May 20, 2025 Board of Education Study Session

001Uh it is May 20th, 2025. Sorry. This is our five o'clock board meeting um study session and we're going to begin by indicating who is here. Uh Clark, will you start? Clark Nelson, Karen Winter, Chris Win, Julie Jackson, Kim Chandler, Connie Burges, Todd Hubber, Ben Worsley, Nicole McDermott. All right, first we have patron participation time on our agenda. Uh, unless Luke tells me otherwise, I don't think we have anybody that signed up. So, we're going to move on to our consent agenda. We just have a couple items that we had to take care of. I shouldn't say couple, a few items that we had to take care of um because of pressing time issues. Uh we've had a time to uh review those and ask any questions. So, if there's no further questions, I will

002entertain a motion for that. I move to accept the consent agenda. Second. We have a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda. Is there any further discussion on this? All in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Thank you. All right, we're going to move on to our study side study items. Excuse me. And we're going to turn the time over. You two are up. Okay, we're going to turn it over to Patrick. Good evening, uh, board members. And Patrick, I'm so sorry for real quick. um board members, just because we have um we have a request to get through some of our stuff uh in a timely manner because of uh some awards that are happening tonight. So, will you please uh instead of asking questions along the way, write down any

003questions that you may have and then let's try to keep our our questions at the end and and do it as succinctly as possible. Thank you. Thank you, President. Uh so pleasure to be with you and I have been reminded of that time limit as well. Knowing that I tend to be a little verbose, I got Mitch here to keep me on track and going on time. Uh we are going to be covering Senate Bill 173 which is the teacher merit award uh pay pilot. All right. So uh it's officially titled Excellence in Education Leadership Supplement Program. It was established during the 2024 Utah legislative session. Uh it's a state funded voluntary 5-year pilot from 24 to 29. And uh Center for School of the Future at USU uh is administering this program. What what's

004the purpose? Well, the idea is to identify and reward the top 25% of teachers statewide. uh it's hopefully incentivizing high performing teachers to remain uh in the profession and even to transfer to high poverty schools and we'll go over uh some charts that'll show how it uh proposes to do that and then hopefully retaining effective educators uh and supporting student achievement through teacher excellence. All right. So what is the eligibility criteria? licensed teachers with active classroom assignments K12. Uh it is limited to teachers from tested uh at least in in granite districts be tested subject areas. Uh there's the option to do non-ested, but you then have to go to the center and demonstrate here's how we're going to um evaluate their performance and then the center has to sign off that we've met all

005their criteria to make that happen. And with the amount of time that we have, there was enough feeling that we could successfully and confidently do that and have it uh uh work. And then uh local education agencies uh are looking at designing and implementing implementing the system in accordance with the with the CSF guidelines. All right. So what does that award structure look like? That's what we are talking about to try and recruit and retain and incentivize teachers to do well. Uh and that is based on teacher ranking across three performance tiers. Um granite district and other participating leas whether it be school district or charter schools will identify their top performers. It'll go to the state. The state will then compare and the top 5% will be awarded a $10,000 uh payment. if they're

006in a title one or a p poverty school, it'd be $20,000. And so therefore, that shows you how they would be um proposing to get people to want to trans transfer to a title one school or high poverty, high need school. Top six to 10% is $5,000. Again, it's doubled in a high poverty school. And then the top 11 to 25% is 2,000. In addition, they'll be recognized uh as being a top performing teacher. it. Just to be clear, uh it's not just title one schools. It's any school with 70% or higher poverty. That's high poverty. Um and you could be title one and have 40%. That's the threshold. You could actually go to 35, but uh for this law, it is 70% or higher free reduced lunch. Right. Yeah. Thanks clarification. That's why it

