February 10, 2022 Governing Board Regular Meeting

001parents in the audience let's recognize thank you for sharing with us this evening and uh very impressive that you choreographed that on your own so thank you very much it is 7 p.m and i would like to call this meeting to order i would first like to invite our nbaa dance students to lead us in the pledge of allegiance may i have roll call please mrs greenberg here mrs bacon here mr laney here mrs matura here mrs case here all right 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

002hours prior to the meeting and have time to review and consider all items prior to the agenda being adopted members of the governing board or audience may ask that an item be removed from the consent agenda and brought to the floor for discussion at the appropriate time on the agenda i'd like to offer the agenda as posted with the following exceptions i'd like to move g12 and g16 to the approval agenda items 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 greenberg may have a motion to approve the meeting agenda and recommend recommended consent agenda items g1 g1 to g12 moving agenda items g12 and g16 to items

003under approval for h1 and h2 will now become those items so moved all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed say nay motion passage unanimously next on the agenda is governing board statements and i would like to start this evening because i'm sure you all noticed that we have a new governing board member with us this evening and i wanted to wish a welcome to our new board member michael laney we are so glad to have you join us in serving the paradise valley unified school district and i look forward to working with you i also wanted to take the opportunity to thank everyone who expressed an interest in serving our community and it really was nice to see people that were interested in being a part of the board and serving the

004students and the community of our district so thank you very much and uh mr laney would you like to go next thank you mrs matura thank you i'm grateful and humbled to have been invited to fill this important position at paradise valley unified school board before i submitted my application i discussed this opportunity with my family i publicly thank them for their support and understanding and me fulfilling the responsibilities of this service thank you board members i appreciate you reaching out to me in this transition and look forward to working with you dr bells and the paradise valley staff thank you for all the hard work you do on behalf of our district i've attended many school board meetings always in the back quietly thinking about how i would do things if i were in

005this position i've stood and spoke at only one district board meeting so many of you don't know me you may wondering where i stand on issues and what my priorities are the answer to those two questions are the students in our schools i'm a product of public schools my father was a school teacher where i was raised in crooksville missouri i have four children two of them have already graduated from horizon high school and the other two are still in the pv school district i have been involved in public schools for 45 years as a student a son of a teacher and now as a parent of students i want what is best for all our children who attend any school in the district i will work with paradise valley staff with honesty and integrity

006to find solutions that meet their needs and enhance the value of their teachers finally i've often told my own children don't try just do i'm here to do and give back to this community by helping our children navigate their experience through our public schools and emerge as strong well-educated citizens thank you thank you mrs greenberg um i'd also like to welcome mr laney to the board and i'm very much looking forward to serving with you um and i do also want to thank all of the individuals who submitted applications uh it's an interesting time to be a governing board member and i appreciate everybody who stepped up to um want to fill that position for our community and i also just want to say i hope everybody had a chance to unplug and play this

007past weekend um and even though we aren't officially unplugging and playing uh going forward i hope everybody still does when they have the opportunity so thank you thank you um mrs case thank you um i many things are going on and changing in the nation and school boards are being um picked on and so i just want to say uh mr laney it seems like you're being really brave to try to do this right now um i um we have the opportunity to look at people's resumes and answers to questions for those who submitted to uh to be appointed to the board and i'd never met her i didn't know what he looked like and when i walked in i thought it was dr lee sitting there tonight um but i um i just want

008to say that when i was reading through the different answers to questions i appreciate what mr laney said about wanting to bring people together and i've never met him i'm hoping that i don't know who he is but i'm hoping to get to know him and i welcome him to the board and i'm grateful for the opportunity to work with people who care about this district and who know our district if he's had kids in the district this long he knows our district pretty well and uh right now he probably feels like a fire hose is in the mouth i remember those feelings a lot just reading through the board book for tonight was a lot of information you don't know what to pay attention to what not to there's a learning curve but um

009and i really appreciate that he has children i've been trying to get people to run for the board for a really long time who have children in the district and i have had seven children go through this district but we need people who on the board who currently have children in the district so i just appreciate you being willing to step forth and um welcome and enjoy the ride thank you mrs case and mrs bacon yes um of course i also want to welcome mr laney to the board we're i'm happy to have you um on the team um i also want to thank everyone who applied um the the fact that anyone applied is a little bit shocking frankly because it has been a difficult time for school board members but um i'm very

010heartened to see so many people committed to and caring about pv schools i'd like to thank county superintendent of school steve watson for the speedy way in which he was able to get this done because there's a lot of work to do and and we appreciate his commitment and feedback and dedication to students um so welcome to the team we're we're happy to have you um there's one other thing i wanted to mention too was um on saturday the prada del sol del sol parade happened and one of the our volunteers from our volunteer and paradise program was recognized as a scottsdale all-star for the work that she does as a volunteer in our school district kathy mckeever it was a retired person she was looking for a little bit of something to do and

011now she's doing a lot by volunteering in our schools and working closely with the coordinator uh the coordinators of vip i'm really proud of the work that she does as you may know the po she was a point of light recipient um and so that's an organization that honors those in the community who do good every day using their hearts hands and minds to strengthen communities and solve persistent problems so i want to thank kathy for the work that she's done i want to thank every single vip we have over a hundred volunteers in the school district it is um a minimal investment by the district to get really good people in our schools working with students so that they can be as successful as possible so i wanted to thank um every volunteer um

012in our schools but particularly kathy wanted to recognize her this time thank you thank you uh next on the agenda is awards and recognitions dr bales uh thank you very much president mature governing board members uh guests and cabinet at this time i'd like to turn over to mr droghi who will be rmc good evening president matura governing board members dr bales members of cabinet and attendees both in person and virtual tonight we have several employee recognitions to share with you our first honorees this evening completed a rigorous process to earn the elite status of being a national board certified teacher tonight we're honoring five teachers who have earned their national board certification and four teachers who have completed the process to maintain their nbct certification only three percent of the us teaching force has

013achieved the national board certified teachers certification so this is definitely an accomplishment tonight our honorees are pamela falk of sunrise middle school miriam chance marion of eagle ridge elementary school kelly rahm of gray hawk elementary school john trenton of pinnacle high school reagan winters of boulder creek elementary school rachel cohen of larkspur elementary school heather fleming of quail run elementary school theresa smith of pinnacle high school and leanne walkus goldstein of fireside elementary school please join me in recognizing these amazing teachers [Applause] our next recognition are for the recipient of paradise valley education support professionals of the month presenting this award is pvsca president miss michelle cortwright matura governing board dr bales and cabinet this is the very first time that we have recognized two employees at the same time and we are going to

014recognize therese mesa and jenny montano terry they are both translators in the language acquisition department and we were told that they are such a cohesive team that we could not recognize one without the other and i want you to think about the size of our district and the amount of things that go home to parents and the diverse population that we have and we have two translators that take care of the superintendent messages the covid uh letter templates the pv prepared plan school emergency letters dual enrollment packets marketing things video transcripts and along with all the things that teachers and principals want to send home on a daily basis to parents many times they're given one day because it's that important and translation is not just looking at it and saying well this word translate

