August 5, 2021 Governing Board Regular Meeting

001okay i'm calling the first regular meeting of the 108th year of the paradise valley unified school district governing board to order um i would appreciate if you would rise for the plot okay we still can you got it now okay um after call to to order i would appreciate if anyone rise and mr appleman will lead us in the pledge of the united allegiance of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you may i have roll call please mrs matura here mrs greenberg here mrs bacon here mrs brown here mrs case here next on the agenda is approval of agenda dr bales good evening items approved by consent will not come up for discussion during the meeting but will be approved

002when the agenda is adopted this is possible since members of the governing board receive the agenda along with backup materials at least 24 hours prior to the meeting and have had 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 place on the agenda i would like to offer the agenda as posted thank you dr bales does any member of the governing board wish to remove anything or remove anything from the consent agenda does any member of the audience seeing none mrs brown may have a motion so moved all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed motion passes and the agenda we

003will follow the agenda as posted next on the agenda is governing board statements i'm looking off to my left mrs case do you have um i just want to say welcome back to teachers and students and parents for a new school year and i hope it all goes even better than last year we can all hope thank you yeah i'm gonna say the same thing welcome back to um students and teachers parents um and community members who are in our schools um it's gonna be a good year and um we're grateful to have kids back in classrooms and and learning um from teachers who love the jobs that they do so thank you [Music] mrs brown uh ditto what they said but also i would like to thank all of the parents and community members

004and teachers for their emails and input since our last meeting i appreciate how much time and energy that people have put in i appreciate that if their students education are important to them and um and we're listening and so i just want to say thank you again uh i wanted to say everything that's already been said but also i wanted to let everyone know that teachers have already been back and they are excited and some of them have been in trainings and they're very excited to be back in the classrooms with the kids so everyone's looking forward to a great year i wanted to say thank you to the teachers for all you do for our families and our students and appreciate you starting off the new year i before i say welcome back i'd

005also like to say congratulations on july 29th we held a summer graduation for all of our students who were doing some credit recovery or otherwise taking classes over summer school and i want to thank mr long and our high school principals for organizing it we had 14 students actually walk and every one of our high schools was represented it was amazing and i think it's something that will become a another pv tradition and it was an honor to be there on behalf of the board i'd also like to thank dr holmes and everyone [Music] in pva as well for yesterday's news certificated employee event we had orientation for new employees both in the morning for elementary and in the afternoon for secondary and just a lot of um great information and a lot of very

006enthusiastic folks and it was it was lovely to be there as well and like everyone else i am looking forward to the new year i want to thank our community our teachers our students for all being ready and for what i expect will be an amazing year of learning so with that we will move to call to the public because we have no awards and recognitions today um before i get to the cards um i would like to let everyone know that because our meetings are made available to a virtual audience paradise valley unified school district has implemented a process to collect virtual public comments members of the public wishing to submit these comments to the governing board for this meeting were able to do so by completing the public comment form located on the

007home page of the district's website in order to be included in tonight's meeting members of the public were encouraged to complete the public comment form by noon today it is important to note all comments related to board agenda items that were received by today's new deadline were provided to all of the governing board members and the superintendent's office in advance of tonight's meaning these comments will not be read aloud during the meeting we would like to thank our community for voicing their thoughts and providing comments for tonight's meeting and we received a total of 159 comment submissions so with that we did receive quite a number of cards and given the extensive amount we have on the agenda today we are going to limit each to 90 seconds or minute and a half for call

008to the public and i apologize i don't have these in an order because we were going through so i'm just going to take them as i have them the first person i have is summer bagley good evening i would like to say that seeing my two older sons attend their high school orientation last night warmed my heart and it also warmed my heart to see so many faces smiles and so many genuinely excited about students returning to a normal year it has been really wonderful it has also been a long and strenuous year for everyone for those who have fought hard to keep our personal freedoms bodily autonomy and medical freedoms alive i thank you you are the true heroes and we continue to hold the line and keep the sport accountable to follow the

009letter of the law here in arizona to reiterate what our governor has said arizona does not allow mass mandates vaccine mandates vaccine passports or discrimination in schools based on who is or isn't vaccinated he passed all this into law and it will not be changed in addition arizona carries all three exemptions under law for all vaccines for every child at any school at any time it is the parent's choice whether or not to vaccinate no shots no school is not true if you need exemptions please see me afterwards lastly i do not consent to vaccine clinics at my child's school i do not consent to probe testing i do not consent to anyone inquiring about the mental and physical health status of my child without my presence and i do not consent to crt the

010majority of parents in this district the majority do not consent to any of these things and want in-person learning no math [Applause] thank you the next card i have and i apologize in advance if i am not pronouncing names correctly uh michelle eris arista zabal dr eris bazaar thanks thank you um hi my name is michelle aristi sable i'm a local ob gyn and i come tonight to implore the board to consider challenging governor ducey's ban of mass mandates those of us in the medical community unanimously feel that mass mandates are essential for ensuring our students safety this year we know that covet is an airborne disease that means that hand washing cleaning of surfaces or any of the other sanitation strategies for controlling disease in our classrooms will not work this has been shown

011in all of the districts that have thus far opened without maths in place um over 130 students in chandler school district are already sick with covid after only two weeks of being in school circulating in our community seventy-five percent of cases are the delta variant this is fifty percent more contagious than the virus we saw last year it also affects students to a significantly i'm sorry children to a significantly more uh significant degree and we are seeing that in the cases one in four new cases of covid is in a child and one in 20 hospitalizations in arizona right now are in a child this is serious and is something that the board needs to take into account that this is not the same animal we were dealing with last year and we need to

012protect our children asking us to send our children back to school without mass is driving around next on the next card i have is lisa farr so first off i'm going to say that that doctor he made a very big gross mistake when you said that all doctors agree on their unanimousness they are absolutely not big misrepresentation and secondly you are encouraging this board what's that okay so i'm talking to you but i'm talking to her um also this doctor is sitting here asking our board and our superintendent and our administration to break the law that is not acceptable your constituents demand that you follow the executive order and give us the freedom no mask mandates will be allowed and also i am very concerned about the quarantining your duty is to provide an equal

013education opportunity for our children there is no way that is possible when you're going to quarantine children for days without the teacher instruction and if you think you're going to just provide some available teacher to answer questions after school you've got to remember most of these kids or many of these kids are going to be in extracurricular activities athletics if they're not going to be available during that time is your duty to make sure they have equal access to education please follow the executive order [Applause] the next card i have is from marcy sarnie firstly i sincerely thank you for making the use of masks optional and for following the law my daughter is 13 years old and is beginning eighth grade this year last year our children had to wear masks all day and

014were pulled in and out of in-person learning due to lockdowns and quarantines i hope this year will be different um i have had many conversations with her about covet masks vaccines and the like and i can tell you that the psychological effects of masks are real and terrifying our children's childhood is being stolen from them and this is not okay trust the science i have done my research over the past year and there are over 47 studies confirming masks are ineffective one of which was performed by the cdc itself and stated that 85 percent of those who contracted kobit 19 were wearing masks over 32 studies confirmed the negative health effects of masks as parents we have the right to make health decisions for our children this is the law unless shown in writing that

015i am prohibited from exercising that right my child will not be wearing a mask as it is my belief the masks is harmful to her health cobit 19 again has a 99.99 percent survival rate in children according to peer-reviewed studies and according to the patient bill of rights ars 1602 number five the right to make health care decisions for the minor child including rights pursuant to sections 15-8 um thank you i was just before i um get to the next card i was just handed a note um we are working with new equipment and we would appreciate you we may need to but you guys don't need to speak quite so closely to the mic next card is from diane nieman hi thank you for letting me speak my name is diane niemann i've lived

016in this area paradise valley for 24 years three children have graduated from your schools as far as the mass go i'd like to know of the concrete evidence that serious illnesses ever occurred in the paradise valley district from children from covet and i'd like to know after a year of the kids being separated being in zoom meetings how this would help them get back into socialization with the other children if they're wearing a mask and also i'd like to know how this could help um in the event of let's see their able ability to express themselves and and just look at other people and just really feel like um they were valued you know i feel that this this really is a separation for the children so thank you uh the next card i have

017is nicole cludwick did i say that correctly um i'm just going to keep it pretty short uh i just want to ask you to please keep masks optional um i know people have talked about the efficacy and how that's questioned i know people have talked about experts and quite frankly they're all over the board um people have talked about the law i do encourage you to follow it as i think we would want our to teach our children that they should be following the law as well i mean it's kind of a bad example but but in addition to that i i don't want to see our state's resources going to legal bills going to fighting all of these things but then on top of that just from a very very practical perspective we frankly

018don't know the amount of learning and development that children have in non-verbal facial ways um i it breaks my heart that kindergarteners are not learning those cues those social cues those emotional cues those developmental cues in their school from their teachers and from their peers and it's really quite tragic that we're forcing them to to not learn it so thank you [Applause] um i have a card here from someone named carrie who did not provide the last name uh good evening i'm a little bit ashamed to say that this is my first governing board meeting that i've attended in the last 15 years i've had children within this district i come here today for myself for my first grader for my son who's an alumni of horizon high school and for the silent majority that's

019unable or unwilling to make it here today for one reason or another i wanted to state that today i applaud and support the school board along with businesses and localities that have respected our parental choice when it comes to masking our children we anticipate and appreciate your continued support of our right to choose what is best for our children and our individual families simply put i'm thankful that you respect that these are not your children these are ours they also have rights as americans it's our responsibility to take care of them and they are our most beloved they're not yours if you're a parent listening to this tonight hear me clearly you're not alone i urge you to connect with other parents and make your voice heard we are strong we're united and we're in

020control i have never and will never agree to co-parent with the government when it comes to my children thank you so much for your time next card i have is jennifer baglioli and again i apologize if i mispronounced that for having us um i have three kids in the pb school district i have a high school i have a middle grade and i have a elementary school teacher i mean elementary school age i have seen this affect my kids in so many negative ways this past year it has been awful as a parent to have no answers to give your kid when psychologically emotionally it is literally affecting them they don't want to go to school they don't want it they're scared that they're going to get quarantined if they play a sport it affects

021their position if they get corn quarantined my son got quarantined for two weeks and he had nothing he already had covet they didn't care it affected his position it affects every kid in a different way my other my youngest has fear like he couldn't even talk to other kids he would be so scared because he'd lost the ability to just be normal because he's not used to he was not used to being around other kids every day he became the shy introvert kid and he's not and it breaks my heart that we need to do what is best and we need to listen to the law we need to listen to our governor we need to do what's best for our kids and whereas parents we should be able to make that choice if you

022want to bring your kid have your kid wear a mask than fine please do but don't tell us how to parent our kids that's all i have to say the next card i have is from kelly mccormick for your time um i have had six children come through pv school district my last is a junior at pinnacle and my grandkids are now starting i have one starting um preschool um i am very grateful for the communication that we will be able to not have mass mandated and then i've already had an experience that has made me concerned my daughter tried out for the spirit line which is literally the hugest part of her life it gives her so much joy she tried out on friday was announced the team that she made it on saturday

023we got together for a board meeting on monday and then wednesday they checked out their uniforms yesterday we received an email that seven girls were quarantined already they they missed team pictures won't be in the yearbook today um for the year tomorrow is freshman camp and they are big mentors at freshman camp they are not able to attend that and they will miss the first day of school and all those other activities my daughter's not one of these but i'm so sad for the girls who are having to miss who are not who are not ill they are not sick um i also have a friend who is a charge nurse at phoenix children's hospital she told me they have recently hired what they call watchers because they have up to 50 kids coming a

024day with suicide attempts and these watchers are walking the halls 24 7. when we're canceling activities quarantining these kids making them sit in their bedroom on a computer or whatever they are not going to be able to um deal with these things emotionally and i [Applause] the next card i have is from barbara jennings well this is more for instructional purposes for the parents here because az legislature passed house bill hb 2898 and governor ducey signed it into law on june 30 2021 ars section 21 title 15 chapter 7 states the following with regards to instruction of pre-k grades and summary form a teacher or any other employee of a school district in arizona may not use public money for instruction that presents any form of blame or judgment on the basis of race ethnicity

025or sex may not allow instruction in or make part of the course the concept may not allow instruction that one race ethnic group or sex is inherently morally or intellectually superior to another race may not allow instruction that an individual is inherently racist sexist or oppressive whether consciously or unconsciously by virtue of their race ethnicity or sex may not allow instruction that an individual should be discriminated against or be adversely treated solely or partly because of that individual's race ethnicity or sex may not allow instruction to an individual's moral character is determined by individuals race ethnicity or sex may not allow instruction to by an individual by virtue of their race ethnic group or sex bears responsibility for actions committed by other members of the same race ethnic group or sex [Applause] thank you the

026next card is from wendy mahler hello i'm asking the school board today to not make any mass mandates going forward it is the parental rights of all of us parents to make medical decisions for our children we have the freedom of choice for our children also i want to ask that the school also not discriminate when they decide if if if you're going to make kids quarantine who are not vaccinated you're being discriminatory one you're violating our medical rights to privacy we should have the private kids should have the privacy of keeping their medical issues private and therefore by you if a child is exposed to another child that has covid per se you're going to send the unvaccinated child home but yet the vaccinated child can stay at school that sounds like discrimination to

027me also i would like to governor ducey has signed into law that we do not have crt but he did speak about the next very next day he signed into law about sel social emotional learning which is basically the same thing it's just renamed i ask that this not be instituted in our schools and that we teach freedom [Applause] the next card i have here is jennifer cronin i just want to thank the administration and the board for respecting the rights of parents and families and employees to choose whether to wear face coverings at school and also for complying with the state law which prohibits mass mandates over the past 17 months there have been many developments regarding coven 19. there's an incredible amount of data from all over the country in the world indicating

