001for tonight all right um it is 7 p.m i would like to call the meeting to order and i would like to invite our shadow mountain choir students to lead us in the pledge of fly allegiance the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all 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 mature 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
002to the meeting and have time to review and consider all items prior to the agenda being adopted members of the governing border audience may ask that an item be removed from the consent agenda and brought to the floor for 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 consent agenda does any member of the audience wish to have an item removed from the consent agenda seeing none mrs bacon may have a motion to approve the meeting agenda and recommended consent agenda items g1 to g14 so moved all those in favor say aye aye any opposed say nay motion passes unanimously next on the agenda is governing board statements mrs case thank you
003we come to another a close of another school year well almost there's still finals and celebrations to be had and some more concerts but um how exciting for the students to be back in person as they chose to do and to have field trips started again i'm so excited that we can be about the business that we've been doing for so long and we're grateful for the teachers adjusting to all the things they had to adjust to this past couple years and for the students adjusting and for the parents working so hard to help their students and that's what makes it paradise when everyone works together thank you mrs bacon um yes i just wanted to say what a great experience student voice was again i know we talk about this every single time we
004have student voice but the insight the wisdom the amazing intelligence of these kids that we we meet with is just it it just makes me feel good about the future of the world and and where we're going um it is the end of a school year although we do have i know that people are counting right we have four and a half days with students and longer for our employees but i want to wish you all a great restful summer calm summer where you can take some time to recharge and thank you for everything that you have all done teachers students parents all of our staff for making this year a great year miss delaney yeah um i would like to iterate that on student voice that was fun and thank you again to pv
005high school for providing the food for us i actually toured that department not that long ago and it's incredible and then yesterday i toured the cte program so yesterday was it two days i can't remember but i toured it at uh pv high school too and some of the programs that we have are just are really awesome i want to say i also got the opportunity to attend my two of my kids performances um not that i'm speaking about my kids but that's the reason why i went to them um one of them was for north ranch they had a little band concert and that was really cute and and then horizon high school had a new pop concert where they did a lot of cool songs and if you didn't go you really missed
006something it was it was impressive let's see and yeah that's so i was grateful to go to that mr greenberg um yes student voice um was doubly interesting i guess we can say because not only did we have the students that we normally talk to we had the incoming stugo heads so we got a chance to meet um some of the the individuals will be leading their their consoles next year um and again the the conversation was amazing i had the opportunity to sit um with our contingent from shadow and uh mr appleman was taking notes the whole time there were some great ideas and i hope many of them come to fruition within shadows halls also had the opportunity to briefly attend the desert springs prep art walk and just amazing the the artwork
007was phenomenal um every student had work there there were pieces that you would have thought were you know high school and above the sixth graders did ceramic ice cream cones that truly look good enough to eat i mean they when i first saw them i'm like oh refreshments but um they were amazing and um there is i believe it's the tree of life is is how mrs chesney described it there is every student every year she's been having the students do one little piece of a picture but they don't know what it will be until she puts it together and this year there is a tree where each student got to do a leaf multi-colored ultra heat and it's it's just gorgeous and um so if you have a chance to go to desert springs
008it's on one of their walls and it's beautiful and also this week um was able to attend quail runs exhibition night where our sixth grade ib students present their projects and as mrs bacon said our world is in good hands um the the projects which the students all choose themselves they partner um with with other classmates and wide variety but they really have to dig deep into their subjects and come up with solutions and then also do a project or an activity that's that supports their uh their their overall projects so one of the groups i attended they had gone to i'm going to mangle the name so i'm not going to say it but um a support group that was supportive of what they were doing and talked about opportunities for for kids to
009do community service and it was great so busy week and it will continue we have roadrunner graduation tomorrow and i look forward to that with some of my colleagues here and for everybody good luck next week with finals and final days and graduations i'm bored i'll be at pinnacle and to everybody thank you thank you for a very full and very fulfilling year and i hope your summer is a great one it's been busy weeks around our district and it's always fun when we get to meet with the students and see what they've been doing and see what teachers have been doing in their classrooms and so student voice definitely high points the exhibition night at quail run was a lot of fun i i did enjoy learning so much from the students i mean
010they were talking about childhood poverty and reading and um they were some of the service projects have been teaching the kindergarteners about their project and so they they had to research and then present to the visiting adults and it was really fantastic to see their their what they chose and and how they presented it so that was really great i was glad to be a part of that i also got to see the desert springs prep art walk which was a lot of fun and the quail run choir concert so i got a little i got lots of arts in uh in the past couple of weeks and i do want to say a special congratulations to our seniors and their families because graduations are you know imminent so very exciting time for a lot
011of our students and a huge part of our district and thank you to everyone who helped accomplish that there's so many people that are working hard to get our students to where they need to be and so it's uh it's been a great year and thank you all and uh next on the agenda is dr bales with awards and recognitions thank you president ventura it's always a pleasure to highlight students and staff for success mr droghi will emcee our honors to steven good evening president matura governing board members dr bales members of cabinet and attendees both in person and virtual tonight we have several student and employee recognitions to share with you the arizona council of economics educators hosts the invest right student essay contest each year and this year the elementary state winner is
012from pv schools from fireside elementary please stand uh aditya kencha [Applause] next we're thrilled to announce that our sonoran sky elementary school sunrise middle school and paradise valley high school teams have placed at the top of this year's e-cyber mission competition congratulations to all these students for their hard work and dedication the arizona state winners first place from sonoran sky elementary school bella ross and sydney tan [Applause] national finalists regional finalists and arizona state winners from sunrise middle school eric wang adichia vashishta and ira parsons they're joined by their counterpart from scottsdale unified school district charles skidmore [Applause] regional finalist and arizona state winners from sunrise middle school miley witt [Applause] my page broken at a really bad spot so please also congratulate rylan mil uh emil carreck [Applause] arizona state winners first place from
013parazon or from arizona from paradise valley high school crest is riley mogallion and oliver hirth next the pv student athletes have done it again north canyon high school pinnacle high school and shadow mountain high school athletes competed and won in individual division one three and three aia track and field championships this is an amazing accomplishment that could not have been done without their dedication and hard work the aia division ii state championship and individual champions and overall winner is the north canyon high school track team [Applause] long jump and the 300 is joy moorer [Applause] triple jump and high jump gloria hussey [Applause] the 4 by 100 meter relay naomi malone [Applause] the 4 by 100 meter and 4 by 400 meter relay two students janaya hill and jada stewart [Applause] the four by 100
014meter relay three students olivia hussey ava ardazone and treasure rinaldi [Applause] division one individual champions from pinnacle high school in the 200 meter mckenna watson [Applause] in the 800 meter gabriela chiara [Applause] and from shadow mountain high school division iii individual champions 1600 meter 3200 meter and the 4x800 meter nate petzka [Applause] also in that relay jack rhea [Applause] and the 4 by 800 meter relay ryan brass and canon bolas [Applause] our next recognition is the united parent council 2022 jerry l morgan volunteer award the jerry elmar the jerry l morgan volunteer award honors volunteers who display dedication and service to their community as in as exemplified by late upc member jerry morgan this evening the presentation will be made by ms lori berman good evening president matura can you hear me um good evening
015president matura um governing board dr bale's cabinet everybody who's here in person and virtually it is absolutely my honor to once again be presenting the jerry morgan award on behalf of the united parent council jerry morgan was the exemplary volunteer a formal a former elementary school teacher she was an active upc member and published the newsletter and followed legislation long before upc played a participatory role jerry morgan unfortunately was killed in a one-car rollover accident on the family's return from a flagstaff weekend in 2005. an anonymous donor established the upfront money for the original award that we continue today the 2022 nominees are tara anderson from liberty elementary stephanie wolfie from whispering wind stephanie kapla from boulder creek linda shapiro from boulder creek margie moore from quail run crystal mccabe from eagle ridge emily newman
016from larkspur and me megan starr from sonoran sky a few notes about our winner this year's winner is what every school needs to be successful she is a true gift to the school community her commitment to the students has been invaluable she builds relationships with the kids and they love to go to work with her and talk to her it has been the greatest privilege to work with someone with such compassion towards her school she is active in the pta and volunteers at events she is willing to do anything to help our campus it would be hard to find a staff member or student on campus that has not been touched by her generosity it is my honor to present the 2022 jerry morgan award to margie moore [Applause] would you like to say a
017few words and maybe introduce your family sure um you know what doesn't everything go back to our parents right and uh my father's no longer alive but my mother's right here and um she's 90 years old [Applause] this is my husband stan moore he changes eighth grade math did i say more and um also he's just quite a hero too he took three years off a disability while uh his leg and hip was amputated uh but that didn't stop him from returning to uh to go back and challenge those eighth graders so uh and this is my granddaughter acadia and i get to see her at school all the time and i just treasure doing that and then this is my daughter eric and uh and she's always my supporter um and i especially want
018to thank mrs maynard mrs raymond and mrs ruby i mean it's you know this is so nice but i can't tell you what a joy it is for me to work with these kids i mean my husband we won't take time to you know there's other things on the agenda but i go home and tell him about the wonderful things the students do of course i can't name the students like you know i respect their privacy and but i get to be a part of a tremendous uh number of children's lives one-on-one or two on two and it's it's the greatest gift so this is so special and what a remarkable woman but you know really the the gift and the joy is really all mine i i just i love my job at quail
019run i really do i say that but i really mean that so thank you very much and thank you for the the united parents council i'm sure there's other great volunteers because i know some of them at quail run too so thank you for choosing me and i i am really grateful thank you [Laughter] [Music] thank you congratulations next we have the united parent council staff and teacher recognitions upc honors pv school teachers and staff members annually throughout through its teacher staff appreciation program for a presentation please direct your attention to the video screens hello i'm troy bales proud superintendent of pv schools this winter i read a great book entitled leading with gratitude it reminded me of the opportunity to extend my appreciation my thanks and my gratitude for the people that make this
020district amazing at this time we're going to celebrate our united parent council teachers and staff recognition and i am so thrilled to extend that thank you to those and those who nominated them because you go above and beyond and we are grateful and thankful for all that you do to support the students of pv schools congratulations hi i'm susan matura president of the paradise valley unified school district governing board whether in a classroom at a school site or across the district each of you does something every day to make the lives of our students better on behalf of the board thank you for being a part of the pv schools family and thank you for making a positive difference in our students lives hi i'm kia carrada united parent council president this year thank you
021to the amazing teachers and staff members for all you do for our students every day across this district this year the annual teacher of staff appreciation program received a record number of submissions over 700 different teachers and staff were recognized for their exemplary activities this year to all of our teachers and staff members thank you for all that you do for our students [Music] [Applause] and the last recognition this evening is our administrators leaving pv schools we'd like to acknowledge these administrators who have dedicated their careers to student success right here in paradise throughout their time in the district they have made a difference in the lives of both students and staff this evening dr bales and supervising assistant superintendents will have the honor of leading this recognition thank you mr droghi mature agony board
022members cabinet guests uh it's my pleasure to recognize these retired administrators with deep appreciation and gratitude our first honoree is dr dean ambrouse dina and i go back about a quarter of a century when i was in nhr office in a different district and hired her as a kindergarten bilingual teacher and so it's been my pleasure to watch her grow and become such a prominent and recognized national speaker author and publisher so dr corson would you help me recognize dr bruce uh it's my honor to recognize dr bruez who has served as the director of gifted education pv schools for the past 16 years during this time she has developed and supported a continuum of gifted services from preschool through high school dina's team has worked with our professional development department to provide learning opportunities
023to all teachers in the district she's also worked closely with united parent council gifted parent liaisons to great parent speaker series bringing both local and national experts to present to pb's parents at least six times a year during her tenure dr bruez has served for eight years on the national association of gifted children's board of directors as the school district representative and currently as governance secretary she has also published eight books in the field of get gifted education three of which became best sellers dina attributes her accomplishments in the field to the opportunities and experiences gained from serving our gifted learners in paradise valley we are honored tonight to be recognizing a leader in pv and in her field congratulations dr bruez dr bruce would you please stand dr bruce you have any family you'd
024like to introduce thank you dr johnsted thank you for sharing your wife with us the last 16 years next is uh dr mitch von necton dr von ekten retired mid-year and is already out of the country celebrating his retirement [Laughter] he's unfortunately not here with us tonight but a man of com deepest uh integrity that i've ever met an honest man that i've enjoyed working with in different positions over the years mr long would you help me recognize dr van necten certainly uh dr von necton devoted many years to beef to pv and we are sorry to see him go but very happy for the next chapter in his life we are so thankful for his dedication in the role as director of student support services the last few years have been tough due to
025the pandemic and dr von necton helped us help provide us guidance as we navigated in unchartered waters mitch became an expert in covet 19 mitigation strategies and processes and really stepped forward as a district leader to make sense of it all that was never in the original job description what we can appreciate about mitch is that he processes all angles stays calm and is always ready to assist in collaborating on a solution this calm and steady leadership will be missed mitch is currently traveling abroad and could not be here this evening but congratulations mitch and i hope you're having a fantastic time when you hear this our next retiree phil haradel inspired my own son to go into engineering and mr long would you help me recognize phil mr haradel's background is quite impressive as
026a navy underwater welder he welded in the ocean off the coast of iceland later he became a project manager for a civil engineering firm and built lots of roads and freeways around arizona which led him to teaching for the next 29 years those life experiences made him a natural choice to be a part of pv's crest program for five years as a teacher before becoming the crest coordinator seven years ago he has been instrumental in helping crest become the most prestigious high school stem program in the valley as well as leading district efforts to promote stem k-12 across our district congratulations on your retirement mr howard [Applause] our next honoree failed at retirement the first time and came to us and has served with very strong calm leadership as a mentor to students to teachers