015to this word they have to understand the meaning the concept everything we want to say needs to be translated and these two do it very very well we have principals that have said their attitude is exemplary and i think the biggest one that was said was by jerry withers and i've noticed a pattern with the esps that we have had this year jerry says during the past year and a half with all the challenges and stress that came with covid it's always a joy to talk to teresa and jenny as they always brighten my day with an upbeat do anything attitude the world needs more people like teresa and jenny and these are the kind of esps that we have in our district and that's why we can honestly say welcome to paradise thank you

016[Applause] coming from the marketing and communications department i must say we could not do our jobs without their help so we extend our thanks as well our final recognition this evening is for the recipient of the paradise valley education association's recognition of professional standards award for teachers this honoree will be introduced by ms susie seep p-v-a-e-p-v-e-a excuse me president right good evening president matura dr bales governing board and cabinet i am so pleased to celebrate pba props tonight that i might have gotten a little overdressed but this person's so worthy of the celebration i really couldn't help myself rosemary jacob is a resource teacher at pinnacle she was nominated this time we get a nomination for her every year by her colleague katie fizz katie says that rosemary's been the glue that holds us together

017over the last couple of years we've had some teacher leaders leave us it's always rosemary that steps up pinnacle high school has not only navigated the pandemic we've done so with new administration lots of new teachers and support staff she's always trying to be a part of the solution even now we're down several staff rosemary rises to the occasion to best meet the needs of our students she always has a friendly smile she's a concerned confidant i'm not sure how she does it all but we're so fortunate that she does i know we'd be in pieces without her leadership and support thank you rosemary we you are much appreciated and we love you in addition to the incredible work that rosemary does during the tough times i just need you to know that she's joyous

018in all of her work it's for her that very reason that she got involved with pva's prom boutique in its very first year pva's prom boutique has helped over 150 students in five years we started very very small but with all the donations we've been collecting for two years with no problems we'll be able to help at least that many this year if not more if we have the need our students come and get outfitted not just with dresses suits and ties but with handbags and costume jewelry makeup socks and belts they are entered into raffles for gifts that are donated by members of our community that allow them to get their hair and nails done be photographed by a professional or go out for a fun dinner i really wanted rosemary's celebration to be

019an especially joyous one for all of us because she brings so much joy to so many people when i'm having a tough day she sends me pictures of her very handsome pitbull seymour butts it doesn't always take a miracle but it does take a lot of energy to meet all of our kids needs rosemary is the picture of both and i thank her for being a colleague who makes me so proud to be in paradise thank you rosemary [Applause] rosemary is amazing but so are all of the other people that came up with the idea of the prom boutique april gladden heather schmidt the people like mary mckay catherine goshert um leah conably diane siekman and lots and lots of teacher volunteers i really wanted tonight to be fun and whimsical i wore the sweater

020so i wouldn't lose my wallflower credibility but i really wanted everyone to remember that teachers have so much passion for these kids we do so much and really i want you all to understand that we love these kinds of events we're so excited to get started so we're going to start promoting asking for donations thank you for the suits uh dr or mr long isn't here he brought me some suits recently um but please if you know people if you have donations let us know and uh we're gonna do really amazing work this year thank you for joining the governing board mr laney i had the privilege of teaching two of your boys so i'm very happy to have you here thank you everyone [Applause] and that concludes this evening's recognitions okay next on the

021agenda is call to 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 that 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 any 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

022submit 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 the superintendent's office in advance of tonight's meeting tonight we have three people who have submitted comment cards prior to the start of the meeting each speaker will have three minutes for remarks those 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

023that 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 jennifer ariza uh can you hear me yep okay uh hi my name is jennifer ariza and i stand here tonight as a concerned parent in the paradise valley school district and first i would like to say i do really appreciate the opportunity to speak and that you allow people to do so um tonight as we welcome michael laney uh to his new position i would also like to ask each of the other members of the board to just ponder and ask yourself why did you stand up to volunteer for this school board i would hope that it would have been to ensure the welfare of the families

024in this school district i stand here tonight to declare that pornography should not be allowed in our schools pornography is used to train and desensitize people and increase demand for human trafficking porn users often seek to act out what they have seen and read in pornography additionally porn users demand a constant stream of new increasingly violent and fetishized content in order to keep up with this demand more women and children become prostituted and trafficked and i'm sure that you all know that pedophiles cultivate a friendly relationship that investigators call grooming it could continue for days or weeks before pedophiles begin bringing up sexual topics or asking for explicit pictures from children and pedophiles can be master manipulators it's important to note that young people can be victimized by sexually explicit material have any of you

025known someone who's been a victim of human sex trafficking do you know that arizona is home to the largest human sex trafficking recovery program do you know that we are taking elementary age children into this program so if we know that pornography is used by pedophiles to groom children and if we know that pornography is a gateway to human trafficking then i have to challenge each of our school board members to and ask you to never allow pornography pornographic material to be in our schools while on your watch and in closing i do have to say it's very unfortunate that our school board feels like they are being picked on i would hope that the board recognizes that as citizens we are called to stand up to ensure the welfare of our communities and when

026the citizens see that the school board is not ensuring the welfare of our children i would hope that parents and people in our community would continue to stand up and fight for the children thank you [Applause] next we have sandra christensen thank you president matura and and welcome mr laney as a new board member um today i would like to talk about a incident that happened at uh horizon high school and i'm not here to complain i'm here to offer some constructive criticism there was an emergency situation last month and um as a parent i got a text from my son saying mom we're evacuating and he was at he was at lunch and i said okay do i need to come pick you up how serious he says i don't know they're not telling

027us anything and i said okay so i waited i checked my email i am receiving text messages now so i and i didn't receive anything so i said okay i'll call the school so i called the school but then of course it dawned on me well if they evacuated nobody's gonna be there to answer the phone so i thought well maybe they'll roll it to the district but that didn't happen so 15 minutes later i called the school district and they said oh i didn't know there was an emergency at horizon high school so um let me forward you to the super the assistant superintendent and they actually did know that there was a gas leak and they said we don't have any information mrs christensen all we can do is um let you know

028that southwest gases is on the scene i said okay great do i need to pick up my son or daughter my son and he and they said no i said okay so i waited again and then my get another text from my son we're on the football field i'm going okay you know our school's gonna contact me any minute now and um and it wasn't until 45 minutes after i got received the first text and after i had called the school twice and i called the district office until i got a text message saying oh everything's fine we have an emergency but all the kids are safe and i'm like okay great and then i get a text from my son say mom come pick me up people are being picked up so i i

029was really confused um i looked through my email i did get the same email message that said oh we're waiting they were still in on hold periods so i ended up pausing because i was in meetings and then i ended up did driving to horizon i saw lots of children walking down the street and then i saw a lot of kids lined up and this was about an hour and a half after the first text message that i got from my son and then finally i see my son lined up and then i he he gets in the car and he said mom they said we could go back to class but so it was kind of interesting and then school ends i know my time is ending school ends at 2 10 and then

