the skills so that you can be successful whatever you choose to do later on in life and i think that being critical thinkers being able to to write uh coherent arguments um all of that blends into one another and makes this a great district and at the end of the day if if you are all happy that makes the board happy because that's that's the key so thank you all so much good luck on your final exams and i appreciate you joining us tonight thank you the board will now move to agenda item for student

035and staff recognitions and celebrations dr menzel good evening again president greenberg vice president zanowski and members of the governing board as you know this is the final meeting while school is still in session and it's a tradition long-standing tradition in scottsdale that we celebrate many student successes and some staff milestones while we're unable to do it in person this evening it doesn't in any way dis diminish the uh the celebration that we want to um have and how we can uplift all of the great things and accomplishments this year i appreciate your willingness to help share the good news and tonight we're going to start at the elementary level and ask board member lindsay to begin with that's part of the celebration thank you dr menzel it is my honor to tell you about anazi

036elementary school third grader mckenna vick mckenna has earned the distinction this year of having the best cursive writing among third graders in arizona and not just in public schools but all schools she is the third grade state level champion in the 2021 xander blowser national handwriting contest now in its 30th year you may recall the process of going from printing to writing and cursive is not an easy transition mckenna's cursive skills are due in no small part to a community member who has made teaching handwriting to anazi students her mission for many years now thank you miss maryland horror for your dedication to our students and for finding a way to maintain that connection with them virtually during the pandemic we are so grateful to you ms har and so proud of mckenna for taking

037her instruction to heart congratulations moving on to middle school we are happy to tell you about the recent accomplishments of cocoa paw middle middle school seventh graders finn feldman and theo josephs at the encouragement of cocoa pop gifted specialists sandy flayton finn and theo participated in the phoenix holocaust association's student writing and art contest this spring finn created a stunning drawing and was awarded first place in the contest visual art category theo wrote an essay describing what he learned from listening to the testimony of a holocaust survivor theo placed second in the writ in the writing competition congratulations finn and congratulations theo and thank you mrs flayton for your sensitivity in making this chapter of human history relatable to your students dr menzel thank you board member lindsay at this time board member beckman is

038going to tell us about some outstanding high school national award winner winners uh board member beckman yeah thank you dr menzel i'm pleased to take part in the celebration of arcadia high school freshman gabriella newkey i hope i said that right gabriella has been selected as one of ten tribal youth to serve as a national earth ambassador this year for an organization called unity whose goal is to help build the next generation of native american leaders gabriella represents the navajo and the choctaw tribes she came to unity's detention because of her project growing traditional native crops in an urban home garden space donating that produce to native nonprofits and teaching seed saving practices so others can grow their their own crops as an earth ambassador gabriella and her nine fellow ambassadors are part of an

039environmental stewardship and a leadership program through which where they will increase their knowledge of environmental issues affecting american indian tribes and learn ways of engaging others their age about environmental concerns affecting native communities congratulations gabriella next i want to tell you about three recipients of the 2021 national merit scholarships they are sony um agual from desert mountain high school daniel marchand also a desert mountain wolf and samuel eckhardt from saguaro high school who actually graduated in december from approximately 1.6 million students nationwide who entered the 2021 competition based on test scores they received as juniors on the psat just sixteen thousand finalists became national semifinalists to move on from semifinalists to the finalist status students had to fulfill several requirements including submitting a detailed scholarship application that illustrated a record of very high academic performance

040last month the national merit scholarship foundation based in chicago chose 7 500 distinguished graduating seniors this year's scholarship winners and sanya daniel and samuel are among them two more announcements are forthcoming one in june and one in july and i feel sure in saying that more members of the susd class of 2021 will be named recipients of these scholarships lastly for the second consecutive year a member of the desert mountain high school's graduating class has been named a u.s presidential scholar the u.s presidential scholars program was established in 1964 to recognize and honor some of our nation's most distinguished graduating high school seniors you may recall that last year jake ochen from desert mountain was named a cte us presidential scholar each year fewer than 170 students are named presidential scholars and this year danielle

041sherman who will graduate from desert mountain wednesday night is among the 2021 recipients danielle is a member of the international baccalaureat program at desert mountain and holds a 4.87 gpa and is ranked fourth in her graduating class of more than 500. she is the author of published poems and short stories writes both novels and nonfiction oversaw the publication of the school's amazing literary magazine plays soccer volunteers and arts and library programs in the community and finds a way to emphasize and balance arts and sciences in other words she is an accomplished susd graduate to be congratulations danielle and best wishes from the governing board and susd in your future pursuits thank you board member beckman and congratulations to these students and now we're going to turn our attention to board member hart wells to help

042us celebrate some susd athletic accomplishments thank you dr menzel all of you have most likely been a member of a team that has focused on achieving a common goal for an organization of which you've been a part and every member of that team plays a critical role in helping the team work collaboratively towards their goal is supporting each other all while the ultimate goal may not always be accomplished the value of the journey cannot be understated and it's in that light uh of that kind of achievement that tonight we recognize the following susd high school athletic teams starting with the desert mountain high school baseball teams winners last tuesday of the 5a state championship with their commanding 6-1 victory over sunrise mountain it was the wolves first state title since 2013. now moving on to

043the desert mountain girls and boys teams tennis teams the girls um i'm sorry um singles the girls single titleist savannah colic and state doubles chance olivia kim and julia frazier in these arizona interscholastic associations division one so all champions there good job ladies both the girls and the boys were ranked number one all season long both teams had a perfect 18-0 record heading into the state championship and during those 18 matches the boys went 143-4 and the girls 142 to 6. that's pretty impressive josh moving on to coronado high school state track and field triple jump champion dejean safford stafford sorry whose winning jump in division three competition was a whopping 45 feet six and three quarter inches which is just shy of 14 meters excellent good job dejean back to desert mountain girls 4

044by 800 relay team whose winning time of nine minutes 40.14 seconds outpaced the second place team by nearly nine seconds to take the division ii state championship all those achievements relied on strong leadership so congratulations to the coaches coach ryan dyer kevin er kim dever carl teichner and nate herbert your inspirational leadership of these student athletes is to be commended so thank you we also wish to congratulate coronado high school athletic director tony miller who this past weekend was named the arizona interscholastic association's administrator of the year at its annual gala this is an amazing accomplishment and we're very proud of tony and his entire athletic department at coronado it is a testament to his hard work hosting aia tournaments encouraging professional development certifications by coronado's coaches and teaching courses at the national level that

045makes tony stand out among his peers congratulations tony thank you dr hart wells so much to celebrate and still so many more to acknowledge and now i'd like to ask president greenberg to share a few more student successes to celebrate thank you dr menzel it is my privilege to share that the susd class of 2021 is the recipient of 38 arizona department of education state seals of arts proficiency in band choir dance theater and visual arts the state seal on these seniors diplomas recognizes their high levels of achievement in meeting the ade's arizona arts education standards the arts proficiency seal is in its second year and was created to identify pathways of artistic literacy that translate into college and career preparedness and success and to promote increased access to well-rounded high-quality arts education across the

046state seal recipients are selected based on their grade point averages throughout their high school career consistent strong performances in their arts education courses 80 hours of community service in the arts and a digital portfolio of their work congratulations to these seniors who represent each susp high school members of the class of 2021 are also the recipients of 124 arizona department of education state seals of bi-literacy sgst students can start working toward the bi-literacy seal as early as middle school when we first start offering formal world language studies their course of study culminates in high school with a comprehensive examination of their reading writing speaking and listening proficiency in the foreign language they have selected by literacy seal recipients must also meet all state english language arts graduation requirements with an overall grade point average in

047those classes of 2.0 or higher and pass end-of-course examinations if a student's primary language is a language other than english the student must also pass the ade's arizona english language learner assessment or azela a standards-based assessment that meets both state and federal requirements to measure english language proficiency the sust class of 2021 earned state sales of bioliteracy in spanish french mandarin japanese and german and also represents each of our five high schools congratulations to all of our state sale recipients every year members of congress receive applications from graduating seniors who have decided to that they wish to pursue their university education and at the same time their nation by attending one of the nation's five military academies the admissions process to the five u.s service academies is extensive and very competitive the average acceptance rate

048is less than 20 percent we are very proud to announce that these three members of the susd class of 2021 larson emig chaparral high school sam kreitzman chaparral high school and logan breath hour desert mountain high school larson's nomination comes from the office of congressman david schweikert he is headed to the u.s merchant marine academy in kings point new york larson has pushed himself to take rigorous courses throughout high school enrolling in honors and advanced placement classes larson's learning is about the process he has a passion for flying that has seen him get involved in the civil air patrol has contributed to the success of chaparral's baseball team from the mountain and is the recipient of so many awards and honors we would be here all night telling you about them good luck to you

049larson sam received two nominations to the us military academy one from former u.s senator martha mcsally and one from congressman schweikert sam's guidance counselor reports he ran out of rigorous courses to take his senior year because he had already taken them all nonetheless he has pursued advanced placement and honors courses his senior years such as differential equations spanish five literature and composition and macroeconomics is a musician athlete and strives to put his best foot forward every day sam will take his considerable talents to the us military academy at west point new york soon congratulations sam our final appointee is logan brethauer of desert mountain high school who will call the u.s air force academy in colorado springs his new home logan's interest in the air force has been underway for some time as an officer

050in the air force's explorers program a military career college preparatory program he is a member of the national honor society is a candidate for an international baccalaureate diploma and runs track and cross country for the wolves serving as cross country captain the past two years each of these students has something in him that wants to learn but also even at the young age of 18 wants to give back in a meaningful way as part of their acceptance into their respective academies they have committed to five years of military service we applaud these students for their commitment to service and their nation and wish them all the best congratulations we are all so proud and thank you so much dr menzel thank you president greenberg and congratulations again to all the students who have been celebrated

051this evening we are just really proud to be able to elevate all that you've accomplished and now we'd like to turn our attention as we close out our celebrations to our staff several of whom are marking significant milestones with our district and i'd like to ask vice president zanowski to be able to share with us those milestone celebrations thank you dr menzo the scottsdale unified school district would not be what it is without the dedication of its employees as a former employee myself i can attest without a doubt to the hard work susd employees contribute to this district day in and day out we would not have the reputation of one of the finest school districts in arizona were not for the commitment of our employees and in many cases behind the scenes where they

052are not always noticed by the general public but committed they are and on behalf of the governing board it is my honor to recognize the following long-time susd employees for their years of service to our students our schools and our community jan malikowski has worn many hats throughout his his 35 year career with susd he began his career in facilities and building services moved to the i.t department as a support technician and specialist and is currently part of our transportation department's team of school bus drivers robert renwicki has taught physics and chemistry for the past 35 years at arcadia and chaparral high schools he has chaired the science department coached the school's track and cross-country and soccer teams and currently teaches physics at scottsdale online and chaparral marcy sanchez is a long time backbone of

053the chaparral high school athletic department having taught physical education to firebird students for the past 35 years and helping coach the girls basketball teams i appreciate the opportunity to salute a former colleague you cannot have attended pima elementary school now pima traditional school anytime in the past 35 years and not remember physical education teacher john selkirk when pima celebrated its 60th anniversary a few years ago former students were so happy to see mr selkirk still there catherine spitler is a 35-year veteran of susd's nutrition service department part of the team awesome to which we often refer catherine's work serving susd students has primarily been at cocoapod middle school thomas vining has taught various science science classes including physics at desert mountain high school for the past 35 years he is the go-to physics first initiative

054person for susd and also teaches the most much sad after sought after astrophysics class and topping off tonight's employee recognitions is 40 year susd facility and building services employee greg skelton the reason our athletic fields win awards is due in large part to greg's leadership and his dedication to ensuring that our student athletes have the finest outdoors facilities in which to compete to all tonight's honorees please accept susd's profound gratitude for your combined 160 years of dedication to your professions and to our students we are truly indebted to you thank you so much dr menzel thank you uh vice president zanowski and that concludes our celebrations for this evening thank you and congratulations again to all the honorees tonight and congratulations we will now move to agenda item five superintendent's comments as a reminder for

055individuals who are providing public comments after superintendent's comments to please call in to the line that was provided if you did not receive an email with the call-in number please email the board secretary gladys wagner again that email is g w a g o n e r s u s d dot org dr menzel thank you president greenberg what a joy really to celebrate all of our students and staff from elementary middle school high school i'm excited to see what happens as they move on to the next phase of their career earlier today i had an opportunity to participate in the rotary scholarship presentations at the scottsdale rotary clubs meeting at noon and it was wonderful to be able to meet our students some of their parents and to celebrate with with a club in

056scottsdale that is really committed to our students i think there were close to 14 scholarships that were awarded today and after that they made a quick trip over to coronado where we recognized winners from an essay contest that they held as well so we have great community support for scottsdale unified school district and today was just a highlight during a year we where we've had a lot of things that we've been working on and struggling with to recognize and celebrate student success has just been phenomenal i'd like to actually see now if we can share with all of you a video of hohokum elementary school that was put together in partnership with architect and construction management team that i think tells a really nice story where we are in the process and i think you'll

057enjoy seeing this video [Music] are you excited to see what the school looks like now i'm totally excited all right let's go my name is scott menzel and i'm the superintendent of scottsdale unified school district i'm proud to be able to welcome you to a video tour of the newly rebuilt hohokam elementary school here in scottsdale unified school district pretty nice sized library though huh library is connected to the office it is now yes that's a change you're not wrong i'm blown up in 1960 ralph haver designed the original holocomb and the community wanted to preserve core aspects of that architectural design and the rebuild this connectivity between the two courtyards between the cafeteria and the office really really bring the school together make it feel very close knit connectivity the outside was a big

058big factor and something we really wanted to preserve we're real excited about that [Music] really proud that you guys are very good yeah we're excited too [Music] each of these school houses has five classrooms they all have a collaboration space like this so this is a flexible space where your teachers can send you to work in pairs or small groups or you can do project based learning out here that's really exciting [Music] i like how they connected all the classrooms so everyone can have a partner and we can work in groups i'm most excited about the library because it's a lot bigger i'm pretty much excited about this whole thing about school the playgrounds the soccer fields the basketball courts it all looks great we are looking forward to welcoming our students from both ho