007says here high poverty uh school if they meet that metric. Uh so uh when we look at what how we'll be evaluating uh teacher performance uh 55 to 75% so we're given this flexibility as a district to say student growth and achievement and that is the limits that the state said it has to be as we've met in our committee. uh 50% made up of representative teacher of that committee and then 50% uh district admin. We've selected to go 75% on uh student growth or achievement. Uh professional evaluations, you can see uh what we're given there by uh the state if we want to participate and we've elected to go 20% on the professional evaluations. Uh and then it gives us the option of parent or student surveys. After looking at both and discussing heavily

008in committee the pros and cons of both, the committee has has selected and elected to recommend going with student surveys at 5%. There was an optional uh element to include some sort of measure on collaboration and portfolio uh or other uh we felt like it's more advantageous for our teachers not to go down this route. We already have on the professional evaluations a section where our principles evaluate collaboration and so we feel like we can still successfully encourage collaboration and identify that's an important thing in Granite School District but for our teachers ability to uh walk away with some of of this recognition we felt like including that fourth element wouldn't necessarily be in our in our favor and so we're we've elected not to include that measure. Yeah. The idea is that if it's

009optional um when when they teachers go compare with other teachers, if we opted for that option, it might hamstring some of our teachers in comparison. We're trying to set them up for the best chance to succeed when compared to other teachers across the state. Um and and to be clear, uh one more thing about Granite has selected. Granite is a committee that Patrick is overseeing. Sitting on that committee is uh representative GA, a couple of teachers, um myself and Joan Bramble and Patrick. So, it's a it's a committee that kind of had was charged with making these decisions as we opted into the program. This gives a a brief timeline. Uh before uh December closed out of 2024, uh we uh made it known that we would be interested in in participating in this and

010looking at it. Of course, uh from January to June, we're developing uh this through committee. Uh and then we look July 25th through May 26. This first full year will be full system implementation. And then it's not till August 2026 where we will submit our first teacher candidates for that recognition and then it's in October where those first awards are issued. So it's it's still a ways out there yet, but these are all things that need to happen to get us to that point in October 2026. Uh there's a feeling that there's some opportunities that we could seize on with this uh incentivizing retention of high performing teachers. uh concerned that if other districts were to participate in this and that we had teachers that could uh walk away with a good amount of money

011for performing at a high rate and we didn't do that, how many of those teachers might lose to those other districts. Uh also this desire to encourage movement to high poverty schools. When you look at uh some of the cash payouts, uh if somebody can earn double the amount and demonstrate that they're a high performing teacher, uh we can get some of those quality teacher teach teachers to uh self-recruit into some of those schools as well. Um it helps us as well looking at those evaluation practices and then uh aligning efforts to elevate teacher pay and professionalism. So there is a real desire. I I I know I heard uh Dr. and I talk about this as well and I've heard others saying, "Wouldn't it be nice if we can get our teachers uh paid

012at a even higher rate and this uh could be an opportunity to get us uh that much closer to that. Of course, there are concerns uh and uh some of the concerns that we as a committee have heard is this concern of risk of competition undermining collaboration. If there's money on the line and only so many people uh can receive that amount, uh do I keep my secret sauce to myself so that I can uh likely be the one to get that amount of money uh more so than colleagues. Uh challenges with equitability evaluating all subject areas again these are tested subjects. Uh we don't have the ability or capability right now to and most of your LEAs that are participating won't either. Uh and so the question being if I'm a teacher that's in

013one of these areas that isn't a test tested subject how will that make me feel uh potential impacts on teacher morale and workload uh potent uh is is there as well concerns raised about program design and objectivity. So these are to the best of our knowledge some of the concerns. We are going to be sending out a questionnaire to our teachers as well so they can answer uh specifically to some of the concerns they may have. Uh but these are concerns that we've heard from even surrounding districts as they've uh and LEAs as they've considered this. Um our our superintendent has uh enthusiastically encouraged us to be proactive in engaging in this pilot and uh the hope is that by participating at the ground level we can help shape the implementation through this early phase.