030i get a email from the the principal about 45 minutes after that saying oh kids can go back to class so um just you know next time maybe notify the district sooner and so they can notify parents so thank you okay and uh next up we have nicole klutwick for um volunteering um i just wanted to talk a little bit about masks i haven't talked about masks for a very long time but everything's changing right we have people and states and countries all dropping restrictions um and so i do want to say i'm thankful that upc gave parents a chance to voice their opinion about covid and all of the the restrictions we've been doing but i also want to say i was disappointed this survey the way it was designed did not give it

031prevented certain views from being shared for instance you could say as a parent that you wanted an option for more or less or the same amount of emails but there was no option to say that you wanted less masks and there was no option to say you wanted less quarantines i know parents who actually refused to do the survey because it didn't represent what they wanted they did not want it to be used as a tool to say that they wanted the current option and there was no better option for them to choose i also want to note there was about 250 respondents so less than one percent of our total school was you know district was represented represented um so just preemptively i want to say please don't use that statistic as a crutch

032to say parents love the opt out because it it did not ask that question it just asked if that was the best option on the survey which wasn't which wasn't very many and i also want to remind that on the first day of school 80 percent of families at my kids schools sent their kids mask free it wasn't until they were faced with the decision of letting their kids be quarantined potentially indefinitely that they put masks on because that's what we were told we had to do it was it was kind of coercion um masking is not an ordinary step it's an extraordinary step and it should require extraordinary evidence and as of right now i haven't seen it the survey the the information that we've gotten that has supported masks are outliers of dozens

033and dozens and dozens of surveys or sorry i keep saying surveys of studies that show that masks are have no statistical significance in helping spread slow the spread the one one that has been pointed to is 3.5 it was in arizona 3.5 times less spread if you have a mass restriction that study has been found to have included online schools vocational schools did not adjust for the fact that some schools were in it was only six week long study it did not account for some schools were in in session for three days and some for three weeks it didn't account for vaccination rates it didn't account for any of those things one person actually said a data researcher said the study was so unreliable that it should not have even entered the public discourse we

034have to have evidence we are trying to raise critical thinkers who go to source material i see it in our in my syllabuses for my kids i see it in our mission statements i would think surely as a board we would stand and ask ourselves to do the same thing thank you okay next on the agenda is dr bales thank you president matura and welcome mr laney i too i'm looking forward to working with you and through our phone calls uh email and transition meetings particularly today i believe you're going to make a very positive impact on our district in your service as a company board member so welcome starting off tonight comments i'd like to address the aggregate expenditure limit or ael it's critical that our legislators vote to override the aggregate expenditure limit

035this fiscal year doing so allows districts across the state to use originally approved funding funding that was approved by the legislators in june if legislators don't override the ael this year it will result in a reduction of approximately 16 percent to operating funds for pv schools that's roughly 39 35.9 million dollars and this cut would need to be made before the end of the fiscal year our students can't afford another disruption in their learning so if the ael isn't overwritten districts will have to make difficult decisions this is a massive issue and not every district can do what we plan to do our plan is to keep the doors open to continue to pay staff and to move forward with the funding that legislators promised and that they appropriated last june in the budget that

036they passed while this may mean that we move into a quote over expenditure status it's the right thing to do it's the right thing to do for our students it's the right thing to do for our parents i remain confident that our legislators will do the right thing and solve their issue by march 1st once they have this issue addressed for this fiscal year my hope is that they will address the ael moving forward because schools will continue to hit this limit each year in the future if it isn't fixed we need legislators to create a more permanent solution for ael and then update the funding formula that's associated with it that currently uses numbers from 1980. thank you to the parents and business community members that have already reached out to legislators to encourage

037them to solve their problem and if you haven't and you'd like to i encourage you as parents and community partners to reach out to legislators express how important it is to support our students here in pb schools and across arizona by finding a solution to the aggregate expenditure limit as some of you may be aware we had an incident last week that used anti-semitic imagery i was shocked and disappointed to say the least we value our jewish community and share in the sorrow inflicted by this incident in fact it hurts our community as a whole regardless of whether one is jewish or not pb schools is committed to fighting anti-semitism lady corps once said you don't judge an organization by its problems judging by the solutions they bring to those problems we responded quickly and

038appropriately and i'm grateful for the parents rabbi shafman paul rockauer and many other jewish community leaders who have talked with me over the last week and shown their support for pb schools students and parents pb schools values its partnership with the anti-defamation league and many of our schools participate in the adl no place for hate program for 2021 school year eagle ridge greenway middle school mountain trail middle school and vista verde either engaged or received the no place for hate designation for creating safe and respectful learning environments and bringing awareness to the issues of bullying and bias each school takes its own approach to implement and instill the values of adl no place for hate motto in students and staff members other schools in our district with a no place for hate program include explore

039shea or also in the beginning stages in paradise valley high school who can recently conducted a student assembly february is black history month which pays tribute to the contributions of generations of african americans and this year's theme celebrated throughout the nation is black health and wellness celebrating the many contributions and breakthroughs of black professionals in the area of health and wellness it is my hope that the recognitions we celebrate this month continue throughout the year this week is also national school counselor week which recognizes the contributions of school counselors and highlights the impact school counselors have in helping students overcome barriers to achieve academic success and plan for the future i want to extend my thanks and gratitude to our dedicated school counselors who work tirelessly every day to help our students see excellence i

040had the privilege of speaking with just one of those as an example early earlier today jackie from paradise valley high school is one of those examples and she is in the process of completing so far 88 one-on-one interviews and appointments and registrations with students who are coming from the private and parochial setting but are choosing our district so thank you jackie as on behalf of all of our great counselors as mrs bacon mentioned kathy mckeever was recognized this weekend we are so proud of her and our volunteer in paradise program and she was recognized by the mayor david ortega last saturday so honored and so thank you kathy please join me as selected join us as select band students from our elementary middle and high school students perform in the pb schools district honor orchestra

041on saturday february 12 at 1 pm in the performing arts center at horizon high school this event is a great opportunity to see extreme talent that we have here in pv schools from across our district on february 21st through the 25th we will celebrate public schools week a national celebration to highlight the great things happening in our nation's public schools as well as bring attention to the critical issues facing our schools students and educators we'd like to thank our staff members parents students and community members for being partners in education thank you for your continued support of our students on their many journeys of excellence it's greatly appreciated if you're looking for a preschool opportunity for your little one pb schools preschool universe is the perfect event for you this virtual information night held on

042february 24th from 5 45 pm to 7 pm provides parents with all the essential details about neighborhood preschool options in pb please visit pbschools.net where we've published an article with all the details and pre-registration information in partnership with the maricopa county public health department pb schools continues to partner and announces another free coveted vaccine clinic for anyone ages 5 and up thursday march 3rd from 4 to 7 p.m at north canyon high school for information here's the phone number 602-506-6767 it's also available on our website next i'd like to acknowledge february as career and technical education month with 22 individual programs at our high schools along with a partnership with westmac our cte students enjoy a head start on a path towards the fastest growing careers our outstanding cte teachers prepare our students providing with