059com and yavapai to this campus on august 4th for the first day of school for families who haven't registered we ask you to go to our website at susd.org to sign up today to secure your spot in this dynamic learning community [Music] that video will be posted on our website and we'll circulate it in social media outlets i think the kids tell the best story and and it was so wonderful to walk through the facility with them to listen to how they were because they had been there before one is a kindergartner and other grades and so different recollections and memories of what was and then as they saw the possibilities of what will be that was just fascinating i also want to take this moment to thank our scottsdale community for supporting the rebuilds

060and the 2016 bond issue because it's what allows us to be able to improve the physical and environment and infrastructure so that our students get the best possible learning experience so many thanks to our community for making that possible there are a couple other things that i would like to highlight before we move on with our agenda one is there are three more days left in the 2020-21 school year and i just want to give a shout-out to our students to our staff to our parents and to the governing board for all that you've done to get our kids from start to finish from the online experience in august to the gradual return to in-person learning for some while providing online learning for others this has been a year unlike any other but the finish

061line is almost here and i just want to express my great gratitude and appreciation for the resilience and perseverance of everyone in this school system and i hope that people will be able to take the time to celebrate all that has been accomplished in this most unusual of years so with that i want to give an applause and then i have two more brief comments last tuesday i was prepared to make a number of other comments some of those were covered in a press conference that we had on friday which is posted on our website things that address information around the conclusion of this year how we're approaching next fall with respect to mask questions about critical race theory that had been raised and i provided information to address some of those things that have

062been circulating in our community and rather than rehash that at this point i will point people to our susd.org website so they can watch the video read the commentary that was provided and access that information and and the final piece of information that was going to be a part of tuesday's report was an update on the chaparral lights as many of you know we've heard from a number of the neighbors in the tierra felice community with respect to that lighting project both on the boys uh baseball field as well as the girls softball field after the meeting i had an opportunity to meet with members of of the community and i suspect that public comment will hear from some of them as well but i just wanted to let the governing board know uh that

063as we've reviewed the concerns uh we're in the process of engaging with quality the company that put the lights in so that we can actually do a a light study we were under the impression and the information that was shared with all of you at the time we brought the proposal forward that the lights were would be down shielded in such a way as to minimize any light spillage outside of the the perimeter of the ball field which is not the case from what we've seen through pictures that have been shared with the governing board so that's the first step in our process to identify how far off they are from what they promised to us then we need to figure out what adjustments can be made to those lighting fixtures and or down shielding

064but i wanted to this let you know that we are actively working on solutions to address the concerns of the neighbors and to get that in place long before the next uh baseball and softball season start in february uh with that president greenberg and vice president stanowski members of the governing board it has been one amazing year so far and i want to thank you for hanging in there as we've tackled every twist and turn and i'll turn it back over to president greenberg thank you dr menzel and um yeah the chase video with these students wearing the oversized vests and hard hats was extremely cute so i think we all appreciated seeing that and it looks like an absolutely phenomenal building the board will now move to agenda item six public comments as a

065reminder to members of the public who are calling in you will each have three minutes for public comments we are displaying the time but there is a video delay so uh we will let you know once your time is up if you are still speaking and ask that you wrap it up with a final sentence with that said we'll move to our first speaker tonight robin snyder thank you so much i hope you can hear me thank you so much ford and i appreciate the opportunity to speak to you tonight uh my husband and i are the parents of three chaparral students one graduated two years ago one is graduating on thursday and one as a freshman my husband also attended chaparral and we i went to arcadia and we've been in the district for

066most of our lives we have noticed over the past probably four years um a shift in the focus on learning and the shift has gone from you know focusing on excellence in curriculum and in everything that students do to very kind of underpinnings of like social justice um activity and it's been very distracting to the learning process for our children as the narrative at school has become so strong and there seems to be only room for one side of the the discussion or the debate and anybody with an opposing view is called names or um told that they're racist not by the teachers but by the students and this style of learning um really creates an atmosphere of intimidation and in some cases bullying and makes it hard for the kids to learn and um

067i feel like we've watched uh and during covet we were able to kind of see it firsthand with our two students home on their zoom classes um a movement of we've gone from teaching kids how to think and we're just telling them what to think and an example of this even just happened as recently as friday when in my son's freshman english class i'm sure his teacher had a lesson plan for that day but somehow uh that got thwarted and he ended up showing the tuesday night board meeting video and then discussing it as a class and i just thought that was inappropriate there was enough to cover in english you know the week before exams to not have that narrative going on so that was disappointing um the focus on diversity is actually created

068greater division and disunity our kids have played on sports teams throughout their high school career and there's never been a feeling on a team that our kids have participated in there's never been even a notion to different races and backgrounds they've been on the same team they've been friends there's never been anything like that and this year we saw it on football at the beginning of the year there was just such an emphasis on this diversity that really created in some ways segregation and um it created problems against friend groups that were previously amicable and it was just an unnecessary and uh disappointing thing to see um so i really just wanted to say you know as a parent we want to be the ones to instill those values in our children and really we

069we rely on you all as our wonderful district teachers and administrators to teach teach them what they need to know in terms of the subject matter but don't um don't indoctrinate with opinions and the other thing i just want to encourage suspect to do always as you know we want our kids to be taught that they can do anything they set their minds to regardless of race or regardless of their background that the world is their oyster and they can go and do whatever they set their minds to they're not going to be limited by the color of their skin thank you the next public speaker is melissa mccusker hello and good evening thank you so much president greenberg susc governing board members and dr menzel my community tier of police and myself greatly appreciate

070the opportunity to speak this evening and i'd like to personally thank the governing board as well as dr menzel for allowing us this opportunity specifically in the midst of the last board meeting we were unable to speak so thank you so much for uh your leadership in allowing us to speak this evening please know and understand that my family and i purchased a home originally in the tierra belize neighborhood next to chaparral high school in a dark skies neighborhood i am here this evening as well as some other community members from sierra police to speak about the baseball lights that have been installed on chaparral's baseball field the neighborhood including myself and my family feel like we are living next to a professional baseball stadium or a las vegas casino and i don't say that

071lightning lightly as the lights have greatly affected our community and home since the lights have been installed my neighbors and i have seen a decrease in our quality of life and an increase in many undesirable factors the undesirable factors that affect my personal home and quality lie for the far we have now seen a great uh extreme light pollution we have lights that are beaming into our bedrooms where our children sleep our backyards and our side yards this is previously a dark skies neighborhood that had no lights on any streets including street lights it is a very dark neighborhood and now it has been overwhelmed with the baseball lights this is now affecting the sleep of multiple family members most especially my children who are also scottsdale unified school district students it has affected the

072effect of the enjoyment in our home our backyard and our side yard it has affected every aspect of our home and our yard as well another undesirable factor is the increased traffic we have now seen charter buses that are driving through our community are clogging our streets on golgust avenue because they are unloading students baseball players to play and or softball players to play at the field they are cutting through our neighborhood to do so as well parents and students are now racing up and down our streets to find parking to attend night games which is increasing of course traffic and noise in our community the speeding has become quite overwhelming as i walk my dogs and my children at night and again we live in a dark sized community and so what happens is

073with racing cars that it becomes dangerous to walk my children and my dogs now we also have noise pollution because now the sounds that we used to hear during the day living next to a baseball field now happen at night so this pollution includes music over loud speakers uh announcers as well as cheering and again this is great during the day however please conclude undesirable however now with free traffic we have now seen charter buses that are driving towards the community for the following communication strategies to include taking down the lights and or modifying the lighting significantly we want these neighbors to play in the fields and please know that the homes that are affected by these football lights include scottsdale unified school district students as well as the baseball and softball students thank you

074so much thank you our next speaker is laura franco is there a laura franco on the line if not we will move to our next speaker john kavanagh jonathan are you available is there a is there a technical issue there appears to be a technical issue so i will hold on one second and laura franco if you are still on the line you will be called so thank you we will first move we will next move to representative john kavanagh thank you thank you for giving this opportunity to speak on a critical race theory and i guess the controversy over masks at the meetings critical race theory is a theory slash political movement born in the 1990s on the tattered intellectual framework of discredited identity-based marxism marxism is a discredited political theory that claims that

075the imbalance of power and wealth in capitalist societies must be ended by a revolution that changes the country's politics economy distribution of wealth when the communist revolutions produced nothing but bankrupt brutal totalitarian regimes the communists were forced to drop their economic-based marxist theory enter critical race theory which attempts to convince people that the united states is hopelessly and irredeemably and systemically racist and can only be fixed by radical changes to our politics economy and institution critical race theory cleverly sneaks in marx's theory fools people by manipulating words equality of opportunity one of the foundations of america is suddenly replaced with equity of outcome which is the marxist redistribution of wealth critical rate theory divides our society by categorizing us by race gender and sexual orientation and then labeling those within the categories as the oppressed

076or the oppressors critical race theory teaches us that most whites contribute to racism that males are oppressors and that heterosexuals are oppressors critical race theory requires the oppressors denounce their respective privileges in a most public and most humiliating way the arizona legislature has passed a bill in the house that is now in the senate that would protect our society from this divisive toxic theory the bill would prohibit teaching that one race ethnicity or sex is inherently morally or intellectually superior to another it would prohibit that any person by virtue of his or hers race ethnicity or sex is inherently racist sexist or oppressive whether consciously or not the bill would ban teaching that an individual by virtue of his or her race ethnicity or sex there's responsibility for actions committed by others of the same

077sex ethnicity or race the bill will also ban any teachings that academic achievement meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic or racist or sexist will be created by members of particular race or sex to oppress members of another racial sex all of these are key principles in critical race theory and i'm hoping that you will step ahead of the legislature which i think will test this bill soon and then critical race theory in your curriculum and i haven't heard about the press conference that you gave but i'm hoping that you said so much i would also like to speak on behalf of the hundred or so parents and citizens who went to the meeting site expecting to be able to speak in a larger venue where mass would not be mandatory in compliance

078with cdc guidelines that did not happen instead their voices on critical race theory and masks have been muffled more than any mass could do i hope that at a future meeting of susd school board you can accommodate these people in a large safe venue because watching is not participating and studying and shutting people out will not shut them up thank you very much our next speaker is laura franco good evening i'm laura franco thank you for the opportunity to speak i have two children in the scottsdale unified district i'm not sure if you were aware that on april 23rd there was national day of science event jose hosted by the gay straight alliance club is sponsored by miss laney langner at kokopa middle school those students and teachers who supported the day of science had

079permission to stay silent in every class throughout the day i am not opposed to supporting the lgbt community some of my good friends and colleagues are members of the community and our family respects them very much we also support the lgbt community by founding fundraising for their chamber of commerce the red french event one community and phoenix sprite center however focal point's transparency of this event is questionable in how the sponsor miss lainey langner went about promoting it on campus like other clubs and organizations affiliated with the school this event should have been held in a meeting room or a designated spot on campus instead of being set up at the school's main entrance where every student coming into campus was exposed to this incident topic club supporters were standing at the school's main gate

080and in classrooms passing out flyers and verbally assaulting kids who disagree or chose not to support their cause i'm asking the board to review the employee handbook as if they interfere with my son's education as well as many other students this event forced several parents to pull their kids from school early because they were being harassed questionable their sexuality and received wrong facts about the lgbt group thus creating an uncomfortable and unsafe learning environment at kokopan middle school sgsd and mr noonan principal of kokopa should notify the parents beforehand of any controversial events that may occur encompass this will allow the parents to remove the kids from school or discuss any controversial topics with their children in a comfortable setting or with an expert when they're ready thank you for your time thank you our

081next speaker will be connor shannon good evening dr menzel and board members my name is connor shannon and i'm an eighth grader who attends desert canyon middle school it has been 14 months since covet first erected and i are extremely tired of not just masks but all the multiple unnecessary code protocols science has shown that children are not at risk of serious symptoms of covid and all the 16 and older who are at higher risk have already been vaccinated anyone 16 and older could have been vaccinated and they can be vaccinated and now those 12-15 can also be better than leaders last week there are only three cases among the nearly 20 000 susd in-person students and those aren't merely cases not even symptomatic illness at what point do we stop at these unproven protocols

082who are you protecting the unproven benefits do not outweigh the bad things of masks such as no one is smiling at each other everyone is a zombie they have no personality we need to have the option to take them off more often my entire yearbook was full of math kids even in outside photos with no one else around your decision-making on this has been ridiculous although you have finally given us an end date to masks i want to ask that all restricted measures are removed for the 2021-2022 school year unnecessary things such as lining up outside before every class what's the point of this we also have to follow arrows i can't even go across the hall of my next class elementary schools are still required to follow arrows my little brother is also sick

083of it stores got rid of this last year is an unproven and unnecessary measure small bagged school lunches that leave me hungry i want my cafeteria back i can't get the lunch i want we had no watertowns all year where's the scientific support that this is helping stop to spread we have no graduation and said there is a drive-through parade happening at our school tomorrow where we were specifically instructed to only wave to our friends and teachers and not leave our cars with all the measures that have been forced upon us with our location rates please tell me why do i not have an 8th grade graduation and on top of all that we are still forced to isolate themselves when no one is even being covered at school all year you have made a

084scoop jump through the protocols just to attend school yet we're still being quarantined that may or not these protocols need to stop shame on all of you for the ridiculous hoop jumping us kids have to endure it is time to stop all these probing measures and we must start next year normally without any of these unproven unnecessary protocols thank you for your time thank you our next speaker is richard schneider hi this is ali schneider richard's wife we both live directly behind the baseball field at chaparral and i just wanted to start by thanking you for allowing us an opportunity to have a bit of your ear tonight and again iterate that we're huge supporters of chaparral and scottsdale school district that's why we actually bought this house we bought the house in 2017 right

085when we got married and you know we're thrilled to live here and we feel so fortunate to be able to live in this community and have the neighbor of a high school we're so lucky we love seeing all the kids walk to school in the morning but a few months ago things changed we had our second baby who is now seven weeks old and our other one is 13 and a half months old so our hands are full and we woke up about two months ago all these construction noises going on with these lights being installed and we didn't know what was going on we weren't alerted that you know five a.m before the sun rose there'd be construction going on but okay we kind of let it go went on for a few days

086and then the lights went on and wow we were really really shocked in this house that we just moved back into after remodeling it we're right behind the baseball field so they shine right through our slider door and light up the whole house it was crazy here we are with a newborn screaming and crying and they're shining through the bedrooms we have to relocate the kids we can't sit and feed the baby in the living room it's just been really difficult for us and again thank you for taking the time to hear us you know tell you what the impact has been on our life since then being installed i wish that we were alerted before so we could have just told you hey here's how this is going to impact us because you know