028who is most likely to suffer from a severe infection hospitalization or death there are effective vaccines available to anyone age 12 and over that wants one and pv schools is providing multiple learning options for families to choose from including pv online pv connect traditional in-person learning and the option to wear face coverings each family and employee can review the available information recommendations and studies and choose the option that best mitigates the risks of coven 19 for their situation two of my students attended back to school activities at their schools yesterday mountain trail middle school and paradise valley high school at both schools some students and staff were wearing masks and others were not students were respectful to each other and the events were very successful there's some concern that there could be different treatment at

029school for those that choose to wear a face covering and that choose and those that choose to be mask free i hope that administration does not tolerate any discrimination towards students or employees based on their choice of whether or not to wear a face covering finally excluding healthy kids from the classroom thank you the last card i have for call to the public is trevor nelson all right challenge accepted um good evening arizona is currently experiencing a covid surge because of the delta variant the arizona academy of pediatrics reported a case amongst u.s children jumped 84 sorry that was the america academy pediatrics arkansas is in the midst of a surge mississippi miss missouri florida louisiana or running out of beds uh banner health chief clinical officer marjorie bessel reported that 95 there's been a

03095 increase in covetation since july the 300 increase in ventilator use the cdc recently updated their guidelines but it's not really an update because masks in schools have always been in there it's just that when unvaccinated children were attending excuse me i'm speaking thanks it's not lies actually please don't interrupt the speaker one it stated if unvaccinated people attend a small indoor gathering with fully vaccinated and unvaccinated people or multiple households they should wear a mask that sounds like a school because it is there is simply no data to justify non-compliance with the arizona academy of family physicians american academy pediatricians pediatrics sorry cdc county health guidelines to wear masks uh ars 15 34205 that is banning uh the mandating of masks is not ins does not apply right now because it doesn't go into

031effect until september 29th it doesn't become redirective until the date it becomes law ask the board to consider their stance on the law and my time [Applause] thank you very much next on the agenda is superintendent's comments dr bales sorry the other cards we have up here are for specific agenda items those are all the cards i have for call to the public everything else is for a specific agenda items so if a card did not reach us i i don't have it so i will turn it over to dr bales for superintendent comments thank you president greenberg happy new year well like one of my mentors taught me it's important to start with enthusiasm and we are starting a new year excuse me a friend of mine also recently sent me a list of

032the worst jobs in america sadly school superintendent was at the top of the list i reminded him that i grew up on a farm and i'm pretty sure that i can describe worse jobs than superintendent i have the unique privilege honor and perspective of serving as superintendent pb schools and i'm excited to see the steps that our students continue to take on their journey of excellence this year these are not easy times for school leaders teachers students or parents with distractions around nearly every decision that we make remaining focused on our mission is sometimes difficult we may not always agree but we can continue to listen learn and lead with mutual respect and rapport because we can always agree that the most important piece to this equation is our students success on their journey of

033excellence here in pv schools that's what unites us it's our partnership that will help their success it makes us strong next week our schools will begin the 2122 school year and i want to extend may my thanks to the support staff teachers and administrators working to ensure our buildings and classrooms are ready for the new year more than 3 600 employees are looking forward to welcoming nearly 30 000 students to our classrooms to our students and parents we're excited to welcome you with care love and support regardless of the learning path you chose in person pb connect or pb online our focus remains on teaching and learning and i know our staff members are eager to get back to it i want to extend a special warm welcome to our more than 250 new certified

034employees teachers nurses psychologists and such as well as at least as of today 119 support staff and personnel and thanks to dr holmes and his team busy hiring every day i'd like to extend a shout out to desert financial credit union and that gave every new teacher a 10 gift card to target later in the agenda tonight i will highlight some priority focus areas goals and objectives for this year as the new superintendent i hope you stick around and listen to that presentation as we work to stabilize and reinvigorate stakeholder relationships rebuild trust and improve transparency across the district the current landscape around copenhagen mitigation continues to change as we watch for public health advice from our local state and federal officials i want to reaffirm our commitment to maintain a safe and healthy learning

035environment and workplace we have a multi-layered approach to mitigation protocols and it begins with everyone making a personal commitment to complete a little self-assessment every day and refrain from coming to work or school if you have copic-like symptoms we continue to promote healthy hand hygiene social distancing when possible cohorting increased air filtration ventilation measures and cleaning upgrades our mitigation efforts continue to evolve as guidance is received over the past week i've been asked to go against ars 15 342.05 regarding the prohibition of mass or vaccine mandates a law with a retroactive clause effective july 1st i will not normally break the law my personal integrity and values will not let me make that decision in consultation with our legal counsel we will continue to follow the law as outlined in ars 15 342. [Applause] we

036have a bright and thoughtful cabinet that has discussed with me in our attorney many topics including the effective date retroactivity concerns regarding immunity insurance coverage potential for lawsuits funding challenges and just plain practical considerations while i personally believe that mask may be a tool that help reduce viral spread and i recommend their use you'll see me also wearing a mask indoors at our pre-k through 6th grade campuses because they have not yet had the opportunity to be vaccinated if they choose if you're eligible for a vaccine talk to your doctor about getting one in the new near future we anticipate new guidance in terms of protocols regarding quarantining in arizona quarantine authority is outlined in administrative code title nine chapter six it is the public health officials to quarantine yesterday like fellow superintendents i submitted

037a letter to the maricopa county board of supervisors for clear and specific guidelines when the county provides that new guidance we will update our pv schools prepared plan and follow it in addition to the previously mentioned mitigation strategies we will continue to offer free and robust drive through testing program monday through friday 7-4 this provides the opportunity for students and children to return to a classroom study much before a 10-day quarantine expires so we're excited about offering that as we did last year looking forward to the new school year we have a lot to be excited about not only where our students and staff continue to achieve like the paradise valley high school's crest bioscience program that was named outstanding program of the year by the association of career and technical education in arizona congratulations

038to teachers amanda cherry michelle landerville and all of our outstanding crest bioscience students but also our organization continues to thrive i'm proud to announce that the district has once again received a certificate of achievement for excellence in financial reporting by the government finance officers association of the united states and canada for our annual financial report for the fiscal year that ended june 30th 2020. pb schools has received this award every year since 1989 and i'd certainly like to recognize our business operations and finance department led by ms jill berrigan and especially laura felton our former assistant superintendent who retired in april for this amazing achievement you have big shoes to fill continue there are other big updates for our organization that i can't wait to share with you text message notifications are coming for school

039information and updates we'll begin rolling the service out early this school year also we're excited to announce that we will be going through the process of refreshing our websites the scale of the this refresh is too big to talk about tonight but i wanted to let everybody know that behind the scenes we are working hard to bring our community a new and improved online experience lastly as a reminder pb schools is offering three different learning experiences for the school year whether it's a traditional in-person option or one of two online options choosing your journey allows families to decide which learning option is right fit for their child our two online online options include pb connect a structured online school experience through sweetwater community school and pv online a self-paced online experience allowing students to work

040independently later when we have a public hearing at the end of the meeting which i'm not sure everybody will stay for but uh our instructional time model will talk about a number of students that have enrolled in our district in our pv online and pv connect that were previously not in our enrolled in our district coming from other school districts in the terms of about 50 students so we appreciate the opportunity to recruit students and serve them lastly i would like to welcome back school board members it is a new school year and we have great things ahead of us i look forward to working with you our staff our students our families in our entire pb schools community to see that every student meets or exceeds their potential here in paradise thank you thank

041you very much dr bales i'm throwing it right back over to you because next on our agenda are items for approval so h1 is consideration and approval of superintendent's goals and objectives for this school year outstanding you stayed for it too all right matthew want to put up that screen for me this work to develop these goals and objectives i will also provide some commentary as relates to some strategies to support each for the 21-22 school year begin immediately on april 1st when the school board selected me in this position working with this outstanding cabinet as well as this board through the summer i've developed the following goals for your approval tonight i mentioned earlier some priority focus areas um stabilize and reinvigorate reinvigorate our stakeholder relationships so rebuild some trust and improve transparency in

042all facets not just financial but all facets of our community and our district operations the first goal shouldn't be a surprise that we're focused on student achievement and then we want to continue to focus and enhance our teaching and learning opportunities to expand student achievement through continuous improvement and equity lens the objectives include the following we're going to create some new strategies to address the general academic performance strategies in this area include a new endeavor through the governor's office called project momentum we've identified five schools we'll receive some significant dollars from the governor's office to help these schools improve north canyon vista verde eagle ridge desert springs elementary and echo mountain intermediate eco mountain intermediate schools are those that will participate in this endeavor which will be a huge infusion of professional development for those

043teachers after a year of planning we're also looking at the providing teacher clarity our administrators receive initial training on their all administrative day here earlier in in july to help improve instruction and then we also have some strategies around 9th through 12th grade act readiness as well as multi-tiered system of supports across the district basically in educational terms we're just trying to find as many tools on the tool belt to help kids succeed the next objective is to review and monitor this first year of our district literacy plan it is a three-year plan that we will monitor and over the course of this time implement our english language arts guaranteed and viable curriculum we will be refining and using some screening and diagnostic tools and adding a a program called really great reading to our

044non-title schools as a tier 2 intervention we know our reading specialists have been asking for those kind of materials to help them reach kids that may be struggling finally the third objective is to develop some additional strategies to evaluate elevate academic achievement in math and science this year we will continue to focus on developing a 9th to 12th grade common final assessments in math you may or may not know that some of those assessments across the district have not been the same same class different school different exams so we're looking at trying to develop some of those common final assessments and also create some a new integrated science course for freshmen this is the year for our 9th through 12th grade math adoption so we will be involving our community in that process it's a

045process that will go through the entire year and then have a recommendation at the end of that for curriculum and materials next late next spring and we'll also be implementing some strategies around a common observation tool so that the principals and teachers on assignment assistant principals who are conducting observations have a tool to all look for the same thing in mathematics provide constructive feedback the second goal uh by june of next year is to develop a process to reboot and complete our strategic plan guiding the district for the next five years uh the objectives include to revise the core team and the strategic planning committee makeup and and those purposes for each will also align our mission our vision our values with the strategic plan this is long-range planning folks and and in the end

046what we hope by the first of march is to have developed a revised mission vision and value statement um as well as a portrait of a graduate with maybe four to six strategic broad goals that will guide us over the next several years this is our journey um you know i like to think of it right now as a journey 2030 because it we need to be thinking that far out and what we do and our decisions for resources need to align with a strategic plan we're also going to gather some uh develop some strategies to gather greater voice throughout the strategic planning process so you will see with the help of our marcom team as well as uh dr jairus who will be a co-pilot in this project management working with me to ensure

047that we have a little accordion like experience so when this develops along the way we can get some feedback from our community and our stakeholders really wasn't planning on talking this much goal number three is to improve communication with our parents and our community we have objectives around to replace or improve our mass communication system by adding text and capability you heard me mention that earlier we're going to reimagine our website and social media platforms to simplify and improve the end user experience you may have saw even today the very first back to school edition with a new look to that edition that came out today as well as the the website will be a process that's already included many stakeholders we have some focus groups developing over the next month and a lot of

048work behind the scenes but this was a project that hopefully will be complete by the first of january we're going to develop some strategies to communicate on all curriculum standards and materials for public review dr corson and i are committed to making sure that all of our materials become easily accessible on our website as a resource for parents to view at any time we're going to enhance the customer service experience for internal and external stakeholders dr holmes and ms berrigan are going to work carefully together on a customer service experience developing scripts for phone and in-person uh experiences as well as the district department support so we're excited to have those two working with the marcom department to develop some customer service experiences and improve that for our all of our clientele finally we're going

049to increase some opportunities for greater student and parent feedback we're going to re-implement our parent satisfaction survey which has generally been administered in the early spring we're also going to develop a cabinet survey for our administrators to provide feedback to our leadership we're going to discuss with our student leadership council about gathering student feedback and we've got some other great ideas that mr drogy has outlined in his goals as our director of marketing communications and finally we want to continue adherence to principles of fiscal responsibility and improve our stakeholders understanding of the district's revenues and expenditures we are a large organization with more than a half a billion dollars worth of budgets and we are one of the most regulated states uh in the country when it comes to those pots we want to make

050sure that we're doing our best to explain where the money comes from and how is it how it's being used and expended so we are developing some strategies to do that this year that may include information on the website as well as developing a new popular annual report beyond our comprehensive uh and then developing some small chunks of information shared through multimedia platforms as webinars or town halls so we're looking at finding some ways to help inform our stakeholders next we're going to develop some strategies to enhance our board and community understanding of the budgetary matters we're going to develop some clear and easy understandable presentations at board meetings i hope that you see that in both tonight and future meetings we're going to post our minutes clearly share updates for state budget matters and

051weekly updates and q and a's for our board members i try to be upfront and honest with everything i will be and sharing all what i can with them last but not least we're going to develop a three to four year facilities plan with a lens toward 10 years we need to be looking way beyond just the three to four years we we know we go to our voters at different times for support on bond elections and they need to know what the long-term vision is for the the plans that we may or may not have for our facilities and those are my goals and objectives with some commentary about some strategies i'd be happy to answer any questions and i do request approval thank you very much dr bales does anybody have any comments