027uh at greenway middle school mr long which helped me recognize mr jeff quisberg mr quisberg has a long distinguished career in education and we were blessed to have him for a short time here in pv mr quisberg was not afraid to take on the challenges of greenway middle school and worked hard to begin building a school community that is now ready to focus on school improvement mr quisberg inspects what he expects but does so in such a manner where you want to do your best to make a difference thank you mr quisberg for your dedicated service and willingness to make a difference every day in the lives of our students at greenway [Applause] and our last retiree diane silvestri has served as principal sweetwater she is one of a kind she's not here with us
028i'm sure tonight because it wouldn't be her style she they definitely broke the mold when they built a place for diane and she will definitely call a spade a spade mr long would you help me recognize diane silvestri very interesting on your selection of words i start off with miss silvestri is one of a kind diana's one of the first administrators i met when i first arrived in pv she immediately made an impression she always shares what she is thinking and will speak the truth you immediately know that she will always ensure that students are her primary focus when you visit sweetwater you know that it is a special place that does not happen by accident it begins with the leader when we were looking to combine pv connect and pv online it was diane's
029forward thinking that led to sweetwater being selected to house those programs and her branding it as a school of alternatives her positive interactions with students are incredible and amazing to observe sweetwater students would say miss silvestri can be tough but is fair that she can be direct but her directness is given with love because she wants you to be successful diane your leadership will be greatly missed and i personally will miss your sense of humor congratulations and we look forward to seeing you again soon hopefully [Applause] and those are our honorees for retirees tonight super intense comments oh no um all right next on the agenda is called the public we are about to convene call to the public which allows the public the opportunity to address the board although state law does not require
030that we hold a call to the public we have chosen to do so because we believe it is crucial for us to hear from our community about concerns and issues having said that please note that the board is here to listen call to the public is not designed to be a discussion due to arizona open meeting law the governing board cannot respond to discuss or take action on items brought up during this time however staff members may be directed to get back to you to address individual concerns additionally i want to remind you that in lieu of speaking tonight you may choose to submit written comments to the board by completing a public comment form on the district homepage all comments submitted by noon today have been provided to each governing board member and to
031the superintendent's office in advance of tonight's meeting tonight we have 19 people who have submitted comment cards prior to the start of the meeting each speaker will have 3 minutes for remarks those 12 who have asked to speak on agenda items will be recognized at the appropriate time during the meeting 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 openly and collaboratively all in attendance are expected to observe our 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 please state your first and last name when you come to the podium our first speaker is hera dembowski
032and our next speaker will be malicious warts thank you very much again my name is hera dembowski good evening president matura governing board cabinet and dr bales if i could have dr deana bria's come up please pretty please so um i am currently treasurer of united parent council which is a group that's been around for about 50 years but we wanted to highlight tonight because over the past 16 years that dr bruce has been with our district we have developed quite a partnership between her gifted education department and us over the years these programs have changed they've become more robust with her direction and we have created lots of parent presentations as was mentioned earlier so in addition to our parent and family presentations the presenters often go into the classroom work directly with some
033of our teachers and then lead workshops after school we've been so lucky to learn the latest information on teaching gifted students offering us a broader understanding of just what goes on in their heads and tools to help us parent them more effectively melissa schwartz good evening president matura governing board dr bales and dr bries i'm melissa schwartz i'm the current gifted chair for the pv united parent council and i'm the parent of two students between the two they've gone through every gifted offering you have created the cluster program honors self-contained gifted dlc and now crest in 2017 i started to assist at the gifted presentations recording and posting them to the upc facebook page this was before zoom but we realized not many people were able to attend our evening presentations because of many other
034commitments and we found very quickly we reached out and expanded to many more families both nearby districts nearby and actually across the country within a short time we found hundreds of people were finding those presentations dr bruyez over these years you've provided upc and pv parents the opportunity to expand our knowledge to learn the latest in gifted education and often most important to relieve the anxieties many new parents to gifted students go through one of the presentations she would schedule probably almost every year was they say my child is gifted now what thank you dr bries for creating an incredible gifted program nurturing so many talented teachers and providing a playground for so many gifted students to grow and expand their knowledge on behalf of united parent council and parents of thousands of gifted students
035you have touched over the years thank you for giving us access to some of the brightest presenters on interacting with gifted children we would like to present you with this award engraved on it it says in appreciation of your collaboration and advocacy for over a decade to educate the parents of gifted students in pv schools thank you so much up next is shannon leonard and next will be sandra christensen good evening my name is shannon leonard my daughter ever is a second grader at wildfire elementary i've come here tonight to speak about their behavior program called make your day two weeks ago for the very first time ever did not make her day while the details of this were actually valuable in revealing the obvious flaws of the program the effects of it on my
036daughter are what really got my attention ever had so much fear and anxiety in the aftermath of the experience her anticipation in returning to school the next day was palpable this is not like her through tears she begged me to let her stay home from school she begged me to pick her up early she implored me that she couldn't go back because now she was one of the bad kids i was so shocked and saddened by how deeply this affected her unfortunately her distress went on the next morning no matter how much i tried to explain that it was okay the feeling she had was otherwise she felt shame she felt humiliation and in her core she felt bad in this moment i saw very clearly the effects make your day has on children and
037how deeply flawed it is i'd like to ask if you're familiar with the work of brene brown she's an american research professor and is the leading authority on shame having researched it extensively for well over a decade of shame she has said we live in a world where most people still subscribe to the belief that shame is a good tool for keeping people in line not only is this wrong but it's dangerous shame is highly correlated with addiction violence aggression depression eating disorders and bullying make your day is inadvertently a shaming program it's not the program recommended by district state or national level why is wildfire still using this program our principal has suggested the program may need modifications but i respectfully disagree shaming children into submission is wrong it's outdated and there is research
038on how damaging it is why is wildfire still using a program that's negative in nature it's reminiscent of the dunce cap days which are now considered archaic and deeply misguided i spend a lot of time instilling in my daughter that energy is everything and that we get that which we focus on focus on something negative and you'll get more of it in turn focus on the positive and you'll get more of that so why are we attempting to curb negative behaviors with negatively based measures by not using a positively based program in effect the school is working against my own efforts as a parent the program has only been excuse me the program has only been reviewed once in 17 years at wildfire and those results were inconclusive there is no existing data to show
039its effectiveness programs such as this are expected to be reviewed by a school every five years as well the public nature of the program and the fact that students are allowed to chime in and raise concern on other students points is disquieting can you not see the pending disasters this might encourage especially for girls as they progress into the fifth and sixth grades i do and i we have sandra christensen and then eddie jackson my name is sandra christensen president matura governing board members dr bills and kavanaugh thank you for allowing me to speak today i would like to discuss um the horizon choir program and just the wonderful achievements they've made and what a great impact they've made on my son's life they had their first daniel pop show this past tuesday just one
040word phenomenal they had two shows back to back and those kids were jumping around and doing their stuff i mean it was just so wonderful i'm really grateful to the students teachers parents and community members that came alongside each other to make that happen miss clue and and miss winslower have developed a world class choir program and they continue to up the ante every year the choir presidents do a great job organizing massive amounts of volunteers to pull off this quality of show mr laney your your wife did an amazing job with uniforms from um elton john to queen to lady gaga it was it was wonderful the tech crew they live streamed the event and recorded the events my my elderly my son's elderly grandma was able to um try he she tried to
041log in and she couldn't so one of the presidents um miss allison feinberg was able to send her a link right away and help her just in time to see my my son perform so i was really grateful to her for that in closing one size doesn't fit all in education especially in the high schools and these two years have been really rather difficult with covid each school has its own personality where they have different programs where they shine and so i'm grateful for steam which includes the arts i'm also grateful for school choice allowing my son to participate in a nationally recognized choir program rather than the the school that he can be bussed to finally this pr this choir program shows the importance of students educators parents and community members coming alongside each
042other to really make something world-class so i'm truly grateful for this program thank you eddie jackson and then lily gresham eddie jackson good evening i want to talk about the district's lobbyist efforts that we have here and for those that don't know we have a cln committee that lobbies on behalf of the district and uh unfortunately we had to request the members the agendas and the minutes through public records requests because they're not readily available on the website through those requests we finally found out who the members were and we found out that when the meetings were because they're not published so then i tried to attend a meeting on may 10th and they left work and i came here to find out that the meeting had been cancelled so then i contacted dr bales
043and i said when's the next meeting and he informed me that this is a superintendent's committee and therefore not open subject to open meeting laws i'm not sure that's the kind of district that we want here where we're closing out parents and the public from finding out what our lobbyists are doing so i some had to submit another public records request to try to get more information and find out what our lobbyists are doing and dr bales you told me that we did not lobby as a district against the biological boys playing in girls sports my daughter is a student athlete here at pinnacle who plays softball and i learned today through that public records request that demena our lobbyist arm that we're paying for with mno funds which come out of our classroom they
044did in fact offer a position of opposition against that bill in that public records document and that bill was later signed by the governor that document was dated march 11th that and that bill was signed by the governor on march 30th i'm asking you that to open up these meetings to the public and i'm asking the board if we don't open up these meetings to the public i ask you to rescind that 200 200 000 authorization and bring all lobbyist efforts back to the board where it can be handled with transparency here at board meetings parents deserve to know that you're when you're lobbying against parents and parents rights we deserve to know that thank you we have lily gresham and then our final final speaker for call of the public will be barbara jennings
045hi my name is lily gresham and um i'd like to start by saying thank you to the board members dr bales the upc and all the teachers for all their hard work this year it's been a tough one i believe in public education that serves all students in 2019 the u.s census bureau review placed arizona in 49th place for school funding ranked 47th for least educated ranked 48th for school quality and our arizona state government spends less in education per capita than any other state and they have passed many laws that ban books and curriculum for political gain book banning i think is harmful when we ban books we compromise our kids education and development book banning is the most widespread form of censorship the primary function of education is teaching students how to think
046for themselves book banning restricts information and discourages freedom of thought children prepare for adulthood in the classroom with books and through education and all students should see representation in the books offered at school including black brown and lgbtq reading is supposed to expand ideas and thoughts not confirm our biases books are supposed to inspire us to engage in debate and exchange of ideas a truly great school curriculum and library would have material and books on the shelves that represent everyone and support everyone trying to educate themselves from homeschooling christians to lgbtq youths even books that may be disturbing or explicit should not be banned because it belittles the belittles the painful experiences of the subject matter content characters and our authors especially of historical and true events and experiences it then marginalizes those societies banning
047books is not about protecting children it's about discrimination the best way to protect our children is to educate them and you don't have to be a historian to know that the people banning books are never the good guys uh and if you're afraid that reading a book might change someone's thinking you're not afraid of books you're afraid of thinking that's all i got barbara jennings is barbara jennings here good evening my name is barbara jennings i also would like to bring up the point that mr jackson brought up in regards to our funding about a month ago at the school board meeting a teacher came up here and she said that she was just satisfied dissatisfied with her salary they weren't happy with their contract and she wasn't sure who to blame but then she
048figured out it was to blame the politicians 55 percent of our state's budget goes to education and i think it's time that we need some transparency and where all that money is going parents are teachers most loyal advocates we appreciate the good teachers and what they do for our kids it is a tough job and parents are aware of that but we also want it to go back to teaching not critical race theory not social emotional learning not the transgender dysphoria that's being pushed in our schools it is harming our children and as far as banning books i don't you know two years ago they were abandoning dr seuss where was all this uproar everybody wanted to get rid of rid of poor dr seuss because they said you know his books somehow had racial
049discrimination in them but now we have books that have rape bestiality so many inappropriate subjects and parents should have the right whether they want their children to be exposed to that it's not about banning books it's giving parents the right just to expose their kids to what they think is appropriate and some of these books are not and the ones that talk about bestiality i mean there was a girl rested in florida a high schooler for having sex with her dog and posting it online she was arrested and you wonder where the where these thoughts come from how do they get these horrible ideas well some of them may come from books books that promote bestiality in there i mean i i've been in the school district for a very long time my kids are
050very spaced apart and our schools the curriculum that is coming into this school district i don't know how any of you can be proud of it and the fact that you did give two hundred thousand dollars to lobbyists that should that's not only a slap in the face for us who pay these taxes but also to these teachers who deserve more salaries the way you guys are spending your money is not about our children it is not about educating them you guys are falling under some kind of political platform that we see what is happening on the federal level all this transgenderism these they're promoting kids to change their bodies you cannot undo that that is already done they're promoting hormone blockers and all these this is being promoted by our schools and it should
051not be next on the agenda is dr bales and superintendent comments thank you president mature the 2021 school year is winding down and we are only one week away from sending our 2022 graduates off to their next endeavor i'd like to take a moment tonight to as our mission moment recognize the culmination of high quality instruction meaningful educational opportunities dynamic learning experiences most importantly the hard work and dedication of our students whether their path is college career military or community on behalf of the board and all employees of pv schools we wish all of our graduates more than 2 300 of them very much success and congratulations to the parents of these graduates we are grateful for you choosing pv schools to serve your family thank you best wishes [Applause] our sixth 2022 national merit