087for so many years chaparral has been such a great neighbor to us and i feel we send a great neighbor to them but this is really changing the way that we're living our life and that we can't have dinner when the lights are on we can't be in the living room to feed the newborn when the lights are on we can't put the newborn to sleep when the lights are on and it's been really really difficult for us so i just wanted to voice my concerns let you know how the lights were impacting me express the concern i had that i wasn't alerted before and again thank you for all of your time and listening for being such a great neighbor throughout the years and i'm hopeful that something can be done to alleviate the

088stress that this has caused us and our new family here in this house thank you congratulations on your newborn thank you the board will now move uh the next speaker is amy carney okay hello board and dr manzo my name is amy carney i'm the mother of six sufd students and i'd like to talk about seeking transparency in three different areas first let's talk curriculum we the parents want full transparency transparency of all curriculum being taught in our schools there are syllabus course materials and resource buttons listed on the teachers websites on their school pages the buttons are there but nothing's attached can we get those updated come fall so parents can see what exactly uh the teachers are will be teaching and this new million dollar ela curriculum you guys quietly adopted for 9th

089or 12th graders emphasizes students cultural references in all curricula it teaches some kids that they're victims and others that they should be ashamed of who they are and we also know that curriculum designers don't answer the words critical race theory in children's curriculum they instead slyly put it into practice by generating lessons that introduce racial grievances and calls for advocacy here at sgsc seems we're calling this culturally relevant and responsive learning so just maybe we don't realize what's going on but we don't want divisive curriculum in our classrooms we've got to stop putting activism ahead of learning immediately but our kids are behind academically and that's got to be our focus next let's talk extracurricular clubs coca-cola middle school recently caused a lot of problems when they failed to communicate to parents about their planned

090gay straight alliance club day of silence thankfully kids and parents are talking more than ever about what's going on in their schools so the word got out pokeball administration called parents sharing information with each other disappointing and gossip but i call this community at its best and exactly what's going to happen when you fail to communicate with the parents who have no option but to talk with one another advanced communication with parents must occur if club activities are going to interfere with their learning day all correct extracurricular clubs offered at each school in the district needs to be listed on your website for parents to view you can look at chaparral as an excellent example of this they are transparent with what clubs they offer and who the staff leader is and even who the

091president is this is what needs to happen with all of our middle and high schools we the parents want interest-based clubs in our middle schools not identity-based ones that are going to further divide these young students lastly let's talk committees we the parents want full transparency when it comes to what committees are being formed in the district and furthermore understand their purpose and who is serving on them we know you've recently formed and selected people you want to serve on your curriculum and diversity equity and inclusion committees yet why is there nothing listed on your website about these important committees who are helping make very important decisions for our kids on the s usc website there's a section of in-progress committees yet those committees the curriculum and dei ones aren't listed why we the parents

092deserve to know what curriculum is being taught to our children what clubs are being invited to join and what committees are being formed in the background to make important decisions for us our kids these conclude thank you our next speaker is crystal carroll hello hi hi my name is crystal carroll and i'm a mother of five kids i have two currently in the susca system and i've always taught my kids to respect and honor their teachers their entire life unfortunately these same teachers are now trying to push their political social agenda in the learning processes and this is not acceptable i will be pulling my child out of susd there is a liberal democratic indoctrination being pushed in their daily teachings and in learning programs i'll give you an example brain pop dems are often

093painted in a positive tone while republicans are painted in negative tones when trying to teach politics in their learning program one such example is obama pop lesson in brain pop it used the example that dems believe in feeding the children while republicans don't the uh the general undertone is one that dems care about feeding our children and health care and fairness while republicans focus on war feel free to check out the very biased pro-dem brain pop video obama pop oddly i couldn't find anything on trump pop another example is my fourth grader would begin cry for me not to wear a trump face mask to school because her teacher takes trump i'd like to know why my fourth grader knows that the teachers hate trump how is teaching our children that hating is okay our

094teachers are meant to educate our kids not indoctrinate them into their views i'm also concerned as this program teaches students that cops are racist and that they kill blacks at i quote two times the rate based on their color alone they also try to make our kids feel bad about being white and apologetic and that they've created a systemic environment of racism based on on their color police protect and serve and risk their lives every day to protect your children if you have any and my children they risk their life on a daily basis to possibly never see their own children again i am completely appalled that police would be painted in any kind of negative light our district is adopting and adopting a new curriculum quietly behind our backs and they refuse to acknowledge

095it's in the form of crt when we do question if it's critical race theory or we're told it's absolutely not and many parents in our community are even bullied by members of the school board yes our school board here over social media if they dare speak up and challenge the issues one example i saw was a face book post by one of you school board members that actually posted a picture of the parent and painted a negative false narrative about this said parent what followed were several hateful comments that were just beyond acceptable unprofessional and targeted hate by a board member to a parent i'm also confused how a board member is allowed to harass parents and act in such a deplorable manner i wonder what kind of example this sets for our children at

096susd as i know that bullying is not okay we the parents and the community members are done being bullied by board members and having critical race theory in our school under any form you can call it whatever you want but there is a general tone that creates racism my child is not racist as it or none of the other children and the board member is supposed to protect and serve our kids not create this level of distension that they have thank you very much and i appreciate your time thank you our next speaker is heidi combs good evening dr menzel and governing board members my name is heidi combs i am a mother of two young children in the district during the last year and a half susp has sent weekly emails layered with quantitative

097data regarding the covid19 pandemic you have given us numbers that stacked your numerical deck with reasons to keep our children at home during distance learning masked quarantined when they were not sick and separated from their peers while at lunch and recess you provided a numerical dark cloud for the last 63 weeks based on selective medical and governmental resources that have continued to move the goal post and impose governmental overreach to our health freedom the district's use of contact tracing limited educational resources and opportunities to all of its children while you followed non-evidence-based mitigation strategies to dodge the covid liability bullet contact tracing forced our healthy children to stay home to fend for themselves with parents and caregivers that may or may not have the resources to help them while remaining loyal to honor health mayo

098clinic dr sun shine and the cdc you neglected the emotional and social health of our most precious population our children while also putting immeasurable stress onto our hard-working teachers last week proved our community and susp is broken you have isolated our children you have overworked our dedicated teachers you have lost the trust of some parents you have showed us in the past 63 weeks that your loyalties lie with major hospitals the maricopa county department of public health the cdc and not our kids you took recommendations and made them rules without using the resources we have in our own district to do what was best for our kids we are the parents we are the children's hearts and their health we invited you into our lives to work with us but parents are questioning your focus

099as we all try to move forward after this past year and a half i encourage you dr menzel and governing board to change your focus so we can move forward together as a healed community ready to make our children the priority again thank you for your time thank you our next speaker is parisa gorg dear board members and dr manziel my name is theresa gorek thank you for giving me a time to speak today i am here on behalf of my family and my elderly neighbors who do not know how to use the internet and have lived in this neighborhood for over 40 years we lived in the trs police neighborhood for six years we have a seven-year-old daughter and a five-year-old son our house is two houses in from the baseball field we love

100this neighborhood and the sound of school children coming and going the new baseball and softball lights have made it difficult for us to enjoy our home to enjoy our home as we once did our master bedroom and the children's rooms face east the east side of our home is lit up whenever there is a baseball game we must close the doors to the bathrooms and the children's room to avoid it building in the hallway and the living room at bedtime we must put the children to bed in the back room because the streets look like daytime as you can imagine there's no reasoning with young children about why outside his life but they must go to bed bedtime has become a very stressful part of our day when there are baseball games we love the

101desert sky and enjoy using our backyard as much as the weather allows during the year this past spring which was the first baseball season with the new life we were not able to sit outside and enjoy our backyard as the lights were blinding and lit up the whole backyard especially given the pandemic and our outings being very limited being able to use our backyard was especially important to us when i say the lights lit up the sky i am not inflating the level of the light they are blinding in every way and direction i use the word blinding repeatedly because that is the most accurate way of describing them with the lights have come extra noise from spectators announcers and music adding more new things to what already is a bad situation my neighbors facing

102west and south of their schools have their whole homes backyards kitchens living rooms and even guesthouses flooded with lights they cannot enjoy dinner at their own kitchen table and must move to other rooms because their lives are blinding they cannot use their backyards or any part of their property without the interference of the light we would like to ask the board to work with us to come up with a solution so that we can use and enjoy our homes as we did prior to the life thank you for your time thank you there are no additional speakers for tonight's public comment but pursuant to ars 38 43101 h i would like to take a moment to respond to a number of points and to ask staff to review a matter um regarding obama pop dr

103menzel if you could have your staff please review that video on brainpop and access to it regarding the gay straight alliance club our administration has reviewed that and our principal has already uh responded to parents and sent out a notification of all families at that school but please know that students have a first amendment right uh to form extracurricular clubs in our schools so we we do not have the ability to prevent or prohibit students from uh from forming such a club uh regarding the chaparral lights dr menzel's already addressed that in his uh superintendent's comments but we are working as a district and intend to continue working with our neighbors at all schools to do what we can to be good neighbors i do want to note though that uh neighbors were notified within

104a one mile radius before they were installed with a meeting notification for community meeting and those lights are on approximately 20 nights of the entire year nonetheless we intend to to work with quality as dr menzel mentioned to do what we can to be good neighbors and make sure that our neighbors can enjoy their homes regarding critical race theory and curriculum dr menzel has already directed members of the public to review our press conference on friday where most of those questions are addressed thank you very much and this concludes our public comments section for the evening the board will now move to agenda item 7b information discussion item provide susd governing board with a review of fastbridge usage to date including principal and teacher input on site usage and instructional coach input on district trainings

105and usage dr menzel thank you president greenberg and members of the governing board um this agenda item even though at our last meeting we had an action item on fast bridges here because we made a commitment at the time we brought the fastbridge recommendation forward back in the fall that we would review the data with the governing board in terms of what we've learned as we've rolled out implementation tonight we have a number of people with us to go through a presentation but we'll turn it over to dr tim fountain to begin reviewing the slides and then we'll be open for any questions you may have all right thank you dr menzel good evening president greenberg vice president zanowski dr menzel members of the board and of course miss wagner i'm really pleased to get

106to bring to you tonight uh an update on where we are at with fastbridge um we just recently this past week um completed the the end of the year assessment cycle for fastbridge so we've done it two times now um a third time at the beginning of the year if we'd been fortunate enough to get started there i would have completed a full cycle but we're going to share some information with you tonight on the usage to date from some of our site administrators and they've gathered some teacher input for you as well um first i just wanted to take a minute to review the rationale and the reasoning behind bringing fastbridge into place i know we have a couple of new board members since we went that way we did have a requirement of

107a screener for dyslexia that came down from the state a couple of years back they did temporarily table that but we'd already begun our process and susd to move forward um we also needed to make sure that you comply with the move on wind reading statute that we had a research-based intervention uh instrument and screener and so this satisfies that piece to support our tier one instruction um so just a reminder just a couple of key terms that you might hear in this presentation tonight um a universal screener and that is what fast bridges you can go on to that next slide sorry it's weird not clicking your own slide um so the the uh first piece here is the universal screener that is the primary purpose of fastbridge what a universal screener does quite

108simply is tell us who is struggling and what level or intensity of support do they need fastbridge does have some diagnostic components to it as well helps to tell us why they are struggling uh helps us to understand how deep the gaps are in their understanding and then we also utilize this instrument for progress monitoring so we know how the student is responding to the interventions that we are providing all right on our next slide you can see and i won't go through this in too much detail because i know we've seen it before but um this is kind of the rollout and the timeline for implementation uh we began this work back in 2020 prior to the pandemic we put this committee together um as you may remember from the presentation back in september

109um kudos to our teachers if they're listening tonight i applaud you once again because they did incredible work through the pandemic to get together and move this process forward um and tonight you're gonna hear a little bit about the value that we've had and having the screener in place and being able to give us some information about how our are performing um all right so some of our implementation highlights here i'm ready to turn it over to diane murphy diane is our elementary ela specialist and diane was heavily responsible for the implementation of this tool and some of the training that goes with it so diane if you're there hop on in uh thank you dr fountain after the mid-year winter universal screener was completed in january our focus for fastbridge switched from how to

110give the universal screener to how to use the information provided by the screener to work with students at risk fastbridge provides about a dozen different reports but the most powerful report for identifying students at risk is one called screening to intervention report that report identifies students at risk provides an intervention plan as well as specific lessons that focus on the needs for each individual student since january i've been able to work with almost all k-3 teachers and many fourth and fifth grade teachers during their plc time to help them learn how to understand the screening to intervention report and then form a small targeted progress monitoring group for example at sequoia which you'll hear from next i was able to spend the day with teachers in all grades k5 during their grade level plc time

111while meeting with them we analyzed their mid-year scores then based upon recommendations from fastbridge we created progress monitoring groups for students of similar needs uh next slide please a fastbridge tool is really helpful to teachers because it not only identifies students at risk through the universal screener but it also provides really great diagnostic information intervention plans and targeted lessons for students these lessons are easy for teachers to implement and include real detailed directions and resources moving forward the focus of fastbridge will be to continue working on identifying students at risk developing progress monitoring groups conducting targeted intervention lessons and diving deeper into more reports provided by the fast break program um i also have been able to meet with several fourth and fifth grade teams since it was approved by the board a couple weeks

112ago to do fast bridges with fourth and fifth grade this spring not only their schools but i also hope also hosted the first pd for fastbridge for grades four and five last week additional information on fastbridge and pd will be provided this spring uh during the summer and throughout the 2021 school year and now uh nan wilkinson assistant principal sequoia will share wonderful thank you next slide please so good evening everyone i am nan wilkinson i'm very excited to kind of share our path of how sequoia embraced fastbridge we are the school that has absolutely embraced it so much and with diane that was such a beautiful segue into what we are doing here at sequoia after the mid-year screening for the k-3 uh our and diane meeting with our k-3 teachers they were so