014Uh it's something that when we attend these trainings that are statewide uh we hear quite often. Uh this is a brand new pilot and there's a lot still to be worked out and the hope is by engaging early in the conversation we can help uh guide that the conversation in some of the solutions. You mind if I further elaborate? I although he did a really good job of enthusiastically supporting I thought that was actually good. Um there's a couple reasons why we'd want to enthusiastically participate. Um as a partner on this in the legislation, we have a seat at the table with a legislator who's earnestly engaged in trying to make this program better. And if we chose to not participate, um we would basically be thumbming our nose at additional funding and support for

015our teachers, which uh which makes us a more attractive place to work. and we want to be competing um not just with our local um other school districts but also against charter schools by and large the vast majority of them are participating in this program. So my fear is uh by not participating we lose our seat at the table and uh in addition to that we start to lose teachers to charter schools who are invariably going to be able to raise their compensation significantly u by virtue of the the way that this is doowled out. I want to point out that rarely if ever do we see a legislative program that is perfect in every way, shape or form in inception and implementation in funding etc etc etc. Um and by having a seat at

016the table, um this ensures that a district with significant atrisisk population like ours is able to have a direct voice in ensuring that this imperfect legislation continues to be enhanced and grown in a way that is advantageous to our teachers and uh to our population and our district. So if I'm enthusiastic, it is for those reasons. And I am enthusiastic. I thought it was an appropriate adjective. So, I'll hold on to it and say absolutely. And then finally, this commitment to retain our top educators. As a district, we're always looking for ways to do that, and this is another avenue we'll be able to do that. So, our next steps is to continue to meet as a committee, develop the uh develop the plan, and get stakeholder input. Uh and then we've got to finalize

017the system and submit it to CSF by July 1st. Uh which we're uh real close to being completed with it at this point now. And then start preparing for the data collection validation and roll out. Uh and then uh we'll uh do our very best to maintain the transparency and provide updates to the board and community as we move forward with it. So, I uh tried to keep it to the 10 minutes that I was encouraged to do. Uh and at this point, if if you have questions, happy to feel them here or you can send them uh my way via email. I'm happy to respond and I will uh in a timely manner as well. So, I think we can take 10 minutes. Let's try to limit to about 10 minutes of questions. I

018have a couple questions in. Um, how many districts are in the pilot at this stage? If you don't, I don't have an answer to that. I know you, like, uh, Ben said, a lot of our charter schools are. Uh, Jordan District, uh, I believe, is planning on it. Towilla, so I'm talking about the ones that are nearby. Canyons will not be. uh Davis, I don't I'd have to go back and look and see if they are, but you do tend to at least when they first started talking about it, you could see kind of this divide and there uh traditional school districts, you could feel oh a hesitancy to move in this direction. Um but since then when the when districts like Jordan uh uh have looked and seen how much money is on the

019table and what that could mean uh and we also had the folks from USU come to the HR director's uh conference in January that we have each month. Um quite a few of them started more seriously entertaining the idea. So a lot of them said initially in December because we had 110 by the end of December if we're going to do it. Most said they were planning on it, but then we're probably going to back out after that visit in January. I heard quite a few of my colleagues say, "Yeah, I don't know if we have if we're going to have access to this money. We're going to have to do it." And so, at that point, they've been trying to develop a plan that'll work best for their for their school district. There's only

020I think that's a good uh response. And I would just simply add in our conversations with the superintendent association there was only a handful of um leas that were not planning on participating it at some point in time. I do know as soon as we elected uh their website that they keep the next day had granite district on there because they wanted to show Granite District was willing to jump in. So they're using that list of districts and um to be able to say here's all the folks that are participating. One additional followup um with the evaluation criteria being set by granite school district and therefore there being potentially different criteria from district to district or from a district to a charter school. What what is the expectation or anticipation anticipation of how the state