052finalist advanced to the finalist stage congratulations to emma gerard and chloe rozinski from paradise valley high school aditi bechtel and michael stalford from pinnacle high school and jc coachell and boaz goldberg from shadow mountain high school congratulations more than 15 000 semi-finalists named in september 2022 have met all the requirements to advance to finalist standing in the competition and all finalists are considered for national merit scholarships next i'd like to recognize a couple interim administrators that are partying with us the next two administrators came out of retirement to help students teachers administrators and our district in two specific needs both took a break from retirement life to lead in one of the most difficult times to lead in public education as a result of a professional connection with dr holmes terry kellan served as interim
053principal at sonoran sky this year dr jarrus would you help me thank terry kellum yes as you know in the middle of june last year we were faced with a need for a principal at sonoran sky elementary school this was just three weeks prior to the school office staff returning from summer break and mrs kellen graciously put a pause on her retirement from a neighboring district to help us out she not only took on the challenge of being an interim principal in a new school district she was doing so at a school that had an entirely new office staff so they're all learning it together she quickly fell back into her principal shoes filling the many many roles that principals often do around campus and i know this from personal experience because it seems like
054every time i called her i could hear students in the background as she was covering recess duty or drop off and pick up after school so um her years of experience provided wonderful guidance and support to her administrative team helped mentor our new newly appointed principal there michelle fowler and help the school through many through several challenges this year her efforts and presents are greatly appreciated and we wish her the best as she restarts her retirement thank you terry killen [Applause] next administrator served pb schools for many years retired he has been our ace in the bullpen standing tall above all others and with his wife's permission uh craig lollum stepped in to serve as assistant principal at horizon high school mr long would you help me recognize mr lollum certainly mr lawlen was a
055great addition to the horizon team this past semester horizon has some challenges this year and craig added stability and calmness to the campus his strong leadership skills and ability to mentor those around him assisted everyone in moving forward and focusing on student needs i first met craig when he assisted us with pv online and pv connect at the beginning of the pandemic where once again his calm leadership skills were displayed pv is grateful for his willingness to just step in craig wanted to be here tonight but he and his wife are renewing their wedding vows after 40 years of marriage and his wife is taking him to an unknown location to celebrate he only knows it's a six hour drive that's love and trust uh happy anniversary craig and thank you for your continued service
056to pv yes thank you craig and kathy lastly allow me to express my deep appreciation and thanks to our community for support there were several items approved in the consent portion of tonight's agenda that will take place this summer the support of our voters provides us the opportunity to create safe engaging and technology-rich learning environments painting remodels furniture and more are all contributing to the success of our students offering them updated spaces to collaborate learn and grow so thank you pv schools voters and those are my comments for tonight president mature all right next on the agenda is items for approval dr bales president mature governing board members cabinet guest in this item we recommend a new principal for hidden hills elementary school a familiar name and face serving pv schools previously in a variety
057of roles filling in for dr holmes tonight ms berrigan would you please present i would be happy to and uh in return for this favor from dr holmes he'll be presenting the budget next month on my behalf he's just been notified dr drew davis is currently an assistant superintendent in the buckeye elementary school district with 26 years of service in public education including 19 years in various leadership positions he earned a bachelor of arts degree in secondary education from nau a master of education degree and guidance counseling from asu and a doctorate of education and educational leadership from nau if approved he will receive salary and benefits in accordance with the pvp bargaining agreement we recommend you approve dr davis to be the next principal at hidden hills elementary school may i please have a
058motion to approve the recommendation to hire dr drew davis for the position of principal of hidden hills elementary school as presented yeah i'm so moved happy to have you back any member wishing to make a comment uh all those in favor say aye aye hi welcome back any opposed saying motion passes unanimously welcome back to paradise next on the agenda is approval of asba issues for the arizona school board association legislative committee's consideration um and so we have uh what we'll do here we want to go through and our our task tonight is to come up with five top priorities and so we have the current priority issues they're kind of bullet pointed and if if members of the board have some of their top priority items we can discuss those and come up with
059the five that we want to present to asba as our top five priorities for this next year does anyone have one that they want to begin with mrs greenberg sure um i mean you know there are many i still believe that the first bullet point on maximizing state funding nationally locally competitive salaries to attract recruit and retain talented teachers and staff including support for the taz teachers academy and efforts to increase the diversity of the teaching workforce and for difficult to fill positions should always be a priority so i would certainly tag that one with a bullet okay mr laney do you have one that you had proposed to be one of our top five um yeah i have a few comments about it in uh in my in my visits with all the principals
060a few of them i i spoke with them about this and a lot of people may not realize this but uh i actually read the law and corporal punishment was still on the books so paddling which i was intimately uh familiar with as a kid and had many visits with uh principals and um and so i'm glad that that is in here that they're moving to remove that because it's not effective anyway didn't work on me and as far as what i would like to see changed on this the improved outcomes i would like that instead of to say outcomes i would rather have it say improve opportunity um or efforts instead of outcomes because that's focusing on the result in my opinion instead of the effort to get there okay do you have one
061that you would propose that one of these items would um be one that we would say pv would ask them to be saying one of the top priorities that we have as opposed to changing wording because this would be a committee of asba that would would kind of fine-tune this but they want to hear from us to know what are our top five priorities so they can know um they can kind of aggregate it with the other districts and and see what kind of rises to the tops to become the top priorities yeah local control local control okay is there a specific within local control the top one is that ensure local control and flexibility and managing funds or you can check and uh reading it the last item on it okay oppose any legislation
062that intends to lessen her curtail for local control okay all right mrs mrs case do you have any that you uh think rise to the top um yes i jill gives us sean doesn't jill gives us great financial in happenings from our district and i believe all public money spent on education should be equally described no matter the educational institution if they get public monies it should be required to have accountability and transparency and i believe students would be the best beneficiaries of that because so many times owners of a charter school can pay themselves a great salary and not pay their teachers and not put it in the classroom and so i would like that to require comparative classroom spending audits for school districts and all other institutions that expec accept public funds and
063define classroom spending as both instructional spending and student support spending and then enforce financial requirements and seek recovery of improperly received and or expended public funds by charter and private schools and organizations i think we need to know where the money is going when it says it's for education how are they really spending it because they might be doing a good job but we're not sure and they might be i i've heard some horrid stories that uh scare me and i would like to protect all children in education and not just in in school districts thank you thank you mrs case um mrs bacon do you have any that rise to the top well um they've taken most of mine already so um but the one that i think um i think a revised school
064finance formula would would be helpful in terms of providing some stability that's not dependent on the general fund but comes from other sources so that we're not constantly unsure what's going to happen it talks about capital funding needing to be consistent with the constitutional requirement of a general and uniform public school system and then um addressing the unique needs and the and the legislature did do a little bit of something on this um last year in terms of um financial needs of students serving students in poverty um and rural and remote schools but there's way more to be done with that and then funding any distance learning that's happening at 100 so those are the components of that particular item and that's something that rises to the top for me okay mrs greenberg did you
065have any others besides the one you well you haven't we haven't gone yet okay um i julie took mine the uh finance formula i also uh i i think it's very important uh under the adequately funding section on the right-hand side the third bullet down is conduct an exceptional student services cost study to ensure students including in rural or remote areas receive adequate funding for the actual cost of their services including early intervention so that was one that that i thought rose to the top another one that in the funding side on the left hand side to index uh district additional assistance funding for inflation i thought that was really important because we hit this every year where our costs go up and our um the minimum wage goes up by the inflation index and
066then yet we are capped on to two percent no matter what the index is um and there's a lot of other funding that is out of our control and yet we're capped at the two percent so seeing that would match up i believe charter schools get the full inflation rate um and are not capped at the two percent and so allowing us to have that same uh rate of inflation um i think that's an important one as well mrs greenberg did you have more okay if you want me to weigh in on one more um under the improved outcomes for all students um there's actually two i kind of like here but i i mean we're over five at this point uh towards the bottom of the first column support policy that recognizes respects and
067promotes teaching as a profession and then the top of the next column is state standardized testing shall not be used for any purpose other than a year over year measurement of student growth in the tested subject last year the committee added rethink and redefine the role and purpose of standardized testing and develop meaningful assessments and other measurable outcomes and i think in total that's a that's a good one to keep okay does anyone else have one that they didn't share yet that would rise to the top okay so right now we have one two three four five six seven eight nine ten uh we have ten right now so so we need to cut these in half so let's see what we can do to try to get down to our our top five so
068i will review what our top ten are um um page one uh we have the top two bullet points maximize state funding and then revise school finance formula further down we have index district additional assistance funding for inflation and then the exceptional student services cost study was also in that section under the next section we have the uh the last bullet point oppose any legislation that intends to lessen or contain the legal authority of local school boards including their authority to approve curriculum under improve outcomes for all students we have support policy that respects um recognizes respects and promotes teaching as a profession and then the top bullet on the second side state standardized testing used for year-over-year measurement and not uh for other purposes and then uh requiring public accountability and the taxpayer dollar
069spent we had established top bullet point established financial academic transparency for all institutions the third and fourth bullet point require comparative classroom spending for school districts and enforce financial requirements and seek recovery of improperly received public funds um any suggestions on grouping those or uh do we don't want to cut we could do you think if we just put down the the requiring public accountability and said that that is a top priority of our district and that would kind of as opposed to pulling out the bullet points because kind of seemed like all of them um were important and we just gave that overall one as opposed to pulling out a bullet point and having that count as one of ours does that seem like uh you're talking about the last section right yeah just
070making that be equal to one item no because i don't like the fifth item on there okay all right um so is there one of the uh public accountability taxpayer dollars that stands out among the three that maybe we want to say is our biggest one that we think is the biggest priority for our school district the transparency for all institutions seeking repub recovery of improperly received funds any thoughts on that oh the first one yeah we were all nodding our heads on that one and the first one okay all right so we like we like that one okay um in the uh improve outcomes for all students we had the two in there um and preserve and strengthen local control we had the top uh the last bullet point there just sticking on this
071page for now for us is there one that stands out and they improve outcomes section that maybe we think i mean we could keep both and and cut from others too any thoughts on that and well last year we liked the state standardized testing one so okay that seems stand out more than the other okay all right is there agreement on that the standardized testing to be used for growth purposes only this case um that first one the compulsory attendance age from 16 to 18. haven't the indian nations asks for that continuously i'd love to support him on that but thoughts on that i mean i i mean it is one that gets discussed every delegate assembly um and it tends to be supported um i think um i don't remember how many years ago
072maybe three or four uh adding the word compulsory sort of help because there were a lot of folks who were like well what about the kids who graduated 16 it's like well that's the point they've graduated um but compulsory yeah the the um districts on on tribal lands have tended to request this they're not the only ones um i don't see it going away so quite honestly but is that a really problem is that a problem with our district though or is it more so that's that's why i don't think we would need to support that cause i don't see that as a problem with our district unfortunately this with the the reservations and i understand why um but i don't support compulsory anything so okay so if we're looking more towards um things that
073will be that we find most uh important for our district and i think i think we've had we had one two three four in the funding so it seems to me that we should take at least a couple from there yeah um since that seems to be where we all focused on and and um so that may help us kind of okay let's move over to funding and we'll come back to the uh we'll start here okay so on the funding side we had maximized state funding for competitive salaries um revised school finance formula both julie and i had put that one on there mrs bacon and i um for dedicated funding sources and then i put out the daa funding for inflation and the exceptional student services so mine were a lot in there
074um thoughts on those president mature might just offer that the ade has engaged in an exceptional student services study so while it's not driven by the legislature it at least is started and under an uh heinfeld meech accounting firm okay great thank you so we can we can look at that as being in process so that doesn't have to be one of our top priorities so appreciate that thank you dr bales um of the other three is there one that stands out or two that stand out thoughts um i think revising the school finance formula is always a good one to support um particularly the uh trying to find a stable dedicated revenue source so i would go with that one okay seeing lots of head nods there yeah okay um i don't know how
075many years ago it was but many dr skidmore proposed we proposed a um priority of minimum starting salary of fifty thousand dollars for every single teacher in arizona minimum starting salary um we were before our time because that's now happening in some schools some states across the nation and i i think we really have to pay attention to our staff and teachers and i think that has to be one i mean i would like to see that first one um be one of ours okay do we have agreement on that okay all right we have three and i like the um on this page i like the the inflation index okay do we want that to be we had had okay so that's number four all right guys we're almost there um so now we
076have uh local control and the outcomes um the state standardized testing i think we'd landed on that one and then oppose any legislation for the local control that would oppose local control i mean i think the opposed legislation regarding local control as part of our legislative agenda so i think it would make sense to export that one okay are we all good on that one okay all right so we have our top five um i'm going to uh ask mrs greenberg on this they're asking for a rationale then behind each one um or you think that they're kind of self-explanatory because they're already in here so i think we're good on that they will understand where we're coming from so i appreciate that um we also have an opportunity to add any additional items for