113excited and word got around and so we decided to uh request it to be piloted for our fourth and fifth grade group so our fourth and fifth grade also began using some of the fast bridge assessments and really looking in on some of those things so at sequoia we really pride ourselves in getting to know the stories of every single one of our students and so fastbridge gave us a lot of data to kind of data points to understand their story and so that's why we have embraced it heavily here we also like the sel component that fastbridge has there's a sabers component so after how going through some training with shannon crone we created some support groups and we used that sabres to identify some of the social emotional and academic mindset of the

114students so we could find out maybe some areas that we could pinpoint through through support groups one of the things that the teachers really liked about fastbridge was that progress monitoring not only does it have the progress monitoring that fits beautifully into our rti process but it also has the materials so everything is in one spot and we can go in and look at all of the data both the screening information and the progress monitoring data in that so that is something that they really appreciate with the sabres it does not have a progress monitoring component but there is three screening times that you can give that savers and so you can see the attitudes or the mindset of the children throughout the year and also looking at that with teacher in teacher input and

115we can start creating some of those social and emotional groups that are needed so strongly on campus so that is our goal for savers excuse me from fastbridge is to continue using at sequoia to continue using all of the components k5 doing the screening doing the progress monitoring with the rti group and then including that sabres in there so we're very excited to continue using fastbridge progress monitoring and the screen process and that is my portion thank you i'll move to the next speaker all right good evening i am brooke williams the principal over at laguna and i am going to go through a little bit of what our journey has looked like over at laguna for our teachers and our students so fastbridge was rolled out as you know in december our teachers did

116training then and they were able to give that first screener in january so our grade level teams were able to use that screening data during their plc collaborative team time they were able to look at the reports and look at the data and really drill down and create interventions and supports for the students that were struggling in their classrooms since it was mid-year they already had many of these interventions in place so they continued to use what they were already doing with the support of that fast bridge data to really tell them where to point that instruction the next piece where we've been using it is in our ipt our intervention planning team the data from frostbridge has been able to help us see a bigger picture for students and the challenges that they face

117we've been able to create goals using that data and put interventions in place specifically for those students and then track the data utilizing progress monitoring tools we've also been using fastbridge to help support parents these reports can be used by teachers during parent-teacher conferences to support these discussions with parents about how their students are doing and where those areas of need are for them to get a little extra support next slide please what we've really been able to do in being in rolling out fast bridge in january is to really start to use the data start to look at the tools and really come up with a great plan for the next school year so at laguna this is our plan for the 2021-2022 school year utilizing fast fridge all of our students will be

118universally screened in both reading and math in k-5 we'll use that data and it will be analyzed by our collaborative teams students that are shown to be at high risk will then be given a diagnostic tool to drill down even further and determine where those needs and challenges are and then those diagnostic results will drive our intervention groups and the supports for students in the classroom we'll also be using the sel screener as well to support any students in those areas as well all right thank you i'm going to turn it back over to dr fountain and actually i'm going to speak on this one i'm dr bachna i'm the director of assessment and accountability i just want to talk briefly about some of our overall results so far this school year these are the

119results what you're seeing on the screen are the results of the early reading tests given to kindergarteners and first graders this test measures developing reading skills such as concepts of print fluency and phonemic awareness what you see in the left-hand box is that students scores increased slightly from the winter to the spring administration with 55 of students earning scores at or above the 50th percentile the nature of these assessments is that the cut scores rise with each administration in other words a student needs to demonstrate a higher mastery of skills as the school year progresses next slide please and this is these are the results the overall results of cbm are curriculum based measurement reading given to the first through third graders these are measurements of reading accuracy and automaticity such as print concepts oral

120reading fluency phonological awareness phonics and word recognition again the district trend is towards more students testing at the 50th percentile and higher at the final administration of the school year you can see an example of the progressively higher cut scores for the measures in the right hand box students must demonstrate a higher degree of fluency at each subsequent test administration and with that i think i'm turning it over to mrs thank you dr bachna yes so hello governing board thank you so much for having us this evening i am shelley hummon i'm the very proud principal of pueblo elementary school um so um in our first uh bullet point there we say recognizing that these are lofty goals but we don't list what the goals are so let me expand on that just a little

121bit so in susd um each of us at the elementary school uh level uh create a continuous site improvement plan otherwise known as a sip plan and we are asked to come up with academic goals and goals for rigorous instruction amongst others and so for this year we created three academic goals one of course in spanish because we are a dual language immersion program and we also created two goals for english language arts and math and for english language arts which is what we use fastbridge for we created a goal that we wanted each student to make at least nine months or one academic years of growth in ela this year whether that meant that they were growing um because they were maybe a little bit behind and needed to make growth or whether they

122were right on target and we're going to grow up so that was our goal and we recognized that that was a lofty goal given the constraints that we had this year and and the way that school looked and we also created a goal for rigorous instruction being that we wanted to implement small group and individualized instruction in the classroom with uh each and every student so that we could target their specific need we also recognize at the beginning of the school year that small group and individualized instruction may be a little bit challenging given some of the covet protocols that we had in place so we enlisted the help of the amazing instructional coaches that we have in susd as an instructional leader myself at pueblo i recognize that we have other people in our

123district that are true experts that can come and help us when we have issues such as this that we want to tackle so i tapped into my long time friend and colleague diane murphy to come and meet with my teams and diane came and met with us on a monthly basis or more than more than monthly at some points in time um to really come up with some very out of the box ways that my student my students and my teachers could implement small group and individualized instruction but still um be covered friendly to the protocols um and we would get together as a team and we would look at how can we implement these instructional strategies throughout the school year so that we were really targeting the needs of each of our students we

124did that starting from the beginning of school all the way through actually we have a meeting again tomorrow as our final wrap-up and celebration we were also piloting i-ready and using that as a supplement for our small groups but we've soon recognized that the tools that are in fastbridge were really really helpful for our tier three students so um when we got done with our winter winter testing we looked at the results of that and realized that we needed to have a little bit more information so what we did was we looked at what are some of the tools that are in the fastbridge platform and one of those tools is the a reading tool and we honed in on our students that we were seeing we're having some issues and we administered the a

125reading tool for those students and then along with diane murphy i got together with my tier three specialists and teachers and we really looked at which students were really in need of that double and triple dip into those those skills for the rest of the school year so that we could really target them for the last six to eight weeks um targeting the specific instruction targeting the specific skill and doing progress monitoring with each of those students um for the last six to eight weeks of school we believe that we've seen a lot of success and much like my colleague and friends nan wilkinson and brooke williams at pueblo we are continuing this effort into next year where we are looking at how do we create a master schedule that allows us not only to

126do our dual immersion model but also to implement an intervention and enrichment time because we also do have several students that need that push up so we're very excited about using this tool and and what our schedule and what our results are going to be for next year next slide i don't know if i'm doing these slides i believe i am so this just gives you a little bit of an idea of the amazing results that we had using this from the fall to the winter and i don't know if dr bachna wants to talk about these sure so you can see the change from winter to spring in terms of the students going above the 50th percentile in kindergarten it went from 68 at or above the 50th percentile to 77 and in first

127grade it went from 56 to 80 above at or above the 50th percentile uh next slide please in looking at the second grade results we do see a big increase from 61 percent at or above the 50th percentile to 88 at or above the 50th percentile in the spring where we don't see an increase interestingly as third grade um from 53 percent in winter to 44 in spring and i don't know if principal wants to speak to any of that we're looking at what how um what the results are in third grade but one of the things that i will say about um we we're looking at the comparison of some of our modalities that is whether or not we had students that were online learning versus students that were in person and whether that

128made any kind of a difference or you know kind of doing a deeper dive into what may have happened in in um in that particular grade level just to make sure that whatever skills that we might want to um that were lacking or that might have gone down we want to make sure that we're starting immediately when those students come in fourth grade and or that we targeted those students for summer learning opportunities thank you dr bachna thank you principal hummon and with that i'll turn it over to dr fountain to wrap up all right so just finishing things up tonight again thank you to all of our administrators and uh diane murphy for joining us this evening um for a second time even because they came in person last week uh so just the

129last couple things here we are working on developing some feedback from teachers uh to get their insight on the process um either at the end of this year or to kick off next year we know we have some additional training and supports to provide to assist our teachers with development of the small groups you heard diane talk about that earlier some principal plc work with our assistant superintendents to address the four plc questions uh we're working on our onboarding for fourth and fifth grade teachers you heard nan talk a little bit about how they've kicked that off at sequoia and then of course we are ready and willing to come back to update the board again in september after after a full year of usage of implementation uh so we can share with you the

130work that's going on um you know i think that you see some results there at pueblo where they were a little bit ahead of the game with some of their small group work and i know what's happening and all of our campuses will begin to mirror that and so i i'm confident you'll see some positive results with that as you move into the fall so with that if we have any questions on the board we would be happy to work together to answer those um and we're pleased to give you this update thank you very much are there any board member questions or comments uh board member lindsay followed by board member hart wells yeah and i apologize if i missed this but on the slide for next steps um it talked about well let

131me go back there is one here on implementation highlights where it says almost all schools receive pd on understanding and interpreting data from reports forming groups and exploring the intervention lessons provided by fastbridge what's the plan for the schools that have had that have not had that pd yet uh thank you mr lindsey that and what i did was i reached out to every school and asked if they would like me to come out and work with their teachers um i had a response from all but three schools um and of those three schools um one of them they decided to do it in-house with they had some teachers that were really um just doing a great job with it so they wanted that training to be done with them with them and the other

132two have scheduled me for the beginning of this next school year and then what's the plan for new teachers that are coming in for pde great question it'll be a part of um day two and there's a three-day new teacher orientation for new teachers and it will be a part of a little bit apart uh we'll we'll address it on day two and day three of new teacher orientation and then is there any supports for parents understanding the data and results and how to support kids at home another great question um fastbridge has out of their dozen 12 different reports one is a really nice family parent report and in fact i was with uh dr bachmann this afternoon and during the um assessment committee that we had and we were talking about perhaps even

133using that as some mid-year or mid-quarter reports instead of like a um report card for that that could be the report card and the parents that were on the committee were really impressed with when i shared with them what that report looked like they really liked that they said that's something very easy for us to be able to to uh read uh we wouldn't need a lot of interpretation we've also talked about perhaps creating a video that could also help parents understand what some of these things mean okay and then my last one is i see that our required assessments most grades are seven up to eighth grade fourth is five um what's the difference why is fourth five and the other ones are seven i can speak to that i'll have to go back

134and look at our accounts i think i we weren't you know what it was this uh remember lindsay we introduced fastbridge this year for k3 we did not introduce it for fourth grade yet but in terms of all of the accounts of assessments um a testing working group is meeting right now we met last week and today and we're looking at the count of assessments for next year and really evaluating if we need what we need and what we need to keep on the schedule and why we're using each assessment and how many we really should have on a calendar in a school year and then being that these are required assessments the i ready pilot is not included in those numbers right it is not do we have any idea what extra assessments most

135schools add to the required you know it varies from school to school on campus to campus i don't know if any of my colleagues have more of an insight from teaching and learning i don't have i focus more on the district-wide ones but i do know there are other things going on okay thank you i'm done thank you board member lindsay board member heart wells thank you president greenberg um i had a couple of questions and yeah i apologize if i missed it but the professional development um for the sel component of fastbridge when is that being delivered to the secondary so we've seen a lot of information i know the sel wasn't used necessarily this year but we just approved the purchase of that component the last two board meetings i guess what what

136is the plan to roll out the sel component particularly in the high schools i'll hop in and answer that again similar to the new teacher orientation we have five teacher preparation days at the start of the school year um one half of one of those days the second day of teacher preparation uh the day after the welcome back rally we have a menu of items that we'll be putting on for our all our returning teachers um so everyone will get the same thing and that is intended to be part of that um that welcome back stuff okay thank you and then doctors dr bob and the chart the you had two um slides that had some uh bar graphs on them and then there was a subsequent one a little bit further down as a

137district from an enterprise from your perspective you're looking at all this data what do you take away from the results as a finding i think they they show some interesting information in terms of where we're at i mean it's only two data points i'm curious to see as we go further along what this really looks like i also think we started mid-year and i'd like to see what beginning of the year looks like i expect it to be a little bit lower at the start of the school year when the kids are first starting out in terms of it's a comparison of the national scale so it's interesting to see how we compare nationally in terms of how we rank across the nation in terms of students taking these tests can i jump in as

138well dr bachna we have some great intervention and programming planned this summer and i'm really interested to look at the data for students that participated in the different programs and the impact it made on the fastbridge data to see if we see growth in specific areas targeted areas of concern so this is the first time we've had um such specific data district-wide for reading and then we'll be able to make determinations on how the program worked for our students so as dr bachness shared the fall data is going to really help us guide our work okay thank you very much um and then oh i had a question on the norm cut scores that you showed the first slide that had some data presented in a graph and it was neighbored with a chart you

139had norm cut scores were those percents or were those exact numbers sorry i'm trying to unmute uh diane i think those are exact numbers for those credit scores correct yes those are um wait no those are percents okay thank you because we're because we're because they were like thousands of kids so it was what percent um of where kids landed thank you so those were percents in the chart okay all right thank you very much board member beckman i maybe have missed this in the data but that chart graph can you explain how we're going to assess the cohort data as they move along i believe next year we will start to have charts where we can compare over time so as we get into the fall we'll be able to follow that same cohort

140right now we don't have a cohort trend because we've only given it twice within the same school year yeah but that has to look like we're going to intentionally okay yes right thank you can i add something to that there are of the dozen different um reports there's one called impact that we were able to access this year where it showed what impact the teachers interventions in the progress monitoring group made between winter to spring it was pretty exciting to see some kids move from one uh from like at risk some at risk to low at risk and then next year there will be a growth one where unfortunately we were not able to access that one because you have to have fall data in order for us to look at that growth one uh

141remember rebecca do you have any additional questions no i just appreciate that that's the data i've i find all that interesting but what to see that kind of cohort gives me more of the information i like to see as far as it thank you i agree are there any further board member questions or comments uh well dr fountain and and dr bachna diane everybody thank you so much for your time uh it would be helpful to be provided some of that data uh i think trend data is something we like to look at in general i know it's only been implemented for a year so um that's not really necessarily possible at this time but i think as we track this over time uh you know it'll be great to see how fastbridge can really

