001foreign it is 7 p.m and I would like to call this meeting to order can you please stand and join me for the Pledge of Allegiance led by the Shadow Mountain High School orchestra America and to the Republic ANS may I have roll call please Mrs Greenberg here Mrs bacon here Mr Laney here Mrs matura here Mrs case here next on the agenda is approval of agenda Dr bales thank you president matura items approved by consent will not come up for discussion during the meeting but will be approved when the agenda is adopted this is possible since members of the governing board receive the agenda along with backup materials at least 24 hours prior to the meeting and have time to review and consider all items prior to the agenda being adopted members of the
002governing board or audience may ask that an item be removed from the consent agenda and brought to the floor for a discussion at the appropriate place on the agenda I would like to offer the agenda as posted does any member of the governing board wish to have an item removed from the agenda does any member of the audience wish to have an item removed from the consent agenda seeing none Mrs case may I have a motion to approve the meeting agenda and recommended consent agenda items G1 through G13 so moved all those in favor please say aye aye aye any opposed say nay motion passes unanimously next on the agenda is governing board statements no Mrs case thank you um Thanksgiving is next week and I wanted to wish everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving and
003I hope that whoever you're gathering with friends or family that you have an enjoyable time and a restful time out of school and um and to be thankful for the many many things that we have um I also wanted to thank the community for passing that m o override thank you so much I can't even tell you what that means to me I've been through anyway thank you very very much and I just wanted to comment on that Shadow Mountain Orchestra weren't they good I was just I was so good thank you okay uh next on the agenda oh I'm sorry I just wanted to I'm sorry Mrs matura sorry I thought I gave you that I'm sorry I'm speaking um I also want to thank voters um and the many many people who worked
004very hard to get the override passed many of whom are in this audience many of whom uh um who have voted um to help us and um the amount of appreciation is not um small it is large so I want to thank you this is my I've been involved in every campaign since 2009. it's a little bit like Hotel California you know you can check in but you can never check out um and I'll probably continue when I am done with my board service to be involved in every campaign going forward so thank you all Mrs sorry Mrs Greenberg um obviously um I also want to thank our community for their support and thank everybody here who walked and held signs and knocked doors and um did everything they could and I I'm extraordinarily grateful
005particularly when you look at not every Bond or override or question that was on the ballot from school district in the state past ours overwhelmingly did and we are incredibly appreciative of the sport and I'm not saying this to one up what Mrs bacon said but having worked in some capacity pack since 2004. um it's really it is it is incredibly um uh my gratitude is truly overflowing that um our community comes together the way it does so thank you all Mr Laney so I wasn't going to say anything but I do Echo um the comments of the of our other board members that I am really grateful for it and uh being in this position I see how necessary it is making the decisions that we need to make and so I really appreciate
006all the hard work that everybody put towards that so thank you thank you and um ditto to everyone I mean this this it's a Monumental effort that takes a lot of people um out there and promoting um and letting taxpayers know what what this means to the district and so thank you to everyone boots on the ground and all of our our community for continuing to support our district and um next on the agenda is Awards and recognitions Dr bales thank you president mature it's always a pleasure to highlight staff and students for success and or appreciation and Mr drogy will emcee the honors tonight at this time I'd like to invite the governing board to join me in from the dice foreign good evening president matura governing board members Dr Bales members of cabinet
007and attendees both in person and virtual tonight we have several recognitions to share with you this evening we'll be inviting our honorees to the front of the room for recognition and a photo please make your way to the front of the room when I call your name our first honoree this evening is the 2022 AIA Division II girls State dive Champion please join me in congratulating from Paradise Valley High School Madeline Narada foreign is a two-time 2022 AIA Division III girl State swim champion in both the 200 yard and 500 yard freestyle please join me in a round of applause for Danielle Gleason from Shadow Mountain High School next we have the 2022 Arizona Association of school psychologists administrator of the Year award School psychologists in our district provide a wide range of services including
008collaborating with parents administrators teachers instructional assistants and other school Personnel please welcome tonight's honoree lead psychologist Suzanne O'Day [Music] and our next recognition is the recipient of the Paradise Valley education association's recognition of Professional Standards award for teachers the honoree will be introduced this evening by Miss Susie seep evea president thank you uh good evening president matura governing board Dr Bales and cabinet tonight we are honoring um Scott Roper the music teacher at Indian Bend Elementary [Applause] he's incredible he's in his 29th year of teaching the 27th year in this District he's taught Elementary General and music at Desert Cove Copper Canyon Village Vista Sandpiper and Indian Bend he's also taught at the college level for 20 years and isn't in his 10th year at ibes his three children all attended PV schools although he
009lives outside the other District so I hope you know like I've said favorite kind he dabbles in composing music and creates original songs and Rhythm verses to teach Rhythm patterns in class he did send me a song about two cans I wish I could sing okay Anita Kreider the strings teacher at his school sent this nomination she said Scott is the music teacher at Indian Bend and he deserves being acknowledged he's one of the most selfless humans she knows he's about he knows about every student at the school and they genuinely love him the positive positive relationships he has with his students are based on Mutual trust and respect well he was well she was recruiting an Indian band he was supportive by not only inviting him to his classroom sharing information with students and
010explaining the explaining the benefits of playing instruments he even took his own class time to show videos demonstrating various instruments helped him distribute and collect registration forms while she was overwhelmed in the first few months returning to force you know teaching strings at four schools which is hard he was always there to check in frequently see how he could help he's a team player he works hard and cares another colleague said that Scott has committed to Indian Bend and always one of the first people to step up and offer support and help he does community activities such as conferences Title One Nights family picnics he makes sure to fill the air with music he has an incredible chorus program the Thunderbird singers he's an active member of PBIS and committed to spreading positivity throughout the
011campus he's continuously developing his repertoire of knowledge and best practices we value his dedication and commitment our school is enriched by his presence I'm so proud to have someone like Scott Roper as a colleague and I'm so pleased that he was able to be here tonight with so many of his colleagues foreign concludes this evening's Awards and recognitions next on the agenda is call to the public call to the public is about to convene this portion of today's meeting allows the public the opportunity to address the governing board although state law does not require that the governing board hold a call to the public The Paradise Valley Unified School District and its board have chosen to do so because we believe it's important to hear about concerns and issues from our community while call to
012the public is not designed to be a discussion the board is here to listen due to Arizona open meeting law the governing board cannot respond to discuss or take any action on items brought up during this time however staff members may be directed to get back to you and address individual concerns as a reminder the point of this and every board meeting is to accomplish the business at hand and to be able to do so in an open and collaborative way all in attendance are expected to observe meeting rules as well as rules of politeness and decorum so that we may serve as an example to our students that issues can be discussed in a respectful and civil manner foreign we have 32 comment cards we have five for call to the public and 27
013for agenda items uh people who uh people these are all people who have submitted comment cards prior to the start of the meeting each speaker will have two minutes for remarks those who have asked to speak on agenda items will be recognized at the appropriate time during the meeting please remember to State your first and last name when you come to the podium our first speaker will be Jennifer Ariza and our second speaker will be Susan seat thank you hello my name is Jennifer Ariza and I want to say thank you to each of the board members for all the time that you put into your positions I know it's personally difficult to make each one of these meetings so I appreciate everything that you do um and I really appreciate the opportunity to speak
014my concern as a parent in the district is the education and Welfare of our students as I stand here tonight I want to declare that pornography should not be allowed in our schools I know there are some people on the board who do not see an issue with approving materials that contain pornographic or sexualized material and you may question why I come to these meetings to make this declaration and it's really for the benefit of the teachers the students and the community I normally talk about the effects of pornography on children which are dire tonight I want to highlight some of what is going on with Educators there was an article published last month on October 14th and I'm just going to read some of it here for you the title of the article says
015at least 269 K-12 Educators arrested on child sex crimes since January nearly 270 public Educators were arrested on child sex-related crimes in the U.S in the first nine months of this year ranging from grooming to raping underage students an analysis conducted found that from January 1st to September 30th at least 269 Educators were arrested which works out to roughly one arrest a day the 269 Educators included four principals two assistant principals 226 teachers 20 teachers aides and 17 substitute teachers at least 199 of the arrests or 74 percent involved alleged crimes against students the analysis looked at local news stories week by week featuring arrests of K-12 principals assistant principals teachers substitute teachers and teachers aides on child sex-related crimes in school districts across the country arrests that were not publicized were not counted in
016the analysis meaning the true number May well be higher next up we have Susan seep followed by Catherine lashinski good evening again president matura governing board Dr Bales and cabinet I'm going to try and cut it to two minutes we'll see how I do I want to start with the heart of the bargaining agreement which says that the board recognizes that teaching is a profession with specialized qualifications and that their participation in policy development is important to the success of school programs the board and Association recognized their responsibilities toward each other and to the community for bargaining in good faith to reach agreements which are mutually acceptable in Paradise everyone recognizes each other's interests by carefully following a process pvusd is a process for everything in this district and has relied on it for decades
017to do what's best for kids stepping away from the process makes it hard to maintain the trust in each other and even harder to maintain credibility with the people we are doing this work for the students the employees in the community when the board was informed of the budget shortfall in June everyone celebrated the transparency which was brought to the community unfortunately task force members were directed to keep the conversation in the room and not Loop out to our exec boards and members for feedback I honestly regret agreeing to that and I apologize to all PVA members and leaders the Mantra of the PVA president Ombudsman is don't make a single decision alone rely on your board your Council of reps and your members everything that PVA has built written and relied on liens into
018that intention I wish I'd remembered that cooperation means everyone working to the same end certified members a budget task force believed that was the task we believe that the districts are a commitment to take our responsibilities to everyone in the district seriously to have a healthy budget respected leadership and successful classrooms we believed in the board and we believe that they would send us back to the table for more discussion I'm going to quote from policy the process is dependent on Mutual understanding cooperation and good faith it therefore requires a free and open exchange of views with all parties participating in deliberations leading to an agreement I believe we can move forward I will ask that you respect our professionalism and Believe in Us Again [Applause] okay good evening governing board thank you for letting
019me speak at one time I probably would be speaking as a teacher but now I'm just a Community member I urge you to take great caution with the decisions you make regarding teacher salary and teacher workplace I'm a former pvusd teacher who is also a product of the district I went to Sandpiper Desert Shadows and Horizon I did my undergraduate work at Lehigh University and then after completing my master's degree in education at Pepperdine I was extremely proud to come back and work at Paradise Valley no one goes into teaching for the paycheck they go into teaching for the students to make a difference in their lives I absolutely love teaching I'd like to think I was pretty good at it too but I never dreamed I would struggle as much as I did I
020struggled mentally not to mention the financial struggle I endured for my entire 15-year career in this District I worked for 10 years before I saw a comma in my paycheck a comma and I had a master's degree I felt like I was failing as an adult I had a great ever education I loved what I did yet I struggled to make men ends meet paycheck after paycheck year after year I would never have been able to buy my house as an adult if it weren't for having a roommate and my supportive parents and yet there were August then they would roll around and that summer paycheck was running out and I couldn't pay my electric bill and my mortgage having to make the choice between paying my mortgage on time or paying my electric bill
021on time was absolutely humiliating in my 30s and 40s going to my own parents for help to pay my bills was the last thing I wanted to be doing after all shouldn't I be helping them I prayed that nothing would happen to my car I knew I couldn't afford to fix it those Performance Based paychecks every time they went to bills my car my house I never took a vacation or did something fun with it it was useful you will be hard-pressed to find a teacher in this District that just teaches if there's an addendum for extra money with extra work you don't have trouble finding teachers to do that work you could be found I could be found tutoring thank you I'm sorry that's time next we have Gabriella Strunk followed by Lily Gresham
022Gabriella Strunk followed by Lily Gresham good evening I'm speaking to you tonight as a concerned teacher it is no secret that the Staffing shortage this year has had a severe impact on our district but I'm going to share the impact that it has had on the special education students on my campus as context we have six instructional assistants when we should have 14. one teacher and four instructional assistants have quit since the beginning of the school year as special education teachers it is our responsibility to serve the individual needs of our students special education students are an incredibly vulnerable population and because of that there is federal legislation that describes how we must serve them to promote equity in education right now we as teachers instructional assistants and campus administrators are unable to adhere to
023these Federal Regulations due to the lack of District action to support special education staff it is obviously of critical importance that we pass the audit but how is that more important than actually ensuring we provide the services written within the IEPs is the Department of Education aware that we are not following IEPs with fidelity due to the lack of support staff prepped time and responsibility of keeping our students safe I can honestly say that I am unable to collect data analyze data and provide the direct service minutes I am required to for each student this cannot be legal and as District administrators there is no way that you are unaware of this by not taking action this district is putting special education students at a clear disadvantage in their current education and their Futures without
024providing teachers with the resources to enforce the IEPs with Fidelity students will fall further and further behind preventing them from ever being able to fully participate in their communities something must change foreign my name is Lily Gresham I'd like to First congratulate the board members for winning their positions in the midterms and I'd also like to say thank you to the district office and especially Dr Corson for contacting me to follow up and discuss my shock and concern that several previously approved novels including Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet had recently been censored and removed from the high school English curriculum for being pornographic or having sexually explicit material um the United States depend on depends on its Public School System our shared Society also depends on it some County governments stated purpose of removing pornographic materials
025from schools and public libraries was actually a campaign of political and religious censorship the primary function of education is teaching students how to think for themselves parents should not be able to tell schools what to teach we have elected educated and experienced school boards for that purpose parents are free to express their opinions to the school boards and if they want they can sit with their child's teachers and School staff to discuss the curriculum and they can opt out their child from that class but must explain why in detail and in writing they can homeschool their kids if they just want them to learn about only what they want them to know and only what they want them to think parents can control what their own kids can learn but not what everyone else's kids
026can learn in public schools parental censorship in schools is particularly harmful because it prevents students with inquiring minds from exploring the world to seeking truth and reason stretching their intellectual capacities and becoming independent critical thinkers students must be equipped to think critically understand facts of the world society needs to teach them to learn and develop into an independent and critical world-class thinkers Banning or censoring books is not about protecting children it's about restricting information simply because someone dislikes the ideas of material schools are a community resource and no individual citizen parent or otherwise should assume any right to individually mandate what course that community resource should take and honestly many parents have neither the education nor intelligence to make any of those decisions for the rest of us and the best way to protect our
027kids is to educate them yes next on the agenda is Dr Bales thank you president mature governing board members cabinet and guests welcome and I would too like to extend my thanks to the community for your support of the override it is much appreciated and to all those that put in individual small group or large group efforts thank you our mission moment tonight in PB schools we engage we Inspire and we nurture students through high quality instruction meaningful educational opportunities and dynamic learning experiences and one of those experiences took place recently at the Arizona Super Bowl host committee luncheon Horizon High School's indoor percussion Ensemble hype was invited to help kick off luncheon at the Arizona Biltmore resort and the Drumline performed for a large audience including NFL commissioner Roger Goodell former NFL standout and