077consideration if there's anything that someone feels was left off of what we were going through to pick our top five from was there anything that stood out as something additional we would like the uh the uh committee to look at mrs greenberg well i like what mrs bacon was just talking about about establishing a minimum statewide salary i think we tried it before it didn't happen but different committees we tried it we've tried it a couple of times they haven't taken it yeah but different committees now yeah that's true that's something we want to try again okay um to establish being forced to because teachers can't afford they might be forced to do that yeah so asking the state to set a minimum standard um well not not asking them to set the minimum i
078would prefer that that we name a number because they might set a minimum of 35 000 which we don't want right that's not the direction we're looking at so um and you do have to question with inflation and all the things that are happening is 50 000 enough um so maybe we say 50 000 or higher okay all right is everyone in agreement for um asking for additional items for consideration would be um let me see wording here mrs greenberg do you have uh an idea for wording your wordsmith for what we want to officially propose as that i mean we could yeah they use establish you know establish a minimum statewide salary of 50 000 or higher for all certified teachers certified staff certified certified staff annual sale all certified stuff okay so i
079have that established a minimum statewide salary of at least fifty thousand dollars for all certified staff okay and then um we can provide a rationale for uh i think it's a self-explanatory explanatory okay excellent just two words teacher shortage uh-huh all right perfect i'll do that anyone else or do you think we're good with our our list here okay all right so now i'm going to read this back um so may i please have a motion to submit the following issues to the asba legislative committee uh the top five priorities would be maximize state funding for nationally and locally competitive salaries um we have that written down the first bullet point the second bullet point revised the school finance formula and the items below that would be our number two the index district additional assistance
080for funding inflation would be our third oppose any legislation that intends to lessen or curtail legal authority of local school boards bullet point that will be our number four and our number five will be established financial and academic transparency for all institutions and individuals that accept public funds additionally with an item for consideration to establish a minimum statewide salary of at least fifty thousand dollars for all certified staff with the rationale teacher shortage can i just amend that last one 50 000 or higher 50 so instead of at least 50 000 oh no at least fine okay i didn't hear the at least i'm sorry okay all right i'm not questioning mrs greenberg's editorial i'm not sure i wrote down exactly what she said so we're hoping there um and so may i have a
081motion for that to approve that so moved okay all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed say nay any abstentions mrs matura despite the fact that i don't need to because there is no conflict i am going to abstain from voting on this issue because it is related to arizona school boards association who employs me okay motion passes with uh four eyes and one abstention uh next on the agenda is approval of delegates to arizona school boards association 2022 delegate assembly county meeting and the annual business meeting uh do we have any anyone who would like to make a nomination suggestion on who might fill either role may i nominate you mrs mature um for which one and uh i know for the delegate for the delegate okay i will accept that nomination
082unless anyone else would prefer okay and now we need a uh an alternate delegate perhaps mrs greenberg would be willing to fill that role okay all right okay so i think i have our emotion here may i please have a motion to appoint susan matura as the official delegate and ann greenberg as the alternate delegate to represent paradise valley unified school districts governing board members at the arizona school boards association 2022 delegate assembly county meeting and the annual business meeting so moved all those in favor say i i i any opposed i also will abstain on this okay we have one abstention four eyes motion passes all right next on the agenda is revisions to the family student handbook for 2022 and 2023. mr bales dr bales excuse me president mature governing board members cabinet
083and guests tonight we present the committee work for revisions to the family student handbook for 2022-2023 mr long will present for second reading and recommendation for approval good evening president mature governing board members and dr bells tonight is the second reading for you to consider changes made to the family student handbook for their 2022-23 school year the following changes have been made to the family student handbook from the first reading we have added language to the parent resources paragraph on page 17 it states most schools have social workers social emotional learning specialists and counselors available on site additionally a link was inserted into this section that will direct the user to a provided list of suggested resources that are organized organized around the following categories crisis resources emergency resources food and clothing resources and parent
084family support this link will be made active when the district's new website is launched in june an additional change was made on page 26 under the heading off-campus misconduct we have added the word unlawful to eliminate an ars conflict with those changes we recommend approval may i have a motion to approve the revisions to the family student handbook for 2022-2023 so moved any comments or questions mr laney just like to thank you for making that amendment um and making it in compliance with the law it may seem if you read it i just suggest the members of the public just go and read the law it has if you're thinking it has to do with kids possessing firearms illegally has nothing to do with that um it's more about competitions and traveling to competitions and
085stuff like that so thank you i i also would like to thank you for making the update to the resources for families and i also would like to thank the committee who worked so hard [Laughter] and now we know who one is okay all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed say nay motion passes unanimously next on the agenda is the approval of advanced placement literature list final recommendations dr bales president mature governing board members cabinet and guest tonight we present the committee work for additions to the advanced placement literature list with more than 100 books previously approved for 11th and 12th graders to read in ap classes and only a handful or so labeled sensitive tonight's list for approval is in addition to the existing list we are a public school district
086with a diverse board and even more diverse community i appreciate the work of this committee to provide parents information about the literature in these ap classes based on the board's input last month tonight's second reading and recommendation for approval honor a parent's right to choose whether their ap students can read a book labeled sensitive dr course and his team will present for second reading and recommendation for approval good evening president mature governing board members dr bales cabinet and guests tonight is the second reading the literature list recommendations for advanced placement our facilitators for this committee jennifer young the secondary english language arts curriculum specialist and jenny jarrus assistant principal at paradise valley high school will be updating the governing board on guidelines for the literature list and reviewing the committee's recommendations for your consideration and
087approval good evening tonight we will be reviewing updates made to the literature list guidelines based on input that was provided by the governing board at our first reading in addition we will review our recommendations for titles to be added to the district literature list for advanced placement courses as a reminder ap courses are college-level courses that are taught in 11th and 12th grades these novels are not intended to be used for other courses as they are designated only for ap students however ap teachers may choose to teach novels from the current 11th or 12th grade literature lists our purpose tonight is to share with the governing board a second reading of recommendations from the advanced placement literature list committee along with some updates regarding literature list guidelines based on input from the first reading our
088presentation will include updated guidelines for sensitive titles best practices for teaching more than one piece of literature a review of the committee's recommendations and communication plans with stakeholders moving forward in response to the input provided by the governing board at the first reading we updated our guidelines for sensitive titles and we would like to share those updated guidelines with you today these guidelines would allow families to choose between a sensitive title or an alternate title at the beginning of the year this provides teachers the necessary time to prepare a rich learning experience for all students the following guidelines will be implemented next year all titles whether they contain sensitive content or not will be listed on the syllabus at the beginning of the year if there is a sensitive title on the list an alternate
089title will also be listed as another option the sensitive content letter will be completed and included with the syllabus this provides parents with an explanation of the sensitive content in the novel and how it relates to the curriculum students and or parents will have the opportunity to choose between the sensitive title and the alternate title that is not sensitive this will allow the teacher time to plan for instruction the teacher will obtain a parent signature on the syllabus indicating their choice between the sensitive title or the alternate title the teacher will make the principal aware of the sensitive title being taught and the teacher will review the teacher resources on the sensitive title in response to the governing board's interest in instructional approaches we have also compiled a list of best practices that teachers are
090using when they teach more than one piece of literature at a time teachers are dedicated to teaching equivalent literary objectives no matter what novel students are reading there are several ways in which teachers can accomplish this including literature circles discussion of common themes literary elements and character traits compare and contrast of theme characters and setting webquests related to historical context skill lessons tied to standards project-based learning and or inquiry writing prompts that are tied to literary elements or themes these best practices allow students to have a meaningful and rigorous learning experience regardless of their novel choice the following titles are being recommended for the ap literature list as green if a teacher chooses to teach one of these novels it will be listed on the syllabus at the beginning of the year and the parent
091will sign the syllabus although these titles are not marked as sensitive a parent still has the option to opt out if any require of any required title including those that are green these titles include unbroken by laura hillenbrand all the light we cannot see by anthony doerr the sun also rises by ernest hemingway slaughterhouse five by kurt vonnegut the curious incident of the dog in the night time by mark hadden in addition there are four titles that are being recommended for the ap literature list as sensitive if a teacher chooses to teach one of these titles it will be listed on the syllabus at the beginning of the year and teach teachers will also include a letter notifi notifying families of the sensitive content in addition the teacher will offer an alternate title and obtain
092a parent signature indicating the novel choice these titles include snow falling on cedars by david guterson in cold blood by truman capote one flew over the cuckoo's nest by ken kesey and the handmaid's tale by margaret atwood we will communicate the updated guidelines and the approved advanced placement list to all stakeholders to ensure clarity for teachers and students and transparency for our families by doing the following we will post the updated guidelines and advanced placement list on both the public website and the internal literature list website for teachers we will share the uplated updated guidelines and advanced placement list with reading specialists department leaders and principals at the next two meetings we will highlight the updates to the literature list in publications shared with administrators and teachers we will include the literature list information and
093guidelines in the new english language arts teacher training and we will inform the committee members of the updated guidelines and the governing board approved list at this time we'll take any questions that you have um i have a question while you're up here uh i wanted to thank you for listening for adding the syllabus requirement um that was something you know that had come out of a discussion last time so i appreciate that being on there because that gives parents time to review each of the titles they can read the book or look at reviews there can if a parent signs off and signs that sensitive letter and chooses one way or the other but if they change their mind throughout the year and and after doing more research decide they want to go one
094way or the other would there be an opportunity to reach out to the teacher and change their indication absolutely yeah i mean teachers are always flexible and willing to work with parents and you know if they if a parent reached out to request that i'm certain that that would not be a problem at all okay all right and i think i need to go to public comment cards before the next i apologize for that oversight we do have a public comment we have 12 public comment cards um and the first will each person will have three minutes to speak and the first one is toby fox the next speaker will be alison failberg good evening and thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening my name is toby fox i'm a community member a
095pv school alumni and a parent in the community um i have a son who's currently completing his junior year at horizon and twin daughters who are finishing up eighth grade at desert shadows middle school as maya's teacher appreciation month it seems somewhat appropriate to come before the board and express both my deep gratitude and appreciation for the teachers administrators and support staff who show up every day and work to ensure that all kids in this district receive an educational experience that is rich and prepares them for the future and an experience that also includes reading the last few years have been difficult for everyone and this year is no exception when covid hit in may 2020 my daughters were finishing up sixth grade and i can't help but wonder what their middle school experience would
096have been like without the specter of covid but what i also know is that it was their teachers who never wavered when it came to supporting and educating them this year i've watched my son more from a teenager into a young man on the precipice of adulthood this is someone who's taking the lessons from the classroom and deciding for himself who he wants to be and what it means to be a leader and a citizen certainly this is something we've nurtured in him as parents but his confidence and courage of conviction has been made stronger because of his teachers and the curriculum i urge you to please approve the ap reading list reading opens minds to ideas in the world around us getting lost in a book is one of the greatest gifts we can
097give our children and one of the greatest joys a person can experience with that said i want to say thank you to the teachers and staff at horizon desert shadows middle school and throughout the district who show up every day for kids and their families we see you we appreciate you and we support you and most importantly we're grateful for what you do every day okay next is allison failberg [Applause] good evening ladies and gentlemen thank you for the opportunity to speak thank you for all that you do for our public schools i'm a parent of three open enrolled students in the pvusd i have one graduating senior one rising junior at horizon and one rising eighth grader at desert shadows middle school all three of my kids have participated in honors in this district
098since the fourth grade this coming fall my older daughter will be attending a prestigious four-year mid-sized private university this school is so competitive that it only admitted eight percent of applicants for the class of 2026. to say that my daughter is prepared for college has been prepared for college by this district and our amazing teachers is putting it mildly we are very happy with the education our kids are receiving particularly the critical thinking offered in the advanced placement level courses i'm here tonight to ask the board to approve the literature list as presented by the literature review committee i trust our teachers the parents the administrators in their guidance and the implementation for my kids education thank you next we have anita perkle and that will be nora feinberg no and then norah feinberg sorry
099hi good evening thank you for giving me this moment to speak i wanted to first as um off of some of the other parents my deepest gratitude for the educators and in this district this night is typically held for celebration of accomplishments and um i've always actually enjoyed coming to the end of the year meeting here so um oftentimes our our educators wake before we start our day and so i'd like to give support in the ap reading list i think it is extremely important to take into consideration the ap college board gives our teachers and educators the framework to prepare our kids for the next step and they have also warned many um districts and schools that they would likely pull these certifications that you guys work so hard to have with the ap
100and college board and that impact could impact our own very schools if we think of removing certain books or sensitive books our schools can lose their designation and we wouldn't want that because that would mean a removal of that designation for college and universities that would impact our students and um so that's that impacts our students and and that list is there so that colleges and universities can verify those transcripts and in the schools that in in the schools so i am here to support the ap uh list and i hope that you do too [Applause] okay we have nora feinberg and then hera dembrowski hello my name is norah feinberg thank you all for um having us letting us have an open forum um my name is nora i already said my name is