142help us with these targeted interventions are there any further questions or comments none well thank you so much everybody and thank you to the board members who submitted questions ahead of time they answered a lot of questions that i had the board will now move to agenda item 7c information discussion item elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund esther update dr menzel thank you president greenberg this evening shannon crozier will start our conversation about planning for essa relief funds and i believe she's going to share breaking news with respect to what we can expect as an susd allocation for sr3 with that i'm going to turn it over to shannon thank you good evening board president greenberg vice president sinowski members of the board dr menzel and guests tonight we are looking at the elementary

143and secondary school emergency relief funding otherwise more commonly known as esser next slide so esther was approved the sr-1 was approved march 27 2020 by the uh federal government and essentially it was approved to provide additional funds to schools to help uh deal with covet 19 to help us to get through that preparedness for it adjust local relief uh recovery and efforts to respond to coveted 19. these are just a couple of the things that are listed for the purp for ester funds however it is very open as to how we can spend those funds it also includes any activity allowed under essa which is title 1 title 3 title 4 as well as the federal education act which is idea cte mckinney vento along with providing resources to address the needs of individual schools

144improving the preparedness and response efforts supplies to sanitize and clean the schools ppe supplies technology that might be needed to get schools open and going mental health support summer learning and after school programs as well as maintaining the operation and continuity of services to uh schools and continuing to employ existing staff so the first round of money um started with sr1 it goes back to march 13th 2020 and it runs through march 30th of 2022. that first round of funds was essential was just over 2 million dollars we have spent a good portion of that money but we used it for a variety of things one of the things we did was continuing to pay that we purposely moved expenses to esther so that we could free up some mno dollars originally not knowing how

145this year would look also knowing that we had a significant decrease in enrollment in adm so that took a major portion of the user funds we also use those funds for a safe place to learn which was a requirement within within if we had schools closed or we were doing doing school remotely we had to offer students a safe place to learn so we used a good portion of money for that additionally we looked at the need for a covet specialist who could work with our schools in addressing issues addressing the covid numbers um looking at what you know looking to see what was happening locally how we could provide more support to our schools in addressing the needs of covid then we have a portion that we set aside for summer school for this

146year and then there was in this first round a required proportionate private school share so that we were required with this first round of esther money to to set aside a portion of it um for for private schools that was only for esther one s or two and three did not include that then in december 27th of 2020 the next slide please december 27 2020 again the federal government met and decided and passed as for what became sr2 that that particular grant goes from march 13th 2020 all of these other funds actually go retro back to march 30th 2020. this particular one goes to september 30th of 2023 so think 23 24 school year the first part of it we've uh we've looked at a couple things on what we think we need to do

147with that or some ideas on on on those funds again continuing with the covid specialist to continue to help us as we prepare through um this next chapter of of moving um moving forward with covid um and doing things like setting up uh vaccination sites that type of thing uh we still believe that we're gonna have to provide uh ppe to our school sites we know that we're still going to need hand sanitizer um we'll still need disinfecting uh items for the schools so set aside funds for that the governing board approved a retention stipend so that we could continue to encourage our kids staff to continue employment with us after an extremely difficult year so a big portion of that went to the retention stipend we've also got a large portion 2.6 million set

148aside for community education support as i mentioned one of the things that they wanted you to do with this fund is continue to employ staff our community schools program did a lot of the return to school a lot of the safe place to learn as well as offering programs before and after school for families who are back at work that need somewhere for their child to go before or after school as well as in russia enrichment programs however um the revenue source that they're used to seeing was not there we were still trying to provide those sort of those opportunities to our family continuing to employ the staff because we know that those are hard those are hard spots to fill again if we didn't continue to employ those staff so we felt it's important

149to help them out as they've taken a very hard hit this year with their revenues and yet still employing the staff that they have and continuing to offer services we also thought it was important to look at a 0.4 psychologist and i want to point out that 84 000 is over two years for two fiscal years and the purpose of this is that we have um started a program with psychologists where we are doing psychologist interns and so this would be somebody to help oversee um and monitor all of those psychologists interns as well as um working with them so that we can continue to grow our own um psychologist which i think dr uh aaron talked about a couple weeks ago next slide additionally we know that we need some facility needs um we

150have to set aside a large portion to to cover some of the things such as the merv uh verve 11 filters air filters so that's a that's a stronger air filter which we were using this current year for all of our classrooms we need to purchase drinking fountains not all of our sites have the drinking fountains that have the bottled water fillers in it so we're using some funds to make sure that we have those type of drinking fountains on all of our sites maybe add a couple extra um so that we can have students safely getting water as well as we need to or we had to order power washers when the students started eating outside more so than usual that became a need to start to keep the schools clean we needed to

151be able to power wash areas we know that in addition that in the next year or so we're going to have additional things that come up with facilities that are covered related that will need some funds set aside for them a small little amount we've been sending water to all of our school sites for the past month month and a half uh they get a delivery every single week of cases of water uh since those drinking fountains are off and then we've set aside and dr guerin is going to talk about this a little bit but we've set aside a million dollars for additional summer learning and after school programs in addition to another million dollars certified set aside for our accelerated learning dream fair is going to speak to that in just a minute

152but essentially it's a it's a it's a grant within the esser grant where schools can can request the needs that they have for their school and opportunities for their school uh through a grant process which is reviewed by a committee so that brings us to the 8.4 million dollars that we received for esther 2. next slide please esther 3. so we're starting to plan on start for planning for sr-3 that was approved on march 11 2021 again effective march 13th this time through september 30th 2024 so i think 24 25 school year now that's a little bit far off we had originally estimated this at 19 million um however as of late this afternoon we know that the allocation for scottsdale schools is 19 million 754 dollars and 44 cents so pretty good on the

153estimate there we're pretty close a little bit more than what we originally anticipated but it has a couple new requirements with it so you can still use the money of the ways you did for sr1 and esser ii however with user 3 you need to develop and make publicly available on our website our plan for safe return and in-person instruction uh most arizona districts already have that where it's been posted that was a requirement from the state so we have that already posted however we have to update that every six months or anytime the cdc updates its guidance in addition we have to provide the public the opportunity to provide input on that and so we've got a plan in place again that dr guerin will be talking about and how and how we're going

154to make sure that that happens next slide additionally with the sr3 funds there's some new requirements so 20 or 3.8 million must be set aside to address learning laws it has to be evidence-based it has to respond to students academic and emotional needs and it has to address the disproportionate impact of covid on a variety of subgroups i've only got a few listed but low-income families children's with disabilities and english learners as well as a variety of other subgroups next slide please um one of the recommendations i would make is we look at that and say okay well there's 90 million dollars and we have several years to use that money and what we don't want to do is create a huge funding cliff and we don't want to just look at it and go

155ahead it's 19 million dollars and try to spend you know come up with ways that we could spend it all at once um so one of the recommendations that i've given that several other districts are doing is kind of a tiered approach where the first year which would be the um 21-22 school year next school year using 40 of it or 7.6 million might be a little bit more now that we know the actual allocation for fiscal year 22 23 30 or 5.7 million 23 24 year 20 or 3.8 million and then we have that summer months up until september to use the final amount which would be 1.9 um doing that kind of helps us to you know get what we need up front which is the probably the most um needed for for

156expenditures and then slowly start to tear that down and then wrap that up for the summer of the 24-25 school year i'm dr garan thank you so much okay just want to make sure i stopped echoing good evening everyone so this is really an opportunity and a challenge it's an opportunity for us to look at what's working and expand it's an opportunity and a challenge for us to innovate to be responsive to take it to the next level in regards to providing resources support and program for students in a way that we haven't before with so much funding if you can go to the next slide please we are recommending some grant positions these would be limited appointment for the duration of the grant so again they would be funded through the grant and only

157last through the duration of the grant the first is an esser coordinator sr-3 has a lot of specific requirements in regards to who participates in making decisions um how we allocate the funds how we assess what is working what to do when it is not working how to expand so this esser coordinator we're recommending would be a 0.8 position so not full-time and they would help manage all the program proposals that we're navigating right now evaluating program effectiveness working hand in hand with building leaders and with teachers to ensure that our coveted recovery is far-reaching that we are hearing all voices at the table that we have parents and students included in the process and that we're continuing to maintain these services and build upon them based on the ever-changing needs of students in our

158ever-changing situation a data warehouse developer is a position we are so excited about and this is a position when shannon talks about the funding cliff this is something we would need to get this up and running we are currently in an rfp process to partner with a company to develop a data warehouse when you think of a classroom teacher and we're asking a number of assessments that are required by district there could also be specific assessments such as if you're in a dual language immersion school you have assessments specific to language proficiency so instead of having teachers have to go in and mine data in different programs the the vision is that they would have a dashboard for each student and for their entire class where they could pull attendance data behavior data social emotional

159support data fast bridge data anything that we have as for assessments would be all on one page so that teachers would not have to mine the different programs they could see data for the individual students for subgroups for the class a principal or a team would also have a special data hub using information to drive their professional learning community and we would have a data view for parents so they can see all of these reports just like diane was talking about in the last presentation it would be at everyone's fingertips so not only is dr bachman's assessment committee looking at what assessments we need and what assessments we should retire because we have to very carefully manage the amount of of how much we're assessing students and how much we're asking teachers to spend in

160regards to that but we also need to make it available and usable so it will truly drive instruction on a daily basis so this person is going to help us build this system and there's so much work behind the scenes to have all these programs integrated a fiscal support specialist would be a classified position there is uh unbelievable amounts of reporting and fiscal responsibility with this position so these are three that we are recommending again that would be limited appointment and pay for out of the grant next slide please so we already have sr2 funding allocated to help with sites and though we are in the process of building an even more robust and inclusive process we're already starting to build a way for sites to request esser funds and we are already navigating our

161first 11 proposals we want to make it very clear that we want this to be transparent inclusive and that everyone can put forward great ideas that this committee would vat and they would vet them through a rubric so the esser coordinator would lead the committee in accepting reviewing uh and then once approved supporting the implementation and monitoring the progress of all the proposals and the plans and if you go to the next slide i'll share with you the rubric and this rubric was developed based on the requirements of esser so when we look at a project proposal is it designed to meet student needs shannon talked about academic learning social emotional health of students being the primary focus of esser the project need is it aligned to identified student needs through our data and assessment

162so what we're seeing in our data is this supporting it assessment and progress monitoring we need to be able to know if the project is working and what how it is supporting students and families we'll look at curriculum and material federal grant compliance of course is a requirement and we will review the budget so everyone on this committee will score each proposal according to a rubric and those proposals will then come to cabinet for approval next slide please so innovative can you go back one i think we might have slipped once skipped one okay go ahead thank you i'm sorry one more all right so what is different this summer we've already started to use esser funds for our summer programming and one i'm sure you've all heard about is summer boost program for elementary

163this is specific to students that have identified learning needs based on some of our assessments and these assessments helped us to identify who specifically needed additional support in summer and invitations were sent out to these students we have hired 19 highly qualified elementary educators to teach these classes and i'm just so grateful because i know how exhausted everyone is from the past year and that we have so many great applicants to continue to teach and continue to meet the needs of suasd students in the summer is really exciting what's different about this is we have pre and post assessment data so be able to determine program effectiveness we are providing transportation to our two sites from the school front door and we also have social emotional support content embedded into the program we will focus

164on english language arts and also mathematics problem solving we have sent out hundreds and hundreds of invitations and are wrapping up enrollment so i'll be able to provide you with additional data soon next slide please in secondary for summer bridge we've had summer bridge before it is focused on mathematics but what's different this year is we're offering it both in person and virtual we've expanded the number of sites that is offering this program and for the first time we have common interventions and assessments so we'll be able to look at our sixth seventh eighth and ninth grade data which are all the grades we've expanded to now and look and see what is working and how our students have responded particularly with the i ready assessments next slide please in high school we are again

165offering free tuition with a small application fee that can be waived based on need i want to thank all of the staff at the sites that individually reached out to students and families explaining how summer programming for summer school how we can help with credit recovery how we can help with course completion to take that incomplete and turn it into a credit all that individual reaching out by teachers by counselors by administrators has helped boost our enrollment and really target the students that need it we're offering both brick and mortar and virtual summer programming because some really enjoy the virtual aspect but others if they're struggling they need to be in a classroom and seeing it right in front of them the learning and the instruction we've added additional layers with through dr sacko's of

166counseling and social worker support so we're really up to that support and one of the things i am so excited about is student tutoring we have recruited and hired and are paying our honor society students to tutor we have drop-in tutoring and scheduled tutoring and we've just recently expanded this to k-12 and we're also going to be hiring elementary middle and high school teachers to help with the tutoring so you can have a student tutor or you can request a certified teacher we've just advertised it and i cannot believe the number of families that have already signed up just this weekend so this is a new creative approach and i think this is just what the spirit of esser is to look at new ways to reach all families multiple opportunities because not one size

167fits all next slide please so i just wanted to give you a little flavor of some of the current proposals that are going through the committee right now and right now we have an abbreviated committee we didn't want to hold up any of these proposals that are timely but we are in the process as soon as um shannon gave us the thumbs up that she's actually getting the esser funds and we know how much money that we have we're expanding our committee to be very inclusive uh to encourage parents and students and staff to be involved so one of our proposals comes from community education and as providing training and social emotional support for our preschool students so to really provide some summer training for our preschool teachers in order to meet the needs of

168the preschool students desert mountain high school came with a trifecta proposal we've got lrc student support to support inclusion so special education students being included in general education student uh classrooms with additional supports we have their diligent den of wolves that is a tutoring program that you they've had throughout the pandemic so this could continue it and we also they'd also like to add some international baccalaureate drop-in support we have special education asking for additional supports for summer programming for students for the enrichment programs and we have one from mountainside middle school for after school tutoring and tavonne has planned a whole summer intervention program we've already received about 12 or 13 proposals and this we're just in the initial stages but i wanted to give you a flavor of what we're seeing from the

169sites and we're going to increase and ask for intervention and involvement so we can really take it to the next level with with this additional funding next slide so for next steps we're going to work hand in hand with stakeholders stakeholders to develop this innovative programming and then check to ensure it's working you've heard a lot about assessment and progress monitoring tonight so we're not just going to design a program approve it and let it go we're going to keep asking ourselves how are the students is it making a difference what is the impact how can we improve we're going to build the data dashboard so we can answer all of these questions and also the data dashboard to assess how we are doing in meeting our strategic plan goals that are in development right