028Arizona Cardinal Larry Fitzgerald and the Arizona host committee what a fantastic memory for these students to celebrate this occasion congratulations foreign do you love to exercise the Fun Run is back PB schools Community 5K Fun Run is back in person this year on Saturday February 4th 2023 the event encouraging active Lifestyles among our staff our families in our community uh once again is a favorite and we're glad to be able to bring everyone together registration began on November 7th and to sign up for the PB schools Fun Run 5K fun run or walk you may go to www.runsignup.com before Friday February 3rd of course participants who register by January 6 will receive a beautiful t-shirt and all participants will register under their choice of team name either a school or department so look forward to
029seeing you out there at Horizon on Saturday February 6th February 4th my apologies finally uh PV pulse another opportunity to check the PV pulse is coming up PV pulse formerly known as bagels with the board provides an opportunity for parents Guardians and community members to meet with me cabinet members and governing board members in an informal setting throughout PB schools district this reimagined event supporting the PB schools strategic plan is part of the new strategy that promotes Community strength and collaboration within the district PV pulse will be held at different locations each quarter to make it as convenient as possible for the community to attend our next event will be held at Copper Canyon Elementary on Thursday November 30th from 10 to 11 A.M and those are my comments this evening next on the agenda
030is items for approval Dr bales thank you president mature governing board members cabinet and guests tonight we recommend for approval a resolution authorizing the issuance and sale of bonds from the voter approved initiative of 2019. Ms Berrigan will present thank you Dr Bales governing board and president matura I have a presentation Maybe that's the one okay uh tonight we are selling the remaining portion of the approved 2019 uh bond package that was passed by our voters and uh just to give you an update on that information that says credit ratings at the top it's hidden there but it's currently we still have the same ratings as we did when we sold bonds earlier this year which is the highest credit rating that is available to school districts uh this week I've had my bond rating
031calls with Fitch and with Moody's and we'll see if there's any changes to that but our fingers are crossed that we'll be able to maintain that rating uh the original bond that was approved in 2019 was for 236 million one hundred forty thousand dollars and as mentioned this is the sale of the remaining 91 million thirty five thousand of that uh the all-in true interest costs this time around is uh estimated about 4.25 percent and uh we will sort of be monitoring the market a little bit more than we typically do since things have been changing and try to ensure a sale on the best day that provides us the lowest all in true interest cost possible and it's a little bit early on and in the process normally we don't sell bonds until about
032the January or February time frame but we continue to have struggles with our vendors in being able to obtain all of the materials necessary there's still a material shortage of supply chain shortage supply chain shortage as well as even sometimes the Staffing shortage with our vendors uh selling bonds earlier this year will allow us to get our POS in sooner and allow those vendors to secure the necessary materials and Staffing to be able to do these projects so right now we have more of a general idea of what we expect our projects to be and this is a list of of most of those really maintenance and upkeep of our our schools at this point in time painting HVAC and things of that nature and this is a steeple's disclosure as our financial advisor I'd
033be happy to answer any questions that you may have at this time I think um Brian Lundberg from Stiefel may be here as well as Jim gill from gust if we have any detailed questions I'm not sure if they've made it in the door they might be outside may I please have a motion to adopt and approve resolution number 530 authorizing the issuance and sale of pvusd school Improvement bonds as presented so moved do we have any questions or comments from the board um I do just want to make a comment that uh Bonds in place like this allow us to keep our buildings uh in working order um and keep the air conditioning running and keeping our building safe for our students and our staff and we wouldn't be able to keep have this
034upkeep of our buildings which are uh public it's a public buildings and it's our responsibility to make sure we are taking care of them and we do that with the assistance of uh of uh the people in our community who have supported us in our bonds so thank you so much yes um Mrs case um I just want to make a comment because the community has PV Community has been so generous in passing bonds we are allowed to use our m l money to pay teachers instead of trying to fix an air conditioner with MMO money so I just wanted to bring that to your understanding because the generosity of the community has allowed us to have bonds we use that money to fix those things instead of taking money from mno thank you okay
035uh all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed say nay motion passes unanimously next on the agenda is gifts and donations uh I will have a few to highlight tonight and we are always appreciative of our very generous Community uh for making donations to our individual schools to our district to allow students to have things that they might not otherwise be available to them oh do I usually I use I think I usually okay um so this evening I wanted to bring a few to highlight a few we have a donation to from Dorito Partners to Echo Mountain intermediate schools caught being kind store and I know those donations go far uh for those students we also have donation from Country Financial uh credit card CC Services Incorporated Mountain to Mountain Trail Middle
036School for their Jazz Band program fifteen hundred dollars the Thunderbirds foundation made two donations uh recently to girls golf at Paradise Valley High School a thousand dollars and a thousand dollars to girls golf at Shadow Mountain High School so thank you to everyone who continues to make donations I just wanted to bring those to your attention and may I have a motion please to approve the gifts and donations as presented so moved all those in favor please say aye aye aye aye all those opposed say nay motion passes unanimously next on the agenda is items for discussion Dr Bales thank you president Ventura governing board members cabinet and guest tonight Dr Corson will present for first reading the proposed new courses and revisions for the 23-24 high school course catalog Dr Corson thank you I'll
037just wait a moment for the presentation well good evening president matura members of the board Dr Bales cabinet and guests tonight is the first reading of the high school course recommendation editions and revisions for the 23-24 school year our purpose this evening is to share with the governing board the process and recommendations regarding new and revised High School courses I'll begin tonight with a process we followed recommendations for new courses changes to existing courses and then end with questions and discussion I do have our representatives from our Career and Technical education programs as well as our District's lead counselor to also also help answer any questions you might have early in the school year high school teams and departments submitted course additional revision recommendations those recommendations were initially reviewed by our lead counselors these course
038recommendations were brought to the APC team a team composed of lead counselors curriculum assistant principals from our high schools and other department Representatives at our October meeting each of these course recommendations and revisions were reviewed and discussed and the team reached agreement on the following course additions and changes presented to you this evening our first series of new courses are part of the Career and Technical education program four levels of network security courses will introduce students to elements of computer networking including Information Technology Essentials cyber security routing and switching and cyber defense these courses offer students opportunities for dual enrollment and certification exams in addition to Preparing students for careers in this growing industry our CTE program is also recommending an internship program and computer Technologies elective courses that extend students preparation for College and
039Career Readiness in this field other new courses are also being recommended for your consideration sports psychology and exercise science are elective courses that we believe will be high interest courses for those students interested in studying psychology and science Concepts through the lens of sports and human performance data analytics is also an elective course focusing on statistical thinking while these courses do not count towards science credits they do extend students knowledge and application of science principles contributing to PV schools strategic plans steam initiative college board has also developed a new advanced placement course beginning next school year called AP pre-calculus this course can serve as an entry point to calculus concepts for those students not quite ready for the advanced calculus courses of calculus a b and b c that we have already adopted we also
040want to take this opportunity to recommend to the governing board that we award high school credit for students in our Spanish and Mandarin courses being taught at the middle school currently our immersion programs at the eighth grade level are equivalent to Spanish 3 4 and Mandarin 3-4 taught in high school much like we award middle school students High School Credit when they take algebra this opportunity for students to earn high school credit will keep an even playing field with those students who already travel to high schools to take Advanced language course and earn credit if the governing board approves we'd like to offer that credit to this year's students in the program our fine arts program is also recommending two new courses individual instrumental techniques and winterguard winterguard would be a spring semester course complementing
041the color guard course offered in the fall and finally North Canyon High School is recommending the emerging leader a new JROTC program in conjunction with the Army branch of the Armed Forces this program will complement the space Force program already at Shadow Mountain High School in addition to new courses our APC team is also recommending changes to several existing courses our honors interdisciplinary 5 6 program at Shadow Mountain High School is recommended a name change to honors Digital Academy advanced placement Scholars Capstone project this name change is more in line with the program description provided he honors innovation in bioscience and engineering course is reducing its fee from forty dollars to twenty five dollars to be more in line with other similar courses these fees pay for such items as Computer and Network components tools
042connectors and cables I mentioned that we are recommending a new spring semester course called winterguard this that course will complement the fall version of the course called Color Guard which is a name change from banned auxiliary core a name that has been confusing to some over the years and finally our language acquisition department is recommending name changes to the El English language courses in high school to align with the new names that the state is using to describe High School El programming this concludes the APC team's recommendations and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have any questions Mrs case thank you when I read these I got so excited thank you for bringing more technology courses that's what these kids need I have family members who have graduated from college or soon to
043graduate from college in technology and the sooner we start the better I just want us to also do some more coding in elementary school but um all of these courses I I just got so excited and the idea that students in Middle School can get credit high school credit for their language yes thank you that is wonderful I appreciate everyone who contributed these ideas that came to your desk that you went through and all the work that went into it I love the opportunities our students have in this District it's phenomenal thank you thank you Miss case Mrs Greenberg um yeah I think I think as I told Dr Bales when I saw the the uh the cyber security and other classes I was I was giddy um just one quick question on the AP
044pre-calc so algebra 3 4 is a prereq for that correct that is correct Okay so and that would normally be algebra 3 4 is normally what year that's typically a junior level course okay so we're saying this course would come in if we've got Juniors who may just not be interested in or ready for and Cal KB or BC but this would give them the opportunity to take an AP class that's reaching there that is correct uh Miss Greenberg students have a couple of different options at their senior level a couple of options include some dual enrollment courses as well as now this AP course okay great thank you um I had a couple of comments I was so um really excited to see the edition of the army ROTC program having an additional ROTC
045program in our district I think is really impressive and having that at North Canyon I'm I'm excited to see that uh new program uh come to life over over on that campus um and I was also very excited to see the immersion uh program because uh watching immersion from its beginning in our district I've been watching immersion and where how it's been progressing throughout the years and seeing now that those students who are in immersion are also now able to be receiving those high school credits I think is a great Boon to our program and I think could go a long ways to encouraging students to stay stay with it because you it's it's getting them those credits faster and um so I'm really excited for the immersion programs in our district and I was
046happy to see that so thank you foreign case sorry I had it in my notes and I didn't look down can students get help for the fees if I don't want any student to to look at a class and really want to take it but not to be able to afford that is there some ways and are there are there counselors letting those students know yeah in this case we share the same interest we don't ever want to feed to be a barrier for students and so our principals and high school counselors do work with those students to potentially waive fees when uh appropriate thank you okay next on the agenda is presentation of school letter grades Dr Bales thank you very much president mature County board members cabinet and guests tonight we present an
047update in the recently released School letter grades and I think you'll find this fascinating and interesting and exciting to recognize all the accomplishments across the district and Dr Corson and his team with Gene copen are here to make that presentation good evening president matura governing board Dr Bale's cabinet and guests uh thank you for this opportunity to share information about Paradise Valley's 2022 School letter grades on October 31st the Arizona Department of Education released School letter grades that reflected student achievement from the 2021-2022 school year tonight I will first review some brief information about the purpose of school letter grades explain what each letter grade reflects about a school and briefly review key data used in the calculations I will then present our school letter grades some District comparative data and share some points of
048pride the purpose of the AF accountability system in Arizona has three purposes first each School receives a letter grade that reports quantitative data and gives feedback for school Improvement second the letter grades are communicated publicly and this allows family to inform their school choice and lastly it holds schools accountable for the most important pieces in school Improvement efforts such as students growing towards proficiency reducing percentages of students in the lowest achievement rankings and improving subgroup performance each letter grade indicates a level of performance and captures quantitative data about the school as a whole system the A and B ratings are very similar both levels of performance indicate high performance on state assessments significant student growth High four-year graduation rates for our high schools and moving students to proficiency at a higher rate than the state
049average the distinguishing point for an a letter grade is that the performance is significantly higher than the state average a c letter gate grade indicates that the school is supporting satisfactory student achievement but improvements on some of the indicators such as growth proficiency and grad rates is needed dnf letter grades would indicate an inadequate performance level and require a great amount of focus on Improvement efforts School letter grade formulas vary depending on the student population schools serve our elementary schools and middle schools are measured on the K-8 formula this formula places great emphasis on students growing to higher levels of achievement on the state assessment and raising proficiency is also measured a portion of this formula also measures English language proficiency levels on the Azela assessment for our English Learners other parts of the formulas
050monitor minimally proficient levels on third grade reading mentally proficient levels on 8th grade math highly proficient levels on 8th grade math and subgroup Improvement our traditional high schools have have similar components but also include accountability to graduation rates and improving College and Career readiness and lastly high schools with alternative status have similar components as our Traditional High Schools but also receive credit for helping students stay on track for graduation the state released a breakdown of letter grades received for all schools in Arizona the top table displays the number of schools by type in each letter grade the bottom translates those numbers into percentages that can be compared to PV performance an impressive statistic to note is that 27 of Arizona K-8 schools earned an a letter grade compared to 55 in PV I'll pause that
051is a great statistic [Laughter] additionally 71 of Ka schools in the state achieved an A and or b letter grade PV achieved 79 a and b letter school letter grades 68 of 9 12 high schools in Arizona achieved an A or B PV is at 80 percent A and B School letter grades for our high schools now that we have reviewed the descriptors and formulas for each letter grade we can now look at how PV schools performed one celebration for our district you will notice that this chart only has a b and c columns because no schools receive divs or F's this year [Applause] the light blue column displays schools that received an a letter grade light green are schools earning a b letter grade and light yellow are schools earning c letter grade the
052schools written in purple font indicate schools that receive Title 1 funding I will be highlighting many points of Pride at the end of my presentation but I would really like to take this moment to congratulate the schools in our district these letter grades speak highly to the resilience of students and staff through challenging times that the pandemic posed to teaching and learning this information is the same information but it's highlighting the changes in letter grades from 19 to 22. um due to the pandemic the last year schools received a letter grade was 2019. each school is listed in alphabetical order with the 2019 in the white column and the 2022 score in the light green column schools that have a highlighted 2022 letter increased from 2019. all of all of our schools are aiming for
053a and b letter grades the bottom table highlights that PV had a 10 increase in the amount of A and B ratings for our elementary schools currently 88 of our k-6 and K-8 schools have achieved A's and B's this neck chart is for our middle schools and this information is organized in the same fashion five of our seven middle schools were able to raise their letter grades from 2019 to 2022 currently three out of seven of our Middle School letter grades are A's and B's and we also have one appeal a pending pending for this group the last set of tables displays our traditional high schools in the table that is in light blue four out of five high schools are A and B rated we also have two appeals in this group that are
054currently pending the table at the bottom of the slide that is in light yellow display Sweet Water which is measured with the alternative school formula Sweetwater achieved a c alt letter grade this is the first year that PV online has received a school letter grade they are considered a hybrid school because they serve K8 and 912 students both formulas are used to calculate the letter grade and are weighted according to the percentages of students in each group and this year PV online received a b letter grade we often Benchmark ourselves against comparative districts and this chart displays four of our districts that are comparative in demographics and size and that would be Deer Valley Dysart Peoria and Scottsdale the chart breaks down by color the number of letter grades received by each district for the