101norah feinberg sorry about that i'm a senior at horizon high school and i'm in the choir program um i'm very grateful for 12 years in the district i started at sonoran sky then went to desert shadows and now i'm at horizon i have taken eight ap classes and eight ap tests um thanks to college board and the amazing opportunities that i've been granted from horizon high school the past two years um three years um and just i i'm very grateful for all of that time especially my time in ap literature this year i've had um the opportunity to work with an incredible teacher um and learned a lot about complex literature in order to prepare me for the ap test and i'm just going to read you the prompt from the liter so there's three
102essay prompts from the ap literature test the third one being the literary analysis which is an open-ended question that prompts you and allows you to choose any work of literary complexity so i'm going to read you the prompt that was this year's because it's been released by college board many works of literature feature characters who accept or reject a hierarchical structure this hierarchy may be social economic political or familiar familial or it may apply to some other kind of structure either you from your own reading or from the list below choose a work of fiction in which a liter in which a character responds to in to a hierarchy in some significant way then in a well-written essay analyze how the character's response to the hierarchy contributes to an interpretation of the work as a
103whole do not merely summarize the plot so this prompts us to choose a work of literary complexity and how are ap students supposed to succeed on the ap test without having options of literary complexity complexity does not derive from simply having books that are not at least bit controversial we need to have a little bit of controversiality because otherwise we won't have conversation and we will not earn the complexity point and will basically be marked with a zero on that entire essay and you're setting up the the students in our district for failure by not allowing us to have the access to these books in schools so i really i plead that for the next years i won't be here but please allow these books to remain on the literature list thank you so much
104for your time [Applause] hera dembowski and then will be uh tony pantera good evening again i'm not sure how i can follow nora um after that it was amazing but i have three kids in the district i have a freshman at pv and i have twin girls at mountain trail and as one of the two parents who are on the ap lit list committee i wanted to share my perspective on the process that we undertook and the books that we discussed the books were submitted by our abt ap teachers they were all done so with intention i believe of the 11 books that we were submitted and the nine books that we have asked to be added to the ap lit list it will provide a more robust list of options for teachers to use
105we had ap lit teachers from our high schools including pv online administrators and two parents it was inspiring to listen to the teachers speak about these books it not only made me want to encourage my son to take ap lit but it made me want to re-read the books that i didn't get a chance to read as a member of the committee and i actually read three books one that's on the green list one that's on the sensitive list and one that we didn't pass on for me the book was more impactful listening to these scholars speak about them and that is what i keep in my head that i want for my kids i heard earlier tonight that our world is in good hands because our kids are in pv allowing our teachers to
106teach the highest ability of the kids is one reason that we can say that there could not be a better place than in one of our ap lit classrooms with one of our ap lit teachers to discuss and critically think about difficult yet important pieces of literature that's what i want for my kids and that is what i hope that all parents want for theirs thank you [Applause] next is tony pantera and then carrie baker uh good evening president matura cabinet uh board members glad to be here tony pantera um i've lived and taught in this district since 1978. okay although um pretty soon i'll just be living in the district because i'm retiring this year this is my i'm out of here but um my children went to this uh school district my grandson
107was uh enrolled in the schools here and i've always been very proud of it i'm looking at the mission statement of this district to cultivate world-class learners okay well for world-class learners you have to be aware of the world um a broad and diverse type of literature that you're exposed to helps you do that i don't want to talk about the literature list so much as the process that it came by the work of this wonderful committee which had teachers administrators and parents on it okay reflects the willingness of this district to call on everybody the diverse population within our district to find out what we really want to have here that's why i know i'm leaving this district in great hands i very much support this list and the way it's been done and
108put together thank you very much for your time [Applause] carrie baker and then sandra christensen good evening president matura dr bales governing board members and cabinet members tonight i come to you to talk about parental rights and parent choice as a mother of former high school students current high school students and soon to be or not in my kindergartners case but future high school students i want to make sure my rights and choices as a parent are protected in other words i want my students to have options in their classes i want diversity in literature i don't want options taken away that could provide valuable teaching experiences when we limit what our children are exposed to we limit their possibilities the more children learn and the more educated they are the more open-minded they are
109i have had two high school students one in honors english and one in ap english every time they read a book a permission slip has to be signed i had a choice on whether my student could read the assigned books i always gave permission i trust that experienced teachers are making the best choices for my sons because of the books that my kids have been encouraged to read i have compassionate understanding and open-minded children by reading about experiences that are different from theirs and yes sometimes uncomfortable experiences my children have a deeper understanding of a range of human experiences this makes them better adults with the guidance of a teacher they are able to talk about and digest difficult topics topics they have access to anyway via social media television tv i'd rather have the
110exposure in their classroom where they can talk about it safely and openly than in their rooms alone on their phone late at night i'm here to ask the board to approve the ap literature list as presented again when we limit books we limit choices when we limit choices we limit our own growth as individuals and then we limit our capacity to be empathetic and to be better citizens parents and friends thank you [Applause] sandra christensen and then nicole klutwick my name is sandra christensen i'm a mom of a high schooler and i went to all the ap lit meetings and i was very impressed with the ap lit teachers the positives that i took away from that it was a wonderful process as miss dembowski described i too was grateful to the ap teachers they
111were thoughtful and i could see that they really love literature and teaching the rubric was excellent um i was grateful for the list lit the tongue twister list lit guide guidelines update and the syllabus update that was presented earlier today as well the items discussed in the committee that i was a little bit concerned with was the argument that since kids have access to inappropriate material on the internet which i don't really feel is valid it's very different from a teacher giving a required reading assignment so i you know that was discussed in committee um one clarification that i did want to do was the committee is looking at recommend and not recommend we're not they're not looking at banning books this has nothing to do with banning books it's just books that are that
112we as a district would be proud of um transparency and parental choice is important i read two of the books i read hemingway's sin also rises and at woods handmaid's tale as a woman of faith it was really difficult to get through the second book um i with the violence cruelty and graphic sex that was described in detail it was i felt it was very anti-bible anti-person of faith discusses suicide as a way to escape the life of a sex slave in chapter 16 there was an excerpt that said my red skirt is hyped up to my waist though no higher below the commander is what is he is the lower part of my body i do not say making love because it's not what he's doing copulating two would be inaccurate because it would
113imply two people and only one is involved nor does rape cover it nothing is going on here that i haven't signed up for that wasn't a lot of choice but there was some then a few sentences later serena joy grips my hands as if she not i was being as if she finds it pleasurable or painful as the commander with a regular two-four marching stroke on and on like happy a trap dripping um while i'm not for banning books i am for following district policy and reading materials that are age-appropriate even for ap um please approve books in our district that can be proud of and um put the handmaid's tell on the do not recommend list thank you nicole klutwick and then teresa smith i didn't sign up for this um i actually signed
114up to talk about something earlier so um you'll notice my number doesn't say this um but since you invited me i always have something to say um so i actually listened to the person who spoke from the trafficking um center she comes here most meetings and talks about trafficking i don't think she's ever explained what trafficking is in our in our situation i always thought it meant that like the kid was kidnapped and they're gone and i'm like how is that possible like i don't know anybody whose kids how can we be the biggest in the nation and i don't know anybody who had a kid get kidnapped and she explained to me no no the pimp doesn't want to take care of them the kid lives at home fed by the parents stays at
115home and the pimp just you know makes friendly gets them to be in a sexual relationship and then start selling them i talked to my son and i asked him she made a point that you know when she was talking to kids who were in college how many of them had to read sexually explicit information as part of their freshman sophomore junior years my son went to horizon he graduated last year he just finished his first year at asu he took a number of ap courses got fives on a number of exams but i don't think in english um and i asked him how many how many things did they make you read that were sexually explicit and he said literally zero there was zero zero at the college level that they ask me to
116read that's sexually explicit so i just want to just point out that i feel like we're conflating complexity literary depth high level of education with sexually explicit material they're not one in the same it's not required i was going to hold my tongue on this but i find it very odd that when we look at our device information on what kids are allowed to have on their device they're not allowed to have sexually explicit material but we're going to assign it i get the parents have the choice i'm all for choice i'm not for book banning i just find it inconsistent thank you apologies for that mix up there uh ms klutwick uh theresa smith and then mandy neat good evening my name is teresa smith and i'm an ap english teacher at pinnacle high
117school i'm finishing my 21st year with the district and in that time i've had the honor of serving on several district committees including several curriculum adoptions both for regular level and for ap level courses and the literature list i understand the process of the committees that our committees undertake and the good work that they do over months and sometimes years as was the case with the literature list that i was on thank you pandemic i want to thank you president matura dr bales governing board and cabinet for allowing our district to consider so many important so much of our important business through the committee process this process involves all stakeholders as you know cabinet administrators teachers parents and community members i appreciate the work our committees do our literature list committees spend months reviewing and
118talking about a variety of books that are suggested for inclusion in our classes at all levels not all titles that are considered and reviewed and discussed during that process are recommended to you for approval those that do come to you with the committee recommend recommendation have been thoroughly vetted by stakeholders and thank you for trusting their judgment and i ask that you accept the recommendation of all the titles of our comm that our committee has presented to you for inclusion in our college-level 11th and 12th grade ap courses and just in response to some of the comments to say recommend or not recommend is to say these are for recommend for approval or not recommend for approval and if you don't recommend it for approval it's not approved and that is banning a book from
119our classrooms thank you man mandy neat and then our final speaker will be shannon wood thank you for this opportunity my name is mandy neat and i have currently moved my family from the tallest sun school district to the paradise valley school district because of your reputation and the opportunities allotted to kids in the classroom i have incoming junior this year and i have twins that are incoming into their ninth year i ask you as board members and thank you for your time to respect the work that your committees do to take away your own personal biases and remember when you were in high school when an adult said no you can't what did you want to do you wanted to do it these books are an option we're not mandating any child or parent
120to approve it we're providing options our committees have worked endless hours in debated long hours to say this is what will engage a child these are options that will get them to read so please forget your background forget your biases and think and be empathetic to the children in the classroom that are doing the assignments and remember you're not their parents their parents will make the decisions for that child i appreciate your time and i look forward to spending the next four years with you shannon wood my name is shannon wood and i'm an honors english 12 ap capstone and next year ap literature and composition teacher at pinnacle i was also a part of the ap lit list committee this year and i read and reviewed all the light we cannot see and the
121handmaid's tale i'm also the parent of two pinnacle high school graduates and one future pinnacle high school graduate since i've worked in some capacity with all grade levels literally from kindergarten all the way through 12th grade i feel i have a pretty good grasp of the developmental capabilities of most students without hesitation i would say the texts i reviewed would not be suitable for elementary middle or even lower level high school students whether honors or regular but also without hesitation i would say these texts would be suitable for 12th grade ap lit students ap lit is the highest level english class available at the high school level and mimics a college level lit course the students who voluntarily enroll in this course are cognitively intellectually and emotionally advanced they are ready to move beyond the
122concepts they explored in lower level literature like where the red fern grows to kill a mockingbird and lord of the flies all great literature no doubt but way too simple for preparation for an ap lit test based on conversations these kids have had in my presence they want to be challenged by complex figurative devices that deepen their comprehension by flawed characters that mirror the people they encounter in real life and yes by controversial topics that are relevant and current and will prepare them for college and the real world some of the texts in question have been labeled sensitive by the ap lit committee the district organized group of parents administrators and teachers that followed the process outlined by the district when a text is labeled sensitive it means that parents or students can opt out
123i 100 agree that parents should be able to request an alternate text for their own students but i do not think they should be able to make that decision for all students parent choice is parent choice so please don't take away my choice or the choice of other parents because some parents don't want these texts included on the list please approve this list thank you [Applause] okay we'll have the motion first and then we'll open for questions and discussion may please have a motion to approve the advanced placement literature list final recommendations as presented so moved okay anyone have questions or comments we have the team here mrs case i have a question of where jen young there i have a question for you um so you went through how it could be taught various
124things in one classroom it and but i have some other kind of how it's to be done so i'm assuming some of the schools are going to have summer reading so this list would the syllabus would go out soon for their approval for summer reading or how does that work how does how does it work when these books are read and and etc um well summer reading for this year has already gone out but for next year um just like they do on the syllabus teachers would be required to list the novels for summer reading on the summer reading project and get a signature so same rules would apply as they do for the syllabus is did that answer your question okay but okay let me ask it another way does the summer reading is
125it just by itself and then the syllabus is a separate thing how does that work yes so because the summary reading is generally for the next level course so at the beginning of the year they would get the syllabus for the current course summer reading comes at the end of the year and it's for the next level course right but then they would also get the syllabus for the next level course when they come back to school so the the syllabus would be given to them in the fall in august and that would include this is what we're going to cover this year and at pv where my children attended it it turned into block scheduling so it it would be for the block or whatever for the semester right for the semester okay so
126um so the schools that are still doing summer reading and i've had seven children go through summer reading programs in our district and i've tried to get them to read their books and outline everything it was the biggest pain in my neck i mean it was hard but i finally i paid them and that worked um i resorted to anything i'm back anyway i did um i said if you get it done by july 15th you get this what you want i know i know i would do everything but um i uh and i've seen all the lists of like the books most of the books that you have were um uh on the listed as recommended novels and it listed how many times it was used on ap prompts etc i i have all