043cutting-edge training and opportunities uh no matter which cte program our students follow ms becky mcgowan and guest will present for us tonight becky is our director of cte programs good evening becky good evening president matura governing board dr bell's cabinet and guests although february is the shortest month of the year it brings many things to celebrate black history month let's celebrate our diversity valentine's day lets us celebrate each other and our loved ones and cte month lets us celebrate the many opportunities that we are able to provide our students through our career and technical education programs with us tonight to highlight one of the 22 ct programs that we have in our district is ira puranic who is president of hosa for our crest bioscience program era will be verifying that cte is indeed alive

044and well in our district thank you miss mcgowan for the lovely introduction a good evening president matura governing board superintendent bill's cabinet and all other guests present with us today i would like to begin by thanking you all so much for for providing me with this wonderful opportunity to present about hosa future health professionals my name is era peronic and i am the current president of crest bioscience hosa at paradise valley high school hosa future health professionals is a national organization of secondary and post-secondary students that supports career development and health professions and improvement of health services delivery to the general population i joined hosa in my freshman year and was enthralled by the opportunities i was presented with so i became d so i became deeply involved with this organization and it provided and

045it provided me with valuable knowledge and enriching experiences enabling me to thrive both as a hosa member and high school student today i will be discussing how hosa has enhanced my skill set as well as the opportunities and benefits presented by this wonderful organization oh the green button oh sorry okay firstly hosa allows students to augment their leadership skills to prepare them for success in their future careers as you can see here we have a wonderful group of high school students who volunteer their time to serve as executive board officers in order to make sure the events that we organize and host run as smoothly as possible our lovely advisors mrs amanda cherry and mrs michelle launderville mentor us and help us combat any nooks and crannies we encountered throughout our journey without them hosa

046would probably not be nearly as successful as it is now with hosa you are able to enter into a world of new possibilities you never even knew existed members participate in activities throughout the various conferences hosted by the local state and national hosa organizations they are presented with the opportunity to participate in interactive workshops which improves one skills and knowledge preparing them for the workforce our chapter also hosts guest speakers we've had a variety of professionals such as a pulmonologist a physician assistant a geriatrician a petty officer first class in the navy and crest alumni and they presented about their day-to-day life and tips on how to succeed in their professions as well as the education leading up to it we also organized the hands-on suturing lab hosted by grand canyon university where students got

047to practice tutoring on silicon pads where they received the opportunity to simulate the surgical experience the first conference we attend is hosted by arizona hosa and it is called the fall leadership conference it is located at the phoenix convention center in downtown phoenix here we get to participate in a variety of workshops which hone the skills necessary for the healthcare field some of the ones i attended were called how to get into medical school networking with others internship opportunities and a special one called dead men do tell tales where we were introduced to the world of forensic science and were taught how to read autopsies this one was my personal favorite as you can see in the picture at the top we also have a yearly tradition called flexing for flc where members simultaneously perform

048yoga poses and prepare for the conference to de-stress before the big day maximizing their enjoyment at flc through the regional state and international leadership conferences students are able to compete in an event of their choice which presents them with the opportunity to strengthen their academic and technical skills and build self-confidence motivation and enthusiasm which they can then transfer to the real world endeavors hosa offers 81 different competitions in many different categories as shown above guaranteeing members to find a competition of their interests as well as allowing them to further many skills necessary to be successful in whichever career path they desire to pursue hosa members also get to give back to their community through volunteering and organizing fundraisers this year we hosted a hygiene drive and we collected items such as shampoo conditioner baby hygiene

049items toilet paper and many others for um new day centers whose mission is to prevent and end homelessness with innovative strategies and housing solutions that meet the unique needs of each family and individual we also organize fundraisers such as a walkathon where students host a sponsor who pledge a certain amount of money for each lap they walk a wheel of fun fundraiser where students spin a wheel filled with dares and whichever dare the wheel lands on they get to perform it on one of our officers in front of all the members and there's a picture of me getting pie-faced on the left we also host a goggle knight fundraiser where students pay money to buy and decorate goggles so cool and snazzy during labs um there's a trivia night where families and members can test

050their trivia skills and this is typically our biggest fundraiser of the year and the fundraiser at skyzone trampoline park and all of the proceeds made from these fundraisers are donated to be the match foundation which is a bone marrow transplantation matching organization hosa has enabled me to flourish through building my public speaking leadership and organization skills as well as making an impact on our community by allowing me to participate in service activities if you have any questions please feel free to ask me and i'll be happy to answer them once again thank you so much for allowing me to present i hope you all have a wonderful rest of your evening thank you [Applause] thank you so very very much finally i feel compelled to express my pride in our district and community it's been

051a challenging year however our community remains committed to seeing our students succeed on their journey of excellence and president mature that concludes my comments this evening thank you next on the agenda is items for approval dr bales first step will be uh consideration approval to award rfp 22-06 pv president uh governing board members cabinet and yes as recommended on this item this is for lobbying services uh as a one gpa award and we do recommend approval okay we do have a speaker for this item nicole klutwick hi i just wanted to speak on it because previously this had not been on something that would be separately discussed and i just wanted to make sure people were aware that um we're spending out of our m o budget right which we're having an expenditure limit right

052the aggregate expenditure limit is on the m o budget this is being spent out of the m l budget and this is going to cost us 200 000 over the next four years obviously um maybe we don't renew it next year so maybe it's only 50 000 this year um but this is to to lobby politicians um i don't know i i it just seems odd to me that instead of educating our kids with the money or paying teachers with the money that we're lobbying politicians with the money so that's it thank you okay first i'll entertain a motion then we can have discussion if necessary uh may have a motion to approve uh to award rfp 22-06 pv so moved any questions or discussion okay all those in favor say aye aye all those

053uh pose say nay motion passes unanimously uh up next on the agenda is item uh let's see uh motion to approve job order contracting for star tech at paradise valley high school renovations 18-15 pv dr bales president sure governing board members cabinet guests in in this item uh we highlight and recommend uh this job order for star tech renovations i'd like to especially thank our voters for their continued support of pv schools with the passage of voter approved bonds to maintain our facilities great schools improve property values and reduce crime and in our continued effort to operate with transparency and fiscal responsibility ms barrigan we've had a couple of comments for us about this work at pv high school yes so as shared in the memo with the board the scope of work for this

054project is renovations of the administrative areas and classrooms located on the first and second floor of the building there will be additional work for this project as discussed with the board i believe it was last march or april and we would like to get star tech up and running in good working order and this will help us to be able to do that happy to answer any questions any questions mrs case by changing the order of when things were getting done what's the benefit from what i understand did we change the order of when it was going to happen this is the second phase of that um it's the second phase of it it's a second piece it's it's still the same order i think that we would have done things in so it doesn't

055change the order necessarily this is just i thought things were combined i thought it was a cost-saving thing to combine it i i must be thinking of something else maybe thank you you're welcome any other questions um i just want to make a comment that i think it's appropriate we have this this evening after our cte uh presentation that we had and during our cte month so i appreciate uh funding going towards our cte programming so thank you all right no uh may i please have a motion to approve job order contracting for star tech at paradise valley high school renovations 18-15 pv as presented so moved all those in favor please say aye aye all this posed say nay motion passes unanimously next on the agenda is approval for recommended 912 math curriculum resources