05521-22 school year our district performed very comparably to these District benchmarks or these Benchmark districts sorry Dr bills has set the expectation that all of our schools will be A's and B's and our strategic plan is definitely the road map to achieving this expectation our work for example with our multi-tier system of supports mtss one of our key initiatives is going to be focusing on evidence-based curricular materials formative and summative standards align assessments and instructions that have high impact results the answer to better letter grades and keeping our letter grades is a coherent system that aligns curriculum instruction and assessment around standards our strategic plan initiatives positions our school and District very well to strengthen that alignment among our schools and throughout our grade level Bans to end the presentation tonight I'd like to present
056some points of Pride that stood out as we were examining uh School letter grade data to put together this presentation um first I'd like to celebrate Eagle Ridge who had a perfect score of 50 points in the area of growth moving the school from a d to an a Fireside Elementary scored a perfect score of 30 in proficiency points earning the school in a letter grade and moving them to the ninth highest scoring K-8 public school in the state Pinnacle High School scored a perfect score of 20 points in growth earning the school in a letter grade and moving them to the 18th highest scoring public high school in the state Boulder Creek Elementary Fireside Elementary and Sonoran Sky Elementary were in the top 20 K-8 public schools in the state and our last points
057of Pride 17 schools increase their school letter grade from 2019 20 of our pvusd schools achieved an a letter grade in 2022 eight schools and I have them they're listed have maintained an a letter grade for four years 17 18 19 and 22. it's amazing and three schools that received Title One funding received an a school letter grade this year and that would be Desert Cove Eagle Ridge and Sunset Canyon and while there always continues to be opportunities for improvement we're very proud of the increases that we've seen this year and I will be happy to answer any questions thank you so much we have comments or questions from the board Mr Laney yeah I would just like to say again that I am grateful to our teachers and administrators for the hard work that
058they put in to accomplish these things and uh and the and how Eagle Ridge was able to go from a d to an a that's just it's really impressive and um a point of Pride and so I am I'm grateful to them so thank you Mrs Greenberg um I also want to thank um the entirety of our staff because it does take a village to to get there um I appreciate the fact that the letter grades have evolved over the years and do recognize growth because we see what that really means and that truly is what assessments are supposed to to determine is a student growing and so um it's it's truly um just it's phenomenal to to see where our schools are and I just I want to thank everybody for that Mrs case
059thank you um first of all want to thank uh the many teachers in the room and at home who have worked so hard for our students that have made this progress and made all of this possible I really appreciate the hard work of teachers through difficult times and going through covet and working so hard to get things moving in the right direction um so thank you very much um I also have a question how does the appeal work what is what's the process how long does it take Mrs case um so an appeal is allowable we had to have those in by November 15th and the state has about two weeks to act upon them um there's different criteria that you have to have to appeal we are appealing on um what they call a
060it's like an event that interrupted um testing and we believe caused um possible errors in the data and then two of our schools uh just have errors in the formula that we have found and so basically you submit a narrative and supporting documentation and then the state reviews that and makes a decision so would know within two weeks um we're anticipating like uh yeah within like the second week of December okay thank you foreign I mean I'm almost speechless which never happens um almost but I I'll come up with some words um I the amount of pride and um gratitude that I have around these scores and how hard our employees have worked to make this happen I is I just can't even state it um I have friends who are teachers I have family
061who are teachers and I know how hard they work and um I just appreciate you I also appreciate students who are willing to do the work too because they had a little bit to do with this and um parents who are at home reinforcing everything that we ask them to reinforce so every employee in the district every parent every student thank you so much for all the tremendous work that you've put into this foreign reiterate what Mrs Greenberg was saying seeing how uh these grade levels have evolved to bring in the growth and the proficiency and and not just looking at just the grade of the test on the one day is really nice to see how that is uh that strategy is working and um and to see our our schools to be able
062to excel in different areas is really exciting and the points of Pride were every single one of those was really a reason for celebration and was great to have um have that highlighted for for us tonight and again thank you to everyone who plays a part in educating this community it's uh it's it's a great Testament to hard work from from everyone so thank you foreign next on the agenda is budget Task Force update Dr Bales thank you president Ventura governing board members cabinet and guests tonight we present an update on the work of the budget task force and I'd like to begin with my thanks to the employees who participated in these difficult conversations and recommendations having participated in discussing budget reductions and budget increases in more than one District I can tell you
063that it is never easy either way to begin our presentation Ms Bergen and Dr Holmes will start thank you Dr Bales president matura and governing board members tonight I want to begin with the task force budget Task Force update as well as the the we'll get to the cabinet recommendation but just want to start again with the background in history I know that I've shared uh how uh this occurred and what brought us to this point but just want to reiterate that for everyone's memory and for maybe any who haven't heard that yet uh so in school year 2021 with the pandemic the district like all districts in the state of Arizona received the ESG or enrollment stabilization Grant from the governor's office that was essentially his version of Esser funding and he provided that
064to districts and Charters so that they could stabilize their budget for the purposes of that loss and enrollment that all of us experienced during that covid time period and so that really took on what were some of our mno expenditures in that 2021 school year so that we could maintain our annual contracts that we provide to our staff and that was important to us and so that's what our district and many districts use those ESG funds for when planning for the 2122 school year the transferring of those ESG covered costs that had previously been in mno were not included in the mno budgeting process and in addition in sort of a compounding factor to that is that the district's yet to regain that enrollment that we had lost since 2021. in a typical year we
065would have addressed that decline in enrollment leading to the loss of State funding by reducing ongoing expenditures but this didn't occur until a little bit later on in the budget planning process which has left that deficit to be addressed but as a result of the district's excellent fiscal management the budget balance carry forwards that the districts have has were able to be used to address the deficit for fiscal year 2122. because the district discovered the issue after planning for 2223 budget the district's uh developed the budget task force which was made up of representatives from the various stakeholder groups throughout the district the goal was to make adjustments in a way that was least disruptive to the high quality education that our staff provide to PV schools so with the support of that Esser fund
066which was through the American Rescue plan ending and that significant decline in enrollment that we're seeing the district needed to make adjustments so that we didn't have to continue with the shortfall moving forward into future budget planning so it's a challenge certainly but it's one that PV schools can absolutely get through and just want to provide a reminder that the district's mno budget 85 to 87 percent varies from year to year but that range is what is spent on staff salaries and benefits so that was the background the budget task force makeup these are the members from pvea pbsca we had four Representatives each and then COA and PVA PVP excuse me had three Representatives as well as Dr Holmes and myself the purpose was to develop a recommendation to Cabinet to resolve the ongoing
067budget shortfall and provide employees with additional compensation at the same time so this takes us through the summary of the budget tasks task force and the resolution for this current fiscal year so we start with this current fiscal year and then we'll move into the 2324 which resolves things moving forward the ongoing deficit was a little bit under 14 million dollars at about 13 million six hundred and seventy five thousand dollars we used some one-time Revenue increases which is a repurposing of uh Esser funds uh just under four million dollars to help resolve one time for this year 2223 and when you see one time on here that means that resolves that for 22.23 but we need ongoing Solutions moving forward so there's an ongoing Revenue increase from the state which was great news that
068we finally had confirmed on June 30th of this year and that added to our state Equalization uh just under 15 million dollars about 14.8 million dollars so that helps with the current issue as well we did some one-time reductions and that included nine hundred thousand dollars out of one of the Esser grants for uh what had been spotted for marketing as well as did a 2223 hiring freeze which has amounted to about three hundred thousand dollars for a total of 1.2 million in one-time reductions for ongoing reductions we collapsed 12.5 classrooms at the beginning of this year once we saw that we were down about 800 students and that amounts to about eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars then for an ongoing expense increase remember the other part of the purpose of the budget task
069force was to provide some pay increase to staff which will cost about seven million dollars that leaves the budget balance for 22.23 this current fiscal year and a positive two hundred and five thousand dollars but because some of the solutions that you see are one time that one-time revenue and that one-time reduction those need to be addressed still moving forward those are just one-time monies for this year so that balance after ongoing Solutions is just under five million dollars and essentially what the budget task force started the 2324 budget year with that deficit and needed to do something to resolve that so what uh what was determined were ongoing reductions to help resolve that and they amounted to a little over four million dollars I'll show on next slide what those details are that would
070leave the balance moving into bargaining which begins in the late winter time frame uh at a negative 950 000 so that's just uh this part of the budget process that does not include any further reductions in student enrollment projected for next year any cost increases that's just from starting uh this process so the budget reductions from the budget task force include these seven items which is a reduction of all employees work schedule by one day which is often referred to as a furlough that saves the district about eight hundred and seventy thousand dollars the reduction to ABM which is our custodial company uh for their hours by two per day which would result in a savings of five hundred and four thousand dollars and then mno department and school budget non-personnel cuts this is effectively
071their supply budgets for both departments and schools of five percent is a savings of ninety seven thousand dollars approximately then increasing average gen ed class size by one which would result in 29 ftes and as a reminder that's a full-time equivalent or one teacher that was a savings of one million nine hundred seventy two thousand dollars the removal of Elementary account accounting clerk positions there are 14 equivalents in there for five hundred and twelve thousand dollars and then the reduction to College and Career Specialists to make their contract the same amount of days as a teacher contract which is a savings of twenty three thousand dollars and then finally the elimination of Hanover which supported some of our surveying that we do of fifty thousand dollars that totaled that four million twenty eight thousand uh
072dollars from the previous slide and just I have the note as a reminder again at the bottom that that begins the 23-24 uh bargaining season with the 950 000 deficit among other revenue and expenditure changes and Dr bales oh sorry Dr Holmes thank you um so the the reductions uh as presented do provide capacity to uh provide uh additional compensation for our employees and this is a summary of what those compensation increases would be uh for pbsca or our ESP uh employees they would receive an average of six percent with a minimum of three percent increase to pay and that is going to be highly individualized uh based on each and each individual as as it's due to a restructure of the salary schedule it does include a one one step movement for all employees
073it includes an additional 250 per band for a longevity it also includes a new band of longevity in the four to six year range at two hundred fifty dollars and again additional pay to base depending on where employees are in the salary schedule please okay if pvea are certified employees would be a two percent increase to base salary and 835 dollar increase to each level of priority service credit which represents an average increase of three percent with a minimum increase of two percent I do want to pause and note here that we did communicate this to employees yesterday and there was a typo and that there was in the communication it indicated that there it was an 825 dollar increase to priority service credit so that was incorrect by ten dollars the actual amount is
074eight eight thirty five foreign executive support staff they receive a six percent increase space uh increase to base salary and for our three administrative groups a two percent increase to base salary next I want to make sure and clarify that this is uh these compensation increases would be in addition to what the board had approved last April last April uh the the board had approved one percent increase to base pay uh one thousand one-time retention incentive and a 3.34 one-time retention incentive and so these recommendations would be in addition to that for the timeline the uh the the recommendation for pay increase is contemplated uh are are to be for this year and ongoing which creates a little bit of a challenge as we are almost halfway through uh the current year uh so to
075do that the The Proposal would be to provide uh our people with a one-time retention incentive uh to be provided in December which would amount to be approximately half of what their their increase would be for the year I would come in December beginning in January we would adjust everybody's pay so the the pay increases uh would be uh in each and every one of their paychecks going forward and then beginning in uh 2023-24 uh school year the we would have to make an adjustment of of one day to everybody's salaries because as uh as you would seen in the budget reductions there was a a one-day furlough so uh uh so that would be backed out of people's pay it's it would be the the equivalent of of one day uh of pay and
076we would and we will be reducing uh the calendar work days by one day correspondingly and next yes okay Dr Bell and as you can see the work of the budget task force was very comprehensive and there were recommendations tackled the two goals of addressing the budget shortfall and providing additional compensation to our employees clearly the employees group the employee groups work together and prioritize the largest increases to our support employees yet the work of the budget task force is just the beginning to address our expenditures in a declining enrollment District and as you as you noticed their work ended with a 950 000 short of goal as I said this work is not easy and we want to honor the work of the budget task force however we also want to offer some changes
077it's important to remember that we honored Staffing allocation and raises last year and this year and they may not have been provided if we had planned for the ESG in our mno budget for the 2122 school year the compensation recommendations tonight are in addition as Dr Holmes mentioned to the one percent on the base the one thousand dollar return to work stipend and the 3.34 retention stipend we paid out last week based on board Direction the cabinet provides one revision and two or additional recommendations for the board to discuss and consider publicly the board's questions comments and feedback will guide our final recommendations tentatively planned for board approval on December 1st our suggested revision is to eliminate the increased class size Staffing ratio by one we have worked so hard to lower class size ratios
078over the last several years and we are committed to making Cuts as far away from the classroom as possible next we would recommend we eliminate the mno results funded results-based funded instructional coaches and mno-funded emotional social emotional learning and behavior specialists these last two recommendations are extremely difficult to make both positions align well with our strategic plan however we have district-wide initiatives in mtss and PBIS that provide the Frameworks and structures and support in these areas we know we need to support our teachers and our schools and our implementation teams for these initiatives we'll have to consider these factors when finalizing implementation rubrics additionally there would remain 13.5 FTE in these Specialists funded from Esser and or title dollars for the 23-24 school year additionally we will continue to have mno and special education funded
079social workers and counselors across the district nearly 70 UniQue Ideas were initially identified including these two recommendations with this one revision and two additions we are financially in a better position moving forward with no budget shortfall as we move into the spring bargaining sessions with that in mind we will still have tough decisions to make as the budgeting process will need to consider several factors for the fiscal 24 budget like increased cost for goods and services due to record height inflation increased utility costs and state mandated increases to minimum wage and retirement contributions these increases are compounded with an anticipated decline of student enrollment due to Falling birth rates affordable housing and choices for educational service providers the sky is not falling but it is cloudy and still very unpredictable Ms Bergen would you please
080continue and restate the revisions and additional recommendations yes thank you Dr bales this slide reflects the summary of those changes you will see the elimination of line four the increase in average gen ed class size by 1 as the recommendation from cabinet and the addition of lines eight and nine which are highlighted in green the reduction of the social emotional learning specialist position and the reduction of the instructional coach positions that brings the total for the budget reductions to help resolve the issue to five million one hundred thousand dollars and would leave us beginning the 23-24 bargaining year with a positive balance of a hundred and twenty two thousand dollars so for next steps uh tentatively we would plan to bring a uh a recommendation for your approval on December 1st that that would be
081your next scheduled uh regularly scheduled board meeting uh there's uh some technical work to do that HR payroll and finance will engage in to make the pay increases happen in particular uh in January for our ESP employees specifically because they just can't really determine by what I described what their increase would be we would we would look at um communicating to them their their new grade steps longevity and hourly rates so that they they understood what that would be for them that'll come in January um and then we will make plans to meet with employees um that are impacted by uh by these recommendations to help them understand um uh the transfer process and to answer their specific questions and with that we're happy to answer any questions you may have we do have uh
082comment cards that we'll go through first um a reminder to uh I will call three names so we know the order uh please State your first and last name when you come to the podium and you will have two minutes um first we have Sarah chicarello followed by Courtney somar and Trevor Nelson okay hi my name is Sarah ciccarello and I'm a teacher at Sonoran Sky Elementary I've been a teacher with the district for 15 years I grew up going to PV schools and I've also sent my children to them I love my students and I've always been devoted to myself to the district I'm speaking to you today for two very important reasons last year I was diagnosed with cancer mid-school year it was a very difficult time for me and it was hard