127those things and it looks like most of these lists that you brought to the reading committee had been used as prompts at some point in time over the last 20 years or whatever i i've seen all those lists um but so is that a lot of why these books were used to go as how did you i believe that's why the ap teachers um submitted them yes they were submitted because they had been used on ap tests that's correct yeah okay the two non-fiction books um have not been used on the ap tests but those were submitted more for the um the ap lang course as opposed to the ap literature course okay unbroken and in cold blood oh those were the two that were okay um so i've gone through so many different literature
128lists uh from many many places like the top ap english literature reading list are these still applicable applicable because they said the top 10 if you want to do well on ap preparedness they said invisible man great expectations this is number one these are the top ten withering heights heart of darkness king lear and it goes on and on uh crime and punishment portrait of an artist jane eyre the adventures of huckleberry finn and moby dick those are the top ten and by the ap the top ap english literature reading list if that you need to have read those books to be prepared that's what the list said so i don't know i'm sure there's different lists from different people so i'm just curious where your list was obtained uh from the college board from
129the college board okay so this would be okay so i'm sure there's different lists from different people promoting different things okay um so [Music] these books could be used for summer reading the ones that are being recommended and they could be used during the school year in the future summer reading because you've said that it's already been assigned for this year is that correct that's correct they could be used for classroom or summer reading um yes okay um i'll have some more questions but i'm gonna let somebody else okay thank you anyone have a question or comment mrs bacon um my question is really is how will the teachers get this information and you talked about it a little bit um in terms of some written information that they're going to get but will there
130be conversations with the ap um literature teachers to kind of really go over the specific changes that we've made to the process because i think that's one of the most challenging things is getting the information out to people um so they know right what they have to do and and what the expectations are yeah so will there be other ways to get that done yeah um well that's why you know i mentioned multiple different ways that we're trying to make sure we communicate the information so that it gets out there to everyone my direct contact is with principals and idl's or department leaders and so then i rely on the principles and idls to talk to the advanced placement teachers we also have a literature list website for teachers um that's shared with everyone multiple
131times throughout the year and it's you know available to teachers at any time and then i want to make sure i'm not forgetting anything i'm also meeting with new teachers at the beginning of the school year not sure if there are any advanced placement new teachers but i want to go over the lit list guidelines with them um at any rate because the guidelines about getting the syllabus signed in that won't only apply to ap those will apply to everyone um and then um [Music] i believe that's everything including um informing committee members and almost all of our ap teachers um were on the committee so mr laney yeah thank you so one of my goals when i put in my application to be on this board was to reduce contention in the district and
132that's been one of my over writing goals and the way i'm trying to do that is through communication and transparency and just talking with people so along that lines i have a brief statement to read so you so people understand why i made the decision i'll make about this in just a minute so in my life i consider agency or freedom that's what i consider the most important thing it's the most important thing that we have is people my main concern is a school board member and i can't read this with my glasses on my main concern as a school board member is representing all kids in the district regardless of my own moral beliefs there is a misconception that people are for banning books this is not the case my grandmother actually left a
133country that did ban books in germany so i do have some familiarity with that and i highly doubt anybody in here has actually lived underneath that type of atmosphere with true banning of books so restricting minors from being taught by an authority figure graphic content is not banning books everyone still has their agency to purchase any book they want and read it though i disagree with some of the content in these books and i wouldn't read them myself i understand why some parents or students wouldn't mind reading them i get it however if there's even one kid who doesn't want to read this content as it may be offensive to them then i have a responsibility to allow them at their agency the best way to do this is through communication and transparency so i
134really i'm really grateful for the changes that were made to this document and because i feel that it's doing that it's it's giving all of the parents and kids a choice in this it's letting them know what they're getting into and it's reducing the contention when it comes to that um there will be a system in place to protect those who want to read a sensitive book and those who do not want to be exposed to that sensitive content so i have one question for you though on this before i propose something um there are 79 books on the ap lit list for 12th grade of those books only four right now are sensitive so with this list that we're introducing right now we're basically doubling the sensitive books i'm just curious what was the
135rationale behind that because it's just causing contention and so i'm just i'm curious why what the rationale was behind these books um the books were submitted by the um ap teachers so um you know the committee considered them um we didn't we didn't really have sensitive guidelines or sensitive novel novels for that matter up until the just the last lit list adoption which took place last year was finalized last year um so books that have been on the literature list for many years we just didn't necessarily have that designation and so i kind of think that now that we have that designation we're going to see books marked as sensitive because we want to make sure that we are you know trying to be as transparent with parents as possible gotcha you're saying it wasn't
136intentional it's just the way everything's coming into play and all that so that's what i wanted to yeah awesome yeah the the process did not exist before now it does so okay thank you and so um i also appreciate all of the work the reviewers have done and i would like to present a slight change to the item for approval slaughterhouse five i would like it to be placed on the sensitive list that's the only change i would like though it's not as graphic as handmaid's tell that's obvious for those who have read it and i have a copy right here um it does mention bestiality in it so for those who may be sensitive to that because i'm looking out for every kid i would like that small change added when we put this
137up for approval that's what i have thanks do we have discussion around that proposed amendment or uh is the case i also support that i have many descriptions of slaughterhouse five that i could read some i won't read but i think it should be listed on the sensitive i also have one other change i want to make but i have a question for these two women okay so um will there be an explanation of what makes it sensitive to the parents and will it come from the notes from the committee because i've read all those the well so when we have a sensitive title we create teacher resource documents that list the sensitive content items of discussion that teachers would want to discuss with students and then we provide resources like links and things like
138that to help the teacher provide some resources for them so then they take the information from the teacher resource document put it into the sensitive content letter that they share with parents and it includes information about the nature of the sensitive content okay because on the on slaughterhouse five if you go to common sense media which i think the committee used in their beginning discussions the mentions of condom pornographic pictures nocturnal emissions intercourse erections sex and marital infidelity that is what it said about slaughterhouse five and there's also a graphic uh uh description of the i mean a graphic version of this that has pictures involved and so they have to block stuff out because of anyway so a child could pick up the graphic one which is even more pornographic is what i'm trying
139to say um so what parents need to know parents need to know that slaughterhouse five by kurt vonnegut is a classic of anti-war science fiction the graphic novel adaptation opens opens up the story set during world war ii and then it goes on strong language violence and i won't even read these words um [Music] i don't know i'm not going to read all these words but there's a lot of things in there and it's on the green list it's not on the sensitive list so i agree that it should be moved to this the sensitive list it's parents i mean because the parents who would receive that that we're going to read this book and they wouldn't have any knowledge of this unless they spent a lot of time researching like i have so anyway
140i that's what i suggest i do just want to clarify that the graphic novel is not the one that we're recommending for the literature right but if a child went to pick up the book that is also available and you don't know which one they would get i i mean when you're getting a book they both come up if you're doing it online or whatever i mean i'm just saying and if the teachers say don't get this one for sure they'll get it so i don't know i just i'm just saying that's when you pull it up they both come up online okay i have a clarification um we'll in in an ap class because it is a um an optional class and uh it's separate from the normal trajectory uh are the books provided
141for the students or are they expected to buy them on their own books are provided for the students okay so so the okay so if it's on the list they would be handed the book so they wouldn't be given the wrong book by mistake i i mean a new thing i've bought a lot of books through the years for for reading for ap literature it could vary by school but any school that i've ever taught at we provided the books for the kids sometimes miss mature we do provide class sets of books when a school decides that a teacher is going to teach those books we do provide the class sets oftentimes we find that our ap students like to purchase their own books however because they like to mark in the books and provide
142annotations and that sort of thing and they like to have a personal copy of it beyond the class and so sometimes students do purchase their own okay thank you i do have a question um on the syllabus i i don't know if there would be an indication um where the uh where the parent might be noted you know here's the list of books we encourage you to review these with your student and to look up you know resources on them or will there be any kind of information about that that would encourage parents to look into the titles and look into the information before signing off on any of the titles i do have a a template for teachers to use to that they can just include the page in their syllabus um so i
143mean that would be an easy sentence to add in um you know and i think i i think you know a lot of parents are definitely interested in what their kids are reading and would want to look into it so mrs greenberg um i went through you know our the lit list our four through 12 lit list and there are i'm going to say this wrong because some of the titles are for more than one grade level but if you count them as separate titles currently there's 488 titles on the list 13 of those are now marked sensitive which so we're you know what three four percent of our books are sensitive and i appreciate that we mark them i suspect over time others will probably join that list whether it's you know moving slaughterhouse
144five on or um you know other other titles um i believe that is you know a critical resource we provide our parents and our students and [Music] i do not believe in removing any books from this list that we that has been recommended um i also these aren't new books i mean it's not like handmaid's tale has never been used in our classroom i mean i was talking to my son who graduated in 2008 and said oh you know we're doing this lit review he goes oh yeah my copy's still in you know my old bedroom i mean he had this 14 years ago and great discussion in class and like many parents who have students who've gone through ap my son ended up you know with this was dr carson's first year um you
145know over the course of time he took i don't know 12 13 ap tests and managed to graduate college in three years because this district prepared him so well in terms of passing college level material as a high school student and he for whoever also said their child's going to you know and four-year highs i mean he and all of i mean you know my son graduated duke university in three years had a year off and was literally told he could have flunked three more classes and still have a year off we need to prepare our students we need to under you know in particular when we're talking ap there is a little literal return on investment for our students if they do well on the ap tests and we need to be able to
146support our students in doing that and we need to be able to support our parents in having the choices for their students to do that if a parent does not want their student to read a book they will not read a book period i think over the course of the last year or two this more in this district has shown a true commitment to that so i do not believe that we should remove anything from this list i again i read slaughterhouse five in high school um sure you know they're i want a market sensitive weekend market sensitive you know i can i think we also have to realize that in many books sensitivity is in the eye of the beholder and there's many books throughout our list throughout any list throughout our libraries throughout
147you know public libraries that for one person is not going to be sensitive and for the next person it will be and that's the reality of it and and i appreciate that mrs matura asked the question if you know if a parent makes a choice in the beginning and wants to change can they do that i would and i'm thrilled that the answer is yes because circumstances are going to change i mean our fifth grade list has the bridge to terribly i'm mispronouncing it i most of us would very likely not consider that book sensitive but if you have a child who the course of the year experiences the tragedy that the protagonist experiences that book is going to become sensitive for that that student and we have to be aware of that and i
148believe our teachers are i trust the process i trust the professionalism of our teachers of the committee i appreciate the extraordinary amount of time we put in i appreciate the transparency of this committee and again i'm you know i'm okay with with moving slaughterhouse five to sensitive and i hope my colleagues will join me in approving this list [Applause] mrs case thank you um i also have one and by the way i have read your notes you guys put in your whole committee a ton of work i don't want to say thank you because i have read what you wrote i know the books you read because it listed who read what i i've gone through a lot of committee meetings and i appreciate that that is available for people to see the transparency that
149went into this whole process is to be commended so i wanted to make sure that was said before i go on um i i do have a problem with the book um the handmaid's tale and and uh mrs greenberg i also had a daughter go through college in three years she never read the handmaid tell she passed all those ap tests so it's not necessary to read those books to be able to graduate in three years but um and i'm glad your son did that that is fabulous um so in the listing i have if i can find it here ah i have so many papers um the process for the handmaid's tale i read and i can't i don't think i printed the name of the person over and over again in the handmaid's
150tale they talked about suicide and and i understand the the handmaids were being forced to have sex forced to produce children and they were miserable they didn't want to be there and here are some of the notes that your committee member wrote so this is from a teacher's quote the book contains significant suicide ideation public executions rape beatings sexual encounters and adultery some limited profanity and references to pornography and i've sent my colleagues down two pages of it i will not read what the photography listed in the book i'm going to dwell mainly on suicide so here's some more said by the teacher of all of us uh all of us of that said there are passages in the book that would be uncomfortable to read and i'm not going to read those passages in
151a school board meeting i'm sorry i won't that have to be bleeped out um anyway on page 87 there's sex 93 95 their sex and then body parts mentioned in great detail suicide this is what i want to dwell on and this is what a teacher wrote on your committee suicide if i'm being honest the only sensitive content that bothers me in this book are the numerous references to suicide i have a personal recent connection to this so i put myself in the in the uh the it says shows but i think it means something else of other kids who have personal content connections to this again i'm prepared to read these passengers so the teacher says they'll be brave and read it but oh my goodness alfred constantly references suicide of the ways the
152handmaids could commit suicide to get them out of their horrible circumstances page seven they've removed anything you could tie a rope to referencing the removing of the overhead lamp and the hooks and other things like that page eight it isn't the running away they're afraid of we couldn't get far it's those other escapes the ones you can open in yourself give giving a cutting edge referencing the fact that all the glass had either been removed from the handmaid's room or had been replaced with shatterproof glass so they could slit their wrists page 62 reference to how someone always had to monitor the handmaids when they were in the bathtub or bath bathroom or bathtub no mirrors and clothes monitoring so they don't drown themselves page 97 i want to steal something what i would like