052or questions for dr bell i do i just i want to thank you for so um uh holistically capturing the uh interests of uh what we discussed as a board and me as an individual that i have received from stakeholders in my time in pv and um i personally am excited about all of the the uh the goals and i really feel good about uh you and our cabinet and our board working together to uh and the rest of our employees all honestly to uh come together and help make these happen i i really think that they're all important and i appreciate i really do appreciate them so thank you mrs case thank you um i just want to say as i've looked at these goals and thought about them and as we spoke about

053them in june i just appreciate the overall feeling of these goals that our constituents our students our parents our teachers are all included and i appreciate the thoughtfulness that's gone into these goals and i appreciate also that the first goal is student achievement but all of these are wonderful and i thank you mrs bacon dr bales i'd also like to thank you for um putting this together and and so accurately reflecting the conversations that we've been having um in particular at our june retreat the other thing i'm really appreciative of is that you sit and you show this to the community you tell them what you're accountable for and you give us the tools to hold you accountable and that's incredibly important and not done everywhere so i want to thank you for that that

054is um something that i'm very proud of and as i talk to other board members in other parts of the state or even locally that's not always done and they feel envious that we have a situation and we have an agreement that this is something that we're doing because it is important for the community to understand how the board holds you accountable so thank you so much for everything that you've done [Applause] um i wanted to point out there's a lot of things in here that you're talking about not only what it means for right now but how this is impacting for the future and and always an eye for for what's coming down the road and i appreciate that in the superintendent um that that's always the focus is uh dealing with the here

055and now but also with an eye towards where we want to be going so thank you and i will add my thanks um you know having sat on the board and done this annually with different superintendents i really appreciate how thorough this is and as everyone said how collaborative this is and again you know we've heard bits and pieces we've seen some of this but the details you provided tonight are extraordinarily exciting i mean i'm really um captivated by some of the programs and and other opportunities that are inherent in your your goals and focus areas so again thank you and i will you know echo what mrs bacon said i i know that the process we have here and the transparency and openness we have here is not um replicated in many districts around

056the maricopa county and around the state and thank you for joining with us to be that open and with that mrs brown i'll ask for a motion to approve so moved all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed motion passes unanimously thank you very much and we have goals and objectives next on the agenda is the uh draft 2022 political agenda from the arizona school boards association uh when they sent this to all school boards they asked that we put this on an agenda prior to the delegate assembly on september 11. i hope everybody has had everybody up here has had a chance to review it in the cover note john sparks whose legislative committee chair this year noted that the committee reviewed and discussed every submitted proposal during its meetings most boards

057indicated support for items included in the 2021 political agenda and um what uh the committee and the staff has decided to do is present the proposed political agenda as a marked up version of the 2021 agenda and this will allow us during the delegate assembly to focus on the changes as opposed to go through every item in the agenda and as somebody who has chaired this committee and served as a delegate that is an excellent innovation so i just kind of want to throw it open to see if anyone on the board has any thoughts or comments on the proposed changes that the alleged committee made right mrs brown okay so um i did read through them um they're uh i i like many of the edits and uh and i'm supportive um in general

058of what most of is most is said on the second page of the report um a close near the bottom there is a part that is in red that says replacement of buildings that have exceeded their useful life and advocating for the capacity standards that reflect the design of uh you know of instructional space i actually should read it from the beginning the bullet reads provide funding for new space before existing schools exceed their minimum their maximum capacity and become overcrowded and provide dedicated and flexible ongoing going maintenance funding including replacement of buildings that have exceeded their useful life advocate for capacity standards that reflect the design of instructional space and i uh this for whatever reason this is a hot topic for me i'm in uh particularly grateful that this is specified in here

059and that the and this the specificity because it said replace building replacement before but um i i appreciate that so i um i'm generally in favor but that one i'm particularly in favor of on the next page the last there's an there's a bullet that was added that i um am more confused about than uh giving as much support it um the addition give all districts the authority to provide affordable housing options to teachers um is something i've literally never heard of and so i'm curious as to what that's about anyone um well you may you may have more of the um official information but there are districts throughout the state particularly in rural areas that to attract teachers have either built housing or entered into agreements to be able to provide affordable housing that

060is correct and it is something that uh is a topic for even you know valley school districts not necessarily rural arizona districts only but valley school districts you know this is a particularly expensive area to live in and on a you know 42 to 47 000 starting salary as a teacher even a dual income they can't afford to buy a home in our attendance here we have 100 square miles but it's very difficult to try to do that so affordable housing is is certainly an issue and it's becoming a part of recruitment and retention um conversations at districts nationwide really okay thank you um i have one additional uh comment that is the uh it's the last of the redlined pages i don't there aren't page numbers on here but there's it's like the third

061to the last page and um it is the bullet at the top it says oppose any measure that would result in fewer qualified voters from being easily able to vote or registered to vote i personally believe that qualified voters should be able to easily vote and register to vote and so i see why there would be an opposition to that measure but um i'm not exactly sure what asba has to do and with that in particular and not because i don't see a little bit of correlation but i worry that the focus of what our legislative agenda you know as an asba school as an asthma school district would potentially be um you know there would there are so many things on this list i just want to make sure that we have the most

062important things as it relates to education and so um the opposition of that how much time could that take away from other um things i i don't know that it's taking time away i think um the way julie might jump into on this i don't know but the way the government relations staff looks at this is that it provides direction so it's not that staff is going to necessarily go out and do something with us but if it comes up in a legislative session it provides staff direction in terms of how asba would approach that type of legislation does that help so it's not it does help yeah i'm i mean it is adding because there's already a list of things that would be here and then that's additional now i'm not saying i oppose

063the idea of it i'm only just concerned that because education is so incredibly encumbered with so many things that we have to be paying attention to that taking on any additional things that um could be related it may may take away from our efficacy in the other measures that's that's my only concern and so i thought maybe if there was a specific reason that this came up as it related to education or if there you know it you know is but it sounds like maybe there wasn't a specific thing that you're aware yeah i mean i wasn't on the committee i wasn't in the meeting um so of all of this that that is one that i wouldn't necessarily support not because i don't support the idea of voters being able to vote but because

064i want to make sure that we are focusing on specific education items that we can make a difference in more directly even though i do see how this could be apply to education i just that's all i mean they put it under require public accountability for taxpayer dollars spent on education as the overall right yeah i read that so i i would it's kind of gonna guess that the conversation might have been because i the one objection i have is that they didn't add their rationales back in i know about that we used to get that and i thought that was excellent so we knew what the thinking was um so obviously this would be a great place for him so i would conjecture that it might be just the thought that um ensuring that

065that voters can vote um expands that accountability measure to as many people as possible so we are i guess approving that this that we support these changes that would be what we would be approving tonight or or not approving tonight would be these the the way it reads here and so if if i were to approve it i would want that feedback that i gave to make it back to the um the committee that you know that runs us i mean i would say um [Music] i mean depending on how we would make a motion um cert you know if the rest of the board agrees that that feedback should go back and we approve either support or whatever because we i also like the idea that they would give their reasoning if possible in

066the future i know that's not going to happen this year but like for the next years well i mean we also it i mean we've got more than a month before the delegate assembly i mean it's certainly feedback we can give the government relations folks and see if we can get that information beforehand okay so that that's all my comments and mrs greenberg i think it's worth noting that we're talking about this and we send a representative to um the meeting where they share our feedback with the rest of the school districts from across arizona and then all of the school districts in arizona will discuss this document they'll approve or not approve they'll amend and modify so you know the conversation that we're having hopefully there's lots of other school districts having it and

067it is really a compilation of all school district boards um feedback so that's good and i think it's good for um us to i mean we can approve it as discussed you know you know with with the concerns um as discussed and that gives mrs greenberg and mrs mature the opportunity to go and share those things on the day of the assembly for this approval does anybody else have any other thoughts comments um then can we have a motion uh so moved to are we making a motion to approve as discussed is that what we oh i am sorry you did we're gonna hear okay before we make a motion thank you trevor my my apologies i put him over here um yes so um trevor nelson um submitted card to speak to this thank

068you i apologize um since there is only one person um i think we can make it up to three minutes oh thank you three minutes 30. nice i won't need it all but um you guys had such a great discussion going i understand why i don't i'm not offended at all um i just want to say i appreciate uh the arizona school board association and this governing board and your involvement in asthma i think it's a great organization they do good work advocating um for public education and that's that's really great what's what's struggle what's disconcerting is the removal of the section i believe it's page four but you're right um board member brown it's not numbered it's just a huge one that's all red were they removed manage the impact of covet on public

069schools some people may or may not be aware that the pandemic isn't over just because we're over it in maricopa county there have been 18 active outbreaks in schools in the last 24 hours six schools were added to the dashboard uh so yesterday they were 12 today there's 18. san carlos unified cancelled in-person pre-k to second grade hamilton as of yesterday and chandler had 32 active cases and at desert vista in tucson 105 football players their season's been impacted because six players tested positive and 16 are in quarantine waiting for testing um in arizona as it stands um this morning the age the arizona youth age 12 to 17 only 23.5 have been vaccinated and overall only 49.4 of eligible population has been vaccinated um so we've got a ways to go what i'm asking

070i could keep going but what i'm asking for is the governing board to consider a request into asba to reconsider that position i noticed some of these have 2020 2021 school year in them they probably need to be amended it doesn't make sense to be in there it's not 2020 anymore um but what i think you guys should advocate for is for public schools to be given the tools to be better prepared for this ongoing pandemic and even for the next one coming in the future if there is one you guys need to put the tools to put this in place for instance one one thing i might suggest induct superintendent bales you might get this from the county health when kids go on quarantine what i heard tonight that was really depressing that mom

071said that her kid was out for 10 whole days my daughter was exposed she went and got tested and was able to come back into the classroom before the 10 days so there might need to be some education and some clearance so that that can happen and if that's what the county comes up with that would be great because that is a tool that's used that's in the toolbox kind of the toolkit of the cdc and others so that they can get retested to come back if it's a pcr test um so that's it that's what i have to say i've got like 30 seconds left i don't need it but just ask them to reconsider that position so that you they can advocate for you guys to have the tools you need to be

072better prepared for the rest of this pandemic as it finishes thank you thank you very much um is there uh my assumption that the reason why this was eliminated this section was eliminated was because most of the specifics of it were enacted and could be continued from schools uh for school districts as they see fit in the future so um you know things like provide flexibility and seat time and attendance requirement for school districts school districts etc now there's a lot isn't there that has limited that sort of narrative yes there are a number of provisions in the adopted state budget that address some of these issues okay all right and then um uh some of these things were addressed like i think there was [Music] technology monetization and accessibility to ensure students much of

073that has already been accomplished i would imagine and then i think that that's addressed in a different section um so that is why i did not have an issue with this being um eliminated just as but i don't i wasn't in the committee so i don't know what the discussion was as to how they came to that decision and i'm not actually seeing that they have taken much of what was in this section and inserted it elsewhere but so if there's something specific that you saw yeah i'll just mention the first three bullets for example have been addressed you know with legislative action so a lot of this is has already been addressed well like i think the fifth bullet it says provide districts flexibility and teacher evaluation requirements and procedures don't we have some

074flexibility in teacher evaluation requirements and we we did have that uh granted to us here late in the in the legislative session it was um it was like may or as april i mean it was after we actually had all of ours completed to be honest is when they were released that reprieve um and that came from ade yeah i don't know if the state-funded program designed to bulk purchase sanitation supplies for distribution is something that is ongoing or not yeah the the county has a lot of the ppe available districts can order it online and and get it delivered so in another part um that was already it's not in red it wasn't added it was already in the political agenda on a page where there's a red line at the top it says

075receive adequate funding for the actual cost of their services there's a bullet below that that says provide funding to individual districts to implement locally directed school safety programs as well as student mental health and well-being initiatives and when you look at the bullet that is under managing covid that one of the things is social and emotional needs of students which would fall under that other bullet in that other section that is already in existence so those are some of the things that i am referring to but in the interest of time i don't we i'm not going to go through each one of them but i just was making a comment on why i felt comfortable with that part being eliminated okay thank you mrs brown anybody else have any other common mrs case um

076i'm looking at improve the outcome for all students and the it says increase the compulsory attendance age from 16 to 18 years or the attainment of a high school diploma a ged i remember in years past where the indian nations particularly have wanted this to pass and other people did not have it pass i had the opportunity in a week ago to be on the indian nation um looking at the beauties there and i spoke to a teacher and i talked to her about this issue and i hope that this is voted in to change that that they it's changed from 16 to 18 or the attainment of a high school diploma or ged i hope that passes this time because that has been a problem in the indian nations and perhaps some other cultures

077they turn 16 and the state law says 16 and you don't have to continue on in school and i would hope that kids are encouraged to continue till they get their ged diploma or turn 18. so which unfortunately is why this has been in here for many times but i just had a personal experience and i've always wanted it to pass but now i want it to pass even more so thank you for that feedback does anybody else have any other thoughts questions so mrs brown we have a motion to i move to approve uh as discussed and that uh uh president greenberg and board member churro will bring back the feedback and um that's it thank you very much if there's no further discussion all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed

078motion passes unanimously next on the agenda is consideration approval of revisions to policy bedb and i will turn it over to dr bales president greenberg governing board members cabinet guests uh revisions to this policy uh regarding uh the public agenda uh is a revision to eliminate the subjective part of a five minute for a spokesperson of a recognized uh represented authorized organization this revision eliminates the subjectivity to identify such speaker and just keeps it consistent with three minutes for every speaker maintaining the governing board's right to limit the number of individuals with a specific time depending on the volume of speakers we recommend approval thank you very much we have two cards two individuals wish to speak to h3 first uh nicole klutwick and since we only have two if you need the full three