056adoption dr bales president ventura governing board members cabinet and guests with a brief summit and additional information dr corson and ms strang will present this item for a second reading for approval good evening president matura governing board members dr bale's cabinet and guests tonight is the second reading for the r9 12 math curriculum resource adoption as a reminder this adoption results from a committee process of teachers administrators and parents evaluating multiple curriculum resources and considering community feedback from a 60-day public viewing the resources being recommended tonight are for all secondary math courses including algebra 1-2 geometry algebra 3 4 pre-calculus ap calculus college algebra trigonometry applied math statistics and computer science and including all of the honors ap and dual enrollment versions of these courses the cost of this adoption is just over 2.3 million

057dollars funded through the district additional assistance override this adoption is for seven years our secondary math curriculum specialist amber strang and i are here to answer any questions and we are recommending approval this evening we do have um two cards two speakers on this topic first um first we have sandra christensen thank you governing board and i wanted to say thank you also to the math curriculum committee and and allowing us as community members to sit in on on some of their meetings um i just wanted to say that i agree with i i spent a lot of time looking through these math books i went through almost every book and i agreed with most of their most of the pics that they had i thought i thought they did a good job of trying

058to de decrease the ones that were really highly polar so i i appreciate so thank you i appreciate that as a as a parent um there were there were two books that i did want to discuss the first one was the statistics book and i know that the committee had indicated that statistics is one of the ones that they have a more difficult time trying to stay away from topics that are polarizing or can be considered political but the one that that they chose i did happen to review that and just some of the topics to that um were a little bit concerning to me were um there was several on immigration reform and a pathway to citizenship and um there was a question on where do immigrants live and statistics on which states have

059uh 10 or less versus more foreign-born um and um and then there was another question on is it normal to be foreign-born um and then there was one on u.s residents who were not registered voters and um about and and the one on the registered voters can they vote and i mean it to me it just you know kind of was a little off-putting to read that as a parent um there was also some sel mini lessons on meditation to lessen anxiety and this is math this is um statistics so i just didn't feel that it was appropriate to have those items there was a lot on greenhouse gases carbon dioxide not in the form of doing that but more like um encouraging students to get green have your parents do green cards and things

060like that so i i just didn't think it was appropriate um and i'm running out of time the the second one was the um the pearson i thought it was a very good book we were already using that for the curriculum and i thought it could save the district money i know we were talking a lot about finances rather than going to a whole new because um a whole new vendor i thought it might save the money if we used their second choice was which was the pearson for the algebra ones because um they could keep their math excel which my kid really loves and the book was very good and there wasn't really any highly polarizing questions in that book so thank you okay next is nicole klutwick okay you guys are probably getting

061tired of hearing me um i'm getting tired of coming up here um so i just have a couple of things that i just wanted to point out one is i'm noticing that our kids are doing more and more online this is math curriculum is going to be largely online which does not really give our kids much of an opportunity to show their work which is not giving our kids much of an opportunity to show their work which impacts their learning negatively i haven't seen it but i would love to see i know the district's um test scores have been declining for the last five years i would love to see if that correlates to our move to going more and more and more online with um information i was just looking at my son's social

062studies homework last night it's all online and it's it's not great it's just not great in addition to that um the problem is is we have some sensitive things in this curriculum and i know you guys have told us in the past that when sensitive things are in the curriculum we have teachers who will just not assign that part or they'll add context to it and i'm telling you right now i'm working through social studies and they're not instead they're saying this is the this is the curriculum the district approved this is what i have to teach this is how i have to teach it you're putting teachers in a really difficult spot to give them things that you want them to ignore without the tools to know what they're supposed to ignore if you

063approve it they're going to teach it so all of those studies that say you know republicans are racist in the statistics you're hoping they're going to go ahead and just not teach that well why well why why would they not pick that one what reason do they have anyhow so i guess my three points are a lot of online work does not allow them to show their work the more online work it seems like the lower our test scores are going and it's unfair to put teachers in a position to add context or to avoid divisive topics because you guys are the ones who are who are supposed to to tackle that topic for them that's it thank you hey does anyone have any questions for dr corson mrs case thank you um i had

064some questions um i've been communicating with the math teacher about a lot of these different math things and one of the uh questions that i we discussed was are we going to have a book per child or not we are and my next question is and i know a parent just talked against it is it necessary to have a book per child and is it cost saving once you buy the book do you have to buy the book for a number of students for how many let's say 10 000 books or what i don't know i don't know how the what number i'll just say 5 000. so if there's 5 000 books purchased does that allow for 5 000 students to be online using the materials online how does that equate i don't know

065yeah excuse me miss case i'm happy to answer that question for you the vendors do package both the online portal access as well as any hard print materials that are provided in the adoptions and so you are correct i believe in that uh if there are 5 000 textbooks ordered that means that there are 5 000 students that have online access and so if you only ordered 4 000 books you wouldn't have 5 000 online that is correct they come bundled they come bundled one-on-one yes okay i wanted to and there is no cost savings uh in working with the vendors to purchase one without the other they come packaged they come packaged together it is my understanding from what we discussed last time that teachers would be able to see where student was not

066understanding is that is that correct with this new math adoption that it had some ways that they could assess where the student was at the time miss case i believe that you're referring to some of the online programs both the alec which is primarily at the algebra 1 2 geometry and 3 4 level which would be an online supplement which is what we sometimes call adaptive curriculum and so what that does is it allows students to work through concepts and provides teachers rich data in terms of which parts of the problems or standards students are being unsuccessful with so that they can provide uh immediate intervention mr anything you would want to add to that you did great okay so i i just want to do what's best for the students to have the most

067opportunity to learn and for teachers to be able to see where they're getting it and where they're not getting it it's kind of i mean if you can if if 20 students miss the same problem that concept needs to be or whatever it is within a classroom my other comment is i would like to make sure i i'm trying to understand the burdens on teachers right now because it's been a struggle with kova teaching online teaching in person and and kids being absent and trying to catch kids up i would like for teachers to have the opportunity to as soon as these materials come to do their lesson planning so they don't have to use their whole summer to do that so all the half days are they designated for the rest of the year

068and for the beginning of next year to go so these math teachers can get together and plan out lesson plans because it's hard to change books absolutely and we do recognize the impact that that has on teachers as they're having to readjust their planning and preparation for next year mrang has been working uh with her team on a very robust professional development plan and implementation plan and i'll be happy to have miss strang talk a little bit about that good evening mrs case i can't wait to tell you about my plan here we go okay so hear about it next week i'm going to meet with all the vendors if all of these resources get approved and i'm going to get online access right away so our teachers can start playing around with the curriculum

069and getting familiar with it by april all sites are going to have their physical resources their textbooks their tech teachers editions and so forth on april 5th all teachers are going to attend a workshop at north canyon high school in person and they will receive training based on the course that they teach or that they're going to teach next year because they should know their schedules tentative schedules at that time and they'll go to breakout sessions based on whatever training they want to receive from our four vendors then during april and may i'm going to provide pd courses for teachers to attend on their own those would be virtual i'm going to have those recorded so if teachers can't make that based on their schedule they could go at another time and watch those recordings