153to steal is a knife from the kitchen but i'm not ready for that she's not ready to kill herself just yet she hasn't lost all hope the world is full of weapons if you're looking for them page 6 discusses ways she could die burn the house down the sheets around the neck and choke herself off freeze herself to death knife sewing scissors knitting needles garden shears really with the amount of suicide our kids are going through i had a nephew who committed suicide i think that topic alone should keep this book out from the list i'm very concerned about okay but as i read those things i i excuse me excuse mrs case um this is a discussion among the board and we are glad to have you in the audience and listening but this
154is not a participatory portion of the meeting we have members of the committee here who are speaking on behalf of the committee to give us information but we would appreciate if there are no comments from the audience thank you mrs case you may continue thank you mrs mature um so as a board member i feel it we don't know the vulnerability of our students this is a very hard time they get messages on social media they could be having a horrible day we don't want them to get ideas from a book that would do this i just as a elected official this bothers me that there's so much reference and the whole book it references sex and they want to get out of it well what if a student's in a difficult situation what if
155their girlfriend broke up with them what if i mean i'm sorry i have a really hard time and i understand it's supposed to be make you think and the way women are treated in the book is horrid and i know the point is supposed to be you're supposed to teach them that you don't want to treat women this way but there's a lot of demented people that 18 year old that just shot up the people in buffalo i i just there's people who are off balance and i don't want to give them ideas and as an elected official i i feel that the books that come from our district if they're on our recommended ap list a recommended literature list i feel responsible for that so i couldn't vote for that but i appreciate and
156and there's a lot of sensitive books on this i get that and i understand talking about war talking about hard things what's going on in ukraine i mean watch the news it's horrific it's horrible but i i just think a book that dwells so much on suicide is not something that should be approved i i i just from the bottom of my heart i have some very deep concerns about that thank you mrs bacon yeah thank you um well first of all i want to congratulate both mrs case and mrs greenberg having kids graduate in three years neither of my kids did that so that's just the start with and i don't think that mrs greenberg was saying her son graduated three years because of the handmaid's tale i just think you both have really
157smart kids so congratulations yeah no no problem um but but being a person who who actually has a degree in mental health one of the stigmas around suicide is not talking about it it's it's not having it be in the conversation it's staying inside the student where they don't know what to do with it they don't know how to deal with it so while it is concerning the problem with suicide is that we don't talk about it that we don't give students the the tools that they need to deal with the feelings that they have to be open and honest and allow their parents and the staff to address these issues secrecy is is part of of suicide um and i've had personal experiences with it i know many of you have and talking about
158it is what helps calm that getting treatment for your children is what helps us deal with suicide it is not not talking about it um however the other part of this is we have talented responsible adults who are going to guide these conversations and they're going to know students who they're going to be able to see students who are struggling with this and and i am grateful for staff members in our schools who have done that for my children so i want to make sure that we we understand um that that suicide is a very significant issue and it's one that's been talked about a lot over the past two years by a lot of people i've been talking about suicide my entire life my whole career has been about mental health it's been about
159students um sharing their situations and um as a method to student achievement to doing better in school so i think i think we i i think it's in there it is it is concerning but i'm but i'm someone who believes that talking about things is the way you get through them um my daughter once said to me recently you know i was talking to a friend of mine and she was telling me about a problem she was having with her family and i said to her why don't you just talk to them about it and she's like we don't talk about things and my daughter said oh at my house it's like talk talk talk all the time so um that is a that's a curse right that i gave my kids um i think
160the other thing is i i would be um open to moving uh slaughterhouse five um i will not say any book should not be read by any person that is that i am not their parent i don't if it's a minor child parents have the right to make those decisions i cannot judge for them what they should and should not allow their students to read and so i said this earlier at the first reading and i'm going to say it again now i'm not going to tell parents what their kids can and can't read um and so that's where i stand and um mrs case also uh wanted to this may help a little bit there um in that the discussion of suicide within the book is not glorifying suicide which could have a different
161impact on how a student may read it as opposed to a looking at it as a negative outcome as opposed to glorifying the idea of it so that gives a little um balance there but i appreciate mrs bacon weighing in with the with her background and mental health so um something like suicide that would be on listed on one of the items for the parents to be aware of and a question is if um if a student starts reading a book even if the parent approved it if a student starts reading it and does not want to continue the novel will they be allowed to opt themselves out of the novel even if they've already started and be able to move over to the other option absolutely there are other comments or questions mr laney
162i just want to say i appreciate all of the comments the the different views um that's that's the way i feel we should handle things and and participate in civil discussion so we can work out our our differences and come to a common consensus like i said in my statement though i wouldn't read the book and don't necessarily agree with it being on the list i would also not stop somebody from doing it because i think agency is the most important thing that we have and i appreciate the changes and the the questions that were asked showing that parents have full transparency in this and they know what is on the curriculum they'll know whether the book's sensitive or not and i appreciate you um supporting my view to move slaughterhouse five to the sensitive
163list and i get that you know where do you draw the line i mean that that's that's an almost impossibility um but it does need to be drawn somewhere and i feel that by discussing with each other we can come to those conclusions so i appreciate all of the comments mrs case thank you so are you saying that when the book goes out the teacher will list perhaps pages or whatever just like i have read that they would say that suicide is mentioned on these pages to make you aware how will that be addressed the sensitive topics will be listed but there won't be specific page numbers listed okay um but if if a parent wants to know more would that be made available to them yeah the letter states that if the parent wants
164to inquire more about the book they can contact the teacher and ask any questions that they want to ask okay to me this book is pornographic i'm just putting that in public record and we've already had discussions this year earlier with it i'm just saying that i cannot approve something that we're putting forth this at that's blatantly so i'm just and you can have lots of opinions on that but i feel like there's a lot of people who elected me who would say they agree with me and i i feel that i have to say that and um i and and i'm not trying to take away from the discussion of the teachers in any shape or form or the committee because i think there was a ton of work involved i mean i can
165just look at the notes and know how much work was involved so um i i i can't vote for that so i just want to let you know that's my premise there so okay thank you okay so oh mrs greenberg thank you i used to be better at that i just want to say mrs case i'm glad that both of our children had options in terms of their reading lists in their classes and it worked out well for all of them my daughter read as i laid and complained about it every day yeah i mean but that's simply the point that i was trying to make is we do have options we've had them for a long time and um [Music] putting the book on the list does not necessarily mean every teacher is going
166to put it on their syllabus that is also true but the committee themselves had 11 books and came up with nine so were they book banning i don't think so well book banning is by i think definition when a governing body says something can't be so and that's what we are um so it's a recommended list right um from a committee of people and there were various reasons that they weren't recommended um you know there were lots of different criteria um that they looked at it wasn't just sensitive content there were other issues whether it was appropriate in terms of the learning objectives the teaching objectives all of those things so i think the rubric probably had more than just sensitive content in it yeah i was under the impression that the two books that
167were not recommended was because the literary uh value did not outweigh the the the the sensitive content etc so correct yep okay okay i believe we have one amendment to am i correct me can i make a motion that would say that we take off that book we can we can offer that as an amendment okay so i will bring forth the two different amendments separately um the we have a motion to amend the motion to approve as presented by mr laney with the uh the amendment to the motion is as follows would be to move the uh the book slaughterhouse five from uh to designate that as a sensitive title is that fairly stated um yeah that is the way you're presenting this though it's gonna cause a conflict with my voting but that's
168okay i think i've expressed my views on how i feel that i don't whether i vote no or yes on a handmaid's tell has nothing to do with whether i think it should be on there or not it's just that's my conscience that's my my morality but so are you running this first part with just this is just slaughterhouse i'm just trying to just slaughterhouse five we're doing a separate amount i'm just going to that's why i wanted to clarify because this was amended this is your amendment or your proposed amendment um you'd request it so i want to make sure that i am i'm capturing that properly so the amendment to the motion would be as follows would be to mark slaughter the book slaughterhouse 5 as a sensitive title is that fair okay
169um mrs matura i'm just wondering if it makes more sense to reverse that so that we don't approve something that still has the handmaid's tale on it when mrs we're not approving the original motion okay we're just approaching sensitive so we're gonna have two separate amendments yeah that's exactly what i was asking yes i apologize so we are simply going to vote on this specific amendment the amendment being to uh to notate slaughterhouse five as a sensitive title that is the only thing we are just uh voting on at this moment okay great so um so may i have a motion uh to amend the original motion to approve as presented by mr laney the amendment to the motion being oh no i apologize okay i'm sorry i'm sorry okay this is a specific vote
170on the amendment a motion to vote on the amendment to move slaughterhouse five as mark sent uh slaughterhouse five as a sensitive title okay okay so we're marking slaughterhouse five as a sensitive title so moved okay all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed say nay any abstain okay motion passes for the amendment only okay um i believe mrs case would like an amendment to uh remove the handmaid's tale from the recommend a recommended list so moved okay all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed say nay okay believe motion passes three to two or motion fails two to three the nays okay motion fails for the amendment to remove handmaid's tale from the list okay so uh we now have the original motion with the amendment to move slaughterhouse five
171as approved so um all those in favor because we already have the the motion was already on and then we passed the amendment and so now we are going to vote for um those in favor of the motion as amended for the nine books oh yes how does this work if i just said no on handmaid's tell so would i that mean i have to vote no on this too you can vote your how will you choose on this so knowing that this list now remains um so the list remains as nine books with the uh slaughterhouse five as sensitive titles so we now have one two three four five sensitive titles on the list handmaid's tale remains on the list and so then at this point you'll be making a decision on voting this
172now recommended list as presented with with the amendment to the sensitive title okay all right so i believe we already have that motion right have that motion okay so that motion is already there and so now we just need to though all those in favor say i i any opposed say nay nay the motion carries three to two okay all right um next on our agenda is gifts and donations we appreciate all the donations that we receive in our district throughout the year i wanted to highlight some at this meeting we had donations from desert springs preparatory pta cash donation of eighteen hundred dollars for their sixth grade field trip desert trails elementary pto donated uh about forty five hundred dollars for speaker for outdoor learning area and cody howt donated a thousand dollars to
173the art program there at desert trails elementary additionally we had a brazo central campus and scottsdale campus donate 2200 to summer school program at paradise valley high school shadow mountain high booster club matador parent teacher club donated almost three thousand dollars to the jrotc program and then the del rito program partners made donations to sunset canyon for toys prizes for pbs students and teachers and resources classroom supplies year-end gifts for students donated two thousand dollars this time and just wanted to highlight that they have been very supportive of sunset canyon throughout the year and with donations totaling of over eight thousand dollars so we really appreciate our partners in our community please say thank you if you know any of our donors and appreciate all our donations in all amounts uh may i have a
174motion for acceptance of gifts and donations please so moved all those in favor say aye aye any opposed say nay motion passes unanimously next on the agenda is items for discussion dr bales president mature governing board members cabinet and guest tonight dr corson and team will share some student achievement results in math for those students who had high participation rates with cern one of our k-6 governing board approved curriculum resources dr corson good evening president mature governing board dr bale's cabinet and the guests who have hung in there tonight jean copen director of assessment joins me to present our cern impact study for grades one through six the purpose of tonight's presentation is to share with the governing board the results of a study we conducted in partnership with cern to examine the impact of
175zearn usage on student math achievement in tonight's presentation ms copen and i will provide an overview of the curriculum resource an overview of the study we conducted and its results and a few implications and next steps we will be taking as a reminder the governing board adopted cern as a curriculum resource in at the time our curriculum committee was committed to finding a math curriculum resource that was closely aligned with standards embedded evidence-based practices built strong conceptual mathematics understanding and scaffold algebra concepts that prepared students for higher levels of math in high school cern is a comprehensive digital and teacher-led resource that accompanies eureka math and open up resources in our k-5 and 6-8 classrooms not only does cern provide individualized and differentiated instruction and practice for students at the teacher's discretion but it also
176provides immediate feedback to students which we know is an evidence-based strategy that increases learning and retention in order to receive the most benefit for using cern the platform recommends the students complete three to four individual lessons per week for maximum impact on learning cern is a comprehensive curriculum that includes independent individualized lessons that complement the teacher-led instruction for example if you walked into some classrooms you might find that the teacher teaches a math lesson to the whole group and then the students work independently on their zearn lesson that complements the teacher's instruction other teachers choose to conduct teacher-led instruction with only 50 percent of the class while the other half work on their digital zern lesson then the students switch at no time is this resource designed to be independent only it does require the
177teacher to provide instruction additionally cern uses high effect strategies to reinforce teacher-led instruction some of these strategies include manipulatives and pictorial representations to increase conceptual understanding of mathematical concepts another strategy is frequent checks of understanding in digital and pencil paper format with immediate feedback the platform also provides adaptive supports and recommendations for the teacher to keep remediation tightly aligned to core instruction and lastly the program also provides teachers and instructional leaders with real-time data on math learning with these high effects strategies we were confident the cern math would help our students to continue to grow especially during very challenging learning conditions during the pandemic we had already tracked cern's success in other districts and states and we were particularly interested in whether our pb students were experiencing similar results therefore we partnered with zearn to
178conduct a research study to determine how our students zern usage correlated to their growth and achievement ms copen is going to share an overview of the study and his findings good evening the research study began with a question how did math achievement for students who completed three or more zern lessons per week compare with students who completed zero to one lessons per week three to four lessons completed per week is recommended by cern to have the most impact on student growth to create the data set for this study we collected math achievement data for first and second grade students using district inspect assessments and and for third through sixth grade students use the state we use the state math scores this data was correlated to how many lessons students completed weekly during the 2020 2021