170now we will continue with a robust cycle of innovation implementation assessment and all of this we will do together to ensure student success as we come out of this pandemic uh shannon and i would be happy to answer any questions at this time thank you shannon and dr garren are there uh there are some public comment or jeez board member comments or questions uh beginning with board member beckman then vice president zanowski then board member hart wells okay that's a lot of information and i appreciate you for putting that all together um it's exciting that we are getting these grants to kind of help us come out of this and address some of these issues um one area that our community and our board over time has really asked for support in and focused on

171that i want to talk to you about throughout this and it's our mental health of our kids um from we talk about social emotional learning all the time we talk about supporting them as they come out of this and i see in esther 2 we allocated for a 0.4 ft for our psychologist and then down below in the proposal you talk about counselor and social worker support but you're really not identifying any allocated dollars for that and i know i have streamed for a really long time to see i didn't know it's a lofty goal but to see us get to like a 400 450 to 1 ratio for all of our students in susd and i really would like you to speak to that component because coming out of this it's an extraordinarily important

172area of which we need focus on the state needs to focus on too so what are we doing when you say counselors and social workers support so i'd like to address this initially and then of course hand it over to dr sackos for specificity so we are so excited that we now have a social worker allocated for every school through a separate grant so that is that is key what we want to be careful of with something like reducing the council ratio which we absolutely consider is the funding cliff that shannon talked about so we could uh absolutely and we're we're struggling with this in a productive way with adding staff because any staff that we add with this money it lasts for three years and then we have to pull it away so is

173it something specifically targeted like a math specialist that is specific to a certain skill or goal so we can boost student achievement up with the understanding that we have three years to do that and innovate with something like a guidance counselor and making the ratio then we're there's going to be a push to continue it so that is the productive struggle we're having with this temporary money it is it weird it is so much and it is for three years but we want to be very careful of that funding cliff and then i'll hand it over to dr sakos again and i really quickly i do appreciate that i will state i know that you want to make sure that something is sustainable i get that this is just a lot of money and i'd

174love to see some specific focus anyway dr sackos thank you dr garren good evening board member beckman it's important to remember that our current counselor ratio at our middle school in high school is 375 to one so last year around this time or earlier time is i'm in a warp zone um that was approved by the governing board and so and then in addition as uh dr guerin said then we're now going to be up to one social worker for every single school and that is in part for the school safety grant so i i appreciate that and i and i talk to community members quite a few times and try and clarify that when they talk about the state average being 900 to one that when we talk about scottsdale unified the 375 or

175450 as it was before we're talking about middle school and high school but if you broke out all of k through 12 we would be at we just don't have them there that would be a significantly larger number um but the social workers as a start i appreciate that and uh getting down to in the middle school and high school area i appreciate that too but just to be clear we're not providing any funding for more counselors with any of this s or funding well what i would like to do is bring this need forward and what we're asking people to do is to innovate and to come up with ideas so it's not just one small group so um we know that need and if there's a way to do it that provides that

176additional support but avoids that funding cliff uh to be so dramatic we'll definitely explore it so there isn't anything off the table and we're we can talk about it at middle school and high school principal meetings we can talk about it with our committee with the different associations and stakeholders and thank you and i'll close with that because i think that maybe having those conversations you may find that some of our principals think they're that's just fine they're handling it okay some may want the additional support and surely we can sustain one or two if we need to in certain areas um with this so thank you and boardmaker board member beckman you said you know this is so much money so this is an opportunity for us to really think outside the box that's

177how we came up with student tutoring i think dr sakos and her team came up with that so we're going to really ask everyone to to to really think outside the box and innovate to truly innovate thank you uh vice president zanowski yes this is a great conversation we're having it is a lot of money and i realize it's not forever money but in our state we are given a budget yearly annually by our legislature so there is never a consistent guarantee in any of our funds i'd like for us to consider using that money as board member beckman kind of alluded to in but even if it's just three years let's have a discussion on where the students needs are and then yes the innovative ideas are great but they might be pretty simple

178as well so i'd like for us to stay open-minded to simple needs being met as well and um dr garan you and i had a conversation um over email about assessments and analysis of the number of assessments and i think it's really important for anyone who's listening or watching to understand that the district is concerned about the number of assessments that students take and the amount of instructional time that teachers are giving to providing assessments and then you know it i think it's innovative to talk about a coordinator position in a data wait warehouse developer because then potentially the teachers could spend less time front loading data in and spend more time analyzing their specific student data in designing um appropriate lessons and challenging to their students needs i think that's really important um i

179i wanted to make a comment i think it's great that our district is looking at hiring some of our national honors society students and having them become employees to helping our other students whether they're high school or younger that also is kind of giving them an idea of what it might like be like to be a teacher so potentially recruiting futures leaders into the profession and i think we should be taking advantage of every opportunity we can there um there on the sr2 when shannon mentioned well when on her part of it there was a component of it for after school um expenditures so i'd like to learn more about what that's looking like is that just tutoring or is it providing potentially like our student advisory board leaders shared tonight interesting activity-based hands-on learning

180activities because that too can be very therapeutic and distressing for kids to have some great innovative learning effort opportunities so i'd like for us to be considering that as well um with getting the parents input maybe we have some experts out in the community who are willing to co-teach with a certified teacher this summer or next school year after school with club with some of their expertise too building the bridge between our community and our schools further um made a whole bunch of notes here let's see oh i have a question which which particular summer sites to be clear are offering um summer learning opportunities i think it might be easier to tell you which ones are not because we have we have and i can absolutely provide you the list because i don't want

181to leave anyone out but we have a blend of district sponsored programs and then we also have tried and true site programs that families have come to depend on and then other schools like tavonne who have used esther funds to develop their own site program so i can provide you with the list they are everywhere and i encourage families to reach out with let's talk if they haven't found their perfect fit yet we will find it for you and that's a little bit how this um tutoring evolved because we want to make sure that we individualize it that everyone that wants something has something and recognizing that reading and math are vital to all subjects but i'd like for us to to include in all of this conversation more than just reading and math um

182our science our history our fine arts performing arts all of that those things are really important to student learning and some of those courses are what gets kids to school so i'd like for us to make sure we're including them as well as just reading and math for these enrichment opportunities thank you all for this is great um i look forward to teachers um putting forth these innovative ideas that they think their students need and would really enjoy because i know we have a lot of very talented staff members out there thank you board member hart wells thank you um i just have a request slash comment and it will be unsurprising to you um i would like to request and maybe warn you i'm going to be very keen to see the academic results

183and outcomes based on contemporaneously collected data of not just the um summer initiatives but all of these what end up become becoming supported proposals under all the sr fund s r funding um i would just request that you build that into the administration of all of these acceleration efforts now in large part it will allow um well it will avoid having to kind of reverse engineer information and then drawing conclusions and that that really in terms of an approach lacks integrity compared to contemporaneously collected data so on your slide that had the um proposal stages and requirements and the rubric assessments was one that was assessments but it didn't have the granularity i'm not sure kind of what that meant um but assessments not just at the proposal which i'm sure because that component's there

184i hope that a lot of emphasis is placed that credible assessment outcome data is built into the proposals and it will be collected contemporaneously but also from a enterprise or systems perspective when you're funding or supporting these pros proposals how are they fitting together to kind of you know raise the tide for everybody um as at an enterprise level and i asked that question a little bit earlier and there you know that maybe it's too premature for that but it is not too premature to build in that type of business assessment now in fact the now is when to do it um and i would just i strongly request that you please do that now so that we when we ask the questions how is this all working out we don't just have this a

185proposal b proposal all these silos but how does it work together to benefit the whole district district wide so thank you i'll stop there thank you for all this analysis i think this is exciting and i'm very glad to hear the uh tutoring core that is a drone i've been beating for about four months now so that's great thanks thank you board member beckman uh just a comment i just wanted to say thank you for taking seriously and doing free summer school again with that small fee it was really important to many high school kids that i know that that was affordable so because especially coming off a year like that we just had that they can just kind of go back in there and learn those fundamentals maybe they didn't pick up on so

186thank you thank you board member lindsay yeah looking at the slides from ade on sr3 and it talks about how the district must engage in meaningful consultation with stakeholders and provide the public the opportunity to provide input and take such input into account when developing the plan do we have we already discussed like how we're going to do that so that is the robust community that will vet all the applications and i believe there will be periodic reports to the board throughout the process so absolutely and that is why the sr coordinator the data dashboard developer these are all key pieces what dr hartwell's mentioned about building it now to make certain that we have the data the other thing we want to do is align all of this work not only with the goals

187of esser but with our strategic plan goals as a district so that we will have real-time data when dr menzel says how are the students and how do we know we'll be able to say that in so many different ways so that is the vision it is a heavy lift and it's but it's such an opportunity as well so we're really excited about it and when do you think we'll form this committee well we've already formed a small group to kick-start it to deal with these 9 10 or 11 12 presentations now that we know the amount of s or three you will see it on the comm community hub the committee hub very soon and will start recruiting and training i anticipate that that the committee will kick off again early august late july

188okay and we'll send an email out to parents so they know that they will be tired of hearing from me i promise are there any additional board member questions or comments before mine well thank you uh another excellent presentation um i wanted to follow up on a few points to board member beckman's point um board member beckman and previous board members and i have all pushed for additional uh counselors to help our students social emotional learning is very important i know it's important to this board as well i do want to thank superintendent kathy hoffman and the arizona department of education for the security grant we we received i think they allocated about over just over 21 million dollars to public schools across arizona for counselors and social uh social emotional workers and social workers

189anyone in that category and we because of the funding they've allocated to us we were able to to hire 22. so i i really appreciate that and i think we owe a debt of gratitude for that allocation but i do appreciate the fact at the same time that uh funding is limited and because of the way funding currently works this money will run up and so perhaps there is a way to have that targeted system that board remember beckman was discussing to at least allocate some of the resources there uh where it's most needed for the time being until something more sustainable comes up i i will note that it is pretty rare for the board to receive public comments from state representatives or senators it is unfortunate we have not received them about school

190funding because that is the thing that that that we are they're most concerned with that's what allows us to not only build schools but also uh build all these great academic programs for our students um for the additional advisory help you know uh one idea that's been floated to me and i know other schools that do have some more resources that we have but uh that i've seen before is is kind of the academic advisory system where students are allocated not just a counselor or guidance counselor but also a kind of an academic advisor who talks to them about you know who will meet with them once a once a semester once a quarter to discuss issues both inside and outside the classroom so maybe that's something that you know teachers are very busy um

191they have a lot on their plates but it might be something that uh any staff members including teachers might be interested in at least piloting it at certain sites and i know that a lot of our frankly all of our teachers uh work very hard to make sure they're talking to students and build that relationship anyway anyways so maybe some sort of formal system there could be one of those unique opportunities for us i agree with board member harwell's about the measurables on these i think that's a really important point that gets built i i fully agree everything i i couldn't say it any better i think it's nice to know what those are what those okrs are for that specific project even if they aren't you know even if the okrs aren't necessarily students

192will improve by two points or something you know there are other um measurables that are or targets of a project that matter just as much as the academic outcomes um and then of course the bigger picture is overall are all are our students exceeding expectations and no doubt they can because we have great students and teachers i do not have any additional comments and i don't have any questions at this time are there any further questions or comments by any board members well thank you very much dr garand shannon we really appreciate it it is 905 pm is there any desire by the board to take a five minute break or shall we just power through vice president sinowski that was my power through motion power through it is hey i'm open to what other

193people want too would anybody like a break or shall we just continue the board will now move to agenda item eight consent agenda are there any motions to approve the consent agenda as amended so moved or remember beckman moves is there a second board member hartwell seconds it is moved and seconded that the board approved the consent agenda as amended all in favor say aye the motion carries 5-0 the board will now move to consent agenda item 8 n authorization of expenditure tennis courts renovation saguaro high school board member beckman yeah thank you for uh president greenberg my the reason that i pulled this wasn't because i wasn't truly excited for saguaro high school to get some new tennis courts i am we had a community member um question a few things about the proposal

194itself and the bid etc and the warranty associated with just some more details with regard to this and there's a substantial amount of money so i would like daniel to speak to some of those points with regard to kind of a deeper dive and what we're getting for the money and why you chose the vendor you did and the typical warranty associated with those courts thank you governing board member beckman president greenberg vice president sinowski dr menzel thanks for having me so what i plan on doing to address those concerns uh is just to read the email that i already sent dr menzel just because i feel like that was really just the best way um to put it and to address all the concerns that were brought by that community member so it may

195sound a little awkward because i'm reading but here we go um so the concerns brought up by the community member are not unique to any construction project that's undertaken by the district there's always a chance that material defects or poor workmanship can lead to failed products so how we mitigate those risks is by contracting with reputable companies hiring quality architects and engineers holding weekly progress meetings and utilizing our own staff to make site visits and document site conditions as for the community members concerned pertaining to her conversation with the city of scottsdale point of contact bill murphy about a corresponding project there are a multitude of factors that go into how a project is awarded some of those factors include the size of the project such as if there are more courts that are done

196that leads to a cheaper price per court the current workload of the company's current materials pricing the type of contract being used for us cooperative contracts or which type of cooperative contract that would be the specifications of that project so at the very beginning of our project i had asked my civil engineer who is hess roundtree what a normal price per court would be and in his experience working with the two companies that we have that we went to bid for excuse me he stated approximately a hundred thousand dollars per court is that current estimate and this is for those projects that are smaller in scale so more more that are like ours we're doing eight tennis courts so we're not talking about the 20 somewhat tennis courts that other other entities may do so

197our bid fortunately falls right in line with that type of pricing i believe we're just underneath 100 000 per court which is that industry norm for now and then as for the contractor that was selected standing by their bid a purchase order is a purchase order and this is regards to excuse me in regards to the contractor standing by the pricing that they're giving us and not coming back for an escalated price which if you have uh listened to dennis's um or read his emails and i know you all listen to his his uh presentation to you on tavano pueblo that marking conditions are very much a concern for us right now and that's why we're pushing hard on von and pueblo and other projects um so when it comes to that we've had great

198success with our contractors holding their pricing if there does need to be a time where escalation is needed we would include what's called an escalation contingency but that was not ever a discussion with this contractor because when we did our previous walk through we talked about the marketing conditions and we talked about the different things that would affect our job and both contractors general acrylics and elite did not um did not give us any concern or did not also recommend us to have an escalation contingency so to move to move forward a little bit um so how the bids were compared so there was a concern that one bidder was so much higher than the other and if i remember correctly i want to say it was around two hundred thousand dollars so each of