079minutes you've got it i probably don't need the whole three minutes um yeah last time was my first board meeting and now look at me i'm here like every time i'm saying something so i i didn't even know this was a thing on the board meeting but as i was preparing thinking about math thinking about curriculum i came across this and this actually concerns me more than the other two things um the language here is extremely extremely vague for anybody who doesn't know what the language is they're adding the words the governing board reserves the right to limit the number of individuals limited to comment on a specific item or modify the time permitted for each speaker while i absolutely understand pragmatically why that is at times necessary i always like to think ahead and

080what things might look like even when you guys aren't the ones who are sitting here who who might be sitting here what might they have planned the language is so so vague that it effectively can can sense her public speech altogether right i mean we could just say we're so busy we just have time for one or two people um we're so busy everybody just gets 30 seconds which is not enough time to articulate what you really have to say what your concerns really are um i do understand where you're going with this but i i do would i would like you guys not to approve it just given how extremely vague it is it could be anything right i mean you could limit it to anything um so just in in order to protect

081the public and parents um ability to be able to let you know our thoughts i think it's really important especially as we see other areas of government and and interactions between government and corporations censoring speech i think um and you're wanting to be very transparent i think this is probably not the right thing at the right time so thank you we also have a card from trevor nelson um i understand the nuanced position involved in this decision of limiting speech at these meetings i've been at these meetings where there's been lots of people talking but if you notice tonight it's a pretty relative small amount of people actually speaking three minutes probably would have been fine um there's also a delegate balance with first amendment in our constitution um i do not always like or

082agree with what is said at this microphone but i will always stand up for their right to say it no matter how silly or off topic or ridiculous or rude their speeches um the governing board can claim time limits or excuses like was mentioned so i won't reiterate that but keep in mind these are often the first or last attempt to get a matter resolved when someone comes up and speaks um given the board norms that are going to be adopted later and will no doubt be agreed upon quote often let me read it actually says uh refer the superintendent complaints problems refer to the superintendent completes problems or issues from parents community members and staff to seek positive solutions before airing matters publicly well often there's no positive solution and the matter needs to

083be publicly aired uh when my youngest daughter was in kindergarten her teacher was taken away from her two weeks into the school year there was no positive solution her teacher wasn't put back at our school and the public deserves to know that failure in order to ensure that that mistake is never made again so i respectfully request the governing board seek to not limit speech as outlined in h3 i understand the removal of the five minutes for the spokesperson representing an organization but that should also be allowed as well so this should not be voted in the affirmative should stay the way it is and there might also need to be a mention of email submissions because i don't know if that's in the agenda or not but it's a great policy to have so

084please consider not changing this and not limiting our free speech thank you thank you very much that's that's all the cards we had on this um mrs romney we have a motion and then i will open it up for discussion so i do the motion before we discuss is that or do we discuss we can discuss the motion unless anybody has something they would like to discuss before the motion well i just i'd like to address some concerns can i do that or do i do that after the motion we typically have done it after the motion but you can do it before the motion but i would like to discuss okay okay um so uh i'm not sure that it's clear as to to to our audience as to why um we're asking to

085do this first the five-minute limited the five-minute that exists now for an organization is so difficult to determine what would an organization would be so you may determine that you are the leader of an organization of 10 people that just was created in the parking lot and may advocate for five minutes this eliminates us from having to argue with everyone who believes that they have an organization that exists that may not you know we don't know how how would we determine that this was a this was a large discussion we asked multiple people additionally it's my understanding that we don't there's no law that requires that we have any public comment so we are not required to we could eliminate public comment altogether this board before i was on it and this school district has

086been unusually impressive in their uh accepting public comment and accommodating it as much as possible the time limit that could be that is that is written that you know it may have to be modified or reduced is so that everyone gets an opportunity that wants to speak and that our employees and we are not here until two in the morning if it happens to be a hot topic additionally people have the opportunity to send us emails that we do read and that do affect our decisions and people have oftentimes the opportunity to do online input forms so that we you know separate from if they don't even know our email it's in the board you know information so it's in two different places that they have access to give us feedback so in no way

087shape or form are we looking to limit feedback from our constituency from our parents from our students from our teachers we've always embraced that and then the other thing that i would say is uh that one of the comments that i made when we were discussing this is that commercials have a maximum time amount that they're trying to get a message across it can be done in a limited amount of time less than five minutes for sure less than three minutes for sure and so it's just yes emotions get involved and it goes on longer but my personal feeling is that if you stick to the message you're trying to get even 90 seconds is more than enough so but i also am adamant that we have public comment and i want to hear from

088you so it's not we're not trying to limit free speech that that that's my feedback thank you mrs mature um i also want to mention that a a reason for putting it in writing here is just so that it's not a surprise that that people would be aware that things might change depending on you know if you have 300 people here to speak about one topic that there's that there there may be things that change and this happens with all all school boards do it but if it's if it's explained ahead of time people are aware that it might be an option it was just a way to i felt it was a way to explain things ahead of time so people were more aware going in is this case um recently i was listening

089to some of the discussions going on around the nations and someone brought up the fact that there's a supreme court case that came forward that said you could not limit the ability for the public to speak about their schools and i i think it was in 64 63 i have to go look it up again but that is not what we're trying to do we're trying to make it so we're not here all night for and i understand when you said it was vague i get what you're saying there how vague it is and so perhaps it could say instead when there's going to be hundreds commenting it might be advantageous to limit 90 seconds instead of three you're asking for some clarification on that so it could say perhaps if there are extreme numbers

090of people choosing to speak then we might change it from three minutes to 90 minutes according to a large crowd and that would be fine with me well first policies can be updated by any board anytime so if we're not here a policy could be updated in the future to say anything including eliminating it but i'm not necessarily supportive of adding more detail because sometimes how long our board meetings go are not determined by how many people are making public comment it's determined by what's on the agenda so we don't necessarily sometimes business has to be done for the better for kids so that we're educating kids and if there's so many things on the agenda it may not be 20 people it may not be a hundred people it may be five people so

091i i wouldn't necessarily support that either although i do understand worrying about you know vague language but this same vague language has been in here for a long time i mean it's fairly vague to begin with president greenberg mrs brown the companion policy which is the next item is is similar almost exactly to this it addresses the uh public participation and i know i'm a little ahead of the schedule but i just mentioned that in that companion policy the existing language was time constraints may limit the number of individuals invited to comment on a specific item so it's it was also intentional to make it consistent in both policies um that's why it was reworded the way it was but it it was always there they've always had that opportunity as a board to limit

092and so it was just to make it clear and applicable in both policies uh and also then the historical piece on the or representative organization has been an organization that uh typically the board president would make the decision if they are a group that has an official capacity you know like a tax id uh or they have elections and representatives to know that that person has been elected to speak in that organization so that's how it's been limited to that group that's been the definition up to this point and that's that was concerning to people that that would those would be the only groups that could speak so just by making it consistent was in an effort to be to be fair mrs matura i also um as opposed to trying to be boxed into

093a specific total amount or then the number of speakers uh during our discussion we came up with some scenarios where we wouldn't want to put limits where sometimes the entire board meeting is for the purpose of hearing public feedback for instance if there's a school adjustment a school closing or something like that and so in certain in circumstances like that there have been more board meetings where the board has been willing and said we will sit here all night and hear every single person because that's what we will do today um and so boxing it in with very with specifics kind of limits you on both sides and so the um so i remember that being a discussion of why we weren't putting in specifics uh to that language was that it gave us the

094ability to just not box ourselves in if we have a situation like that are there any other board member comments are there any other board member comments if not may the motion has been made all those in favor please say i i any opposed motion passes unanimously next on the agenda is h4 and dr bale's already sort of previewed it but i will turn it over to dr bales yeah the only addition to this policy is a recommendation from asba regarding presentations from unsolicited services that would not be permitted these are companies or businesses offering services of possible interests and informing them that that presentation or unsolicited service should be sent to the district office for distribution versus the dice thank you very much dr bales we have one comment card here as well trevor

095nelson you're not gonna limit much i'm kidding that's a bad joke um i gave my previous comments about limiting speech blah blah blah um what i will say is that the open meeting agenda is based on uh in arizona there's an attorney general opinion uh i-99006 that says that they should have called to the public but then there's attorney general opinion i-7801 that says you don't necessarily have to have one so to your point member brown it's not clear and the supreme court has not ruled yet on what is said that being said i do support d or the inclusion of d about presentations of unsolicited there's ways to uh present to the district and this is not one of them this is a governing board meeting um so just to stay on course with

096what's here and to provide more time as you guys said to deliberate your items and also allow for even perhaps more public comment that should be added so i i don't have a problem with that um there's proper channels for people to get involved in the district and i've been lucky to be involved in those as a parent volunteer i actually encourage everyone to try and volunteer when the district comes calling it's very rewarding and working with members of the cabinet and the pv staff and the teachers it's we found real problems or real solutions to problems that we mutually agreed upon and it was a great process i highly encourage you to do that but no unsolicited services should not be up here uh because it's unsolicited if you guys wanted to talk to

097them you'd invite them so thank you that's all i have to say that was pretty quick thank you very much mrs brown may have a motion to approve so moved is there any discussion all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed motion passage unanimously next on the agenda is consideration approval of board norms as we have done annually for several years now the board reviewed the norms that we had approved previously at our board retreat we made some slight adjustments um and uh i will ask mrs brown for a motion to approve those norms and then throw it so moved is there any discussion this case nope anyone no yeah miss matura i just uh really appreciate that we have the board norms and i appreciate that we look at them every year

098um especially when we have new members joining um and it's something that's out there so it's uh i think it's an important document i'm glad that we do it sorry thank you very much there's no other discussion all those in favor please say aye any opposed motion passes unanimously next on the agendas consideration approval of an agreement between the district and others regarding litigation i will turn it over to dr bales president greenberg governing board members as directed from our executive session june 24th i present the agreement for litigation against jewell for your approval thank you very much um mrs brown may we have a motion do we want to explain more of what the litigation is or if you have questions i mean it's in the backup material and on the public agenda uh

099i move that we approve thank you is there any discussion and i will note that our attorney is here if we have any legal questions nope seeing none all those in favor please say aye aye aye any opposed motion passes unanimously next on the agenda is h7 consideration approval of recommended k-8 social studies curriculum resource adoption second reading dr bales thank you president greenberg it's my pleasure to welcome dr corson and ms happis good evening president greenberg members of the board dr bale's cabinet and guest lynn hoppas our social studies curriculum specialist and i will present you a second reading of the k-8 social studies curriculum resource adoption committee's recommendations this presentation follows our first reading from april 22nd i'd like to remind the governing board of the 20 members who served on this committee

100comprising of teachers administrators and parents representing 18 different schools these members were selected to be on this committee by the representative stakeholder groups of the paradise valley education association principal and vice principal association and the united parent council a process consistent with committee formation in the district i want to thank these members for their many hours this school year contributing to this process and for their professionalism and commitment to our pv students staff and community lynn as you may recall the committee began its work last october and participated in a series of meetings that included identifying potential curriculum resources reviewing vendor proposals viewing presentations from the vendors about the resources analyzing the materials oh okay sorry start to start the beginning okay viewing presentations from the vendors about the resources analyzing the materials considering stakeholder

101feedback and using materials in their classroom as a result of this process the committee arrived to consensus and presented its recommendations to the governing board on april 22nd following the presentation some community members expressed concern that they were unaware of the adoption process an opportunity to view the materials community members also had questions about the content with the materials in value of these interests and concerned we reopened the public viewing of the curriculum between june 7 through july 9 of both hard copy and online materials we also provided both a hard copy and online forms for feedback the committee members were provided all community feedback and reviewed that feedback independently you can reconvene the committee on july 15th for the purpose of reviewing the community input and making residence making recommendations to the superintendent's cabinet

102on next steps there were 57 responses provided 54 of them online and three in hard copy form we collected information including the person's email address if they agreed to leave it and their primary role from this question two identified themselves as teachers 52 as parents and all hard copy responses were from community members the committee and the pv leadership team appreciates and values the time effort and interest that these individuals took to review materials and offer their input the community feedback included three questions the first was soliciting input into the alignment of resources with state standards the second question elicited input regarding the resources application of inquiry-based approaches both of these were important to the committee's consideration the third question was open-ended and allowed for any input as mentioned in our timeline committee members read

103all feedback provided during the second viewing opportunity and met on july 15 to review discuss and make recommendations about next steps in the committee member meeting members first reviewed the context in which this adoption was taking place impacting the need for an adoption was new standards arizona adopted in 2018 and being implemented last school year these standards shifted content to different grade levels and embedded an inquiry-based approach to studying social studies that involved engaging students in overarching essential questions studying multiple perspectives about issues and events encouraging students to draw conclusions from various resources and connecting historical events to current situations pv schools last k-8 social studies adoption was 2005 and the resources no longer were mapping effectively to these new standards also impacting this adoption was a recent announcement by the arizona department of education

104ade has partnered with discovery education and is under contract with them to provide discovery education's experience platform to all k-12 students in arizona to support schools in implementing the new standards you may recall the discovery education's textbook platform considered a primary and more robust resource from discovery education has and is being recommended as part of the adoption finally the committee also acknowledged the discourse concerns and questions that have been raised regarding such topics as critical race theory the teaching of controversial topics and ars 15-717.02 which prohibits instruction that presents blame or judgment on the basis of race ethnicity or sex in reading the community feedback the committee took particular note of trends in the feedback and the frequency of feedback directly aligned with a particular resource the committee also examined specific examples provided in the