021would allocate the the limited bonuses to a school district versus a charter? That seems a little bit ambiguous to me at this point. Everybody that we nominate as in our top 25% will for sure get the bonus. So if they work in a regular school, a non- highly they'll get 2,000 for sure, 4,000 if it's highly impoverished. What is unclear is how we compare to those upper and and there is some comparison with the state at that point and we're not sure how that how that pans out. That's why we chose to make our teachers as competitive as possible. Okay. So, there's at the lower level, it's only competition within the district. At the higher level, though, you're competing against teachers from around the state. And that's still, if I hear you correctly, that's still

022ambiguous as to how the state will make its own evaluation at that point from district to district or district to term. Well, and we just don't know how good our top 5% is going to compare with the state. We have an idea though because especially in our high poverty schools, our top 5% of teachers generally qualify for the HB212 bonus and we have um roughly I want to say 70 teachers that participate in that um and are eligible in just our high poverty schools and that HB212 bonus goes away because this bill kind of replaces that. And so you've got all those teachers that have working their tail off in really hard schools and are really effective and this is another reason to say, "Hey, yeah, we want to participate because this is going to

023replace that for them." We also have a tremendous amount of data uh our own internal data from uh conducted by Aaron, sorry, Dr. Wilson and Dr. Bramble in interviews with those teachers on the HB212 bonus that a $7,000 bonus is retaining and keeping them in our high poverty schools. They are literally going and being attracted to and staying in those schools. And so I can only imagine when retention is one of our biggest challenges or attraction to high poverty schools. Um again, we'd be remiss to ignore that information um for an imperfect program. Karen, did you have anything? Chris, I just had one. Um, so is the state eval evaluating this or do we as a district and then submit it to the state? The teachers that qualify in this we we identify our top

02425 uh teachers in those te tested subject areas. Then they go on, you can think of it as the second round uh to the state and at the state then they will use their wizardry and metrics. And I say that um uh they've reassured us because uh you have to take differing um either evaluations even amounts that they're uh uh that each district or eleas according uh to the student performance versus the um teacher performance and then the survey from the teacher or the yeah go back but what what they'll end up doing is taking those top 25% of all the participants and then compare them to each other and then identify all right in the state here's our top 5% they'll come up with the list and those folks that are identified from a

025variety of uh leas will then get that 10 or $20,000 amount. The first bullet here on this screen is the student achievement that is by the state. Okay, that will be um how well they did on this on the administered test. So, right now in in elementary school, how well they did on RISE and and they'll determine that for us. We won't decide that. What we will decide is professional evaluation and then our students will do that survey and then we rank order our K our teachers and identify our 25%. But the evaluation of of their impact is on tested subjects. Okay. And we selected the 75% because uh that was an area that we felt like would demonstrate the teachers effectiveness. They'd be able to really shine in that uh with our professional evaluations.

026We'd like to hope and believe we're at the point where there's innerator reliability. Uh but when you start uh when you have as many different administrators doing those evaluations as we have, there is going to be a little variability. So we wanted to limit that as much as we possibly could. So do we have like a rubric we give those principles to evaluate the teachers with? So they're all similar questions or PG it's their it's their evaluations to go through. Yeah. Thanks. Could you go back to the previous slide or the one? Yeah, that one. So if you think about uh the teachers who are eligible for the HB212 bonus, they're generally considered with an 80 mgp 70 mgp or higher. I'm looking at Mitch because he knows this better than I do. Um to

027be eligible for that bonus in a high poverty school. Plus, we do the certificates for teachers from any school with a 70 mgp or higher. And we have I want to say a few hundred teach I have to sign those certificates. So I feel very confident that we have a few hundred teachers that are eligible for that top 5% and I I agree wholeheartedly with our evaluation criteria because we do see a tremendous amount of growth. It is something that we push in our district to uh and as a point of emphasis. So, I'm kind of excited to see what that data looks like come fall of 2026. A a bit of information in the weeds. HP212 is based off of MGP and this is not MGP. they they have a different way of measuring