083to step away from my classroom and take care of myself I didn't know how to talk to my class about my condition or my upcoming leave my school's SEL teacher Samantha barali came into my class and talked to them and help them with the transition she also checked in on me and my class while I was gone she not only helped with I'm sorry I lost my spot I'm sorry she not only helped the children get through this difficult time but also myself I have seen firsthand the impact that having the SEL support has had on my school Community we need these teachers in our campuses it is what's best for students with her support I came back early and finished the last four weeks of school while undergoing chemotherapy I also returned this year
084while having daily radiation treatments for the first four weeks of school I did this because even though it was extremely difficult I do what's best for my students and I ask that you do what's best for our students [Applause] the second reason I'm speaking to you today is because of the process by which these budget decisions were decided I believe that the district has always understood that the bargaining agreement is the teacher's voice I've always felt that there was a mutual respect between the cabinet and our teachers if we don't continue to follow the bargaining bargaining language teachers will lose their voices you must consider the commitment that you have to as teachers as we have been so committed to our classrooms dude do not take away my voice thank you [Applause] good evening governing
085board and cabinet my name is Courtney Silmar I'm currently my 23rd year here in the district I've taught at Arrowhead Sonoran Sky Desert Shadows Middle School and I've been an instructional coach since the position was established in pvusd three years ago I love being a coach first of all I'd like to address the budget miscalculation I'm pretty sure none of your teachers back here still understand how that happened as a math teacher I always teach my students to check and double check their work how does this not carry over into running a school district where is your systems and checks and balances how does this possibly happen this was no small mistake this was in the ballpark of 14 million dollars if our students check their work as well as you do we would not
086have a top-rated district with 20 a rated schools because of this miscalculation my position as an instructional coach is now on The Chopping Block I'm also a realist I understand now there have to be Cuts made the second thing I want to discuss is the budget task force this was supposed to be in a collaborative manner the task force came up from what I understand with recommendations for the cabinet the cabinet decided with no further consultation of the task force to change these recommendations this is not how our district operates or it has not been in the past is this where we are headed as a district that we have a committee recommendations and those recommendations are ignored and there's no further conversation this is a sad state for our district instructional coaches and sels
087are the ones paying for your mistake and your unwillingness to follow the process that we have set up in the district I also want you to understand that your opinion of instructional coaches and sels is being heard loud and clear the message I'm hearing is that we are disposable we are not valued and we're not worth fighting for I wish you would understand that you need coaches teachers need coaches and students need coaches if you do not feel this way then you are unclear of the job that we do we are student-centered coaches we put the needs of students front and center we concentrate on student learning rather than fixing teachers this way we can impact instruction and student achievement after Trevor Nelson is going to be Justin price Cindy LeBlanc and Talisa Gallego good
088evening governing board I'm saddened to learn that the executive committee altered the budget task force recommendations without consultation of stakeholders teachers staff task force parents community members and then attempted to play it off tonight as their decision that kind of backroom dealing is like using apps like signal and Telegraph to communicate with community members to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests and avoid open meeting laws that should not be tolerated in functioning organizations that 12.5 FTE cut that happened four weeks into the school year affected my child directly and he's still recovering from that Interruption of his learning but he's lucky to have great teachers and a great sped team to support his IEP I see in the plan there's no cuts to District personnel and that must be nice but the elimination of the
089elementary accounting clerks makes no sense because in a financial crisis we're going to cut the people who track the finances how's that going to happen the instructional coaches have been helping teachers and staff they administer obsessments they help coach them and help them learn and become better teachers and allows the teachers to focus focus more on the Learners and make every minute count now I'm sure some community members are thrilled to see SEL positions being closed which is a terrible thing to cheer for students who missed out on in-person learning for almost two years or started school not in person also missed out on the social emotional skills learned by being around other people and teachers and students for the record scl is not CRT so don't start with that social emotional learning involves gaining
090critical interpersonal skills needed to function as a human in the community like self-regulation emotional resilience and recovering from disappointment which are skills the community members of PV have been employing consistently this school year as we watch paradise and disarray has the governing board truly considered every place that can be cut when they're tightening the belts like cell phone perks and car allowances and performance bonuses that obviously haven't been earned I hope the governing board will not make a decision tonight on the budget but instead actually make data informed decisions based on each site and the student's needs there should not be a one-size-fits-all solution good evening my name is Justin price uh given that the budget recommendations from cabinet did not have the benefit of hearing from all the stakeholders involved in the budget task
091force I'd like to offer some coaching questions for you to consider first considering the difficulty in hiring how many employees whose positions are cut do you expect might continue to work in Paradise Valley next year how will you mitigate the effects of losing instructional coaches on new and interim teachers that may not have completed teacher preparation programs what are some potential impacts on the steam initiative without instructional coaches how do you reconcile naming mtss a district-wide initiative while cutting SEL Specialists responsible for tier one instruction and finally why would any PV stakeholder believe that any future initiatives will be given time to be fully implemented rather than tossed aside for a quick fix foreign my name is Cindy LeBlanc I am the social emotional learning specialist at Echo Mountain Primary and intermediate this is my
09223rd year working for the district both as a classroom teacher and a specialist during this time I have seen the needs of our students and staff changed dramatically especially in the last few years our district created the positions of SEL Specialists and instructional coaches out of an abundance of need the need for these roles is greater than ever and it is now being proposed to cut these positions this would be detrimental to those we serve from Bell to Bell I have students who need me teachers who need me this is the busiest I have ever been in Education Without SEL Specialists you are asking classroom teachers to absorb an overwhelming task many of whom do not have the training to do so kids are struggling teachers are struggling and we are there working to bridge
093that Gap without these positions we will fail our kids after the recent loss of our student excuse me Cassidy Moreno the district's care and concern team commented multiple times on the amazing support team we had in place at Echo at an unpredictable tragic time our SEL team is able to provide the ongoing support that is needed the job we do is so important that our district paid for SEL Specialists to attend the Betsy conference today which addressed PBIS and mtss both long-term goals for our district SEL Specialists and instructional coaches are pivotal in supporting this plan I would like to leave you with words from our keynote speaker at today's conference academic success doesn't happen without health districts who understand this will reflect it in their budget please do what's best for our kids thank
094you just a moment um after talissa Gallego uh we'll have Julie Garcia uh Mariah Reed Brown and then Denise koepernick my name is Talisa Gallegos and I'm the school social worker at The Echo Mountain Primary School on October 27 2022 rscl and myself notice helicopters hovering above the area unsure of what was going on Monday we received that answer a man and woman came in and asked to speak with me they were the aunt and uncle of Cassidy Moreno a third grade student at Echo Mountain Primary who died seven minutes from this office due to a road rage incident after leaving our school 19 minutes prior I went into preparation mode this was not a task that I could tackle alone given we service 529 students on the primary side no years of college master's
095degree or years of experience can can prepare you for these tragic situations and there was no way I could support our school without the help of our SEL team the pvusd mission statement is to engage Inspire nurture our students through high quality instruction meaningful education opportunities and dynamic learning experiences this cannot be done without the SEL support provided to students in collaboration with their school social worker our our goal is to teach the students of our future so we can prevent these types of tragedies by teaching proper skills such as conflict resolution in schools before we lose more and more members of our community so I asked the board to review this decision think of our students and understand how detrimental it would be if we were to lose our scl specialists good evening my
096name is Julie Garcia I am a parent of a son right now at Sandpiper an incoming Kinder um part of the PTO at Sandpiper and also a UPC volunteer thank you to everyone that's in this room that supports our kids the teachers the families um I learned about those two last two recommendations on Tuesday like many I think in this room and I am speechless I'm upset that you didn't follow a process to include the teachers in these decisions I'm upset and how those two changes will impact my son and my son that's coming into Sandpiper and it will change the entire environment of our kids Miss Denise is our social worker she knows in the first 30 days of school she knows every student's name they know her they love her the work that
097she does is not the work that everyone sees it's supporting the families and the children that need her taking that away is going to change the learning environment and long term for our children we are going to lose families from this District if you continue to make these significant Cuts so I'm asking the board please own the mistake and agree to revisit these recommendations with the proper people in the room and I would like you to include a parent from the UPC [Applause] good evening governing board cabinet suit and superintendent Dr Bells thank you for your time and consideration my name is Mariah Reed Brown and I am a school counselor at PV High School I am here as an advocate for the profession of social emotional learning Specialists and for our students I understand
098that the budget task force committee was charged with an impossible task that has unfortunately resulted in both Mo funded SEL and instructional coaches not returning in the 23-24 school year at the same time I think it is important to share data and factual information for the board and cabinet to consider at the upcoming bargaining year as the upcoming bargaining year is ahead aska is the American school counselor Association and has provided data from the previous school year one in six children in teens ages 6 to 17 have a treatable mental health disorder 40 felt sadness and hopelessness twenty percent seriously considered con contempting suicide and nine percent have actually attempted suicide one or more times this data supports the high need for having scls on our campuses the following is data from our campus that
099we have collected this school year alone to date we have logged 657 visits with students in need of social emotional support that's roughly 10 social emotional crisis per day we have also completed 13 suicide risk Assessments in the first 15 weeks of school that's roughly one suicide risk assessment per week resulting in needing further evaluation by mental health professional before returning to our schools this year alone our SEL has completed 100 classroom visits that's an average of three to four per day weekly 45-minute support groups to address impulse regulation and classroom management Behavior as well as a weekly 30-minute restorative circles to help reduce behavioral issues our district Mission states that every learner is empowered for a lifetime of success in order for us to meet this we need to take into account the Mental
100Health crisis that our nation is arising if we decrease this the supports excuse me that's that's time thank you after Denise kobernick will be Suzanne odea and Michelle Courtright and militia Schwartz hello everyone my name is Denise kerbrick and I'm the school social worker at Sandpiper Elementary I'm also a Sandpiper mom with three students I came to this district from a neighboring School District that really relies on their social workers I came to this District because you sold the idea that social emotional learning was important for our students I also came to be closer to my own children I was hired under a grant and now I'm under the Esther Grant where I have this last year we're seeing a dramatic increase in Behavioral Health needs for our students between my SEL and myself we
101worked with over 125 students last school year we have a population of 440 students you do the math we're seeing over 25 percent of our population because of behavioral needs or mental health needs we see those students in lunch bunches social social skills groups Crisis Intervention individual sessions or classroom SEL lessons we are constantly called on crisis due to heightened behavioral needs those crises look like suicide assessments self-injurious assessments panic attacks where I'm helping children breathe on the floor running around classrooms explosive behaviors elopement and others we are there to support our teachers our Administration and our parents the proposed budget cuts to cut SEL and instructional coaches is a direct blow to the needs of our students and our teachers pbusd just celebrated raising letter grades throughout the district yet you are proposing to
102cut the supports that help to increase those letter grades I urge you to think of the mental health needs of our students and teachers staff are overwhelmed we need support you get to choose whether it's Welcome To Paradise or welcome to disarray hello Governor import I'm Suzanne O'Day lead school psychologist for PV um over the past few years several of our schools really have made great gains in analyzing data and implementing target targeted interventions for students in need that is mtss and we cannot do mtss without our SEL specialists as a school psychologist I am very concerned about the elimination of these staff members in addition to academics workplace competencies are critical to positive post-school outcomes as you know employees are looking for those with soft skills SEL skills as a priority for Readiness in
103the workplace these are things like work ethic communication teamwork collaboration critical thinking and problem solving skills nationally one in six children aged two through eight have a diagnosed mental Behavioral or developmental disorder one of ten experience multiple types of violence seven out of ten seven of the ten leading causes of death are connected to adverse childhood experiences in Arizona 61 percent of adults experience mental illness without treatment therefore Early Childhood Intervention is critical on average 41 percent of Arizona high school students feel sad or hopeless 23 percent of high school students in Arizona seriously considered attempting suicide 10 percent of high school students attempted suicide in 2021 AZ teen Lifeline answered 42 000. calls and texts Dr bales the recommended ratios for school psychologists is one to five hundred and one to two fifty for
104both school counselors and school social workers and we are not currently near these ratios and are already below several of our comparable neighboring districts that Miss uh copen uh Gene spoke about the elimination of SEL specialists in pbusd will have a significant impact on our teachers and other student support Specialists most importantly the loss of these positions will negatively impact the health and well-being and academic achievement at post post School outcomes for our students the national well you know my point thank you president Maturo governing board Dr Bales and cabinet my name is Michelle Courtright and along with being an employee in this District I live in this District my children graduated in this district and my grandchildren are currently enrolled so it's personal to me for this District to succeed as a person that
105was on the budget task force I can tell you it was not an easy thing and there were many times that I came to at least one of you and I said this is not working and I was told to trust the process and that's what we did we put things on the table we took things off and in the end every one of us had a responsibility and the ability to say I can't live with this and no one did we thumbed this with the stipulation that when we do that we walk out of this room and we defend it with everything we have and that didn't happen somehow there was pushback and instead of coming back to us like what you always have and asking us to fix it the board doesn't like
106this we need to start again nobody did that they changed a recommendation that somebody said we wanted to stay away from the classroom this is as close to the classroom as you can get without having a teacher these are the people that are allowing us right now to teach they're keeping my people from having to stand in the hallway with a student they are allowing our students to get back to a normal life in education you cannot do this I know that cabinet can't do this but you have the ability to do one of two things impose this on us or tell them to go back to the table and figure out something that is in the best interest of students staff and this District because this recommendation from cabinet is not and it will
107be devastating to education in this District thank you after Melissa Schwartz will be Athena Westcott Carrie Thornton and Kylie Eldridge good evening president matura governing board Dr Bales and cabinet I'm Melissa Schwartz a parent of both a recent pvhs Crest graduate and current student I'm also the president of the crest parent group past president of the United parent Council among many other volunteer roles I have current I currently serve or have served over the past many years I have served on many district committees and still never quite understand how the district works out their personnel budget line items however I do know how to read budget numbers it appears we need to reduce by almost 3 million dollars it is never easy to reduce budgets especially when including reducing jobs if staffing needs to be
108reduced why is it not possible to work with the principles to adjust Staffing at their schools to determine what would be in the best interest at those sites I understand the desire not to add students to our classrooms and encourage a revised look at Solutions without gutting the social and emotional learning Specialists I have seen the success over the past two years and heard from parents about SEL successes if you do not think these new letter grades all a through C was a result of having the SEL coaches and instructional coaches you are mistaken last when committees spend months together to come up with ideas that are then modified even with good intentions it undermines the work of all of those involved I encourage the governing board to reject this recommendation and go back to