105feedback and compared those comments with the mentioned resource to understand the community members perspectives from the feedback analysis the committee summarized the predominant trends into questions about process and content that they then discussed in considering in determining next steps first the committee considered whether stakeholders were unaware of the adoption thus limiting the voices represented the committee acknowledged that it was a tough year for everyone involved and that there could be individuals who were unaware of the adoption the committee was confident however that the additional opportunity for feedback in june from the community along with the feedback they had previously received from teachers and administrators that the committee had a good cross-section of input to be confident in their recommendations similarly the committee discussed whether the distraction of covet 19 prevented a thorough review of the

106materials thus not having adequate input to consider the committee acknowledged that there could be individuals who did not have as much familiarity with the resources the committee confirmed that with the additional opportunity for feedback this summer along with feedback that they had previously received that it had enough input to be confident in their analysis the committee also considered questions that challenged their own participation in the process and whether their membership represented the diversified voices of the stakeholders they represented committee members rejected the notion that they had not thoroughly reviewed the materials themselves and i can attest to the many hours this committee spent in whole group and small group meetings analyzing these materials in addressing the next question regarding committee configuration and its representation of diversified voices of the larger stakeholder groups these committee members

107explained that they volunteered to serve on this committee as representatives of their stakeholder group pvea pvp and upc leadership selected these members with consideration of representing a cross section of grade levels and schools finally the committee also considered questions specifically regarding the content of the resources they reviewed concerns about the age-appropriateness of content whether resources contained elements of bias or critical race theory or presented misinformation about historical events committee members considered these perspectives from examples that were provided in the input and discussed the examples from multiple points of view while committee members themselves did not believe that the resources in whole were age inappropriate bias or misleading the committee members acknowledged community members perspectives and used those perspectives to inform their recommendations while the committee's last meeting was focused exclusively on recent process and content

108concerns with the resources the committee had considered other evaluation criteria which led to their initial recommendations the committee is confident that the resources it is recommending today meets with all of these previously considered criteria there is clear alignment with the standards there are print and online resources available the resources differentiate effectively for various student needs they support the district's commitment to support all students through an equity lens and they offer quality professional development for our staff as a result of this process the committee is in consensus of two changes from its original recommendation first the committee is removing its recommendation new zela from adoption consideration this recommendation results from the committee's consideration of the community's feedback and perspectives provided in june second the committee recommends the dbq document based question project be removed from consideration

109at grades 4 and 5 in response to the perspective that this resource might better serve middle grades in summary the committee is recommending mcgraw-hill and studies studies weekly for grades k-2 the committee believes these resources for k2 and mcgraw-hill impact is student-centered comprehensive with a coherent knowledge building program that promotes students understanding of the world and their individual place in it through the engaging inquiry-based learning opportunities students discover how to think historically civically spatially and economically this resource all supports also supports our dli spanish program studies weekly is for k-5 it is a standards-aligned weekly resource that introduces and scaffolds students experiences with the skills of inquiry creating their own inquiries examining and analyzing evidence communicating conclusions and taking action this resource also supports our dli spanish program in grades three through four the committee

110affirms its recommendation for splash and studies weekly splash is a resource that uses the inquiry approach to provide our third and fourth grade students hand on hands-on activities in addition to creative expository and persua persuasive writing opportunities in grade five the committee recommends discovery education and studies weekly you may recall that we mentioned that discovery education's experience platform has now been purchased and endorsed by ade for all k-12 students discovery experience is primarily a supplemental resource the committee is recommending discovery education's tech book platform as is a full curriculum resource the state's partnership with discovery education was a strong consideration for the committee and its recommendation in grades 6 through 8 the committee is recommending discovery education's tech book and the dbq project while the committee removed dbq from grades 4 and 5 the committee

111believed that dbq is an important resource to use with intermediate and high school grades the dbq project is a standards aligned document based program that helps students develop rigorous critical thinking and evidence-based writing skills in the social sciences and literature through the in-depth lessons students read analyze find evidence defend their findings and publish their conclusions these life skills are necessary for all college and career citizens this resource also supports our dli spanish program well not directly recommendations from the committee our curriculum team is committed to several next steps first we'll continue reviewing and considering ongoing feedback regarding social studies content to guide the implementation of social studies standards and the use of these resources this feedback will also serve to inform professional development and align specific resource content to our curricular guides lynn hoppis our

112social studies curriculum specialist here tonight will be our point of contact in collecting and reviewing this feedback we'll also work closely with the marketing and communications team to deploy more effective communication about adoption processes including communications sent to the public systems for committee members to report out to their stakeholder groups and better placement of information on the district's website we'll also continue to work with ade other districts and our stakeholder groups to identify additional or alternate resources that support our classrooms as we implement our seven year adoption we also reserve the option to adopt different materials before the end of the seven year cycle if we believe there are other materials that would better serve our students teachers and community in addition we recognize that the 2018 changes in standards represent significant shifts to what

113is taught in social studies and how it is taught we want to work with our community to share those shifts to build awareness of the challenges and opportunities we face in aligning to these new standards and we already have professional development being created to help teachers understand the new legislation on prohibited instruction especially as it applies to the teaching of social studies in history now before we transition to discussion and questions i'd like to provide dr bales with an opportunity to share some final thoughts thank you dr corson first i'd like to express my thanks also to the committee members and particularly community members that provided additional input this summer all those people gave up enormous amounts of time and energy and i want to say thank you this volume of materials is why teachers

114take the first year of any adoption to scan all the materials and select those that help them meet their learning objectives while many people want to erase 2020 from our memory we cannot however we can learn from the challenges and move forward and i especially want to thank dr carson and lynn happis for your leadership in this area i know it's challenging with the changes in leadership and an extended opportunity but i appreciate your patience with us i also want to reiterate some of the commitments covered in the presentation i think are worth mentioning clearly the materials recommended tonight do not teach or support critical race theory we will continue to collect information from our stakeholders this year and lynn is that person that will take those concerns and organize an appropriate response including developing

115professional development working with our principals our instructional coaches and our teachers i want you to know that the concerns shared by our community are important to hear and share with the publishers that put these materials together there are very there are many similarities between the content in publishers and there's very few of those but lynn and dr corson and the rest of their team has already begun sharing our community's concerns and will continue to do so this is not necessarily a local issue and it is an issue that the publishers have acknowledged that they are hearing across the nation i do believe that will influence their work in addition to the professional development on the teachers uh regarding recent legislation for prohibited instruction as it pertains to the teaching of science social studies and history

116we will provide professional development to teachers to instruct them of any other content that may be either inaccurate or not age-appropriate if necessary as dr corson mentioned we can adopt different materials sooner than this cycle finally we will work to identify more effective ways to communicate with our stakeholders about curriculum adoptions before during and after the process i've already begun working with kia corado the president of upc we've started that conversation about strategies to gather some time and talent information of our parents and community members who might be terrific additions to our commit committees when we need volunteers to serve as i mentioned earlier in my goals and objectives about increasing greater student and parent feedback voice we will continue to do those things mentioned earlier and president greenberg those are my comments and i

117turn it back to you for any public comment board questions or otherwise thank you no it's up to you um [Music] okay i'm sorry mrs matura uh has some clarifying questions and then we have some cards from and if anybody else has clarifying questions we can do those first and then we'll go to okay comment well mrs maturo has some and then mrs casel calling you um i just wanted to clarify that the we're looking at resources changing but we're not looking at curriculum changing is that correct that the we're not changing what is taught we're changing the resources that teachers can use as they're teaching so it aligns better with the 2018 adoption is that correct but the content isn't shifting the content if i'm understanding your question correctly miss matura the content is

118represented in the 2018 standards and we've identified resources that best align to that content being taught but we haven't necessarily aligned our education to those standards yet have we yes those standards are so we started doing third grade arizona what year that's correct uh last this past year was the first year of the state's uh implementation of the new standards in this past year but the resources could change the content just not the actual the uh not the actual standard by which the state we're not changing standards but the content would potentially be different depending on the the resource used right is that those but those resources are aligned with the grade level standards that specifies both the content and the skills that are to be taught at those particular grade levels yeah i was

119only clarifying the word content resources and curriculum like that the content could be different even though the curriculum standard is aligned with what it's already been for a year right correct all right mrs maturity have any other questions um if a teacher already has a favorite unit that they've been using and teaching over the years as long as that continues to meet state standards can they continue to teach that unit as opposed to presenting it the way that it's in the new resources if they already have a unit built yeah of course what's most important is that what is being taught is in alignment with the standards both in terms of the content topics and skills within that and you know our teachers across our district do have autonomy to approach those topics in a

120variety of ways to ensure that they are aligning their instruction with where their students are at so if a teacher has a favorite unit that is in alignment at that particular grade level they can do that we see that for example in our core knowledge schools you know our core knowledge schools continue to use core knowledge curriculum which is different than the resources provided here but they're still even aligning their core knowledge units at the proper grade level for the content that's being taught and i one last question i'm sorry um in a tradition in a a year do they will a class go through all of the lessons that are laid out in these books do they have time to do that or is it certain ones that meet with the state standards that

121are hit on and it's not they're not teaching bookend to bookend yeah oftentimes that's not the case there is so much content usually embedded within a school-year scope that oftentimes we are working with our teacher groups to identify what we call the essential standards or prioritize standards within that particular grade level and so around those prioritized standards is where we line up instruction thank you mrs case you said you had a question um my question is of the order of i have a comment to make would i make that now would i make it later do i make it after the community makes questions after if you have a question a clarification question this would be a good time okay i i have i have a question and then later on in the later yeah

122later i just wanted to get the order of what we were doing it's kind of complicated thank you i had a discussion with dr corson earlier today and i suggested we keep our old textbooks because there could be a teacher who had been using as mrs matura mentioned using a textbook for a certain subject they liked it it worked they have the materials it's available and and i have also suggested in the past that um because the new fourth grade materials in splat the new third grade material splash don't have colored pictures they're black and white that they could keep the fourth grade textbooks to supplement anything they needed to with charts and maps et cetera but those are just some housekeeping ideas that i have thank you thank you does anybody else have any

123other questions well just as a comment to uh the splash being in black and white the studies weekly is in color that is also available to third and fourth grade but um my question uh is about the additional curriculum department commitments one of the bullets says we'll work closely with marketing communications department to identify more effective ways to communicate with our stakeholders about curriculum adoptions before during and after the process and i really don't mean to put anyone on the spot but i'm wondering if we have any ideas about how to do that i know that dr bales mentioned that he's already speaking to to the united parent council about it but not everyone tunes in for the united parent council information and so i was just curious if this is something that would be

124like included in like a monthly newsletter or some other if there were any ideas that have been thrown out yet yeah we've discussed several ideas uh miss brown those include uh using our community newsletter to to publish information about the adoption it also includes better placement on the website we feel that you know oftentimes the information might be buried on several clicks uh embedded and maybe we can put that uh at during adoption times more at the forefront of that and it also includes that within the committee is that you know we do have representative stakeholders on that committee and to make sure that we have more systemic and systematic ways for them to communicate the progress of the committee out to their stakeholder groups and i think that if we get a little bit

125better about those systems that will improve the communication so along those lines it would be to sort of educating those stakeholders about their responsibility or accountability as it relates is that was or is i mean i know you're saying cis systemic or systematic processes but um i just i'm not exactly i've been on committees and i've been you know part of united parent council and but i'm not sure how you would um change the process to be to it's difficult to go to parents and get more feedback right i mean it can be difficult if you have it's a lot on the united parent council president to be expected to you know they they can't con communicate with that many parents but i like the idea of of it being in like the monthly newsletter

126or you said community newsletter um so uh so i is there any other clarification on how that process would be it doesn't i mean i'm not trying to put you on the spot if there isn't more i just didn't understand what you meant by systemic process yeah no i appreciate the question so you know during the committee process you know a couple of areas that i think that we can be more effective in the committee process is designating specific times during the committee when we want information to be communicated out to the stakeholders and actually providing what that communication piece is to assist our stakeholder group representatives to more effectively communicate out in a consistent way what the messages are and and really kind of making that a responsibility of those committee members miss cases

127the question um yes it's kind of a question comment um in going through materials it's an enormous amount of material to go through i mean enormous and um in speaking with other districts i mentioned this to you today also in mesa when i was talking to school board members there they have an advisory council which board members choose someone to help them look at materials and i think that's something as a board we could consider at some time because this is a very large adoption and um anyway i just think that's something that this is my only chance to communicate this to all my board members and i thought that was a really interesting point um that what mesa does with their they have an advisory council i can't remember it's one or two per

128board member they choose someone who they feel comfortable with to look at materials and they might change that person according to their expertise in the area so i think that's something we could look at also perhaps at school board meetings it was announced tonight that 912 math is going to be changing in the future so perhaps at every school board meeting we could let the public know we are having an adoption coming up in this particular area and remind people of an ongoing process of that and perhaps it's in the bordoc uh excuse me agenda papers are something so that people always have that in mind i don't want it to happen like it has happened this past year and so i'm trying to think of different ways to alleviate that from happening thank you

129thank you okay if there are no other questions or for clarification on the part of the board because we obviously still will have time to discuss um we have i believe eight cards so i'm more than happy if the board agrees that everyone can um have three minutes if they so desire and the first card is raquel kimball raquel i know you've been here for a while so thank you for staying i get three minutes right okay so first thank you and i'm not just meaning it like other people will try to get points with you and make you feel good really thank you during the summer when a lot of people went out and had vacation and had their time some of you guys took the time to read the materials to really look