028the val the impact the value ad of a teacher and it's if you can think of a graph and and the kid has done this three years ago and this two years ago and this one year ago if they just kind of kept on that line of best fit then the teacher hasn't necessarily made too big of an impact but if the kids scores all of a sudden come out of that line that's where the state is saying that's the kind of so they We don't know what that looks like. Okay. They have not descri given us the details. In fact, I don't think they know the details yet, but that's their plan. I would agree with that. I don't think they know either. Okay. Um, we have time for like one question each. Do

029you guys have questions? Julie, do you have a question? I have a lot of questions. I think this is a really important issue and I think that that I I would like my questions to be discussed as a group. It's frustrating to me that we got 20 minutes to talk about something that will completely shape our culture. Do you want to ask your questions? I think it's huge. Ask your questions real fast. I So you're telling me then that the state is going to determine who those 25% are on a metric that we don't understand. That's what I think I heard you say. Is that correct? We don't understand which they don't under we understand the test but we don't understand how they're determining the kid the kid that did better on the test than

030they predicted. And then on can you go to the structure the next one? Um the professional evaluations are done by the principles. Right. Correct. I mean, so this creates now a an interesting tension between the principal and um teachers who in my mind were already trying to help them feel less silenced about concerns or about ideas. We want them to speak out, but what if I speak out and now my principal doesn't give me a good evaluation and I don't get my 20,000? So, I I worry about that. I uh student surveys um that it's it's really tricky to go on student surveys because uh you know a student's criteria for a great teacher is not always the same as it's it's not the same across students, right? So I just feel like there are

031a lot of questions to this. I've actually done a lot of studying on my own about merit-based pay and never seen a study that shows that it increases achievement. In fact, I've shown that the the research I've read shows that it creates problems within a school district. And I understand what Ben is saying that we've got this political problem, but boy, I mean, at what point do political problems, you know, do do you allow the the politics to get in there and become problematic uh for your kids in your district and your culture when we're trying to create this collaboration culture and now we introduce something that could disrupt it? I just I have real reservations about this. Um, and especially the way that it's set up. I would feel I think differently if we

032had a little more local control about it. Um, so, uh, but I'm also I'm I would love to get our teachers more money, too. So, uh, I just I think those are the thoughts for now. Just to clarify because I think what you're saying but it's been said different ways. We choose the top 25% then the state chooses from that pool top 10 and top five. Okay. Um just to comment on on this slide here. So parent or student surveys we selected student. I agree with Julie's concern there but also you know there's an argument to make to be made that the parents are the ones who pay the teacher salaries at the end of the day. we're not including them in this process at all. I'm not arguing one way or the other, just

033making that point. Um, my question really is tell me about funding. Perhaps this is looking way too far down the road at this point, but surely someone's at least talking about it at this stage. Is this a case? Is this a program where the state will have a pilot be wonderful and then they say, "Okay, great. Here you go. Districts run with it." And now we have to fund that. Is anyone talking about that? And and if so, like how much is something like this cost? Todd knows the number. It's a big number. This costs a lot of money. So the legislature set aside a couple hundred million for a three-year pilot. And so there's no commitment beyond that three years. So we can fill in the blanks from there. So that's that's a concern

034to me, too. So I think you're presenting a broader question and I'm not indicating my feelings on this. Sorry, I took a big bite of a sandwich there for a second. But I to in response to your question, I don't I think it's safe to say and if we look at the political tea leaves that are out there, we have legislators who uh I anticipate will present legislation that require us to get rid of our pay scales and our steps and lanes. And so this is kind of the in between step on that. And um I think it's safe to say that public education and our approach to some of these pieces has been under attack. Um and so that's why they're investing heavily in in this type of approach to consider if if um

035and we saw that we lost our pro staff money. Uh the $2.5 million that was a direct result of that approach and philosophy. So when I say we need a seat at the table, that's what I'm kind of referencing. Um, we need to make sure that we're having input and that we're if this is not successful and the concerns that Julie has presented or um the other questions that we that I the conversations I've had with GA directly, that's why we need to be in the room when these decisions are being made and have influence. And I totally agree and just, you know, I was trying to keep my comments brief, but I should clarify. I'm not saying that I'm opposed to the idea of merit pay at all. just concerns me that we'll start