070those will all be housed on the math curriculum website speaking of the mac curriculum website i'm going to have a page there that has all updates resources videos links everything they need separated by course so it's a perfect hub for teachers to go to for the resources they need virtual pd will continue throughout the first quarter and all throughout the next year i want to use all of the the pd and training that comes from these vendors as much as possible so that our teachers feel prepared and ready they can choose to use their summer if they want to but i want to provide as many opportunities fourth quarter and also first quarter when we return and then don't forget august 3rd and 4th when we come back i'm going to have more training that's

071in person as well okay thank you i it sounds like you're trying to do what's best to help the teachers and if you have happy teachers you have happy students so i appreciate that understanding of the i and i i spoke to a parent that was on the committee and he said there was teacher math teachers went into it saying no we don't want to change we like what we have and by the end of going through it they change their minds because they realized it was so beneficial so i just want to make sure we're protecting the teachers and helping them all that we can absolutely that is my goal i think the teachers in paradise valley unified school district are amazing humans they're doing such great things in the classroom and i want

072to support them as best they can i think in these past two years we've all realized that we can do hard things and they're resilient and they're going to do great with this new curriculum thank you thank you okay any other questions all right may i please have an uh a motion for approval of recommended adoption of the 912 math curriculum resources to be implemented beginning in the 22-23 school year so moved all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed say nay motion passes unanimously next on the agenda is approval of revisions to governing board policy a dr bales president mature with a brief and additional information dr jarros will present this item for a second reading and a recommendation for approval of policy a dr jairus president matura dr bales cabinet and

073members of the audience i present to you tonight the second reading of revisions to governing board policy a which identifies our district's vision mission and values since is this is the second reading tonight i will briefly review our process for creating these provisions then i will share with you our recommendations again this is a second reading for these revisions so we will be looking for approval of this policy change the items presented tonight are the work of our design team which was facilitated by dr connie cam of cam solutions our design team consists of our cabinet and members of each stakeholder group which has been instrumental in providing a well-rounded lens on creating a direction for the district as i shared in the last meeting our strategic planning process includes three phases we've just completed

074the mission vision and values proportion which i'm presenting tonight and then we are starting the to develop our strategic goals and commitments and then we will begin to operationalize that by creating uh strategical action steps uh at district and building level uh at the building level our recommendation for a vision statement is every learner empowered for a lifetime of success i want to remind you that the committee created several versions of this statement using community survey feedback and governing board suggestions to land on this final revision our recommendation for our mission statement is we engage inspire and nurture students through high quality instruction meaningful educational opportunities and dynamic learning experiences the statement reflects the multifaceted nature of education that teaching involves more than just providing instruction and opportunities to grow and learn it includes moments

075of encouragement and support and building relationships to help support the uniqueness of each student recommendations for value statements begin with identifying the following values student focus innovation collaboration integrity growth and respect you'll notice that student focus is in red and on the coming slides other words will be highlighted in red that have been changed since the first reading student focus was initially uh in a different tense it had an ed at the end of it it has been changed to as you see it here to be more consistent with the other values each value is further described through a value statement and descriptors to better demonstrate how the value can be demonstrated uh by being student focused for example we approach each decision and interaction with every student's success and well-being as a priority you'll

076also notice a change from the last reading where we with these descriptors each of the descriptors initially had the word buy embedded in the descriptors and the bullet points but we modified the format so that we can be more flexible in using this material as a standalone in different settings such as the district's web page innovation means that we nurture creativity curiosity and strategic thinking through dynamic learning experiences and that should have been highlighted as well we had thinking and reasoning the last time we've just changed that down to strategic thinking and we've also modified the descriptor there for solve solving problems collaboratively initially the phrasing was problem solving and again to be consistent we made the modification that you see through collaboration we cultivate respectful and meaningful relationships to support high expectations and a

077culture of growth through integrity we model character equity and ethical behavior in all that we do the design team recognize that part of our students education is in the behavior we model and these actions are important to being a part of a strong community by valuing growth we foster continuous progress development and learning and again while we recognize the importance of student achievement the design team felt it necessary to also acknowledge that this can look different for each student and that we should celebrate individual and organizational growth in our process of improvement and through respect we model civility dignity and thoughtful consideration in our communication and actions in addition to our vision mission and value statements we're also recommending that we continue with our motto of a journey of excellence again as a reminder our

078next steps in creating the strategic plan for district improvement will be to establish broad goals and commitments which will take place between now and april and then we will begin to operationalize those goals at this time i'm open to questions or feedback and we also recommend your approval on these changes does anyone have any questions or comments mrs greenberg thank you mrs matura and thank you dr jairus um i had a chance unfortunately today not earlier um to go through again and just you know really sort of look at it try to look at it with fresh eyes and i just have a couple um i think little things or i hope little things um that that i'd like to um throw out there um in the student focus value statement and i dr bales

079and i talked about this briefly before the meeting started i know that we are not numbering i should pull it back we're not numbering any of these statements we're not prioritizing or not whatever but in student focus when we say we demonstrate this value by the last bullet point says prioritizing and it feels to me that maybe that should be the first bullet point that even though we we are not technically prioritizing these bullet points when people read they're going to read them top to bottom and it's going to feel that there is an order there so i would just like to throw out there that perhaps putting prioritizing resources to have the greatest impact on student success go first just because i think it also underscores everything we're trying to do with student focus

080so that's a thought i had on that one and again i you know i think everything that that's here is great um but i would ask the board to you know consider perhaps just changing that order um [Music] the comma is account i don't i don't have to bring that one up there's a common needed in in the uh the growth value statement um [Music] we use a that and a witch and we just need a comma before the and yeah so that's that's an easy one um and the only other thing and i and i i truly don't mean to sound nitpicky or whatever um we've been using a journey of excellence for a long time and i know there is a difference between what a motto is what a tagline is what a

081slogan is and maybe i should be looking at matt on all of this is this is is this our motto i mean is is a journey of excellence do we want to call it our motto um [Music] i just to me it's more than that and i'm not sure that there's really a word to describe it so i'm just kind of saying do we need to describe it within our policies i don't know mr drogy would you like to provide some commentary i'd love to a journey of excellence is definitely part of our brand and it would remain part of our brand i believe that the intention here is to solidify it as an official motto as well to your point making it more than just a tagline at the bottom of our logo okay

082thank you and mrs case not to be disagreeable ann mrs greenberg but on the student focus one i like that if if it is i know it's not supposed to be in an order but what you what you said i like caring about believing in and holding ourselves and students accountable for high academic achievement i like that to be first to me that's more important than any of the other ones so i guess we all have we look at things differently and i understand the other one and i think it's of importance but i don't know i like that other one caring about because that's what teaching is and that's what we do is care about our students so it's student anyway i like that one first but whatever mrs greenberg the the reason it

083sort of struck me as putting the first one the prioritizing first is because the overall statement is talking about student success and so it seemed like when we say we're prioritizing resources to have the greatest impact on student success that would be the first thing we would do and then everything else that's under it that that was where it hit me that's i i see where you're saying but you could have all the resources resources and and not care and it wouldn't matter so i i hear what you're saying any other anyone want to weigh in on this do i want to weigh in not really i know this is the one time boy scout should be here so they could see us having like some um not argue some constructive discourse around issues yes