109this committee for other suggestions that will benefit our students and our staff thank you Athena Westcott then Carrie Thornton then Kylie Eldridge good evening board members president matura Dr Bales and cabinet thank you for your time and allowing us to comment tonight my name is Athena Westcott and I am a seventh grade ELA teacher at Greenway Middle School two years ago I stood out at a Podium just like this in front of a governing School Board speaking about how important teachers were needed in our classrooms it was one of the most nerve-wracking moments in my life I swore I never do it again Never Say Never fast forward here I am two years later standing at this podium in front of a governing School Board terrified to speak however this time the love for my
110Greenway family overpowers the scariness this time I will speak about how important all staff members are needed in our classroom at 44 years old I am a first year school teacher a little over a year and a half ago I began my path at Greenway Middle School from day one I knew I was at home I was immediately welcomed with open arms these P these past 18 months have been a dream come true I would not be where I am without the help and love from not just the teachers but from our important members such as our SEL specialist instructional coach and our instructional coaches most importantly our students wouldn't be where they need to be without these awesome members it takes special people to work at Greenway and we have that our Administration teachers
111SEL specialist instructional coach and more are the perfect team we are a whole heart to take away any piece of that would be crushing I'm asking you all tonight to not tear apart our happy home and to please not break our heart thank you foreign good evening and thank you for allowing me to speak tonight my name is Carrie Thornton and I have worked in the PB School District district for 24 years my last three years have been working as an SEL specialist when I heard Tuesday that SEL and instructional coach positions were going to be cut my heart sank my first thought was what's going to happen to all the students that we work with every day what are they going to do when they can't sell for can't regulate themselves what are the
112students that are going through crisis going to do what who's going to have the time to support them then my thought came to what are the classroom teachers going to do because now they're going to have to take on all of this they're already under so much pressure to make sure standards are mastered mastered instructional coaches make sure these teachers have the access to curriculum that they need they help newer teachers and Veterans alike to make sure they have what they need to be effective teachers coaches also help teachers with classroom management and if coaches aren't there where are these teachers going to go for this support they're going to what are they going to do when they have a student breakdown in the middle of their class right they're trying to teach their lessons
113teachers instinctively will want to help that student but where teachers can't leave 30 other students in their classroom alone how are they going to find time to teach the skills to help them manage these emotions if this student never starts to feel that way again this is too much to ask of any one group of people there are many other groups I could speak of If I Had the Time I know next year I'll have a job somewhere but again what are the students going to do next year we need to support our students and staff so that we can continue to make growth that we are in the process of making as you saw from the earlier presentation I want to work with my students teachers staff and families to continue to make the
114difference in their lives just as much as they have made a difference in mine I'm a firm believer that I need to practice what I preach and working as an SEL has made me a better friend wife mother and teacher I take to heart the skills that I'm trying to instill in my students and practice them in my daily life for the betterment of all who are around me for the sake of the kids and staff and families I ask you to reconsider and just remember you have to Maslow before you can bloom after Kylie Eldridge will be Cali Westman Katie Jenkins and Sam borale good evening governing board members thank you for this opportunity to come and support my SEO and instructional coaching team my name is Kylie Eldridge and I teach 7th and
1158th grade math at Greenway Middle School I am originally from Indiana and my journey as an educator in Paradise started last January when I was hired on as a student teacher in the final semester of my teacher prep program looking back in light of the post-pandemic climate in about 1500 miles between me and my family and everything that I've Loved I remember how lost I was emotionally and professionally more profoundly I remember my SEO and instructional coaching team who took me under their wing and ensured that I would be supported I could not have imagined the impressively wide repertoire of the instructional and interpersonal skills that would help me ensure that my students would receive the learning experience that they are entitled to after a year in Paradise they continue to be an absolutely essential
116Lifeline not only for me but for other students on campus my team taught me how to work with Fidelity for my Administration the dedication for my community and with an undying passion for my amazing students I could never be the role model that I strive to be for my students if I did not have my instructional coaches and my SEL team to be the role models that I so desperately needed and will continue to need in the future thank you Corey Jen and Kerry for being role models to me and thank you SEO and all instructional coaches in the district Greenway family supports you our students need you we need you and this needs to be addressed foreign board members my name is Callie wieseman and I am a first year teacher at Greenway Middle
117School and I can honestly say the hard decision of leaving my home state and driving 27 and a half hours was well worth it about a month ago I sat in this exact room where my colleagues talked about all the positives and successes happening at Greenway and I am standing here today talking about how they are possible I have always wanted to teach but I didn't realize how many questions I would need answered and how much support was needed to provide the best version of myself for my students I have been able to provide this version that I am proud to be through the support of my instructional coaches and SEL Specialists on my campus every question concern and hard day is answered and comforted by the people who fill these positions behind every great
118teacher there is someone who continues to give them confidence motivation and support and the same goes for the students both of these positions play a huge role on how I've been able to have such a successful first half of the year both of these positions have impacted my teaching skills in such positive ways both of these positions provide feedback that lead me to accomplish greatness in my classroom and guide and support students in ways that they need both of these positions take on different duties but benefit our students and staff in ways that truly make a difference the support that I have at this school is the reason it was so easy for me to decide that I am here to stay please don't remove the support system that I have behind me because that
119is the reason I wake up every morning knowing I am going to have yet again another successful day at GMS thank you for your time good evening governing board members thank you for allowing me the chance to speak tonight my name is Katie Jenkins in 2020 I quit my 17-year career as a restaurant manager and moved my family from Indiana to Phoenix Arizona in the midst of a worldwide shutdown and hiring freezes I had no idea what I was going to do I didn't earn my bachelor's and master's degrees in teaching but there was always a desire to share knowledge and through Arizona's alternative certification path teaching became my calling I started teaching science at Greenway Middle School in October of 2020. it is because of our instructional coaches that I am successful I had
120help in understanding the Arizona standards the adopt adopted curriculum and lesson planning they taught me how to engage my students in class and the value in differentiating instruction for our unique population through authenticity and relevance they are my sounding board in a world with a lot of noise I am currently in my third year of teaching and I am the new science IDL I still reach out to them for support not only do they guide me through the PLC process they attend the science plcs and help me direct my team with data-driven evidence they are essential our SEL specialist makes kids feel safe and loved our kids trust her and seek her out as a role model our kids have burdens outside of school that they find our SEL Specialists as their safe space as
121teachers we also seek her out as a support when we are struggling she is essential when I first started working for Paradise Valley I was told Welcome To Paradise do not let us lose this piece of paradise Greenway will not be the same if we lose our instructional coaches and our SEL Specialists as a parent of a child in the district and an employee is an imperative that these positions remain in all our schools we need them like the desert so desperately needs the rain thank you for your time after the speaker will be Jennifer Olson Loretta Sotelo and Tammy Newell my name is Samantha Borelli and I am the social emotional learning specialist at snoring sky in Desert Shadows Elementary Schools I moved all the way from Colorado to take this job opportunity knowing
122that pvusd has an exceptional reputation after I eagerly transitioned my entire life to the State of Arizona I became one of the first cells to work in the school district when I was in elementary school I had several traumatic childhood experiences that caused a lot of grief and loss and future diagnoses of anxiety depression and complex PTSD the reason why I'm being vulnerable and sharing this information to the public is because I often think about my elementary school days and wish that I had somebody to talk to who listened cared and taught me healthy safe and appropriate ways to self-regulate and cope with my strong emotions you are proposing eliminating a position that other districts in the country are dying to have because students are literally dying by suicide every single day suicide rates among
123children and teens are at the highest in history by the time I finish reading my speech someone will have died by Suicide the need for social and emotional support is critical and crucial for a child's academic and overall future success we need to prioritize cells and maintain the great reputation our district has knowing that removing this position would be threatening the lives of our students increasing the stress of our staff creating a disservice to our families moving backwards in our district and becoming another disappointing statistic in our state thank you but good evening my name is Jennifer Olson and I am the SEL specialist at Wildfire Elementary School the importance of SEL in our school is Paramount to the success of our students their mental health along with their social emotional well-being is important for
124their growth and success not only as students but as they grow into the adults they will become our teachers are superheroes you guys they're dedicated loving and supportive they have strong hearts and Minds but even a superhero's plate can overflow and when you cut all the instructional coaches and the SEL Specialists their place are going to overflow again and when you add more students to their room it's going to be another thing that falls off their plate and when that happens how long are they going to be able to sustain that and what's going to happen when they're not happy teaching and they can't handle all of the behaviors or all of the needs that are going on in the classroom our students are going to start suffering for that and our teachers are going
125to suffer for that how will our teachers being depleted and pushed to their limits affect the way that our students learn and how will this affect the way that our students won't fall through the cracks how will this affect our future leaders you passed a district-wide Initiative for PBIS within our schools thank you by the way I fully support that but what happens to that initiative when you take away the sels to support it at the schools because behavior is not going anywhere behavior is a communication call for help it says I have been says I have a need and as SEL Specialists we help to figure out what that need is we teach students a better way to request help and we teach students how they can meet that need thank you sorry I
126have a hard time seeing so I need something bigger uh hello my name is Loretta Sotelo and I'm a second grade teacher in the district of palomino primary uh thank you for allowing me to speak today this is my ninth year in the district and although I had to take a substantial pay cut coming from Cartwright School District I was glad I made the switch from the beginning of my tenure here I enjoyed the community feel between the families and the staff at Paradise I also treasured the way in which the board cabinet certified and classified employees work together to solve problems I felt as though each group was heard and valued and that we were all on the same team that's why I was surprised by the recent decision to adjust and agreed upon
127solution of the to the shortfall of funds in the district the task force that devoted hours and hours of their own time to try to solve the issues in Equitable in an equitable way was not shown the respect they deserved decisions were made without a final discussion and that's not how it typically typically is done in our district to add to that the cuts that are being proposed are counterproductive and in my opinion will cause further harm to the population of teachers and students who have struggled to stay afloat for the last several years including myself many teachers have recently left the profession because they didn't feel valued and heard and others are hanging on by a thread with the challenges that the last few years have brought students have astronomical rates of anxiety and
128depression and are struggling to survive the pressures of school and home the supports provided by the SEL Specialists and the instructional coaches are essential for the overall success for our overall success if Thai test scores and a school scores are the ultimate goal we can't achieve it without the positions to allow that allow it to happen please return to the table with all parties to ensure that students and teachers are shown the respect they deserve thank you after Tammy Newell will be Kelly Washburn Linda Williamson and Tracy Ronka governing board Dr Bales cabinet thank you my name is Tammy Newell and I'm in my 16th year as a teacher in the district the last three years as an instructional coach tonight our director of assessment Gene copen shared the wonderful news of our school letter
129gradeds following the social emotional and academic impact of covid on PV teachers and students coupled with the confirmation of learning loss identified of the nation's report card the increase in school letter grades is worthy of Celebration but I ask you to reflect on a question how do you think we got there in Paradise Valley's new strategic plan goal two staff experience States the following goals one create professional learning opportunities that support individual growth develop and Implement mentorship programs for all staff provide opportunities for staff to meaningfully collaborate with one another to serve the needs of every learner I ask you to live up to that goal job embedded professional development such as the student-centered coaching model employed by Paradise Valley meet these strategic plan goals our coaches are Master Teachers who have the ability to
130Foster the trust necessary to support classroom teachers coaches provide personalized learning opportunities that meet teachers needs in real time provide targeted non-evaluative instructional guidance collaborate on tier one instruction tier 2 intervention research-based instructional strategies and data informed instructional decision making to meet the needs of all Learners in a particular teacher's classroom the economic policy Institute list teacher quality as the most important school-related factor influencing student achievement yet due to the teacher shortage Arizona has forced lower teacher qualification standards Paradise Valley is no exception thank you good evening my name is Kelly Washburn and I am the SEL specialist in PBIS coordinator at North Canyon High School first I would like to direct those in cabinet leadership I am feeling very undervalued and unsupported by the budget revision that was released on Tuesday I feel a
131lot of responsibility is being placed on employees families students and our community for the misplacement of funds I ask all of you in cabinet if you are holding yourself to the same accountability that you are placing on to others second I would like to address how our students will be affected by this change all of us are able to move forward and find new jobs but the children in this community will be the ones who are impacted the most more responsibility will be placed on teachers administrators nurses Etc leading to less support and more students to end up falling through the cracks so far this school year I have had over 100 minor behavior incident conferences facilitated close to 50 mediations checking on a regular basis with 40 to 50 students have referred or provided
132outside resources to over 20 students and families responded to over 15 crisis calls and provided immediate intervention to a student after they had self-tar had self-tarmed in a campus bathroom we do not want to believe these situations like these are occurring at school but it is our reality how do we move forward as a district knowing we are intentionally taking away from our students one of the only positive emotional and behavior supports available I've dealt with my own personal mental health struggles which makes this more than just a job to me it is a passion working with the students at North Canyon High School gives my life a greater purpose I hope you understand the severity this will have on all of our district as a whole and all of the students you will ultimately
133be disserviceing by making this change thank you for listening good evening president mentora the board Dr Bales and the cabinet my name is Linda Williamson and I am the SEL at Shadow Mountain High School who wonderfully performed tonight and um I'm here to appeal to the board to keep the position of SEL not only for myself but for my fellow colleagues um I have I I have the passion to help young people combat trauma and it's becoming increasingly evident from my experience with working at teros for seven years prior to here I'm trying to reunify families um who have experienced substance use and the the age of my clients were getting younger and younger and I left a very high paying position to come to work as an SEO to help mitigate people coming to
134those groups and later in life after two and a half years at Channel Mountain it is clear that my job has significant value and I've helped pave the way for hundreds of students to experience academic and personal success let me give you some examples of my responsibilities I provide an individual a much needed support to students and staff and parents I created three groups conquer the mountain Shadow Mountain senior transition and collaborated with Shea Middle School for an 8th grade transition group Champion team Thrive if a faculty Mentor support program for struggling students with one-on-one intervention for students support a three-person counseling staff by coordinating efforts to assist students with personal trauma however I often take on the students without the need to involve the counselor this has proved to be extremely no well anyway
135our final speakers after Miss Bronco will be Henry Hill Stacy Alejo and Kevin Alla VM good evening Madam president governing board members and cabinet my name is Tracy ranko and currently I'm just a kindergarten teacher at Sunset Canyon and every day is a brand new experience it's awesome I love it and as I'm proceeding through this current year I am being supported by SEL specialist and our instructional coach and to my dismay I found out and my great concern that these positions being considered for elimination I couldn't imagine doing this without that team behind me um with the amount of new teachers are coming in and experienced teachers are moving into new grades I I'm unsure how they're going to be able to make all those ends meet um we absolutely need the support from
136these SEL Specialists and the instructional coach to teach kids with fidelity I do believe the theory presented by Abraham Maslow is true that before individuals meet their full potential they have to they need to satisfy the needs these series of needs that they have to have in order to learn our efforts to close these gaps due to recent challenges due to sickness quarantine distance learning are slow due to social emotional events and presented by children who are readjusting to social norms in the learning environment of the SEO specialist and the instructional coaches have been instrumental in helping my students learn and adjust to learning in this environment and becoming Learners that are um going to impact them for the rest of their academic career why would we not examine retaining SEO positions instructional coaches um