036down this path of this very expensive program and then have to take it on ourselves all of a sudden. So, which by the way, we are taking on the HB212 program ourselves in lie of the fact that there will be a gap between this implementation and the loss of funding from that program and we don't want to lose those teachers. the very thing you're talking about. just to comment. I feel like um we're in a good place with all of our with so many schools that are above 70% and wish all the teachers, you know, that that boost or the help they need to get to get I don't think 75% with the groceries. To be clear on that, it's an interesting I don't think people understand this. There are more than 400 title one

037schools in the state of Utah. There are 80 or less that have 70% or more. And we have 25% of those, 20% of those. We have the lion share. The poverty concentration in our school district is immense. And it's hard to teach at those schools. So if again, Julie's not wrong, like the devil's in the details, but man, if we can pay teachers to be really effective in high poverty schools, we've got to do that. And that's a good argument for us in particular to take it on. We'd benefit the most. Mhm. And to that end, along that same vein, we also have the highest rate uh per capita of charter schools in our area, right? And so if we don't participate and those charter schools are participating, the we are not going to be

038competitive in terms of compensation. And right now, our benefits package is off the charts compared to charter schools and our our salaries are very competitive. I don't want to put us in a place where we're losing some of our most valuable educators down the block to a frankly an inferior charter school. Just a quick comment this I have a I have several sever I have a lot of title one schools in my area and if HB212 is any indication on um teachers choosing intentionally where to teach for the for the possibility of this teacher bonus. I've seen this in action and sometimes even when they're, you know, let's say a surplus situation goes on, they're seeking out another title one school because they don't want that missed opportunity. So, I can see I I I

039can see the appeal of us participating in this and frankly I've just I've seen it work in my schools. Uh most of my schools out in my area, especially my elementaryaries are title one and uh and there are, you know, it's I get the list every year and there's several teachers and every one of those that are qualifying for the HB212 bonus. So that tells me it's working. My concern is that when we have the MGP awards, you know, it's not our title one schools. And so what worries me is that the top 25% is not going to be those teachers. And not because they aren't worthy and not because they aren't the best teachers, but because it doesn't show in the metric. Because the metric that we're using to give those those cups, if

040that's the same metric, then it's it's all of it's it's not our title one schools that are going to get. It's it's the teachers from the schools that have engaged parents who are, you know, in helping their kids perform as much as the parents, I mean, as much as the teachers. So, I I'm really concerned that we think it's going to do something that it's not going to do. I'm going to push back just a little bit because we do see on those I agree with what you're saying in terms we don't know what the actual measurement will be but if it's even closer remotely but we do know what the measurement will be for the top 25%. I feel like I'm hearing two things is the state's measurement or is our measurement. It's the

041state's measurement. It's just we do not identify them. The state does correct which is different from what you said to Kim. No, we we we will identify that top 25%. They move on and then the state takes over from there. We hand off the baton and now they start comparing. But their test data, they tell us, right? They tell us the metric that we'll use to identify the 25%. Yeah. Okay. So that is consistent and it it we know that our teachers that are high performing that are receiving that HB2 bonus and that are getting recognized. We have schools from across the district getting those cups, right? Um Frost Elementary has been up there. Um even Cypress got it one year in terms of high growth. Um and then we see mixes of Penn has

042been up there, Cottonwood Elementary. So we have these high growth teachers um in all of our schools. I want to clarify and just for your guys' sake, if you would clarify, if you reach that 25% threshold that the state has established, you get the bonus no matter what. It's guaranteed. Guaranteed. So that's $2,000 regardless of what school you're at. An additional $2,000 if uh you're in a high poverty school is designated by the 70% threshold on poverty. I'm saying I'm concerned that we're going to see that the majority of our teachers who qualify for this based on the metrics are going to be from our privileged schools and it's going to draw people away from the from our high poverty schools because they're not going to and and I'm saying that because I sit in