084um [Music] i have to say i agree with mrs case on this because to me caring about and believing in kids is the number one job and we could have all the resources in the world and if we didn't care about kids it wouldn't matter so that's just that is but remember i'm a social worker not an accountant not you know i'm not a numbers person i'm a feel person so that feel makes me like that first now could we reorder them and you know and move that higher maybe does it make a difference that's what i'm not sure like if who's looking at this everyone should be looking at this this is really important um but um i just want to i do think that caring about is really important that's what our teachers

085do every day in schools is care mr laney yeah i have a comment about it usually when people read paragraphs they remember the first and the last line mostly so for those two things to be there in those two positions i think that would be great and i also do like having caring be the first thing that that pops out at you so i do um i would uh like to keep the order the way it is now any other okay um may oh so just to be clear what i'm hearing in in the recommendation uh for miss chisman is that the the motion on the revisions includes the hyphen under the mission statement that was in the presentation uh but not necessarily in the back of material okay and number two we had a

086comma under the growth value statement after critical thinking and the rest is presented for approval as is all right may i please have a motion to approve revisions to governing board policy a as presented with the uh with the changes that dr bales just outlined so moved all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed say nay motion passes unanimously next on the agenda is approval of additional sick leave coveted 19 dr bales president mature governing board members cabinet guests with a brief summary and additional information dr holmes will present this item madam president members of the board as you are aware uh in 2021 we offered a a temporary leave benefit to our employees who contracted kovid 19 and that expired on december 31st the very next thing that happened is the state

087as as you know experienced an extreme spike in cases we experienced a lot of employee illness in the month of january and in recognition of that wanting to provide some additional relief to our employees this item would provide five additional sick leave days for all of our employees who had not already received that benefit and for those that maybe received a day or two it would provide them an amount the difference between five and what they received so we are recommending approval and i'm happy to answer any questions you have any questions i just want to clarify i just want to clarify it's retroactive to january 1 2022. we actually can't do that what this actually does is it provides additional days to their banks so if they used days in in january they would

088effectively be replenished and do we do our employees need to do something to receive that or will the benefits department just we will automatically load them okay great thank you so much any other questions may i please have a motion to approve additional sick leave for coven 19 as presented so moved all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed say nay motion passes unanimously next on the agenda is approval of a one percent base pay one-time payment for esi employees dr bales president mature governor board members cabinet and guests and with another brief summary and additional information to explain our esi and this one percent dr holmes madam president members of the board we recently provided a one-time one percent payout for all of our employees um but did not include our esi

089employees these are our employees that are part of our phased retirement program um we we intend for them to receive that same benefit because their contracts are structured differently we have to uh request explicit repo approval for this so um this would provide our esi employees with a one time one percent on base payout we recommend approval and i'm happy to answer any questions any questions i do have uh one question and wondering uh is this something that will be written into future contract negotiations where we will remember this group i mean it was a unique year that we we were offering this but uh now that we've noticed that there's this group that kind of fell through the cracks that uh moving forward we'll have them uh as part of the original contract negotiation

090you know their contracts are are with an a separate company so that's something that we could look at but they are in fact employed by a third party company okay but we can we can look at that i think mr president mature and government board members what you'll see is should we have contingency language again in next year's contract for our employee groups we would probably include separate language to address this item so that it is clear more clear clearer for this group as we move forward okay great thank you all right may please have a motion to approve one percent based pay one-time payment for esi employees as as presented so moved all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed say nay motion passes unanimously next on the agenda is acceptance of

091the 2021 audit reports issued on 12 13 2021 for the 2020 2021 fiscal year dr bales president mature governing board members cabinet and guests ms barrigan will give us a brief summary of some additional information on this item it is unique and it is the first time as a result of legislative action a year ago in last year's session ms bergen thank you dr bales president mature and governing board members uh i have some good information for us on our external audit this year i get a little bit excited about it i recognize that everybody's not as excited as i am uh but i'll go through it as quickly as possible while still being clear the objective is to review the purpose scope and results of the annual financial audit and the various pieces within

092that and this is the agenda of the items that we will go through starting with our audit requirements in ars 15 914 we are required to school districts to have a audit and the completion of the usfr compliance questionnaire if we have more than two million dollars in our budget annually we certainly have more than two million dollars in our budget annually additionally if districts expend more than 750 000 in federal funds then we also have to have the federal single audit and we have more than 750 000 in federal revenues then as dr bales shared in spring of 2021 the arizona legislature passed legislation requiring governing boards to take a roll call vote so you'll have a roll call vote tonight which is a little unusual and you will then vote yay or nay

093on that at that time additionally we then upload all of the files to the department of education so that the public has access to them all in one place they have all of the districts there at the department of education as well as providing them to the county school superintendent office in case you don't know our audit process goes through this this order a couple of times we start by engaging with our external auditors who are contracted through procurement that we have done and that is through the competitive bid process and fiscal year 21 was the fifth year we do the uh contract for five years that was the final year of our contract so we'll be working to develop a new contract for audit moving forward for the next five years once the year

094is getting towards being complete we send all of our financial data to the auditors and then they look through all of that data determine what field work they would like to see from us send us back those field work requests our team mostly in the finance department puts together all of that work prepares the documentation and when the auditors come out for their first round of audit that can usually be in the june july or august time frame then they look at all of this document documentation that we've provided for them we always get excellent feedback from our auditors which are heinfeld and meech and they appreciate how well we put together all of that documentation for them that it is in good order that it is easy under understand and easy to find things

095and then they also know who they can ask questions of when they have questions once they're done with their with their field work they leave us for a little bit and then they come back in the october or november time frame they have sent us new requests for additional field work usually in different areas of the audit and we get some more documentation prepared for them set them in a room for a week and let them add it and then they ask us any questions that they might have for our audit reports that we issue we first issue a communication to the governance we have the comprehensive annual financial report which is now known as the annual comprehensive financial report then we have the single audit reporting package and the uniform system of financial records

096compliance questionnaire starting with the communication to the governance letter for us this year there were no difficulties encountered in performing the audit which we want to hear no disagreements with management also a good thing and that management provided all of the required representations as mentioned heinfeld and meech are auditors they are the auditors for most of the school districts i would say about 90 of the school districts in the state of arizona so they're very familiar with school district work and our financial system and auditing school districts and they complied with all of their required independence requirements next for the annual comprehensive financial report we put together from from that all of that financial work this uh fairly significantly sized report 174 pages this past year we received an unmodified which um doesn't sound like

097it makes a whole lot of sense but essentially as i put in parentheses there that means a clean opinion that that looked good all of our financials looked good from the auditing perspective in the independent auditors report and then listed there is just a sort of a index of the full comprehensive financial report and what's discussed in there the management's discussion and analysis and the various pieces that that covers and then there are full fund financial statements as well as notes to financial statements not everybody understands the financial statements so we try to put those notes in there to help them understand some of the details a little more clearly additionally there's some required required supplementary information and then we have fund financial statements and schedules as well followed by a statistical section that seems