137I don't know why we wouldn't re-examine that and increasing the class size by one and why would we not give such a large percentage of pay increased administrative positions when everybody is struggling to I just it it's just on my it's just I don't know and I won't say anything more about uh the SEO and the coaches I think the previous speakers and uh participants have spoken very eloquently about that and I fully support them and what they're doing I want to thank the work of the budget committee um it's had to have been extremely hard and I really applaud that they had people that put in that work to come up these recommendations that were not easy we're all in a very difficult place with this and it really does lie with this group
138here to make a decision and I appreciate the fact that you listen to our input on this but I do want you to look at this if think about if you'd known that the 14 million wasn't there eight months ago when you're in your budget process I recommend you look at it through that lens of where you can everything I believe what you saw from your budget committee took that approach I really don't want you to go to the point that what's the easy way and frankly what's the politically expedient way to address this it's not fair the district it's not fair to the students and I don't think it upholds what you signed up to do by being part of this group so I really do ask for you to go back look at
139those recommendations and you may even find something different to do if you put yourself in the mindset in the lens of what would I have done had I known this at the beginning of the process thank you okay hello um all right good evening governing board Dr Bales president Ventura and cabinet I'm Stacy Alejo I work over at Greenway Middle School this is my seventh year I am going to talk about the importance of the SEL Specialists and the instructional coaches tonight even though my colleagues back there did speak so eloquently about them um to start as you guys know I was here about a month ago talking about how great Greenway has been and how much improvement we have made and I know our admin is great our teachers are great but a lot
140of the reason why we are where we are is because of the people working behind the scenes um and when we received the news that the positions were being cut hearts on our campus were severely heavy that day they were shattered um our instructional coaches and our uh especially or sorry SEL Specialists Empower our teachers day in and day out and they support our students and staff in every way possible um our instructional coaches work with our new teachers like you've met earlier tonight um and they have worked with them from the beginning to the end they want they model lessons for them and then they stay with them throughout the entire day to make sure they go well they support our staff in new curriculum and work with them on engagement strategies they model
141lessons like I said and they run PDS for our staff and answer questions at all hours of the day and all hours of the night when you need help figuring out how to organize your classroom you call the instructional coach when you need to figure out how to scaffold and differentiate a complex lesson you call the instructional coach again during the day and at night and they answer um and if we want teachers to stay in this District we need them we need them terribly and while I we have our coaches supporting our teachers we also have our SEL Specialists supporting our students students who may not have coping skills to deal with difficult situations students who would rather like they said before not live another day thank you um hello my name is Kevin
142alavian and I'm here with my three kids to support our teachers and the CL program um thank you thank you um we we lost um their mom last year due to cancer and um uh in the last year the ACL staff has been just wonderful the the skills they've learned this this period has been just um that's how I learned about it really and so to um just yesterday I learned that it's it's being taken away it kind of makes me a little quite angry actually because there's so many benefits to this um I'm sorry I didn't really prepare for this but um but but when we look at mental health you look at um some teens the Teen um drug abuse what's the cause of that it's because they didn't know how to deal
143with their emotions maybe they're self-medicating drugs um major problem in college at high schools it's because of self-medicating they need more help than that that's where the ACL people come in um school shootings okay all these kids that have mental problems everybody blames guns or not guns whatever but everybody agrees mental health is a problem well um how much money do we spend on these active shooter drills why not put that into mental health instead prevent the problem and and and so and so I'm a business owner I understand the importance of of budgeting and and sometimes I've done this you try to save a money there it cost you a hundred dollars later on and that's exactly what you guys are doing except it's not dollars is somebody's life it's some kid who dies
144because of alcohol abuse drug abuse suicide active shooter other people's like that and and you guys have to think that you take that away it will happen it will happen to someone because they didn't get that care when they needed it and you have to look in the mirror and live with it okay those were all of our comments for this evening thank you for everyone who took time to come and speak to us and let us know what is on your mind and and what you're feeling I appreciate being able to hear from all of you tonight and now we will open the discussion among the board Mr Laney all right I'll lead it off with some comments and then we can get into our discussion uh so I appreciate all of the emails
145the online comments uh that everybody sent to the board we do see those I spent yesterday and today reading them all so I really appreciate those um decisions are never taken lightly by the board or discussions over the last year I've been able to see the thought and passion each member has put into their decisions and know that although we can disagree that all of us have tried to do our best when weighing choices on how they will impact are how they will impact our first responsibility our first responsibilities to every child in our school district my thoughts on this matter do not come lightly many of you may not know this but my wife's brother has Down syndrome so when my wife and I were first married I had the opportunity of watching him
146receive a standing ovation as he graduated high school I've also had conversations with one of my best friends about this issue his son has autism and has benefited greatly in early childhood from these types of programs not only that but I know that this will probably affect my own child as as she is in a class with not only a new teacher but a teacher who is new to the U.S um and in my tours to the school district when I was meeting with the principals many of you may know many of you were told a little bit of my history as a kid and to be quite Frank I personally would have rather spent time with an SEL specialist than getting paddled in kindergarten first grade second grade and then borderline abuse in fifth
147grade which you can ask me about that story later on um so I just wanted to lead off the discussion with my comments and I know we had a lot of questions so I'll leave it to the next person we can start our questions Mrs bacon yes I don't I don't I have a lot of questions but I I do want to do kind of um what Mr Laney did with the level set of of my background and my thoughts um on both of these positions so my background is in social work I have a master's degree in social work um I like one of our speakers um had to console a student body when a student was murdered as a social worker I understand the importance of SEL you can ask anyone sitting on
148this board or anyone who knows me and I will say the single thing that we should have done since I sat on this board is have a social worker at least one in every single site I also mentioned that I helped run the override and one of the promises that we made and that many of us talked to our neighbors family members constituents we knocked on doors and we said we wouldn't raise class sizes if the override passed I don't know where the answer is I hope there is some compromise that we can come to but we have had success in override and bond Passage because we have lived up to the promises that we made that's this is an issue there's not a way to cut this money this this much money without going
149into salaries and benefits I don't know the answer yet but I want you to know that neither of these options is something I want do I want more students in classrooms no do I want to lose SEL and instructional coaches no I don't my responsibility is to make sure that we balance a budget how do we do that and that is a that is a great question and the committee looked at that so they came to us with these two major ways to cut um budget shortfall neither one is good so we've got to figure out what we can live with and I don't know that anyone can we're going to lose teachers if we increase class size we're going to lose teachers if we do this we we do know that we do know
150that so if you if if you think you have I know that this looks easy and it looks like we're just sitting up here making Cavalier decisions we are not doing that this is a discussion this is not a time to make a decision we're not here to make a decision about this we're here to have a conversation and I think that's what I want to do the other thing I want to say is I know that when when mistakes are made in classrooms by students we try we we ask them how can you solve this problem that's what we're trying to do a mistake was made you're right how do we solve it we can't go back and change it we have to move forward so those are just some baseline comments that I
151wanted to just put out there before we had a lot of questions Nancy oh Mrs case I'm sorry that's fine um this is my 18th year on the board I've been through extreme heavy Cuts before it is the worst part of being on the board it's absolutely yucky um if you know my background at all reading is my thing and making sure children can read well is what I'm all about and that they love to read back in I don't mean when I was 08 or something of that nature we had to cut reading Specialists I felt like I was cutting off an arm it was the horrible thing that we went through cuts are never ever easy none of these are something I want to do I don't I don't want to add have
152more students in the classroom I teach in the summer time the more kids there are the less individual help they can have getting rid of SEL or instructional coaches it's a horrible thing to do we are listening to you um I do have a question for Mrs bear Bergen um could you explain in more detail what a shortfall means currently the shortfall that we're experiencing it if it's not resolved it's what's considered a structural deficit meaning that at some point we run out of funds to meet the current expenditures that we have we'd be put in an over expenditure situation and that's not allowed in school districts nor nor good budgeting practice Okay so and let me just kind of go through this process and you tell me if I have the correct understanding okay
153an error was made in the the way the 14 million I'm going to round numbers the 14 million was put into this system it it wasn't Shenanigans nobody was absconding money there was nothing of that nature am I correct do I correct okay so it was put into the wrong category because there was money coming in through covet Esser funds Etc it's my understanding we took that 14 million and gave pay raises to to staff is that correct i i a lot of it went to that instead of making Cuts we were able to do some things of that nature even we were able to do some programs to help and continue with sels and Etc I mean though that money was used for the benefit of students and and now we have to go
154back and take care of the accounting part of it and we have to make cuts it wasn't like we were I don't know wasting it on on good things I mean we're spending that money on good projects right and so now we have to pay the price for having that money spent in the past yeah I think the simplest way to phrase that is that the district should have reduced 14 million dollars out of his budgeted expenditures for the 21-22 school year because that's we we no longer had that ESG money to support those expenditures okay but nothing nefarious my point of this is nothing the fair nefarious happened with those funds that's correct it was put into a wrong category that's correct okay I wanted that to be better understood thank you thank you
155Mrs Greenberg thank you um usually I prepare something I am not very good at off the cuff so that's why you usually see me reading and I didn't because I did want to hear what people had to say and I want to thank everybody who came to address us and give us um your input and your personal experiences and your feedback and that is important and I want to thank anybody who took the time to contact us because we did we received a number of letters and I know like my colleagues up here we read every single one of them um and you know I speak last and I go hey I'm just gonna you know mirror what somebody said but but every I think Mrs bacon said it you know the bet I mean
156this is not easy um I've also served on this board as long as Mrs case and when the recession hit this was an annual process we went through um as did every school district because funding from the state dried up essentially you know I mean what was considered essential one year had to go the next year I mean it's it's it has [Music] um it has not it's never easy and none of it is a good solution there's literally nothing that is a good solution in my opinion because everything we do is for the benefit of our students and our staff and our families and our community so there is never an ideal solution and no matter what we come up with I I can't imagine that somebody is not going to be affected and
157and considerate you know a negative um but we will work through this um to figure out what we can do uh we will work through it to figure out a solution that best supports our strategic plan I believe going forward um and use that to guide us [Music] um you know I don't want to sound pollyanish but maybe I will be um I do believe now that the elections are over um I have more hope going into the new year that perhaps um on a state level with new leadership in the executive branch and you know new new uh state senators and representatives that perhaps the value of public education will increase and we will see that in a bottom line that may also help this process [Music] um but I I will stop there
158because I do think we all have questions that we need to get answered and um I will turn it back to Mrs Maturo um I do want to say uh for people who are unaware of how the board works sometimes there's there's questions and um people may feel that you know the board has come tonight with a conclusion and I can assure you that none of us have a conclusion in mind there is this is this is an a no-win situation that we are in um and for many of you in the room know this but many people are not aware that you know we have not talked about this we are not able to speak about this we can't ask questions and and run these ideas around um behind the scenes we're not tonight
159we are hearing from each other we have heard from you we're going to be hearing um who we're going to be directing questions to Mrs Bergen and to Dr Bales but we are hearing this information and asking questions and hearing each other and being able to work with our colleagues right now this is you are watching the work happen this is not some foregone conclusion this is not something that's been decided so you're going to to watch the process so as we are asking questions and hearing things this is genuine questions that we have and genuine information that we need to be able to discuss with our colleagues tonight and and to hear um ideas flowing and and come to some sort of idea of what the next step can be so this is not
160we're not just up here you know as a show with the foregone conclusion this is not what's happening you are watching this happen you are watching what we what our questions are and how we're interacting with our colleagues this evening um Mrs Bergen I do want to ask a question because I think this is something that I I asked a while ago and just want clarification that so when the employee stabilization Grant came in about 14 million dollars way back when um and that was you know a pot of money that uh some expenses had to be moved over to match the pot of money um and were used for that one time when that didn't move back it wasn't like there was this magical 14 million dollars and we thought oh wow we have
161this extra 14 million dollars what should we do with it because at the time there was additional funding coming in from federal state Esser Grant so it wasn't this dollar for dollar where it matched up and you said oh not you you weren't even here sorry uh where someone would look and say how come this isn't matching up because this doesn't match from last year because the numbers are constantly changing and in the way that we are budgeted by the state we are in a current year budget so our budget constantly we never know what our budget was for the year until the year is already over and at that point in time so the Numbers Never it's not what you can do in your home and realize that in your home budget where you
162can see where the money came in and where it went out as quickly because of all this extra money was coming in at the same time and so we thought there was additional funding we're able to add programs that would support our students at the time um and we're adding those programs but we thought looking at it it was new money coming in not realizing that there was this money left over here overhanging am I correct that the new funding was coming in at the same time you have a correct understanding okay so I just wanted to let that be known that it wasn't that you know you could just look on paper and realize and that we were um fortunate that you know in coming through and when it was found and we started
163working on it immediately when the when that was noticed and that what happened uh before you were here and you were able to work with your staff to kind of identify that so thank you um Mrs bacon do you are you I don't want to interrupt you okay um so I do have a couple of questions I guess the first one is what else can we do to make up these resources for example could we change our health coverage health insurance coverage we we could not pay as much or we could make employees pay and we contribute nothing um there there are things that we can do but remembering that 85 to 87 percent of our m o budget is salaries and benefits there's not a lot of wiggle room outside of that so there
164are other things we could do and the committee looked at 40 plus 70-ish 70 plus items to start with and took a bunch of them off the table because they're not things they wanted to see anyone wanted to see so I agree with Mrs Greenberg I I wonder if we're going to see a friendlier budget cycle um given uh Governor Hobbes and and some of the legislators that were elected to represent Paradise Valley Schools I've said that before and it's never really come through so I really hesitate to say that but I am hopeful that that will happen um the other thing that occurs to me is when we talk about mtss we talk about using data to inform instruction and I wonder if we should be using data to inform these decisions so where
165is um you know where thank you that one person who thought that was good really appreciate that thank you um but I wonder if we should be looking at the schools that have significant discipline issues maybe we don't get rid of those sels or maybe we look at schools that um you know it is it's ironic and no one up here wants to talk about this and not cabinet doesn't want this either it is terrible that we're having this conversation when we just celebrated such good news and we know that every single person contributed to that there's no doubt about that um but but can we figure out a way that works um and and split the difference so we have two big items that we can look at how do we take those and
166do what's best for each site instead of a blanket um this is what we're going to do so that's just one thing that I wanted to mention um I also wonder um you know we really didn't have any parents represented on that committee and it wasn't necessarily appropriate to have them on that committee because it really was around employee issues and and could have had could have provided maybe some information that I I don't know but I do wonder if we should be talking about two parents about what they would prefer um in addition so but the the the solution isn't neither right the solution is one or the other um and we can and maybe we do that so I think we I personally think we need more feedback um but that that is