043board meeting and give those cups out and I I know where these schools in our are and I see there are these two schools that are not in my area and You're right. There are two, but there are eight that are from my area. And it it's upsetting to me, honestly. I mean, I'm so happy that my area does a good job. And but it's not because the teachers are better. They are great teachers. God, I'm really getting going to get myself in trouble here. I I just worry it's going to have the opposite effect of what we're saying here. And you're not wrong at all. They are trying. Their metric is trying to measure the impact of the teacher. It is trying to say hey look this kid was on a trajectory and and

044that trajectory is going up and then they taught Mrs. Jackson taught the kid and the kid went higher and so that that is supposed to be you made value ad. Now, in that year, did those did the family take a trip to somewhere and the kid learned a whole bunch of stuff? Maybe. But it's supposed to be we expect this kid, my math class, I'll just teach use that as an example. The kid started out at a second grade level. We expect him to get to maybe a third grade level, but maybe I got him to a fifth grade level. Wow. Okay, that's outstanding. And that's the idea and you should be able to do that at any school. And I guess I I appreciate the idealism and I'm skeptical about the reality. And I

045would share that skepticism. The I think we all do. Um again, when I I shared some of those concerns with the bill sponsor during the legislative session. I said I can't support something that's going to draw people away from high quality teachers away from my schools. and he was very he has done um cleanup bills on HB12. So he was very cognizant of that and that's another reason why we were committed to be a part of this pilot is so that we could again have direct influence to make sure that our our most impoverished schools were not hampered as a result of this. I I do want to go back to that data though on the next slide. If you look at the top 5% I know for a fact we have 80 plus teachers

046who are going to be in that range. 80 teachers who could receive a $20,000 a year bonus. You're saying 80 80 top 5% teachers who are in our 70% or higher poverty schools. Yes, because they're already getting the 212 bonus. Okay. Wait, they're already getting the 212 bonus. Correct. That's how I know they qualify on a ma a metric comparative to all the other teachers in the state that they so whatever that final metric looks like I'm assuming those teachers are going to do quite well. Does that make sense? Now I I could be totally wrong. But I also know there's another 200 teachers plus districtwide who also do quite well and and get that high MGP certificate regardless of being in that school cuz I signed those certificates, right? and put smiley faces on

047them. Right? So, if I'm just looking at those teachers in Granite School District, 250 plus teachers we know will likely qualify in that top 5% and get an additional 10 to $20,000 a year. That's how I'm a little bit more optimistic. I still want to trust but verify, right? And again, this is imperfect. It needs a lot of work, but we have a seat at the table. We have a very responsive sponsor who wants to work very closely with us to make sure that this is not hampering our ability to attract and retain high-quality educators in impoverished schools. Sorry. So, and Julie, to your point, I I don't disagree, but remember that it is student growth. And while your your schools and your kids tend to be high achieving, they're not necessarily as high of

048growth. I'm talking about the MGP. I'm talking about the growth awards. We we started giving growth because we thought it would now start to make sure we acknowledge all areas and it it didn't change it. It did a little bit. with the growth. I'll accept that. I I I a lot of people not getting the recognition that they deserve. Yeah. This is the how to measure it so that we can deserve give them to them. Um so my question does this program do we still have our big check program up until this one starts or are we having a year where we have nothing? So when I talked about we will be funding as part of our budget proposals carrying that program because the funding disappears as this gets implemented and there's a year gap

049and we don't want to lose that for our teachers who are kind of counting on that money and they've gone to high poverty schools to be eligible for that and so we're trying to find a way to make sure that we bridge that program to this other one to again the details here HB212 was designed specifically to say you you you accomplish lished this amazing job. You decided to work at a highly impoverished school and then you worked there. It's a three-year delay, but it was strategic to try to incentivize people to go. Well, folks have done that. They accomplished it. They've decided to work there and now they got to work there and they're kind of planning on it and if we don't step in and pay them, they're going to be like, I