179school year there were over three thousand students in this impact study during the 2020-2021 school year our first and second grade students took an end-of-year assessment called inspect the inspect test measures essential grade level standards and results are recorded in school city the orange bars represent the average amount of correct questions for students who completed less than one zern lesson per week the purple bar represents the average amount of correct questions for students who completed three or more lessons per week from this data we concluded that consistent zearn users in grades 1 and 2 had higher district formative math scores at the end of the 2020-2021 than lower users for grade 2 higher users scores were more than two times those of lower users this chart is organized similarly to the previous chart again the
180orange bars represent students completing less than one zern lesson per week and purple represents students completing three or more lessons per week the achievement measure for these students was the 2021 state math test which was azm2 the numbers displayed in each column are scale scores from this data we concluded that across grades three through six students who completed three or more zern lessons per week scored higher on the math azm2 relative to low users at the end of 2021 school year another way to look at achievement is by translating a change in scale score to months of growth the colors in this chart are consistent with the others where orange lines again represent the students completing less than one zern lesson per week and purple represents students completing three or more lessons per week the
181two groups of students that were most impacted by cern usage were students in the lowest proficiency categories on the state math test which are minimally proficient and partially proficient students in these two groups did not pass the state math test and therefore progress for these students was a particular interest for this study i'm going to have some circles pop in here to help us kind of dissect this graph in looking at these particular groups of students the study found that minimally proficient students who completed three or more zern lessons in a week grew an equivalent of six more months than students who did not then we'll look at partially proficient students saw the largest gain equivalent to eight months or eight months more growth than students who did not complete three zern lessons per week
182the study found that with consistent zern usage students labeled not proficient in 2019 grew more than two to two and a half grade levels during two years of pandemic learning this chart provides us another way of looking at those two groups of students and the impact that cern usage had again on the minimally and partially proficient students the first set of columns represents the students who scored minimally proficient on the state test in 2019 these students then took the state test in 2021 and were divided into two groups based on their zern usage again we'll pop in some circles here the first column shows how students scored when they completed less than one lesson per week and the second column shows how students who completed three or more weekly lessons scored of students in the
183second group were able to test out a minimally proficient level in 2021. okay now we're going to look at the next one looking at the part partially proficient students you can see that the improvement was even more pronounced in this group particularly in the percentage of students scoring minimally proficient of students who scored partially proficient in 2019 and did not complete three or more weekly learn lessons fell back to minimally proficient on the 2021 test the group of students completing three or more lessons just the second column experience only a 19 fallback to minimal and 34 of these children moved to proficient in 2021. overall performance levels improved drastically for heisen users than for these below proficiency groups oh we lost connection oh there we go i thought it might have timed us out time
184to leave yes yes the study also looked at the achievement for two of our subgroups students who are in special education and students who are eligible for free and reduced lunch students from these traditionally disadvantaged groups saw an even larger impact on their achievement when using cern at the intensity level again of three or more lessons completed weekly in summary hyzer and users in all grades grew more than low low zern users on average zern was particularly effective for students who started below proficiency these students grew almost one and a half times as much with consistent zern usage on average compared to low users resulting in more than two grade levels of learning during the pandemic zearn was also effective for students on free and reduced lunch eligibility and special education students who grew three
185to four months more on average with consistent zern usage compared to students that were low users this study is just beginning this is our our partnership with cern we will be adding our 2022 scores um to this information to widen this pool of data even more um and dr corson is going to share some immediate implications and next steps that we have for zurd implementation well these real results validate the impact this curriculum resource can have on student achievement when implemented with consistency and fidelity to support its implementation we'll continue with a few next steps first we will embed ongoing professional development for teachers on cern on the zearn platform how to interpret and leverage its reports and how to implement classroom structures to support both teacher-led and independent digital engagement while we have also
186provided this training previously will recognize we recognize the importance of ongoing professional development we've also provided training to our instructional coaches as an additional layer of support we also heard from our kindergarten teachers that children struggle to log into their electronic accounts before knowing their letters and words needed for user names and passwords so in collaboration with our information technology department we are implementing new qr codes for kindergartners as a way for them to log into their accounts we believe this will help our kindergarten students access the digital platform until they know their letters to be able to enter their usernames and passwords and in addition to ms copen's point we'll continue tracking participation and achievement data miss copen and i along with our elementary math curriculum specialist kaylin miller who is here tonight or
187here to answer any of your questions about cern or the study itself mr elainey i understood this correctly i know we've been here a long time so i don't want to take too much more time it seems to impact our title one schools more is that correct on this so students uh on free and uh reduced lunch eligibility they're not necessarily title one it's looking across our system so we will maybe i should say are disadvantaged or are less well-off students yeah so our title one schools would have higher percentages of those students yes mrs bacon so how does one become a three time or more user per week are we giving that time in classrooms for every student to do that because if it's being done at home that's great but it's not really
188it doesn't really help people who don't have access or or don't have the kind of supervision that my kids had for homework so how does one become a super user of cern so the the the platform is intended for uh students to be uh complete their zern lessons within the instructional period and that can happen a couple of different ways it can happen on certain days that are described as cern days where the teacher may on one day have led a whole class to teacher-led instruction and maybe the next day the students are working on their zone lessons that complement the instruction or many teachers do a 50 50 model within the same class period so that then begs the question is why do we have students who aren't doing it three times a week
189yeah well often times it could be several variables uh it could be the teacher some teachers have chosen to leverage more teacher-led instruction and therefore aren't uh allocating as much time to the zern uh sometimes uh teachers are fighting minutes within their schedule and and maybe don't feel as though they have enough minutes in the in the day to uh be able to have students work on zern lessons and some teachers have chosen in some cases to use some other independent math lessons but we are setting the expectation and we do track the expectation that students are completing three or more lessons uh per a week and we do provide that information to both teachers and principals so i guess my concern about this is it this is great i mean fantastic results really think
190if if we can get every student to be a super user um we would be in good shape but the question for me is what is preventing that and and are we working with teachers to figure out what do we need to do to help you to get every student to be doing this because that apparently is the key and so you can give us any curriculum and it may have great results but if it can't be done with fidelity in every single classroom how can we make that happen what's what is our responsibility as district leaders to make sure that whatever curriculum we're giving them they have the time they have the resources and they have knowledge to do mrs bacon president mature gummy board members and a special thank you to uh gene
191caitlin and dr corson i i think it's clear that it mostly impacts our minimally improve and and partially proficient students right so it is a tier two intervention uh primarily are we using it as tier one as whole group uh since we we saw the impacts having you know most impact on those kids but is it is it is it used as a tier one intervention in those classrooms dr corson uh it is used as a uh it's part of our tier one core curriculum and although we saw the most gains on our minimally proficient uh students if you look at the data it also does show uh improvement within proficient students as well and so we do want to continue using it as part of our tier core curriculum with that and i do
192believe dr jarrus and i want caitlyn to have a chance to talk she's been sitting so patiently too um yeah it's definitely a tier one curriculum but it also has a built-in intervention piece as well so it does give you that foundational lessons as well because it also has that differentiation so but it's always supported in a decision made by the teacher so it will adapt so it's very hard for teachers to use adaptive technology for and differentiate for every single person so this does but then it also says hey wait a second they're having problems let's um let's go back and work together with the teacher and the students so it's used in in both tier one but it's also used as as a sort of i like to call it tier 1.5 so
193it's like so because um it's used it's a tier one interventions but it also has that you know with when used with um fidelity it has this um intervention piece as well dr jarrus i got to think that this data helps drive some of those conversations you have with principles in implementing this too by all means we've been uh you know we've talked in through the strategic planning process about mtss multi multi-tier systems of support which includes having a common strong tier one identified curriculum across a school system and that's been the work of the principals this year is identifying what is in place in their schools what are teachers using and what aren't they using and then the big question is why are they not and so with our math curriculum and our ela
194curriculum our principals have been surveying teachers and identifying uh what's in place and and xern has been one of those and then of course then the question is why not it could be it could be our schedule needs to be adjusted it could be a mindset of the teachers um you know but that's it it could be that they've got a conflicting other resource that they're using um and that's what they're identifying now is how do we get to the point where we're using it to to this level and the data definitely does help support that that movement i have a question um so this is kind of a crazy question is and i have a couple is zern used for online elementary students just curious the the ones who have signed up for online
195useful pv connect pv connect i actually use it with fidelity on pv connect but okay but not for necessarily the online no but i'm actually having discussions on monday with um with the um teacher that's moodling for pv online to looking at how um looking at zen with that so we've definitely opened up those conversations okay and then is um this is just a crazy question with the way the math has changed you're not just doing three plus four you have to do dots for three and four and all that kind of stuff is are these are the cern story problems or are they math facts well um yes so there is uh there's fluency there's what's number sense fluency at the beginning which is um um adaptive so if they struggle with what facts
196or whatever they were doing within number sense it adapts to the student it then follows with um lesson based fluency that directly supports the lesson that they're doing and then they have what's called the the video math chat where they have those stop points and they do their notes that directly um correlates to the lesson that they're doing in eureka or open up so the the the teachers are always doing manipulatives and different models with the students and then the zone lesson reinforces that so it's like having another expert teacher because sometimes when you do something you sometimes you need to hear it a different way like a different voice right and then um after that they do the um that's called the guided practice after that they do independent practice to show whether they
197understand it and and um and then after that they would do their exit their written exit tickets to see that paper pencil transfer and for the teacher to see um as a formative assessment to see if they um understood what what they were doing or if they needed more help with it wow thank you you're welcome so this is like immediate feedback for those when they go through the lesson the teacher will immediately know if they got it if they kind of got it or if they didn't get it at all and they'll be able to see all of the results for all of their students and know if you know none of the students were really understanding that then go back over with everyone but if most got it then they can do the
198tier 2 interventions with those students that they know immediately did not understand the lesson fully correct and it provides real-time data for that and it has um reports which are called tower reports or um reports from the fluency to see if they were struggling with number sense or ones if they were struggling with the concept and we it also has as well as the intervention that can be assigned for foundational lessons it has some um that just-in-time intervention so [Music] also has it also connects to our screeners which were created and based on on the questions in zen and eureka and open up so if we do our screeners at the beginning of each unit and if it identifies that they need help all of them need help then then they might do some kicks
199a couple of kickstart lessons or the teacher might do some just in time lessons or if certain students are identified then we can it provides those foundational lessons for it so we've tied in our assessments as well as part of our mtss work mrs case um so the reason that you can do the research on it is because every time child a logs in they use their number and then you can watch that child and how many times they're they're kept track of how many times they enter how many times they do it and that's how you can do the research on it you just pull from their own and but it doesn't it's not used in kindergarten it is used in kindergarten but it doesn't have the written notes they have digital activities which
200are based on number sense mainly around counting but then also some of the manipulatives in the standard and some of the models so they do about 10 minutes little activity four times a week the same thing and the teachers still get a report the same and it really prepares them for the accounting concepts that they're going to need not only in kindergarten but also in first grade so and and that was why we thought it was so important to um to partner with it to come up with the qr simple qr code and actually all of the schools as of yesterday are all set up with their computers for kindergarten we piloted it and now it is completely set up so starting in the new year when they come in they'll be able to start
201straight away and be able to get through those digital activities wow mrs greenberg um because it's different shannon and we're treating it as a resource i would assume on the flip side it also helps students who are mastering the lessons pretty quickly to also continue that mastery or you know up their game as well correct almost like an independent i don't want to say independent study but i mean i guess the question would be is how high can they go i mean how how much further can they go or does it restrict them they have also in each um lesson i was in a um a content um replacement uh gifted classroom in fireside yesterday with um with the um with a teacher there and they were doing uh the two years in front and
202i was walking around asking them how they like it and um before they knew who i was by the way i was like but um they do have the unscaffolded what are called bonuses and the um the students comment on how much they like those because they were challenging the really great advantage of that we have with zern is it's not um we don't purchase student licenses or teacher licenses they're school based licenses so all our licenses are from kindergarten through eighth grade so wherever we are we can we can move both because that's the whole thing with mtss right it's like the up end and the down end and the level end so that is a really exciting part of it as well great thank you so much i love hearing all of this
203information i thought it was really well presented and i was excited by when i was reading this earlier is excited by the outcomes that we're seeing from the zearn usage and as others have stated that uh it would be wonderful if we had some more super users out there as well and and uh having teachers really understand why this um this zern versus the one that they may have used to you know used in the past that they really like that maybe try to give zurin a try because we're seeing actual results and uh and seeing this and having that opportunity for all the students would be really nice so appreciate all that thank you so much and with that uh before we adjourn i would like to remind you that the next regular board
204meeting will be held on thursday june 2nd at 5 00 pm because we will be on our summer schedule and may i have a motion to adjourn so moved all those in favor say aye aye motion passage unanimously we are adjourned