130what it was there some parents thank you i personally know that i expanded hours and hours looking at these materials and i appreciate that so thank you for doing that i had all this pill and i was talk about something else but i thought that i may change it a little bit um dr carson i can't pronounce your name very well i'm sorry it's my accent but um it sounds really good everything looks really good it looks like the perfect pie that you want to eat guys and i talked to some of the members of the committee i know them and i respect them and i and the first thing that she told me and she's she's a friend so she told me you know what your problem is raquel is you don't trust the

131district and i told her you are correct let me tell you what i don't trust the district sometimes not all the times sometimes i respect the district immensely every single one of you guys i had interact and my respect for you is so great i just come back get out of the plane and my daughter told me mom did you hear what happened and i said no i went to drop off a care package for a friend that was sick and he's a sophomore and i asked him what have you been doing and he said oh i have been doing my summer reading and she asked her what book have you been reading and it's a book that last year dr corson you promised me that it will never happen again it's not included on

132the on the approved list and i have a talk with miss annette about it last year during the summer also that it will never be happen again and it's the same book that they promised that it wasn't be placed on the list again i was on the literacy committee for two years guys for two years those communities are long and gruesome i miss piano recitals i mean soccer practices from my daughters soccer games and the my first question that i have when that comedian came into place it was what are we making these changes what are we making these committees when teachers can really teach whatever they want and they assure me miss kimball no what we're doing is a very important work we need this list so the teachers know exactly what they're going

133to be teaching i trusted it i trust the process i sacrificed and the first summer after the two years that i expanded on that committee two books that were not approved on the list were placed on the summit reading for my daughter i could read to you i sent a letter to dr carson and i put the examples of material that was totally inappropriate references to masturbation references to pornography that if the teachers were to read those materials to our students on the classroom there will be prosecution for some charges it's not appropriate if there was a movie it couldn't be shown to our kids but we are assigning those assignments to our kids during summer when there is no when there is no supervision you promised me that that wouldn't happen again that's what

134i'm fighting these guys i wanna trust the district but my experiences the next card here is sandra christensen thank you dr bells and and the board um this is only my my second meeting and um and it's very enlightening so so thank you for letting us speak during the last school board meeting on june 23rd i heard many parents speak about the new social studies curriculum and i admit i was i was a bit taken aback because i had not read through the curriculum myself and based on the input of the parents that spoke it seemed that many of the materials had language similar to crt even though they weren't calling it crt as a latino american i'm so proud of my heritage and my family my ancestors have lived here in the u.s since

135before it was part of the united states so i appreciate culture i appreciate you know people of all races my dad was a entrepreneur grocery store owner and he taught me hard work but he never taught me about race he never taught me that i was different from anybody else and um so i didn't even know i was a minority growing up because i just thought i was like everybody else but um my son is going to be a sophomore this year at horizon high school and i'm really sad to hear some of the stories that are coming out about just what's being taught in our schools um four years ago when my son was in fifth grade he was taught by his homeroom teacher that all the founding fathers were bad because they owned

136slaves and that this teacher also told my son that working at walmart was akin to modern day slavery because they don't pay their employees well so i had to talk to my son about capitalism and things like that and and so that was kind of my first awakening so i just what i just want to say as a mom is just i've worked so hard to teach my son that skin color doesn't matter and that he should be proud that he's a latino american but that we just i just feel that we're taking a step back when we start teaching this stuff in the classrooms and my son is not a victim or an oppressor he's a strong-minded critical thinker and i don't want my his teachers to tell him otherwise so i just hope

137that you know we just keep the opinions and things like that out of the schools and just teach history and teach teach things that make them think i mean it's fine to bring up these topics but let the kids banter back and forth and and just don't don't push that stuff on them because it just breaks my heart you know to hear some of the things that he tells tells me so but thank you for your time and i appreciate all of you i know you volunteer your time for this so we as parents really appreciate you and thank you for giving us the opportunity to speak [Applause] thank you the next card is from lisafarr so first of all i want to say to dr bills you have gone a long way in building

138trust with me thank you um the upc has not built trust with me and so i caution you on accepting the people that they appoint to committees to review materials or to make recommendations i think that's something that you do need to look into i'm thankful that we do have a law now that will allow us to take civil action and fines against anyone who adopts or tries to implement any type of critical race theory into the classroom but i want you to all be aware that that entire committee that is making this recommendation this entire cabinet and any teacher that would try to implement any of that into the classroom is subject to a 5 000 civil fine and that's per person this cannot come from district funds it cannot come from insurance funds

139this is civil money i want to make sure that each of you understand that the committee understands that and that you are 100 confident that this curriculum does not contain critical race theory materials in it because if not you're putting yourself at liability and you're putting a lot of people at liability um so basically i just i if i were you i would be asking the publishers to put it in writing that that material is not in the curriculum because no i don't expect you to be able to go through all of this there's no way any one person or committee can actually dive into this at this level but really for your only protect for your protection and our assurance get it in writing from these publishers so that we know it's not in

140there because i guarantee you if we find it if any of us parents find it it will be very public we will take action so for your protection i think you think twice about it before you just adopt it without making some of those considerations thank you the next card is from jennifer cronin thank you i was a parent that took the time to review the dbq curriculum and the discovery education curriculum for the 7th and 8th graders and the curriculum the content is vast it includes videos resources supplemental materials and it includes critical race theory you can tell us that the teachers will be trained not to use that material it is in the material and when we have national and local teacher groups saying that regardless of state law regardless of district policies

141they are going to bring these ideas into the classroom with our children it creates a lot of distrust with parents and my experience with social studies teachers in this district is that they're very professional and they have not been political but this climate is creating a lot of distrust and then when you introduce a curriculum that contains these ideas how do we know as parents that our kids are not going to come across on their own or these videos aren't going to be shared in the classroom if you want to provide transparency to parents you need to provide access at any time for parents to review any and all of these materials that could be used from these platforms in the classroom thank you [Applause] the next card is excuse me it's from diane nieman

142okay i'm very encouraged to hear from dr bales that you want to improve transparency and to reveal all materials that was your goal number three so um i have talked to a person that did review the social studies curriculum and they said something that disturbed me as a believer in jesus christ i am a i really believe in our founding fathers being christian as the most and the most part and many and there were topics in the social studies that did defame our founding fathers so you might ask me do i have any suggestions i do um to help remedy this number one i would suggest that you let the students take home their books so the parents can see what they're studying as they go along and also the outlines of the upcoming materials

143that they're going to learn number two allow the parents to opt out of certain subjects if they see in this outline something that they don't agree with and the third thing is i suggest the use of microphones for teachers in the classroom so the parents can listen in to the classroom materials thank you very much [Applause] we have a card from nicole klutwick guys i know it's a late night and you guys do so much to prepare for this so i really do do appreciate um i know you guys addressed the fact that um not enough stakeholders were aware of what was going on um i think that's still the case there's still a lot of stakeholders who are not aware of what's going on and saying that we're going to address it next time

144in seven years when all of my children are graduated from high school um doesn't really addre it's not an appropriate um nothing about that solution is appropriate i mean good that we're going to do it better next time but we have the chance and the opportunity to fix that problem now um there's no reason why we need to table it until seven years ago and i know you guys alluded maybe we'll do it less than unless that that's not a promise and and that doesn't make parents today feel any better um in that situation with the very limited time that parents had in order to vet the the stuff two two things were removed from the curriculum so given parents enough time to actually vet all of the material how much more are we going

145to find is inappropriate i mean it's it's a it's a big question that um that i think we really need to concern to consider this right here is the rubric that the teachers and stakeholders not stakeholders uh the committee was supposed to use to go through literally nothing in here asks about bias acts about political perspectives asks about race stereotyping nothing in here addresses that and so for us to move forward and say we feel comfortable with this curriculum when it's never been addressed at all in the rubric seems irresponsible um on top of that i went through and looked through the meeting notes to see what did how many teachers like i particularly have an eighth grader how many eighth grade teachers looked at and gave comments on these materials there's three pages that

146look similar to this that was all of the comments and i counted up and there was one teacher who commented on each of the one eighth grade teacher who commented on each of those that is not inadequate and we got two comments from teachers um during this process the june review process that's not adequate input from stakeholders um i also want to say the timing of this curriculum is very very concerning um based on the the information that you guys have published in the board meeting notes it says it's effective july 1st 2021 july that means this year right school starts in five days so either teachers have been preparing the curriculum which a board has not approved and input from parents was never actually considered to be important so either parent it's already been

147rolled out to teachers and we really weren't actually important or teachers are going to be asked to implement this in five days and they've never a little concern that people have [Applause] already the next card is from nicholas smith good evening um as a parent of a fourth and fifth grader the timing of this curriculum is just perfect and i want to say a couple things to begin with um one i echo the comments of every speaker who has spoken today they're spoken tonight there's many things which are concerning i also want to echo that i do applaud and appreciate all the time that's been put into this to date however i respectfully disagree with the findings of the committee specifically i would like to address the content uh the age-appropriate content of some specific

148material the examples i'm going to provide tonight are from the discovery education material which is being recommended to be going to effect up months ago you know earlier this month last month um which is the question i i don't know how that's working as an example in for the fifth grade there's a video provided called a video called discrimination stereotypes in which it addresses stereotypes fantastic content i love the ideas fantastic topic however the example that it uses is the concept or the concept of rape that's not appropriate for for a 10 year old kid that should never be addressed by 10 year old kid further there's other material that the teachers are instructed to teach throughout this curriculum was being provided around the concepts of sexual orientation gender race these are sensitive complex topics

149these should be addressed at home these should not be addressed by parents and as it's recommended for grades third to fifth that's not appropriate another example that i'd like to provide is in the um the curriculum for the kindergarten to second graders it says the teachers are instructed to instruct about quote perceptions of racial differences i love my my daughter and my son when they were in kindergarten they didn't have a clue what race was it is not appropriate that we instruct our teachers to act to teach our children kindergarten first second about racial perceptions that is beyond them is inappropriate and it leans towards bias there's other content in the material which is skewed and biased and i don't care which type of political spectrum you're on it goes the wrong way it's inappropriate

150i respectfully ask you do not approve the curriculum please please please don't do it send it back give the parents more time to review let them come back i was able to provide these examples in the short amount timely provided there's other content out there that's just not appropriate thank you and the last card we have is from trevor nelson thanks i thank you for pursuing new social studies curriculum for our students a few years ago i discovered that my oldest who's a sophomore was actually younger than the social studies textbook they were using so he's turning 16. the textbook was over 20 years old in his classroom um teaching history and social science you know some people say it hasn't really changed those people i think are knuckleheads it has changed it's no longer

151just dates and names and white people i look forward to reviewing more of the material um i wasn't given a chance to and maybe offer some of my opinions um and just i'm curious if and when material will be available for community members to review and if that's already passed then i'd ask for maybe more time to review and i got two whole minutes i could keep talking if i wanted to but i'm not going to thanks thank you very much getting used to that um [Music] so that was all of the cards for public comment next i would ask for a motion and then we can open up for discussion does any important member mrs case thank you i don't normally write out my comments tonight i did um i first of all want

152to thank the social studies committee which met over this past school year and again in july to review the letters from parents and teachers regarding the social study adoption materials this has been an enormous undertaking for the committee and for the parents who took the time in june to review the materials i personally spent hours and days reviewing just parts of the materials the materials if printed could be stacked from the floor all the way to the ceiling if you printed all of that material and it is extremely hard to navigate some of it you click on one thing it goes to another you go to another even in the printed materials it can go on for 20 pages on just a studies weekly so there is a lot of material we are mandated by

153the state to review our materials and start teaching the new state standards by this school year it is not a choice we have to teach the new state standards the standards have changed what is taught in each grade level the biggest change to our district would be teaching arizona history in third grade instead of fourth and teaching american history and fourth and fourth and fifth grade instead of just fifth mainly teaching exploration of the americas in fourth grade and then the founding fathers and documents and so on in fifth sixth grade is still world history seventh and eighth grade will change in our district american history for the last i'm not sure how many years has had two years they've taken seventh grade and eighth grade to teach american history because it is such a

154large subject now the state standards put american history in seventh grade and then has civics civic engagement and finances in eighth grade and there's some other things in eighth grade and i'm not going to go into all those we have to as a public school district teach arizona state standards and by the way i personally don't have a problem with the state standards but i do have a problem with the materials i personally have found conclusions in these materials these proposed materials which i firmly disagree with i'm not going to go into detail for that but i will tell you in my hours of research i have found things i disagreed with i've mentioned those to cabinet members and dr bells i have also learned in looking through this material i love history and i

155have also learned some things that i really enjoyed learning about i truly have but my conclusion is i do not think we should adopt these materials i believe the k-8 students in our district would be better served if we adopted core knowledge for our as our curriculum in our district i understand the different difficulties with this ideas i have brought this up for the last 16 years in our district i've gone to some core knowledge training it is incredible um but with the new arizona state standards changes core knowledge becomes even more difficult to implement implement in our district because of things being changed on grade levels it used to be fourth grade was always the state uh you learn about your state that year core knowledge is across the country but it are um

156so the the textbooks core knowledge textbooks are now even further removed in sequence than they were with the old arizona social studies state standards but our core knowledge schools have been figuring this out over the last couple years and adjusting their grade level units to um to deal with state standards being different in different grades core knowledge is a tried and true program which has been enjoyed by our students parents and teachers for many many years in our district it is a project-based based learning program which engages students in special ways i believe the content level is richer and time tested than many other programs i understand the extra costs associated with core knowledge i've been being told this for years and years and years i understand but pv has figured out complicated and hard