199the bidders can attended a pre-bid walk-through and that was conducted by myself and i for those of you who don't know i am the project manager for our bond construction projects working directly for dennis rayler who um unfortunately can't be with us right now he's he's busy recovering so wish him well um and then with my associate greg shelton who um remember sinowski you recognized tonight for 40 years of service that he's given us and he is an absolute subject matter expert and then our civil engineer along with the two different bidders so they were both given the same set of plans to review prior to the pre-bid walk-through and they were both encouraged to ask questions throughout the process so if you can imagine a group of 10 to 12 individuals walking around the

200soro tennis courts all together and pointing out things that they may or may not see on the documents and this is where we do that that good pre-work as a as an owner's representative team with the civil engineer and then also with the prospective bidders to make sure that we're getting an all-inclusive price and so at the end of the walk through they were each given a time period to ask questions this is a formal period that's done where they they send the questions to purchasing and then we respond to the questions and neither contractor had any questions for us to answer meaning that we had a very successful pre-bid walkthrough with very successful contract documents or construction documents so that was good um so and then each bidder was evaluated solely on their bids

201and references so it's really important for us as an owner's group in building services to bring in contractors that are reputable because you know they're we are spending quite a bit of money like you alluded to before um remember beckman and so we want to make sure that we're doing right by the district so we evaluated both of these companies general acrylics and elite who are very highly regarded in their field and we went with the low responsive bidder because to us there really is no difference in quality of contractor they're both great um we've used elite on cherokee elementary they did their basketball courts over there elite is also working on disney mountain high school's football field so both contractors are very good we felt in very good hands with both of them now

202to get to the warranty portion that you talked about remember beckman the standard warranty in it in the industry is two years from the time of acceptance and that time of acceptance really is an important phrase because that's us as the ownership group blocking with the engineer and the contractor and saying yes your work meets all the criteria for us to accept this this now officially starts the turnover and then officially starts that two year time clock for us to say hey this part failed or this part doesn't look right we need you to come take back it come come back and take a look at this for us um so when it comes when it comes to concrete because this these tennis courts are what's called a post-tension slab it's not a matter of

203if it cracks it's a matter of when it cracks concrete no matter what will crack so there are just different ways that these companies mitigate those cracks and by utilizing a post tension slab what that does if you ever get a chance to see it it's pretty interesting i would love to talk to the person that first came up with it um but they they put these really long cables in the ground basically pour a bunch of concrete and then they tighten those cables at various times throughout the curing process of the concrete and then what that does is that pulls it all together and compresses it really tight so when the concrete does crack you get these really hairline fracture cracks that don't have any uh they don't affect the playing surface at all

204really you'll see it a little bit but that's just one of the things that we'll always get with concrete um and concrete is a much more reliable product than the asphalt tennis excuse me asphalt tennis courts uh if you ever go to navajo elementary the city of scottsdale tennis court right next to navajo is asphalt and it's pretty terrible um it's in dire need of repair so this is definitely the best way for us to go as a district um and then uh to keep moving so one of the best ways for us to maintain our quartz is every five or seven years we need to do what's called a resurfacing and really that's just putting a new coat of paint with the sand that's with it the aggregate that makes that playing surface every

205five to seven years which is the same time frame that we should be doing for our parking lots um so i hope that kind of helps answer [Music] those questions and it helps provide some clarity and some relief some of the stress on spending this money just two simple questions first of all have we used this vendor on tennis courts in our district before we have not my knowledges general acrylics but they have done west view high school uh if i remember correctly they've done a couple of the community colleges as well so they they have done quite a number of projects in the valley and uh this is one of the only things they do which differentiates them from elite so general acrylics mostly only does four courts while elite does sport courts and

206also football fields okay and when are you hoping to start this and when are you hoping to finish it with regard to the bid escalation yes so we are hoping to start it towards the end of summer and part of the reason why we're we're giving leeway to general acrylics on the start date is because the summer is such a busy time for everybody else and for us in talking with matthew harris and frank rubin at saguaro high school it's not it's not pertinent that we're done over summer and ready in august 4th for class because really frank and his teams over there they don't start utilizing those courts until it gets cooler so we're looking more towards um finishing between november and december so that way frank rubin and the tennis teams there have

207the courts that they need but we also can get the pricing that's going to help us and then and that's the best way for us to do that right now okay so i understand then we're estimating 800 000 for four quarts right now but you may not even start these until august september and finish them and we have no concern about any changes in the proposal at that point correct so for all eight courts um the pricing has stayed consistently at around a hundred thousand dollars and this is where we really lean on our engineer and we lean on those contractors to provide us with that with that discernment um so this was something that they had no issues with and we we have very frank conversations um you know that there wouldn't be an

208escalation contingency and that that purchase order is our contract for you to come and build these eight courts for us okay um fingers crossed it doesn't go up because it's a little ways away okay thank you of course uh just for a little little bit of board member history here i i actually started tennis playing on those chords back when i was six i think during the summers there with the precursor to seth cory tennis so um it has been a long time on those courts and ended up playing you know state championship games there in high school so it's great that they're being redone i'm i and i appreciate um the thorough analysis and explanation of the process that got us those bids so thank you very much for your time are there any

209additional board member questions or comments about this project okay the chair moves to approve action item 8n authorization of expenditure tennis court's renovation saguaro high school as presented is there a second second vice president zanowski seconds is moved and seconded that the board approved consent agenda item eight and authorization of expenditure tennis courts renovation saguaro high school as presented is there any further debate all those in favor say aye hi all opposed say no the motion carries 5-0 thank you the board will now move to action item nine a action item approval of proposed priorities for submission to arizona school boards association asthma for the 2022 political agenda dr menzel thank you president greenberg this is a topic where the arizona school board association has requested member districts to provide feedback with respect to political

210priorities i believe uh vice president zanowski is prepared to talk about this and we'll go from there thank you dr manzo yes the arizona school board association meets annually and the members determine the political agenda to ensure clear communication i'm going to read a brief statement that was provided by the arizona school board association i do realize that all board members and dr menzel have this information but i think it's important that the public also hear this information the arizona school boards association represents and advocates for the diverse interests of the state's school district governing boards and the approximately 1 million arizona school children whose education is entrusted in their care in our care as legislative regulatory and legal advocacy is based on the association's political agenda a member-developed document like the political agenda is

211discussed debated and approved by asba membership at the annual delegate assembly every district member board has the opportunity to influence the yearly agenda the 2021 priority issues have been adequately and equitably fund school districts at least the national per median school funding improve outcomes for all students require public accountability for taxpayer dollars spent on education preserve and strengthen local control and manage the impact of covid on public schools to be very clear quality learning for students cannot exist without quality teaching education support professionals and adequate resources as our scottsdale delegate to the asba delegate assembly in the fall i'd like to propose that the asba legislative agenda continue with its primary political agenda and support the addition of the following all efforts to recruit and retain quality educators reflective of student populations and this must

212be led through better wages and benefits recognizing that students need daily one-on-one learning time regularly with a certified teacher and it's important that reduction of class size is a top priority the current reality though is that there are not enough highly qualified teachers to allow us to effectively and consistently lower class size ratios the reasons for the challenge to recruit and retain teachers is known to be because we do not pay them enough students coming out of college with large debt are choosing more lucrative professions perfect professionally comp uh competitive wages must become a top priority currently districts spend a lot of money hiring and training new employees this money could be directed more closely to student needs if we were able to support and retain our employees so i'd like to suggest that the

213number one uh relating to issue number one priority issue number one that we are fully funding mentoring programs consisting of regular peer assistance and review relating to current priority number five the addition of relevant timely consistent science-based information and procedures to manage future health concerns which impact our schools and that would be my right those would be my recommendations as we move these forward to the asthma political agenda are there any questions at this time vice president zanowski is it correct that the proposed items were due may 21st so that these would be submitted separately to the legislative committee and as but not in a formal capacity but simply to note that because we were not able to meet this is what we discussed in our meeting that is correct and i have reached out

214to asba and explained the situation and they welcome our responses even at this time thank you with that i will move to board member questions uh board member beckman and then board member hart wells i think board member hartwells was before me so oh i apologize on mine it is the other way uh board member hart wells my apologies it's no worries okay um vice president sinowski could you please compare and or contrast what you're suggesting be added to what's already on the priority issues for i'm seen under the tab of adequately and equitably funding district schools to at least the national median per pupil funding the number one bullet point is maximize state funding for nationally and locally competitive salaries to attract recruit and retain talented teachers and staff including incentives for difficult to

215fill positions which is very broad i think what you've ever seen had a little bit more specificity to it so i did not jot down what you said exactly so can you just help me compare that to what's here um yes it's along the very same lines as the first bullet point on the asba's political agenda priority issues um it basically is including more of the reflection of student populations yes it's more specific and then it also gives a reason why other than so that so that basically because it is a political agenda the general populace understands why there is a need to increase compensation to teachers it's about attracting and retaining qualified educators so they stay in the profession and that we are making an effort to attract and retain quality educators reflective of

216our student populations so that is the addition on that one dr hart wells does that answer your question yes it does that that's very helpful and then there was another component if i understood properly with respect to health and health in our schools yes yes and that was the current priority issue is manage the impact of covid 19 and public schools and given the fact that we don't know it hasn't gone away even though we've wished it away um we don't know what this is going to look like and i i you know in considering the priorities listed the issues listed by asba none of them really talked about consistency of practice for managing the impact of coveton covet 19 on public schools none of them talked about um providing um focusing on science-based information

217um the bullet points under the manage impact of cova 19 and public schools talks about like holding harmless you guys can all see this and read this too but just for the general public um you know enacting a moratorium on school letter grades it's it's more general and it's not as specific um i think we could all agree it would have been nice for us to have a very consistent practice from one district to another so that districts really weren't being pitted against one another on who's doing what so there was a consistency of uh recommendation based on true science okay does that help yes it is thank you you're welcome any other questions uh board member beckman yeah president greenberg you may have to refresh my memory on the process here um with regard

218to how we make this discussion and the slate i'm a little fuzzy on if i recall in the past we talked about whether we wanted to keep the same priority issues and each board member really brought up whether they had two subsequent issues that they maybe wanted to focus on and then how did we narrow it down because i i i remember the process a little different it's not saying that this is not the way to handle it but i'm just curious yeah if i recall and that's a very good question if i recall correctly what we did was we submitted um we each submit we we ended up talking quite a lot and then we decided on we would send in our five to sandra sandra would then tabulate them and we would vote

219to approve the top five vote getters i believe last year when we did it um there weren't really many changes it was mainly questions or point raised about individual sub-agenda items uh for example board member travis wanted to know more information about mandatory uh changing the mandatory school age that you would have to stay in school until the age of 18. and so i would i brought that forward to the to the um conference this year we are a little more fortunate and that not only do we have a delegate and an alternate delegate but i was recently put on the legislative committee itself so we are reviewing this next friday not this week's friday but a week from friday we will be reviewing these um you know for the 2022 political agenda setup so

220um since we've missed the deadline my thought process was we would just have a truncated system where if we were okay with vice president zanowski's proposed ideas we would simply approve those and let her carry on accordingly but if the board wishes to instead go through now a process of identifying each of our five we can quickly tabulate which are the top five if that would be desired instead no and that wasn't really what i was getting at i just wanted to i was just wanted to understand the process so that we weren't necessarily creating a new process if that made sense and um so and i appreciated dr hartwell's question with regard to uh vice president zanowski's just kind of more of a granular deep dive into these tabs so if i'm understanding it

221correctly we are still your recommendation is to stay with the same exact priority issues just create more detail with regard to them with like for instance with codewood make sure that stays the same more of a uniform approach would have been desired that type of thing adequate funding as it relates to districts making sure there's enough funding to have a competitive salary as it relates to attracting retaining our staff right is that where i'm i mean i know you we went a lot deeper but president yes correct and um to board president greenberg's point our meeting was on the 18th um it started on the 18th and these were due on the 21st the plan was for us to actually have the discussion but because of our the need to recess that meeting we had

222to basically bypass [Music] the process that what has been practiced in the past um so yeah there this is a new you know if anyone has any objections to these um i'm open to modifying these um but otherwise it would be keeping the same priority issues but then on the bullet points that are included in the political agenda documents that we received adding and going into further detail on things that could improve the political agenda okay so my last question or point on that would be that we get a copy as board members should we all agree with this discussion i would like to see that formalized kind of final draft on what we submitted as a board with that detail that you're suggesting in there just so we have it absolutely i'll send that

223over to i'll send that to everyone this evening after we complete this meeting and if you would if you could get back to me as soon as possible because um you know they were due on friday yeah okay thank you and and i would agree with uh board member beckman that we don't want to i don't think we are creating a a new plan moving forward i think it's just because of this specific incident that unless we i mean again we could do it tonight if we wanted to i don't think that seems to be um the the desire um but yes moving forward the idea would be to continue with the process we had in place where we each identifier five we tabulate it and then approve the the five largest vote getters one

224of the main issues was we did receive these just before our first meeting in may so our agenda was already set and pretty and pretty full and it it just it didn't work out timing-wise and uh hopefully uh we will do a better job of that in the future so i apologize for the for the truncated time that is my fault and president greenberg you bring up a good point just so we may have clarity tonight for the other board members and for the public that may be watching this um this is i appreciate a vice president zanowski's work and and it looks great now and your thought that you put into it sounds wonderful but i just wanted to be clear that normally and going forward there is a way for board members to

225kind of have their own voice in this process not necessarily just the asthma rep you can as a board member say these are things i'd like to add to we just had to have a kind of a truncated process because of this limited time frame that we're under and i think we're all in an agreement too yep that's correct uh do any other board members have any questions or comments well i appreciate this very thorough discussion and i believe the appropriate motion would be to move to uh approve the existing priorities with the additional amendments that uh that vice president sunowski has made does anyone have an issue with with that motion okay the chair moves to approve the existing priorities for submission to arizona school boards association for the 2022 political agenda with the