098to get larger and larger every year but there are often lots of data requests from various folks in the state of arizona and so we try to provide that information in our statistical requests that's uh much of this is also very important when we receive our bond ratings and we did bond rating calls this last week and we'll have some more information on that in a moment with the single audit reporting package there are two primary sections to this and then in the first section we did note one significant deficiency in the internal control over the financial reporting for our budgeting process that was primarily due to the transition to the new financial software that we had discussed uh corrective action plan was made but effectively it was already taken care of we knew before

099we uploaded the annual financial report uh that there there was the concern there we made that fix but we also provided a corrective action to the auditors and then there were no significant deficiencies or material weaknesses identified in internal controls over the major programs in the second section they note in the documentation that it is in their opinion that the paradise valley unified school district complied in all material respects with the compliance requirements that they refer to and something very important and very exciting we had a finding that was in our single audit report for five years in a row it started off as a significant deficiency moved to a material weakness and was a material weakness for three years in a row then went uh backwards again which is in a good way to

100just a significant deficiency in the year prior fiscal year 20. uh in fiscal year 21 it was no longer identified as a finding and i want to note that yes i'm glad you're excited that is primarily due to the change in financial accounting software and i know uh mrs felton in my uh in the time before me being here had shared the importance of moving to a financial system that had better accounting practices in that so in doing so in the first year of implementation they were able to get this five year finding often i give that credit to all the folks that were here before i was only i only finished out the last three months so the next piece is the uniform system of financial records compliance questionnaire this is measures compliance with

101the measure against the questionnaire that the office of the auditor general puts out these are some of the areas they review such as budgeting and cash receipts and procurement and there's a lot of areas that they review some of the non-financial areas they tend to take a look at as well as information technology and human resources the documentation that we're keeping required for all of our staff as always and with any district in the state of arizona there tend to be minor non-compliance items that were noted uh and 92 we were 92 compliant would be one way to put it in other words we were able to answer yes for compliance for 92 percent of the questions the year prior fiscal year 20 we had 18 findings for the compliance questionnaire and this past year

102for fiscal year 21 we only had 10 findings again primarily due to the switch over to the financial software so things are getting better with the audit results they were issued on time and submitted for the awards for the association of school business officials deadline that was december 31st as well as the government finance officers association awards so we hope to receive those word awards yet again for fiscal year 21. also we met the continuing bond disclosures deadlines of february 1st it is important when issuing bonds that those who are interested in pursuing bonds from the paradise valley unified school district know what our financial statements look like and so we need to make sure that we get those in on time as i mentioned i did bond rating calls last week with moody's and

103then a bond rating call on friday with fitch and they moody's we did first and they have issued our rating for this year we are aa1 again so that is good news we maintained our rating and that provides us the better your rating the lower the borrowing rate just like the better your personal credit score the better your your borrowing rate for anything financially related um additionally all required reports need to be submitted by march 31st our wonderful people and staff have already got all of those things done so we're well ahead of time with that i want to thank some very important people who help make this audit a success starting with vanessa shapiro she's our director for the finance area kathy distefano our internal auditor who coordinates the work with our auditors rob

104dethridge who makes sure that our adm is on track that is a very important piece to the compliance within the audit all of our finance department those in technology as well as the human resources department and one more person i would like to mention again mrs laura felton she made sure it all happened for the bulk of the year i appreciate the work of all these people with that i'm happy to answer any questions and we recommend approval and we recommend approval for sure does anyone have any questions no thank you for your work on this thank you uh may i please have a motion to approve acceptance of 2021 audit reports issued on 12 12 13 2021 for the 2020-20-21 fiscal year as presented so moved ms chisman may please have a roll call

105vote mrs greenberg aye mrs bacon aye mr laney aye mrs matura aye mrs case aye motion passes unanimously next on the agenda is consideration to approve purchase from current mojave cooperative contract 18f wrwc-0904 dr bales president mature governing board members cabinet and guests with a brief summary additional information in a thanks to our voters again ms barrigan would you please present this item absolutely uh thank you dr bales uh president mature and governing board members we will be purchasing uh 10 special needs buses 2023 is the year of those buses so they'll be nice and brand new as noted in here we were able to do some trade-in credit with some of the buses that we have which helps us to bring down the price of each bus and we will use this to hopefully

106provide some more efficient routes our current special education buses seat typically up to 14 students there's not always 14 students on them and this will do 18 students we don't want to do too much more than that there's a lot that needs to be managed and maintained on a special education bus but in doing so we hope to be able to effectuate some more efficient routes and with that i would also like to thank our voters as always happy to answer any questions you may have do we have any questions or comments okay may i please have a motion to approve purchase from current mojave cooperative contract 18f rwc-0904 as presented so moved all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed say nay motion passes unanimously next on the agenda is ratification of

107vouchers may i please have a motion to ratify vouchers as submitted so moved all those in favor say i i all those opposed say nay mrs mature i will abstain as i always do when asba is a credit as a payment a payor in our vouchers uh motion passes unanimously with julie's uh with mrs bacon's abstention uh next on the agenda is gifts and donations well we appreciate all the donors that donate to our district and appreciate that so many in our community do take an interest in our students and in our schools i would like to make special thank you to a few of the items on our gifts and donations report this evening we wanted to thank jostens who donated three thousand dollars to each of our traditional high schools for faculty appreciation

108and staff recognition uh miss angela clipper donated 1500 to the national njhs field trip for mountain trail middle school the thunderbirds foundation donated a thousand dollars to boys golf at north canyon high school uh dave and renee ryan donated uh school uniforms to palomino intermediate school in the amount just under two thousand dollars uh john and jessica clark donated eight thousand six hundred dollars to the district for avid programs and the sandpiper pto donated twenty thousand dollars for turf for their outdoor classroom so again thank you to all of our donors um thank you anyone who is here uh representing those organizations or people and uh uh thank you to all of our donors that we did not mention this evening i may i have a motion for acceptance of gifts and donations please so

109moved all those in favor say aye hi hi all those opposed say nay motion passes unanimously there are no other items for discussion this evening no items for discussion this evening and next on the agenda is call for executive session may i have a motion please move the governing board call for an executive session in accordance with arizona revised statutes which reads as follows arizona revised statutes 38431.03.85 discussion or consultations with designated representative representatives of the public body in order to consider its position and instruct its representatives regarding negotiations and employee organizations regarding the salaries salary schedules or compensation paid in the form of french benefits of employees of the public body our purpose is to meet for instruction and direction all those in favor say aye aye aye all those opposed say nay motion

110passes unanimously the regular meeting is recessed at 8 36 pm to go into executive session and we will reconvene after we return from executive session we are reconvening our regular meeting at 9 35 pm next on the agenda is instruction to administration may i have a motion please uh move the governing board and strike the administration to continue with interest-based negotiation uh with our employee groups as directed all those in favor please say aye aye all those opposed say nay motion passes unanimously before we adjourn i would like to remind you that the next regular board meeting will be held on thursday march 10th 2022 at 7 00 pm may i have a motion to adjourn so moved all those in favor please say aye aye all those opposed say nay motion passes unanimously meeting

111is adjourned