167where I stand at this moment Mr Laney thank you so you're suggesting a hybrid type system yeah I'm suggesting not a one-size-fits all yeah okay I I like that idea too um when I I actually talked with um an administrator today who um this would this would affect her school uh immediately she would you lose both the instructional coach and the SEL specialist where other schools it wouldn't it wouldn't affect him at all and so I would like to well I shouldn't say it that way gotcha um it wouldn't affect him as much where other schools the increasing class size which another word for that is Letting Go teachers or removing classes so whole classes getting rid of those it would affect those schools a lot more and so I agree with what you're saying
168would like to see some type of hybrid approach where we can help the schools that need the most and work with the class sizes on the schools that can work with it so my um my thought with the I I mean there is room so some schools are you know right up to the Limit with their class sizes and some wouldn't see a change in the class size if they were to increase it by one because there isn't one student to do so however if the idea were let's work with the schools and increase class size on paper for the ones that it wouldn't change then there wouldn't be a reduction in staff which would be a zero reduction on the budget line item which wouldn't fix the problem so there's that concern there too
169and also something to think about with the increase in class size again on top of the idea that this was talked about in the override of something that wouldn't be touched um additionally when when people think in concept well it's just one more person what you know one more student what difference will it make however what this actually looks like is the uh when a whole classroom is collapsed and now those classrooms have you know eight more students and it technically still fits within what the what that limit is because you raised it by one but each of the class sizes now has gone up by eight so it's not just one more student because in order for it to actually uh to financially work out to the the dollar amount that we're seeing on
170paper it's the expectation that that many classes classrooms would be collapsed and all of those students would be redistributed among those um the additional classrooms so it wouldn't look like on paper it would be one but in actuality something we saw at the beginning of the year when classrooms were collapsed and parents were concerned because the class sizes increased dramatically and yet those were all still under the limit of what we currently have and so I just want that to be out there that so uh Mr Laney yeah the one is just an average and as we know with averages they don't represent the real story if anybody's taken statistics so yeah that makes makes perfectly good sense Mrs case um I appreciate my fellow board members comments um this is an ongoing discussion we
171have not made up our minds I appreciate hearing from all of you and your comments and this is just really really hard there's nothing easy about it I I've gone through this process and year after year would make Cuts one year and the next year would have to make more cuts and we could as was mentioned we were hopeful that perhaps education will receive more money but we can't base budgets on hope it has to be more concrete and so we have to make hard choices even though we don't want to do that it there is no easy answers in this process any any shape or form and so um and it's my understanding that as the task force was working on it they would put things in and off the list because it is
172very very hard to know what to do so um and I have to say also one of the goals since I've been on the board was to get back to smaller class sizes and that process has taken years to do would laying off things moving here and that is what we were told by the community that they wanted they wanted smaller class sizes and so that goal of having that happen was it a year ago or two years ago that we finally got the class size lowered I can't remember was that it's been several years ago that we've been whittling it down it changed over time it oh it changed over time okay so we might have started at 29 got it to 28. so it it was a process to get to where we
173used to have class sizes so none of this is easy but some of you might not have known the history of the class sizes this has been an ongoing goal of this board that we would make class sizes back to what they were at one time before we had all the budgets cuts it's very hard Mr Laney I have a couple hypothetical questions so if if this were to go as is as is right now how many SEL and instructional coaches would we still have we still have them there's 13.5 uh that would still remain that are s or funded or title funded okay yeah yes for next year I mean that's what we talk about all right so my other question and remember this is just we're having a discussion here so the um
174does this change anything in regards to IEPs uh in terms of well we don't write people into IEPs but Dr Corson maybe can help me here we write in service minutes and so you know as a team our uh our teachers our support staff are all part of providing those service members let me rephrase the question would this deny any kid that wants to have an IEP or needs an IEP the ability to have one it will not okay that was that was what I wanted to know Mrs Greenberg um this may not be a very popular question um the pro as we heard at least you know a couple times um this evening um there there was I'm not really sure of a great way to put this um there was a concern that
175teachers would lose their voice that this was outside of the bargaining agreement process or that this was that this was um dismissing the bargaining agreement um process that we have so I don't know if it's Mrs Bergen or Dr Holmes or Dr Bales can you uh um answer is this a did we violate the bargaining agreement or I mean what what hap I would can can I get the question answered please thank you yeah Mrs Greenberg the process that was established was not a interest-based negotiations process we typically do that in the spring we do those individually with the groups this process was a budget task force it was a did not all of the representatives were together on the same work group and they were charged with the two goals that we talked about
176from the very beginning the task was established to number one address the budget shortfall that was established in early June as as the process we communicated that to all the employees we communicated to the board the process and and I've shared that you know in in other circles at the end of June when the governor and the legislature adopted a budget that provided additional revenues that had not been planned then we asked that the budget task force to address the second goal so the first goal was to address the shortfall the second goal was to provide additional compensation even though the additional competence even the additional compensation from the budget is almost equivalent right to the shortfall and that that would certainly be one option no cuts and it's all there then we're not doing
177what was the intent of the additional revenue and that's pass along compensation to the employees that's why they were charged with the second part of this was to come up with some ongoing recommendations so that we could provide additional compensation one of the things that we are struggling with is filling vacancies in in all areas and um this gives us an opportunity to provide additional compensation to be more competitive it's only putting a dent in it it is not enough but to do nothing also raises concerns because we have a community that says what are you doing and we are not in charge of Revenue the revenue is determined by the state legislature it comes to us on our average daily membership by kids we're in charge of our expenditures and that's what we have
178to do is we have to find a way in using Mr Hill's lens from two years ago right what would we have done we would have made the reductions at that time in Staffing and or compensation to be commensurate with our expenditures and our budget in planning for 2122 so the same conversation we're having now about what would we have reduced would have happened should have happened in that budgeting planning process for 2122 before miss American came on board before I was a superintendent those are the conversations and so we would have had the same conversation then as we are now because we had expenditures at that time that we needed to adjust and we and we hadn't done it then this is the same process we would have used now okay so the the
179so we're about to enter into are interested our IBN and and start the budgeting process for 22 23 24. I'm messing yours up 23 24. and what this is saying is we're making recommendations that this is already that I mean we're not we're not cutting positions for this year these are these are positions that are recommended for the 23-24 school year uh all of the recommendations most of them from the task force the revisions from cabinet are all effective for July 1st those are equivalent so you have the additional revenue of 14 million dollars right we're using about eight almost nine million of it to cover the the ongoing Revenue expenditures and then there's five million that is through the cuts for ongoing that's how it kind of balances all right but that that 5
180million this year is is the one-time money the ongoing Cuts beginning July 1st is how we solve it moving forward it creates a Level Playing Field going into bargaining with with a surplus with the cabinet recommendations with a surplus of about 122 thousand dollars versus going into the bargaining spring session with either the entire 14 million dollars to identify in a short period of time and or to identify fi uh 950 000 deficit that hadn't didn't meet goal from the original recommendations from the task force so either way if we make decisions in the spring about letting people go changing positions because remember 85 percent of our budget is in salary and benefits so any reductions in programs and services is people that's what we provide we provide people so when we have those conversations
181in the spring through bargaining you we run against timelines right we don't know what the state legislature is going to give us we we have timelines in statute to notify people about continuing contracts and if they don't know what their assignment is going to be the following year then they get nervous they look elsewhere this decision gives people notice all right there's it brings closure to the deficit it brings closure to the compensation for this year it starts in the spring when we go to bargaining in the spring we have a whole host of things uh there's always an interest there's interest in new positions there's interest in um in changing language for one thing or another so there's always opportunity for us to talk about bringing new positions back bringing positions back that have
182been cut adding positions that's always been a part of the the process through bargaining but this does not touch anything for this this does not touch anything for the current year current calendar school year correct thank you um just to uh piggyback on that because that's something Dr Bales said I was going to to bring up is the idea that um starting over the process for the year either you know with the hundred thousand dollars positive or you know in the other case it was the 950 000 or the 14 million dollars going in is that time crunch and the the idea of not wanting if there's a way to let people know earlier in the process so they can plan to find different positions plan plan for those things now because there's 14 million
183dollars of cuts coming um so if there's if there's time on our side right now to allow those people to know what's coming down as opposed to learning at the at the end of bargaining what's falling out um that we trying to give people more time is something that we that is important as well and so I'm glad you brought that up um that if you just push this all down the road into bargaining then there's no no reconciliation we don't know how much there's there's the um funding we want to be able to give to the employees now um and and so all of those and having that timeline is and giving people more time and and able to find different positions within the district um is an important piece of this that I
184think we do need to consider Mrs case um what you were talking about was what I wanted to talk about but I wanted to approach a little bit different angle um bargaining normally starts in January as I recall but we have to is that correct Dr Bells yeah end of January 1st of February end of January we typically start at that time when we start to have a better idea of the numbers that are going to be available to us right those it isn't until end of February that we sometimes have numbers about our increased cost for medical insurance dental vision all those kinds of things that would be either employee or employer related costs we don't have an idea of what the legislature right now we're capped at two percent uh so that we
185can we can hope that with you know 8 to 13 inflation in in this County that they'll go beyond that but that's somebody that also's crystal ball not mine so there's just so many unknowns already going into this spring session as I said earlier you know this is difficult because we don't have a crystal ball right it's unclear we know we're going to have increased expenses and so it's this is just the beginning unfortunately if I put a number to it you know and Ms Bergen won't let me do that because you know she doesn't want to be held to it but it's possible that we start in January talking about another seven or eight million dollars in deficits because of the increased cost that we anticipate goods and services are going to go up
186we haven't had those because of contracts with us they haven't been passing along all those things over the last year to us um you know the the contracts that are renewed for custodial services are going to go up um we anticipate those things uh and we can't uh we can't put an exact number on it until much later in the spring so while we can hope that the legislature can give us more money we may not know until June 30th and we have statutory requirements to issue contracts to certified employees by May that's why we always come to the back to the board and and do our contract work at the end of April we issue contracts 15-day requirement to get it back Etc so we have all these timelines and you know we can
187eliminate administrative raises there's two hundred thousand dollars that's the two percent it doesn't get us to seven million dollars it's it's doesn't even get us close we have to find Avenues and and it will be if it's not these positions there'll be somebody else's positions right and they will be here talking to you also um so the reason that we need to go quickly is because of those timelines instead of taking two or three more months to do this we have to come to some conclusions now because there's decisions that have to be made in the future that build on one on top of another I I think it would be helpful going into bargaining having some of these decisions made but it's not a requirement if that's not what you want us to do
188we don't have to okay and we won't be able to provide the additional compensation if it's not resolved this year okay so that's a question I have if we're if this is resolved we can give the compensation but the cuts don't happen until next year correct so they're two different budget years that we're talking about the compensation and the cuts so why do we have to do one and not the other why do we have to do both I don't think we have to do both we don't have to do both we we have to come up with a plan for the ongoing Cuts right but we can roll that into bargaining if we've been okay we can yeah and so that number will be five million dollars right right and so we would start
189as a deficit in bargaining with five million dollars plus the other that I just gave that very ugly picture for so it is possible it is possible and if it's more palatable do we consider it if if the if employees don't think they were that this this process was honored which I don't agree or disagree with I I'm just making an observation um is it is it better that we send it to bargaining and the chain they're not gonna be any changes the same the same things are going to be on the cutting block that's not going to change it's going to go into bargaining and you're you will in fact as Mrs matura said have less notice to find other positions or find a position in the district so it's we will not be
190able to make our current bargain language has assignments to teachers by February something or whatever tentative assignments we won't be able to make that so people will be left unknown okay that's and that's okay if that's okay then okay but I I don't know um that we that we fully know what employees would want in terms of that so that's just something I think we have to think about that um that's that's all I that's it thank you so by having the budget task force we were trying to preempt not having anything to bargain is that kind of I mean I mean we I mean right to have negative and bargaining because it's not a win-win situation this is just really really hard and and and and so we're trying to make some decisions now
191so that we have a little bit of choice in the future but none of it there's negatives no matter how you cut it the the other thing that you know I I have been thinking a lot about because of my the fact that I'm going off the board um very shortly is we're making a decision that another board is going to have to live with and in a different majority board so um that that's something that I keep thinking about too is this should we be making this decision right now I mean the pros are they have a fresh start and don't have to you know come on with this um and the pros are we're experienced board members the cons are they have to live with our decision and that's not easy um and
192the cons are they're not they don't have experience making these decisions and there's a lot of information you have to learn as a brand new board member so to be up to speed as quickly as they would need to be I think would be difficult it would have been difficult for me it would be difficult for any human being so those are just some other thoughts that I am having like what's the right thing in terms of that I'm going to call in Mr Laney in one moment but I do want to take a moment just to remind something that Dr Bales did point out was that any because the decisions are going into effect the following year that doing something timely now allows it still leaves everything on the table and bargaining that anything
193that is um any notice or anything that has changed now to in order to balance in order to allow bargaining to go in with not the entire shortfall um if it moves forward with that kind of balanced that things can be added back in and bargaining and different things can come off depending on what wants to be added back so it it allows those changes to continue to happen but without hampering with that huge dollar amount to start with and giving to people time and allowing some of those things to that traditionally happen with being able to give some of those Staffing things in February um that are traditional so that's just another Wrinkle in there that I was thinking about um but Mr Laney had a comment or question or thoughts yeah um I
194personally don't like putting off for tomorrow what you can do today even if it's tough and um you know and I do fully understand what it's like to come to this position as my onboarding was the day of my first meeting and then I'm sitting up here and trying to make decisions you know and and not knowing much at all so I like the idea of taking care of it this year so that they can have the ability to have time to learn and come on and take care of things because I know that they will have some choices and decisions to make too because things keep changing Mrs Greenberg so basically what we're saying is that no matter what the recommendation you make is made and say we proceed with the process and uh
195final recommendations are are presented to US December 1st for approval and let's say we approve them so what we're saying is it is our intent for 23 24 that this is what we're doing whatever this is whether it's what's here whether different recommendations and then bargaining starts and we realize okay we can add something back in what would that look like do you need to come back to the board to say that or does um you know does it just happen through bargaining so if we don't resolve uh the issue night now and I'm I'm saying we do I'm saying whatever whatever comes before us December 1 whatever it is and it sounds more like maybe it's a hybrid of whatever but but we make a decision so that bargaining starts with positive balance or
196you know a smaller balance than than by doing whatever um and we we achieve that by doing a b and c and then bargaining starts and C wants to get put back on the table whatever C is does the fact that we have approved taking C off the table can it go back on the table in bargaining I believe it can um I think that we just have to expect that the bargaining teams have to identify a funding source for that okay they just that there has to be a funding source and it doesn't necess have to wait for the the whole compensation package to be approved at the end of April or such like that but if it's if I mean if there's an identifiable uh funding source for that that we have then