226additional amendments provided by vice president sanowski is there a second uh vice president board member beckman seconds it is moved and seconded that the board approved the existing priorities for submission to arizona school boards association for the 2022 political agenda with the amendments presented by vice president zanowski is there any further debate all those in favor say aye aye aye the motion carries 5-0 the board will now move to action item 9b approval of expenditure and extension of discovery education instructional materials dr menzel thank you president greenberg and members of the governing board last but not least we're bringing forward a recommendation for an expenditure and extension of dub discovery education materials uh here with us tonight are dr garan and barb reiner to do a short presentation and answer any questions you might have

227thank you dr menzel president greenberg vice president sinowski governing board members cabinet and guests i'd like to introduce barb reinhardt our curriculum science academic coach who will present our proposal for an extension of discovery education good evening everyone um we're going to be looking really at two different platforms in discovery education one's called the experience and the other is called the science tech book next slide please and here's a little history of how we got involved with these two platforms the discovery ed experience was formally known as united streaming or discovery streaming and the science education tech science tech book was actually adopted in 2012 as part of the blended learning model for science education k-12 next slide so first let's talk about the experience the state used to provide united streaming to all the

228schools in arizona and then we had this thing called bus budget cuts and the state quit doing that but susd continued to provide the service which by then had changed to discovery experi changed to discovery streaming at the time and we had so many people that used it that that's why the district decided to keep doing it and this it supplements all curriculum providing an opportunity for integration across the content areas it's provided for all 29 sites k-12 and the experience provides resources that align to standards for ela math social studies and other contents so it started with the state and we continued it okay the next slide and then in 2012 we decided to adopt the science tech book at the time i felt we were a little ahead of our time in 2012

229we knew that the blended learning model hands-on science with online technology showed the greatest student achievement the tech book is provided for all 29 state sites all teachers k-12 and all students in the district it's tied directly into our standards i do want to make clear we're not looking at an adoption at this point because we're not up for an adoption our contract has expired and we're looking to extend the contract next slide here you can see people use it with individual students with small groups and centers and probably one of the ways it's used the most is with teachers embedded into their lessons next slide you can hear just read a couple testimonies here's what we know about our resources if teachers like them and kids like them we use them we can go

230to the next slide because they believe you had a chance um this is just some basic uh usage if you look here we can do this by um by site you can see the textbook and you can see the experience the stem connect is only used by a couple of our schools that are going for steam certification next slide we'll show you the type totals as you can see we have over a million uh usages a year we have literally thousands of kids use discovery ed every single month hundreds of teachers use it for every single month um i i would venture to say it's one of our most popular resources that we use in our district next slide and i know there's been some conversation about how do we know when new content is

231added well first of all the tech book science tech book stays pretty much the same we don't add new content to that unless they remake the whole program but for the discovery ed experience and we've worked with them for 15 years on a successful partnership using these materials with open lines of communication and they have three ways of letting us know first of all every teacher when they open up their teacher page down in the corner has a little um orange button they click on it and there we'll open up the resource and help center and it'll show them what's new they do a monthly release and they're shared the first friday of every month about what's new in their content and then also the teacher can go to their professional learning page on the

232teacher's main page and also see when it's new every month next slide so the cost has gone up for the eight years that we've been using this and um we're talking with our reps um if we bundle these two platforms we're going to save about 26 000 a year and since the science adoption isn't scheduled until 2023 to 24 to start we really need to extend our contract i mean this is written into our curriculum maps it's really part of of the science program until we do some other type of adoption um and it's used by all teachers teaching science so this three-year contract has to can be paid yearly at a cost of 289 thousand dollars the experience has always been paid by i.t for an amount of with the increase would be 83

233593 for next three years and it would be 205 thousand four hundred and seven for the textbook that's paid by curriculum we're ready for questions thank you board member all right thank you um board president greenberg and thank you miss reiner and dr garren um and thank you for your conversation electronically that we've had over the last few days and providing lots of information um i have a few follow-up questions but first let me start with miss reiner i'm glad to see you are with us i heard you tried to retire on us actually that's still happening well we're glad you're here um first this is a little bit of a softball but just to clear up for my mind so you've mentioned that the stem connect component is being used by some of the

234schools who are seeking the steam certification but yet the stem connect module is not in this proposal will it not will it not be available then for the schools that were using it um no they're involved in another program totally with pd for the steam certification and that's part of the package gene that we paid for already that is honest totally separate program okay so stem connect was not teed up to expire no okay great how about this coding component and we don't have to if this if this is a bigger story i want to hear it but probably not tonight we're all exhausted um the coding component is that a like a code.org type component um it's they have a um a platform for coding anybody can use it it's actually part of the

235experience so we don't pay extra for that and and anybody can use that okay very interesting and yeah i would be interested to see that actually um my other questions um okay i also had to ask and i'm gonna guess that at the moment either it's not possible or it just there wasn't enough time to get it and that is is there a way to get the usage by grade um i have to check with them we can do it by school but i and we can do it by teacher um but not necessarily by great as far as i know i mean i've been working with them for many years but i will double check that um i had put a call into the rep uh i guess it was friday but she's actually

236not hasn't been available but i don't know that we can run it by grade level but we can do it by school or teacher okay okay but there would if by teacher then you could cross-reference to know so that some kind of bore down a little bit more here and and tie that to academic performance okay and that gets to my next comment which was that in one of my questions with respect to academic outcomes and the impact of this particular um supplemental material first of all it warmed my heart to hear you say this was one of most most popular supplemental materials for science i love that but one of the comments when the response that you had provided that we aren't really we don't have clean data on tracking the academic outcomes with

237respect to ve usage because of the context of the foss kits being used and i guess i would just say that um i think that data is still valuable just with the context that the foss kits is a you know an integrated component to deliver the hands-on experience presumably that's what the kids are being used for um and i also want to point out the um and i don't know if the public knows this um kind of a little analysis that you described to us here at the board um that you was presented on if you presented this in boston or not but to me this was an example of what we're seeing and being suggested to address learning acceleration and that is this rather than remediation actually using um these assessments in an acceleration

238type um approach and i'll just one observation in reading your and if you'd like to share this experiment with the community i think you should because i think this was very interesting um but one observation i made here is that this discovery education component and these assessments that you used in the board builders has an ai component to it and it is artificial intelligence that is um really complementing the teacher instruction to yield almost because the two components of cognitive function to yield this academic acceleration that you observed in these two cohorts of students and i think that that's informative um for this summer and how we're going to be for the next couple of years addressing learning acceleration um and artificial intelligence is a component of that to do this properly right in a

239just-in-time type of business model so i thought that was very interesting from that perspective and i know everyone's exhausted and we're probably the last seven people on this call but um i i would hope that that at some point that the public learns what this um what was presented in boston's i think that was very compelling and it's a compelling um something to learn finding for us to use in a broader context for all of the learning acceleration efforts um and so with that i will be quiet and thank you very much for your work i'm really glad you're here and i look forward to working with you in the next three years in science literacy thank you oh thank you board member lindsay just a quick comment um before the end of the year

240to thank barb for all the wonderful things that she's done for our students and teachers and making sure that our students get an excellent science education we're very lucky so thank you thank you it's been 25 years of pure joy i really loved working here in susd and working with science of course are there any further board member questions or comments vice president zanowski i would like to also thank barb reinhardt she's been barb has been [Music] an amazing mentor to so many teachers as they come into scottsdale schools and not just mentors but also veteran teachers she's been a great support system so barb thank you thank you i don't think we should let her go anywhere barb thank you so much i my only question is um on the usage that you reported

241some of the schools have very limited usage it would appear i think chaparral was at the very bottom is there a reason why it drops off so much for some of those schools and and is i mean given that it's a product and a tool that looks like it really works and brings a lot of benefits to students is there a way to to really integrate that more into our curriculum at those at those sites well we always look at that data at the end of every year and say okay wait and sometimes it might be higher and lower i'll tell you something this is kind of interesting it actually is lower this year than it was last year and you wouldn't think that would covet but because so many people were grabbing things from

242all over they were using other types of resources out there but what i can tell you we can rest assured we know these are tied into our standards it is you know and it's done with the 5v model we know it's really good science so um we will look at that and we will definitely have those conversations sometimes they will tell you when there's a lot of higher level science forces they tend to use more ap curriculum you know honors curriculum so sometimes that might be part of the issue too but we would we definitely go and look and and do pd wherever we can and show new features of what you can use it for so great i appreciate that clarification vice president sinowski yes um as i'm aware the grades in discovery ed

243have to be transferred um back into the grade book by hand is there a way for us to connect it so that the teachers don't have to spend the time transferring that we are still working on that the two systems aren't don't really talk to each other however i think we're going to be putting uh discovery ed on the clever platform and that might open that door but it's definitely something we keep looking at that would be super because i know that gets to be a point of frustration for our teachers vice president sinowski we just have this vision with this data dashboard of making all the systems play nice in the sandbox so i'm going to let you know if we get there because that's that's what teachers need thank you yeah that would

244be great well thank you again uh miss reiner and congratulations on your retirement i know you're going to be very very sorely missed thank you with that do i have any motions on action item 9b approval of expenditure and extension discovery education instructional materials is there a second second board member lindsey seconds it is moved and seconded that the board approve action item 9b approval of expenditure and extension of discovery education instructional materials is there any further debate all those in favor say aye aye aye the motion carries five zero the board will now move to action to agenda item 10 future items board members may propose topics for future consideration are there any future topics of consideration for board members there are no future items at this time the board will move to agenda

245item oh um apologies for remember heart wells i'm sorry i was trying to find my notes yes thank you no it's okay thank you i would like to request that um consider an assessment of parity and course offerings across the district to students in the same cohorts and specifically meaning where pre-k in preschool is offered geographically and the number of students served k through five middle six through eight and then lastly nine through twelve and while i my your mind is probably going into the vertical integration approach of each of the individual buildings and their course operancy course offerings offerings and yes that is part of what i'm asking but i am also asking you to think about how to improve parity and i wish to strongly encourage you to think about the lines of

246a broad systems approach for example to consider the investment that's been made in technology this year the hardware the software the training both formal and informal that has occurred throughout this extraordinary year this investment should be leveraged i encourage that the administration consider the technological investment as an investment in an effective platform that offers mirrored tools to address improvements in parity as opposed to maybe other kind of more traditional ways to deal with it so i see this as a new tool a new arrow in the quiver [Music] that is my request thank you thank you board member hart wells and i echo that request board member lindsay yep just two really quick i think it'd be helpful to get an assessment overview since we have all these various assessments just to learn more about

247how they all work together um and then also this may be better for the finance and facilities committee but i'd really like to hear about the school safety thank you board member lindsay i echo those as well are there any additional future items for consideration thank you very much the board will now move to agenda item 11 dates of upcoming meetings next meeting is tuesday june 8th 2021 at 6 p.m special governing board meeting at the mda uh monday tuesday june 22nd 2021 3 pm the regular governing board member meeting at coronado high school although i believe that meeting is going to be pushed back to five are there any governing board reports with no governing board reports oh uh board member vice president sanowski thank you i couldn't type it fast enough um yes

248i'd like to share the great student work and staff work that's been going on and and i've been thrilled with the ability to view the navajo steam showcase um that took place um quite some time ago that the kindergarten through sixth grade it was great to see that um also to work and coordinate with aauw in donating over 400 books to navajo elementary that was a lot of fun working with some of our community members um along with board member beckman going to i know her daughter received was one of the inductees for the nhs but being there for that um attending the coronado thespian event with vignettes with performances from edgar allan poe and that was those were led by uh chelsea rustler or red sloth pardon me chelsea um and desert canyon theater

249i'm a teenager get me out of this family production that was performed last week led by mrs kelly o'rourke um with board member beckman attending and uh dr menzel attending the saguaro math and science academy graduates um that was organized by susan lindbergh and then listening to this morning the tonally abandoned strings showcase led by miss allison hogue and i'm telling you those band and string teachers to earn every single penny that they make um it was it was really great to see the progress of the students and or to hear the progress of the students and to see some great performances so that's been really a nice um been kind of a nice addition to this um this stint here so i've enjoyed that thank you vice president zanowski board member lindsey yeah i

250just wanted to mention coronado recently had a senior signing day for the students who have committed to college a university a branch of the military or trade school they also had a play a dance a choir concert that were all big successes and then also a couple weeks ago dr hartwells and i attended their senior awards and it was a fantastic event i was blown away by the kids um it amazed me all the awards and scholarships they received so [Music] thank you board member lindsay board member beckman um for vice president shanowski reminded me of something i had the good fortune to attend the ib graduation at desert mountain and i want to give kind of a shout out to uh board member hart wells daughter who graduated from the ib program at desert

251mountain and it was a fantastic program a lot of praise for those kids that have worked really hard um exciting to see what they're gonna do not a fun note a while back i attended saguaro century of song and if any board members have not had the pleasure of going to century a song they always do a teacher number at the end a parent teacher number and this year they did they sang the song taking care of business so you can imagine how fun that was to see about 20 of our best educators up there saying that so anyway it was all good thank you board member beckman board member hart wells yes i'm i'm just going to end with a congratulations to all of our students and our teachers particular i want to congratulate

252all the seniors the student recipients of the charo's outstanding student awards and all the students and their families that were honored this evening and i also for those students who you know regardless of your grade if you earned a scholarship a certificate a recognition you met an ar goal you participated in the steam showcase i too watched some of those were great participated a musical performance or a play where you earned a pat on the back from your neighbor your friend or your coach i want to say congratulations to you all of this it was quite a year and in particular to the seniors who um are rounding out this chapter their very young lives uh and just let you know that you know you've been emotionally strengthened by this year and it is my

253hope uh that regardless of your gpa your standardized test scores that you draw on that strength and resilience in the next chapter so congratulations thank you board member heart wells and i would like to follow that up with uh congratulations to our class of 2021 and all of our students and staff this has been a very difficult school year i know that we're all looking forward to a bit of a break after thursday and some much deserved celebrations thursday night and throughout this week with graduations and promotion ceremonies so thank you all uh we we could not do and we could not be the district we are with without our amazing staff and students are there any further board member comments or comments on governing board reports if not the chair moves to adjourn this

254regular board meeting of the scottsdale unified number 48 governing board on may 24th 2021 the time is 10 03 p.m is there a second okay vice president sunowski seconds it has moved and seconded that the board adjourned this regular meeting of the scottsdale unified school district governing board all in favor say aye i the motion carries 5-0 the meeting is adjourned at 10 03 p.m thank you so much for watching you