157things before and will in the future the training for car knowledge is extensive and expensive and time-consuming but i believe it would be worth it i appreciate dr bell's listening to parents concerns and opening up the materials for an extra month review of review this summer because of the parents concerns this culverteer has complicated many many aspects in education in our district and in all districts i appreciate dr bell's sound judgment in allowing parents more time to review and i appreciate the committee changing some of the re recommended materials and considering the opinions of our parents and teachers i ask again that we keep the old textbooks and that we i would suggest that we do not adopt these materials thank you [Applause] does anybody else have any comments or questions i have a lot

158of comments um i have a couple questions um the uh is there the oh you i left my microphone on this whole time is there the ability for us uh to officially change it from seven years to three years the answer is yes okay um that is uh something that would uh i would like to see um [Music] i have more questions um is there the is there another curriculum available besides dbq for sixth seventh and eighth grade i know that we have discovery education but the dbq materials are supplemental right is there something along those lines that could be looked at for sixth seventh and eighth grade that would be different i don't go back and look at what was reviewed is that like could we approve it without that is i guess the

159question if i'm understanding your question could we approve uh uh reducing uh sixth seventh and eighth grade to just discovery education eliminate the dbq project and there's an understanding that teachers have the ability to get other materials to supplement as well right like it just wouldn't be official across the district is that like teachers use other materials at times teachers do use a variety of supplemental materials usually decided upon by that site oftentimes for supplemental materials but if it is the direction of this board to remove dbq uh then we would still have discovery education's tech book as the primary resource so i thought i'd like that to also be up for our discussion about this um uh somebody else has questions or comments they might want to go before me [Music] does anybody else

160have any particular questions or comments or should we just let mrs brown continue she talked about other materials for years to sandra day o'connor civics she has promoted civics and i believe that is a free forum i believe is yours it is free fourth and above so to fulfill the recommendations for eighth grade civics that is a possibility okay thank you mrs brown i guess if you have additional comments questions yeah i had just second um sorry i have mainly comments now okay um i just want to address some of what this what the uh the public commented on so i um i appreciate the uh concern that was brought to our attention by um by raquel kimball i can see how the literature experience the committee experience that you had could significantly impact your

161trust um and i too am concerned about that specific example my computer's gonna die and i need to get the charger for it um i also want to comment on um i'm that i'm concerned about what sandra christensen said about what her son was taught in fourth or fifth grade um and that i um appreciate the information that um that lisa farr mentioned about the five thousand dollar civil fine um and that we should ask the publishers to commit but i also do know that these publishers have i believe on their website stated that it does not that their materials don't contain crt which is part of how we made it a decision so i just want to clarify that that's true um and then um when jennifer kroenig mentioned that she thinks that seven

162or wait that was nicole but uh that um we should that parents should have access to all materials anytime that is the intention of what partly dr bales had mentioned in the beginning of your goals right that is something that you're planning on working towards that is correct okay and the materials this also addresses trevor nelson are still currently online and accessible to the public and have been so you did have access to to the materials this during this this time and and i was looking at them today so i imagine they're still there um nicole uh is concerned that it will not be soon enough and i just want to clarify that um the process improvements are being made with our very next curriculum very next uh committees it's not that we're going to

163wait seven years to change the committee improvements right i mean that's what um i just want to clarify that even though i realized that it right no i know but but you i just wanted to address that it isn't something that we're just gonna dismiss for years um as a whole um and i think nicholas smith mentioned some things that he feels uncomfortable with and that are part of what the law requires us to teach it's within some of the standards some of the concerns you have are literally written as things that we're supposed to um that we are to uh provide information about not all of it but there are some things that you mentioned that are literally in our standards as that we are supposed to address certain things about race certain things

164about um uh uh gender identity i'm not saying that we determine that for them i'm just saying that it it's it's written in some of our standards um without bias of course uh that as i um so um so you may wanna it's on the arizona department of education website you can look at that i'm not gonna defend it i'm just telling you that some of what you mentioned that you're uncomfortable with you should probably take up with the state and i think a lot of people may be as well but um so uh now to the rest of my comments i read every email that was sent to the board up until 2 p.m today every single email i have so appreciated all of the time and energy that everyone who has reached out

165to us has put into our community and into our children's education i mean that sincerely i appreciate it i've been the parent that's sitting in the board room and speaking to the board i understand where you're coming from i agreed with the concerns about the dbqs and the newsela and the concerns that the committee materials were presented and available during a time that most of the community had no idea there was a committee or materials for review i agreed that the concern with the concerns that all of it was done during a ridiculously challenging year one that pv had three superintendents and one and many parents responsible to keeping for keeping their kids home when they'd normally be in school so um everybody's lives were different i um have subsequent i've subsequently been pleased that

166our superintendent and cabinet reopened the materials and made them available to the public i'm also pleased that the committee reconvened and provided an updated recommendation with some of the recommendations that were made with the exception of the lack of parent feedback that upc was able to provide last year i've been pleased with the committee process and the stakeholder representation across the entire entire district to some degree with improvements the improvements that were made in the end and the commitment for continual improvement is important i've had the opportunity to review all the materials except for the one that was not available online i've been impressed with the materials in many cases finding them engaging and interesting consistent with accuracy and that they align with the state curriculum standards that we don't determine these suggested materials have

167been chosen for their alignment the state standards their engaging content i had requested that some of that would be shown but it sounds like most of you have looked at a lot of it um and i've carefully reviewed some for bias concerns and i do have an issue with dbqs um some of the concerns were addressed by other organizations in particular discovery education was looked at by florida social studies content review and they found that it was it scored the highest of all social studies programs reviewed with an overall rating of 96 percent including 100 percent score for the following categories accuracy of content the content of the material presented objective objectively material should be free from bias and contradictions and is not inflammatory in nature accuracy of content the content and the material is

168representative of the discipline such as the material should be including prevailing theories concepts standards and models within the subject area also with accuracy of content the content of the materials is factual and accurate as it is free of mistakes and inconsistencies according to that organization the currency of the content being current the content is up to date according to current research and standards of practice current sea of content the content is presented to the curriculum standards and benchmarks in an appropriate and relevant context currency of content the content is presented in an appropriate and relevant context for the intended learners multicultural representation the portrayal of gender ethnicity age work situations cultural religious physical and various social groups are fair and unbiased humanity and compassion these materials portray people and animals with compassion sympathy and consider

169their needs and values and exclude hardcore pornography and inhumane treatment additionally i have been pleased with the that is not for the dbqs that was specifically describing the discovery education materials and so i wanted to make that clear that that some of florida's um florida content discovery education florida social studies content review findings um i'm not sure that it is discovery that wrote it it so there this is this is but you're doing a public comment i gotta finish i got it so so and i'm happy that new zela was eliminated too i'm pleased that we're eliminating dbq and new zela as well as the cost of them i would like to see dbq removed from sixth seventh and eighth grade also i trust our educators our teachers and our principals that they know it

170is acceptable to our community and that they will honor the law and the community's interest and i'm especially appreciative of the extended commitment that has been mentioned by our superintendent as well as our um as well as the the committee and dr corson and um and mrs hopps hoppus sorry um i am concerned that we're behind a year and delaying this further hurts our responsibility to provide updated resources and curriculum i'm um but i'm also concerned about what all many of the uh the concerns that were raised in the public comment so i've addressed some of those things and some of my uh requests for uh approving include the um three years removing of uh the and the removing of the dbq so so mrs mature did you um i have a question if it

171is done as a three year versus a seven year does that mean that it's required to be form a new committee in three years is that what the difference is between a three-year adoption and a seven-year adoption because our last curriculu our last resource adoption was actually in 2005 and i don't i doubt it was for a 16-year adoption so how does that what does that mean um in actuality is the question and then um is the dbq project that is an online resource is that correct um that it says online it's an online program that if if if it were removed today it's something that could be researched and added back in later because it's not a physical book to purchase it would be i mean is that i see what you're saying yeah

172dbq comes in two formats there are some uh hard copy formats that comes in but what the committee is recommending is online um so i think that answers your first question the difference between a three year and seven year is is certainly something that we can do we can do a three year adoption what that would mean is that we would form a committee again in year three to make considerations for the year for adoptions and those recommendations could be to continue with the resources that we have or entertain new resources but it would be the discretion of that committee uh the only other um consideration would be that at that time that um that we would rewrite our contracts with the vendors uh indicating three years sometimes that will cause a price adjustment uh

173vendors will yeah other than uh so it would be some price adjustments in terms of the curriculum materials oftentimes a little bit higher price because we're doing a little bit of a shorter adoption is typically the trend but i don't have information in terms of what those cost adjustments would be but we certainly can do a three-year adoption if that is the direction of this board you did meant it was mentioned earlier that discovery education is entering into negotiations with arizona department of education to provide is that would that save us the cost of what is what is listed here now no there are two platforms to discovery education and the platform that the ade has contracted with discovery is what's called their experience platform and that's what's considered oftentimes a supplemental resource the one

174that we're recommending is in this recommendation the committee is recommending is what's called the discovery tech book and they're still the same company this is just a more robust primary resource curriculum okay so then then our schools would also have access to that supplement that would be at no cost at no cost that's correct at least for this first year discovery education is still in conversations with ade about what that would look like after year one um i'd like to make a comment the weekly studies in our conversation today is that my understand is this correct that that is a week a yearly cost and you said it was around 110 000 a year is that correct for the studies weekly rather and that is each year it costs that much for k-5 is that

175correct that is correct okay because that wasn't in any of our paperwork or the numbers so i wanted to bring that up that's correct okay thank you this is bacon um obviously clearly we need to improve our process um we need to make sure that this information is not reliant on our stakeholder groups to get out it is our responsibility as a district to get the information to you so that you can do your due diligence so i think we all know that we've all acknowledged that i think dr bales has been pretty upfront about that so um i'm appreciative of the fact that that um the committee looked at some of the resources where there was a lot of concern about and and elected to get for those to go away i think that's

176really positive um thing um the question i have a couple of questions and the first one is if we were to get if if we were to remove the dbq from six seven and eight would we have the opportunity to replace that with something else that's more acceptable or would we just have to go with the discovery education and and have that be the only material uh miss bacon for now we would be just implementing discovery education uh i i we would probably need to re-assemble either the existing committee or another committee to look at recommending a another resource and we'd want to follow that process to do that okay thank you my other question is and it's really for dr bales what can we do in the next year to really examine what's being

177taught what's happening in classrooms you know how can we make sure that our stakeholders who have concerns that they're heard um is there a process that we can come up with is there a complaint form is there something that we can do like an online form what can we do to help with these concerns that people are having and and really not just about this about everything um you know that's that's something that i think we need to be thinking about always um so that's just my question yeah i i you know i mentioned you know the commitments that we talked about both in the presentation as well as you know some of the goals and objectives that i mentioned for me personally uh and professionally in this role as a new superintendent it is

178one of those things that you know is continuing to evolve and you know our cabinet has been talking about strategies right to support those objectives about transparency and access i mentioned how our goal is to get this all online as soon as possible so people can see it anytime anywhere that's not an easy endeavor to do but we're committed to doing it you know working with publishers and getting you know permissions and access you know is going to be a challenge but it's one we're willing to tackle uh because we want our community to have access to that and we made a commitment to you know continue to collect feedback uh and make changes if there are units in some of this adopted primary source materials uh that that just isn't uh drawing the right

179conclusions or it needs direct re-instruction on how teachers uh you know tackle that content you know we're committed to doing that i you know certainly can can support you know a revised three-year to come back and revisit this i can support you know the modifications uh for dbq eliminated at six seven and eight and i can support the opportunity as dr corson indicated to um uh you know re-evaluate whether or not something needs to be provided in lieu of the dbq elimination um i mentioned earlier about our commitments to talking about how we can gain greater voice in that process you know at one point we kicked around the ideas of of an application process for membership at large we've kicked around the idea and i like the one that mrs case mentioned here about

180an advisory board so these are things that we will follow up on i don't think i've demonstrated the inability to follow up on the commitments that i make it is very difficult to move an organization of 3 700 employees overnight and it's one thing when we adopt the standards the curriculum resource materials that support the standards because we all know the challenge is what happens in the classroom right and and and it's it's made or break and and we actually have to inspect what we expect and that's our responsibility as administrators to do so it's not easy that's not an excuse i just want people to realize the the enormous task that it has as a former high school principal with you know 2600 kids and 100 and some classrooms it's not as easy to

181visit every classroom every day right and um but we we will do that and we will inspect what we expect it's a it's a process of improvement that we're committed to so um i've mentioned some of the things that have been tossed out as survisions to the motion that i think we can support i am deeply concerned about if we don't provide materials teachers will continue to get what they want right and this in here is the challenge at least we know what we're providing and it can bring this in a little bit and say all right here here it is right stay within this parameter and within these things um if not it's a free-for-all and we we have to address that too yeah we do um so i mean for me um i'm

182most concerned about having immediate um the immediate ability for parents um to um provide their concerns and i know we did talk you did address that dr corson and and i appreciate it i'd like it to be a little bit more um visible like on the district's web page homepage you know if you have a curriculum issue click this link and we'll get it to the right person to address you know the question um so um if we could if we can do something like that i i that is something that i would support i think is important and it's been important for the 11 years that i've been on the board so it's not new important it's always been important um so that's that would be the one thing that i would like to

183see a commitment to and it sounds like you are committed to doing that and i appreciate that mrs case i have a question with the k2 mcgraw-hill adoption how much different is it than the materials we already have they go through community city state you're a member of a community et cetera is it that much different than what we already have k2 can you come to the mic please i think that's the real issue is 2005 was a long time ago and so we don't have materials left and those the teachers are scrambling to kind of come up with their own materials which then you don't have continuity you don't have consistency and that's that i think is the big concern is because those materials and i know you were referring to the brown arizona