197then whatever C is can be added into that barging process Ms Bergen if you want to comment am I making you nervous with anything no okay we're all making her nervous yes thank you I mean I I guess you know given that answer um the request is to prioritize where we things Cuts should be made is that really what we're doing because if we can then turn to bargaining and Barney can say wait we want that back and there's no problem with that if as you said a funding source can be found to put that back then these are recommendations now ultimately it's likely they would happen um unless the legislature is more beneficent than it's been um but taking them off the table means they can doesn't mean they can't go back and bargaining
198we make adjustments to our you know our allocations our our priorities every year okay and so yes it could come back in through the bargaining process the the challenge will be and I don't want to mislead anybody the challenge will be you know what revenues are going to be available in the spring right because there will be these increased expenses and expenditures already and then if you want to add something back in there's a cost to that so that it's possible but we just have to make sure that we understand all of the factors related to what we want to bring back how we're going to pay for it okay okay thank you Mrs case um from the eminol we pay for all of our water and we pay for our electricity and all of
199those things are going up and so that comes out of the same pot as salaries and benefits are are those a lot of the biggest expenses of that yeah the the largest expense is employee salaries followed by benefits followed by our utility costs utilities and we are looking in just rough estimates we are projecting about a five percent increase in utilities don't know if that's going to be accurate or not but that's kind of what we're using for initial budget purposes correct we had about a three percent last year and five percent is equal to about how many dollars I think it's 555 000 I have a picture in my head so I think that's what it is and that's a line on the budget preparation for 23 24. and all of this is with
200decrease in like we've we've we've heard from there's a decrease in birth rates which goes to a decrease in students which goes into less money so we're all we're dealing with a declining enrollment on a continuous basis with no hope down the road so that's one of those parts you know to the budgeting process right we did not plan for uh the 268 students that they demographer thought that we would lose this year and yet we were down this year yep we're down around 800 around 800 okay so that's a really significant hit to the current year budget because we won we were going to do zero budgeting uh on zero Decline and so we we thought we'll take the risk I think you know but then it came in 800 kids fewer we're a
201thousand kids fewer today than we were a year ago we are 3 000 kids fewer than we were three years ago and if we in good stewards of the taxpayer dollars plan for the demographer's projection of 550 that's 505 505 students fewer next year that 500 in five students is equal to how much money right now we're looking at around three and a half million three and a half million dollars so that's part of going into the budgeting process for next year if we account for five percent in utilities increases we account for the 505 students fewer next year if we do projections on you know what might there be and in terms of medical insurance costs do we pass those along or do we not we've been blessed to not pass along costs on
202the medical side for the employee only plan I believe Dr harms if you can remind me the employee only plan on the medical side hasn't changed in three years okay there has been changes for those that have dependents and things like that of course but for the employee only that's almost unheard of I don't think any of us could predict that that will happen again especially with everything else that's going about around us so whatever dollars that we think we're going to have in the spring to plan for the fall is already a growing deficit um Dr Bells as to be good stewards of the the taxpayers money I don't think we can push us down the road because we're going to have to make some hard decisions and as Mr Laney said when he
203came onto the board brand new the learning curve was pretty steep and now he's gone through lots of different meetings and learned things that new people won't have um I don't think we can push it down the road and I don't know how we're going to acquire quickly the information we need to make the decision so I I don't know how that can happen where we can get some feedback quickly that's accurate we heard some amazing emotional stories tonight that were very valid but we're talking we have to look at the money situation it's just difficult Mrs case I appreciate those comments because I I share the sentiment for those of you that know me you know that I deeply care about the emotional health of our students and staff I've dedicated the last eight
204years to my volunteer time my wife and I make serious donations to teen Lifeline I've served on the board I deeply care about our kids emotional health and safety these are not easy decisions and whatever decisions we make will touch a person somehow some way in our district whatever positions we end up making a decision on we'll touch somebody unfortunately that's not easy and the work of the task force was not easy you know all of us there's what 35 or 45 people still left in the room if all of us could come up with our recommendation if you could wave a one there'd probably be 45 different decisions in here and there was a lot of work done to get to that point 70 plus UniQue Ideas started in their work and and only
205one that we eliminated from the recommendations as a Cabinet was the class size recommendation we added two back please don't interrupt we added two back that had been discussed at Deep length and were along in that process but that that's water under the bridge in the end they came to consensus on on the recommendation we've added other options for the board to discuss that's what we're here for tonight your comments your questions your suggestions will influence what we recommend in the future I would be my recommendation to not do the class size and it would be my recommendation to come back to you with something to to put us in a better position so the playing field is not millions of dollars in debt but I'm certainly welcome and and and optimistic that if you
206want us to take it all back to bargaining that's fine too it's going to be much more difficult on those bargaining teams to make decisions early in the process that that don't give people enough notice about next year but that is still an option Mr Laney would it be possible for us to have another executive session at the next meeting to discuss this in detail or with more information or anything like that I'm just it's possible okay Mrs mature I haven't really heard from you if I could about so what sorts of when we talked about data decisions when uh Mrs bacon brought that up what sorts of additional information could we have gathered uh before our next meeting or if there needs to be an additional study session or something like that um where
207uh more data could be provided to us prior to the next meeting is that something that is possible uh and and what sorts of information could we be gathering that would help um with this because I I don't like the idea of having to push this this on and not having even though some of these changes could could come pushing off all of the decisions until you know April and May and having no idea when we know for sure there is going to be many cuts to come up with with this I think is it's putting everyone then on at risk and unnoticed uh in order for us to to meet the timeline so I don't like the idea of kicking it down that far um uh and saddling the new board uh with when
208they don't have all of the information and I think that's a hard way to start that off as difficult as the decision is for us now but I would like to know again what sorts of information can we have gathered to get some of those data points that uh Mrs bacon was talking about and if it might be possible to do some sort of study session or something if that's um something that others may think is uh would be appropriate I I do have a question time wise we only have one board meeting in December correct and to get a study session in before then with the holiday it's really tough and then there's PV pulse and there's this you know we've got a lot coming up this student voice um but I'm is it
209possible to have a second board meeting in December I know Julie I'm sorry you're just shaking your head I I just don't know how it's possible to get it in if you I was looking at the calendar a few minutes ago and it because it's December 1st it makes it really tough and so could we call a special board meeting I I don't know how we're going to get around it we'd have to have a study session and I I just don't know how you can gather data and not I don't know I'm staying in town the whole time so I'll meet any day okay and here's the thing that you know it's it is tough but it's our job so we're gonna have to do it I mean um even I who don't really
210want to go beyond December 1st at the meeting I'm willing to do that um I mean I think there's you know to me it seems like we need some information around um discipline you know what what is happening at the sites I think we need some information around achievement you know and and and scores um you know where we are with our mimics um that might be helpful information for us to have some of that was already planned to be shared at the December 8th study session that's already scheduled right so that that could be good we could have a meeting after that I think there are things that we can do that will help us better understand I would like to see some sort of survey go to parents and employees um so that
211we have that data that we can take care of I mean we just said we're getting rid of Hanover though so I don't I don't know what the survey is going to look like but oh next year okay that's not till next year they're not available okay um but I think there's a couple of data points that we can that we can pull and really dedicate that we're all going to be here December 8th we can we've made that commitment so maybe we can look at that as a time to really dig into some of this information I to be a little bit on the facetious side I wish there was a money tree I don't know how else to say it I agree but that's what we need sorry Mrs Greenberg yeah I I
212I I agree with what Mrs bacon was saying I think another data point that would be helpful is you know we're looking at these line items as just numbers and is there any way to give us more information I mean obviously um the the sense of increasing uh class size was going to produce a reduction of of 29 ftes where I mean how how was that figured where um and uh and where what are the numbers based on because you know I know we make presumptions about enrollment and class sizes and this is one of those because it's for the coming year so if we can just get a little bit more of an idea because I you know I think at least three of us have talked about is there a hybrid solution that
213we can come up with and I think those data points are important to know when you say a hybrid solution are you suggesting that some class sizes increase potentially I mean I I got specific class sizes but you know do we do we put those to oh I'm not gonna even say it out loud one um set of of students as opposed to every so we can differentiate our staffing right now the schools that have been previously labeled D have additional Staffing um and we haven't changed those right because they still need the support so we can't just walk away just because they demonstrated Improvement one year right right so um but from a staffing perspective it's important that we have consistent language that applies this is the equal we're trying to do some Equitable
214things but there is also an equal component because people want to know what's what's the formula you know what's why are you Staffing our school differently than another school so and I'm not suggesting that we in the same I'm not suggesting these three cage sixes increase their class size and these don't I'm I'm talking about K12 seven eight I mean k6 17. you know you asked a very good question uh both of you regarding where are those numbers and I can give you just a couple examples maybe call on Dr Holmes the 29 FTE um about 12 of them are at the elementary level and the rest are at the secondary level when you look at changing one to the class size Staffing ratio at the 712 level it has a very different impact than
215it does at the elementary changing the high school from 29 on the Staffing ratio to 30. at Pinnacle High School will eliminate four FTE approximately on 2500 kids that's 20 sections that they will then have to plan to remove from their master schedule at Paradise Valley High School on the Block schedule they probably have to remove about three FTE or such all right that's you know still for them uh 18 or 12 to 18 sections that they have to take out but at the elementary level it varies because we certainly have Staffing allocations 25 Kinder 26 27 28 29 right we have these variations that's the grade levels go up but of The Twelve that in in the Staffing model and these are just best guess projections right using current enrollment rolling those numbers up
216into projections um they vary but a couple examples that maybe I could call on Dr Holmes to give us is there can you think of an example of your elementaries when you did the model that changed that because if there were 12 classrooms I remember you telling me 12 different sites would would lose a teacher because of the Staffing model change can you give me an example what that means at that school sure I I did take uh and Miss matura actually uh was getting at that much earlier in the evening but I did take a look at what that impact would look like at a couple of our schools and the first one uh was a first grade classroom where the um the student teacher ratio went from 21 to 28. and the second
217one was a sixth grade classroom where the student teacher ratio went from 22 to 33. and you're going to get when at the secondary level when we do allocations it's on a per student basis so it's there's a spread if you will a an even distribution across the populations but at the elementary level it comes down to dividing a small number of kids at a grade level by a ratio and then rounding up so it when you do this at the elementary level in the k6 it is always going to be a dramatic raise for whichever uh whichever grade level whichever school is impacted because it is always going to be that that group that is right at the Staffing ratio and so as soon as you change it by one the now the rounding
218changes and you're you're going to have a big jump in class sizes and I appreciate this information I think this is the information that needs we need to talk about more so that there's an understanding of what this is actually going to do because when we talk about raising class size by one it's nebulous it doesn't really give us the information that we need so if we could have more information like that on uh whenever we talk about this again I think that would be incredibly helpful for us to know anyone final thoughts oh look is this case I just said to Mrs bacon from 21 students to 28 students and you said that was that was a first grade classroom that was a first grade class those are children who are trying to teach
219how to read I mean that is an enormous jump and so those are the kind of things that you you we like Mrs bacon said you say one but one doesn't mean one one means over an average and that's really hard that is why we have worked for literally years to lower the class size that is why we've worked on that and we've had parents come to us frequently and talk about when we had a combined and how what an impact it had on their children to go from a small classroom to a big it nothing of this is easy in any shape or form thank you I have one final question did we give you enough information I think we did well I'm hearing that you want to try to do something before the
220board changes I'm hearing that you don't want to address necessary class size without having more information um I'm hearing that um that you want some data on discipline and achievement and those were already scheduled for the eighth the challenge I have is helping you get the con the information the conversation and the potential action before the end of the semester but I will work be happy to work with the board president identifying some dates and times and doing this as quickly as we can for you I might also offer the opportunity um for Ms Berrigan and Dr Holmes to reconvene the budget task force group at least one more time to have maybe their additional input before we come back to like a study session for you therefore yeah may I ask if any parents
221would be included on that or not because they haven't had all the background information up until that point it's up to you I mean that it's what you tell what you want me to do with that opportunity I mean there's pros and cons and I'll be happy to you know ask a parent to sit on it it's just uh that comment was made tonight so okay I think I'll find somebody um how when you met with the budget task force throughout this did you give him the scenario that it could go from 21 to 28 and that for did they hear that that we just heard tonight um I I don't recall we had that level of specificity so I can I I would be speculating to because when you say Plus you know one
222increase that is something totally different than when you gave us the story of 21 to 28. so for example one of the things that we talked about was this notion of at the elementary levels uh one of the one of the things that I normally expect to see in a normal year when when we staff our schools the elementary level all things being equal no surprises whatever the Staffing ratio is I would expect that our average class size are around our elementary schools is approximately three below that number so if we're Staffing at 25 to 1 the average class size at kindergarten is is going to be around 22. you are going to have classrooms that are at 25. but on average is probably at 22 and you're going to have some because that's you
223know an average it's going to be lower than that so we had conversations like that um so kind of embedded in that conversation is this notion of it's there's greater variability at the elementary level but your specific question is did we did we tackle that example and we did not tackle that specific example and it it's really compounded when if you change the Staffing formula even just by one because we're already going to see a change in Staffing allocations when promoted enrollment is less at one grade grade level going into the next and the number for that new grade level is different so if if first grade is going from 26 to 27 but that kindergarten class rolling up is going to go from four sections to three sections because of that now because it's
224not just 27 it's 28 we we had the roll up because it changed with our current model but then we add one to it it's two so that's it does get complicated and it's you know it's the best we can do with what the data that we have but it's likely to see people will be shocked right as we right size our staffing to be commensurate with our enrollment and we were slow to do that over the last couple years I mean that's part of what we did with those expenditures is you know we added EV connect we staffed our schools anticipating that the 1500 kids were going to come back and they didn't and then we lost more than that so we've been reducing our staffing particularly on the certified side because that's where
225we have formulas right um we only have one principal for school doesn't matter where that school is 300 or 800 there's one principle but in the Staffing formula for certify we have bargain language that adjusts based on the size of that that class in that school so when we staffed for those in 2122 we we did provide employment for people new positions we added think about who what we added in 2122 so we added new positions we kept people because we thought the kids were going to come back they didn't and so it's been compounding right because of the declining enrollment and the things that we this the decisions that we made to do that we made you know to support our teachers and our students um it as I said earlier that we have
226to have that same conversation whether we could have done it and should have done it you know two years ago uh in that budget plan process we have to do it now but I I think I have enough information to try to pull together the information you need for a continued conversation um with the intent that there's a recommendation with this board before the end of the semester is that right okay we'll we'll try to get it scheduled all out and communicate that to all of our stakeholders uh as soon as possible okay before we adjourn I would like to remind you that our next regular board meeting as scheduled right now will be held on Thursday December 1st uh 2022 at 7 pm may I have a motion to adjourn so moved all those
227in favor please say aye aye any opposed say nay motion passes unanimously thank you