184book which i used but not every school has them i can't fill there's all of the elementary schools don't have those books anymore i was told we still had them that they were packed out of the classroom but they were at the school sites that's what i was told that they are not at every single school yeah i think the question lynn is is this because of attrition and they haven't been in print to repurchase so just by nature of things wear out and just okay that's that's it so they're left at some of its house the person moves doesn't return the books etc so you're saying there's not enough materials i don't believe there are enough and i have not done you know any kind of a poll to see but i know that

185we don't have um enough fifth grade materials we didn't have enough sixth grade materials this year those books are not even in print anymore and the same thing with the arizona book that's the problem okay so because of use and yes discarding so you're not seeing the schools have gotten rid of them no no no no it's it's it's that they weren't brought back they wore out they got correct watered et cetera yes okay but i but i was asking about the content was it that much difference k2 from the old books than the new books that's my question i don't know if you didn't teach those grades so that's not i was going to say i'm trying to think did i teach second grade or first grade and that it's been a while yeah

186well the standards have changed the standards have changed but i don't know if they've changed have the standards changed that much in k2 i don't know no they've not uh not significantly changed probably what has changed are some anchor threads that go through all social studies standards now which are new and certainly an inquiry-based approach which you know is the direction of our state standards and that is one of the features that the mcgraw-hill textbook does is it engages students in much more inquiry-based approach and that was the benefit of that textbook so what does it mean the inquiry i mean you say that all the time but what does it mean in everyday terms um oftentimes leading with what we call an essential question or an overarching question uh that that is engaging or

187interesting about historical concept or event and then providing students a variety of different perspectives and resources around that uh and and engaging students in reading a variety of resources around that and then asking students to draw conclusions about uh what they have learned as a result of that and then to demonstrate that understanding usually in written form but sometimes in project form as well okay that's one of the reasons i suggested core knowledge in those younger grades is because the richness of the program in core knowledge as opposed to the books we currently have and these new mcgraw-hill there's much more witness and richness and in-depth project-based learning which i think leads itself to the what you just described asking questions just doing the project based and bringing in ideas i think it leads itself

188to what the state is trying to get us to do yeah oftentimes project based learning or sometimes what's called problem-based learning uh oftentimes leads to that same kind of uh approach experience okay thank you mrs matura um i i wanted to point out i i think something unique about our district i don't think all districts do have an assistant superintendent of instruction is that correct so our dr corson here um and what i appreciate and i think is so important for our district is that we have dr corson here who has a department that can take the curriculum and they go through the mapping where it shows here's how this matches with the state standards and it allows the teachers then to do what they do best which is teach and not have to find

189the resources make sure it aligns with the new state standards are they up to date with what state standards have changed have they done all this so without a resource for our teachers to be using they're kind of left on their own and they don't have they're we're not taking advantage of the commitment that we've made for our district in doing the gvc guaranteed viable curriculum mapping and we have the staff and the department that does that so the teachers aren't individually having to spend their time doing this on their own you don't have thousands of people trying to figure this out you have the department to do that and when we have a resources that we say are going to be used then you're able to then map that and make sure it's going

190to match up and then the teachers know which units will make sure that they're reaching all the state standards um and so i think that that you dr corson and your department is a real asset to our to our district and i appreciate that we have you here to do that so it's not left to the teachers um and once new resources are adopted will the mapping begin is that the how how the process works yeah so we we currently have what are called guaranteed and viable curriculum maps already in place for social studies what they don't do at this point is map the the resources to those particular standards because we don't have these adopted yet at which point the governing board does adopt materials then we engage teacher teams in looking at those

191materials and begin to kind of plot them in sequenced way around the particular units that are developed within that guaranteed viable curriculum thank you does anybody else have any other comments or questions um i know miss brown you brought up a couple things in terms of dbq and changed three year dr bales you said i'm so i've got to eat the microphone okay um so dr bales you said that the the request by mrs brown to change this to a three-year adoption down the down the board um and eliminate dbq from sixth seventh and eighth was something that you felt that that in the curriculum department could support uh do we need to then modify the motion um yeah it'll have to be yeah i think you would need to so i recommend that the

192curriculum uh uh i move that the curriculum uh the the social studies adoption recommendation that we approve with the edits that include reducing the adoption to three years and eliminating the db2q project from sixth seventh and eighth grade is that does that cover i'm sorry does that cover everything we have i have no other yellow cards here can we just let her yeah if they did i apologize because i'm not using okay not here so i apologize if it got me i'm sorry your name again now i remember seeing a card for you so oh wait here we go i must so i missed you during the original set i okay i i apologize and feel free to come on up maybe it's fortuitous that i was left out until now i actually was one

193of the parents who gained access to review the textbooks all the conversation i've been hearing tonight in regarding adopting this agenda or this curriculum on the agenda today has been in reference to the supplemental materials but i actually reviewed took a lot of time to review at least two grades worth of the textbooks i believe it was splash and it may have been splashed for both grades i can't remember exactly but it was very concerning to me and i would say overall if you were to just i'm so sorry overall if you were to take um a high altitude view of the textbook material you would think oh it's pretty good but it's when you get down to the granular and you actually start really reading specific passages in this curriculum it's extremely biased very

194concerned concerning to me sheds a bad light on not only founding fathers but the founding of the of our country and i'm just concerned that all of the discussion that's taken place today has been about the supplemental material not the actual textbooks so i urge you to vote no to give us more time to i and i know i'm a rare case of a parent in this district who got to view extensive amounts of the materials in just two grades of the textbooks that we're going to be voting on right now for k-8 i don't think it's fair that most parents i mean the form that was sent out to get feedback from the parents in june was not a form to get parental feedback the questions on that form are so intimidating that i

195know at least personally five people that i sent that form to to please provide their input they read the first question and go i don't know what the state standards are i don't know if it aligns with the state standards those were academic education minded individuals that that survey was geared towards not towards parents my mom was one of the people who looked at that form and said i don't know how to fill this out i'm not an educator i'm not sure what the state standards are i can't say whether the curriculum aligns with the state standards it was not a form to gain parental feedback and the fact that the committee had five parents the curriculum committee had five parents that's not representative of our district and i feel like the curriculum nights that

196our schools hold each beginning of the school year that's the opportunity for parents to really get in not only see that curriculum on that one night because it's impossible to do but just give us access there's a lot of textbooks that your kids are not allowed to take home they stay in the classroom their entire year as a parent i never get to really see it so please vote no thank you and i do apologize again i these um i'll i will i apologize um are there any other comments or questions i don't know mrs case you look like you're considering i'm only one vote but bringing up core knowledge one of the reasons i would do that is so that we can get community input into the process if that was the direction we

197wanted to go it would take a long time to bring core knowledge into the district and i'm aware of that i understand the complexities because i have asked this question literally for 15 years and and so perhaps with the three-year adoption perhaps we look at this and think about a bigger picture i don't know what else to say about that thank you mrs case anybody else mrs matura um i i just wanted to say i appreciate our our teachers our teachers work so hard to um follow all the standards and to um and to make sure they're conforming with the law and i i really appreciate our teachers um doing that putting in the effort putting in the time to learn all the new um expectations and i do trust that our teachers are going

198to follow the new laws and we'll teach the content appropriately and and that's really i have faith in our teachers in our district thank you miss matura i just want to very briefly echo my thanks to everyone here i appreciate that having served on adoption committees before i ever served on the board um it's it is an extensive process and i appreciate that everybody here and many folks because we've heard from many many folks both um with concerns about this and also in support of the recommendations um i appreciate you taking your time i mean it's that that's a a big lift and i appreciate that you've done that i think everybody up here um has as well i also um appreciate dr bales not just listening but taking extensive notes um in terms of

199the commitments that that have been asked and will be made and fulfilled um i think the process that we use in terms of adoption continues to evolve and continues to improve and we will make it better uh going forward make it more extensive and is you know more transparent um again i think we do a better job than many but that doesn't mean it's the best and we can always improve and i think we will um beyond that i i do want to also record what mr mature just said i um i do have trust in our curriculum department and i do have trust in our teachers that they understand uh the additional um what what the new law um the the additional concerns that the new law creates and they will teach appropriately um

200[Music] and with that if there are no other comments or questions or just all those in favor please say aye aye aye any opposed nay [Applause] the revised motion passes four to one thank you next on the agenda we have ratification of vouchers mrs brown may i have a motion place so moved all those in favor please say aye aye mrs greenberg i abstain thank you very much is there any opposed vouchers pass with one excuse me abstention next on the agenda is acceptance of gifts and donations again we appreciate all of our donors and there was a very extensive list this time i want to thank in particular the pto at wildfire for donating 1500 for school testing for this coming year and with that if anybody here is a donor thank you in

201person and if you know anyone please thank them and mrs brown we have a motion to approve gifts and donations so moved all those in favor favor please say aye aye aye any opposed motion passes unanimously we have one item for discussion that's the instructional model time model for sweetwater and i will turn it over to dr bales president greenberg governing board members cabinet and guests at this time we're going to have a short presentation on the instructional time models to align with new state statute for required minutes on calendars that are not five days mr long thank you good evening president greenberg governing board members dr bells and preview community this evening i would like to present to you the first public hearing on sweetwater community school and roadrunner discovery regarding instructional time models

202for the 21-22 school year two public hearings are required to meet the obligations of house bill 2862 which allows school districts and charter districts to adopt instructional time models or itms to meet instructional hour requirements this bill continues to give districts the needed flexibility to meet instructional needs through remote learning project-based learning mastery-based learning weekend courses or evening courses in addition when districts use alternative calendars such as those for road runner discovery and sweetwater night school where we offer four day instead of five day week courses that those are now included in this newly defined public hearing process rather than the yearly submission of those calendars that we have always done in the past as a reminder we expanded the offerings at sweetwater community school to include sweetwater pvconnect and pv online this expansion of

203offerings under one roof actually assists in our ability to share resources and improve communications while providing one-stop choice for our pv families this organizational chart shows that three assistant principals are assigned to work either sweetwater 712 pv connect and pv online while reporting to the principal of sweetwater community school state minimum instructional minutes are located on the left side of this slide on the right are our proposed pvconnect instructional minutes at the elementary middle and high school levels as you can see we meet and actually exceed the minimum requirements this is achieved through the combination of direct and independent learning this next slide displays the class structures at each of those levels at the high school level students will be meeting with teachers daily for their four core classes elective classes will be offered to

204our pv pvconnect students through pv online those elective classes will be self-paced our middle school students will meet daily for core and elective classes at the elementary level the morning is used for whole class instructional time and the afternoon is reserved for core intervention small groups and independent practice legislation dictates that if more than 50 percent of students at a given school are learning remotely from that school then funding is only at 95 percent at sweetwater more than 50 percent of students will now be assigned to remote learning when pvconnect is added to existing enrollment most staffing of pvconnect is funded by federal dollars through the elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund also known as esser the exception being some administrative costs also on this slide you can see that 100 funding is will

205be reserved for those students who are 100 in person our pv online which is aoi arizona online instruction is at 95 percent and those students who will be involved with pb connect will now be funded at 95 percent in terms of enrollment at pv connect currently and this was as of yesterday we have 54 students assigned to high school 35 at middle and 177 students at the elementary level of interesting note as of yesterday of the 266 students registering for pv connect almost 50 are currently not enrolled in pv schools at the moment and i know pv online is not part of this presentation tonight but of those students who have enrolled in pv online 40 of those are currently not enrolled in pv schools our two programs that operate on a four-day calendar and

206thus becomes a part of this process and public hearings are road runner discovery and sweetwater night school the roadrunner discovery program includes 606 hours of direct instruction with additional hours of independent learning sweetwater night school includes 369 hours of direct instruction all of those students at sweetwater night school are full-time students at other area high schools students can only take a maximum of two classes at a time in that program with that i'll be glad to answer any questions as this is a hearing we do not need a motion or action does anybody have any questions mrs matura um clarification on the funding uh currently it in prior years for sweetwater were those students that were going to the classes they were funded at 100 is that correct those students are funded at 100 and

207will continue to be funded at 100 percent those students who are part of pv connect at sweetwater will be funded at 95. okay okay i was sorry if i was not clear on that sure if we were losing some percentage because we merged the program so wonderful thank you thank you i also have a funding question you said that pvconnect was being um funded by the federal esser grant is that something that we will that will evolve are we expecting to have esser forever i wish we could keep asking forever so there's some limitation on that funding so as as we move along in this process as a district we'll need to determine if pvconnect is something we want to keep and expand and invest in that's kind of what i thought for the i

208guess this is a similar question as it relates to whether or not we continue with pvconnect which i uh fully support uh in the future i thought it was great for high school kids but um uh the core classes four core classes will be you know and then two are online for electives which i understand but um i also uh pretty familiar with the limitation of electives at the pv online level so if we continue uh offering pvconnect with this model there will be we'll be open to improving those options in the future correct okay yes we would does anybody else have any other this is bacon i just want to say thank you for the work that's gone into this i know it's been a big lift to get all of this done hiring

209um all of those things so um no no but i'll come down we'll get your question answered and ms silvestri and her team have put in a lot of time to make this happen i just want to make sure that we acknowledge them thanks for that thank you great this was a first hearing so i this will come back i presume um for hearing number two at our next meeting uh that takes us to the end of our agenda so mrs brown may have a motion to adjourn so moved is there any discussion all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed motion passes we are adjourned