050did all that I'm supposed to and now I'm out. So, it's really great that superintendent is is going to be honest to the to the promise that the state should have made. Okay. Thank you. Um if you have if if anybody has further questions that we didn't get answered tonight, I think all mine got answered, but um if anybody has any questions, please feel free to reach out, I'm assuming, and we can get those answered. And thanks to GA for their help and ongoing collaboration on this. Yep. For sure. Thank you. All right, we're going to go ahead and move on. We're going to go to educational access and opportunity. Do you want me to talk about the orchard real quick? Uh Ben's going to give us an update on the or check real fast.

051We've you guys requested and uh we've had some reorganization within the district. So, we just wanted to provide this to you. Um, this does not go into full effect until July 1 of this year. Um, so just providing that as an opportunity for you if you do have questions, but I know when people come and present, there's there's a question of where they belong and fit in our organization. I know sometimes I've invited you to not just bring questions to me, but to be able to reach out to individual department heads directly and then just CC me so I'm in the loop. Um hopefully this will help uh facilitate that process um better in the future. Thanks, Ben. All right, we're going to turn the time over to David Gomez and Carly Chavez who are

052in charge of our educational access and opportunity permit. Sorry, I'm going to set my timer because we do want to stay on time and so we just appreciate you guys inviting us. I'm David Gomez, the director of uh DEAO to shorten it. Um and this is Carly Chavez, associate director, soon to be director for hopefully a few more years down the road. Let's see how we go. Yeah. How do you um down? Thank you. Sorry. We're going to go over five portions of our department that are the big pieces of what we try to handle. Obviously, we can't cover everything in 10 minutes, but we're going to cover these pieces. Title 9, Title Six, 504. You've had questions about the Title Three program with multilingual learners. We're going to uh go into a little bit

053more depth there. And then we're going to talk about the refugee and newcomer program as well. Um, our first responsibility is Title Nine. Um, the the director, now Dave, soon to be me, is the district coordinator for Title N. Um, we work very closely with Doug Larson and Travis Walker. We're very grateful for their input. They've been a huge help with this, but we are just helping helping our schools stay in compliance with this, knowing the process to follow, where to report, and and how to do so. So the other big component of our department is the 504 compliance which is basically prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities. And any entity that receives federal uh dollars has to comply with the 504 um compliance that they give to us. And just a note over there

054on the side, we do have 5,684 active 504s that are found within our focus system, which was great. We were able to put our 504 uh pages and sheets that need to be filled out, forms within focus, but every school needs to have a 504 coordinator. So that's 86 coordinators throughout our district that we as a department are helping to coach and make sure that they are in compliance with the 504 regulations. We do that through training sessions. We do that through individual coaching and primarily that falls on uh Carly and myself. Uh however moving to next year we are going down to just one director and so fortunately we have a middle manager that is able to help Carly to go out and do these 504 compliance visits and so big portion of our

055department um you know our coordinators do an excellent job. We also house title six um all of title six but a big focus is on the American Indian education program within title six um we have goals set with um within the state to support the language and culture and improve the educational opportunities of our native students. Um you can see on the right there we have 933 students that qualify title six this year and those numbers make up the different tribes that they're part of there. Um, within our program, we have a parent committee that that we value greatly, that we take input from. They're they meet weekly at the community center. Um, we also incorporate cultural presentations. We have two different mentors in our department that travel to different schools and teach different cultural

056presentations, especially in the elementary level, but we've been um getting more into our secondary schools as well to share about culture and keep that ongoing. And then we have some celebrations like the annual pow-ow and fall literacy night that we work with the community center for serving these these native students. And that graduation rate is awesome. We're at a 95% graduation rate for our students and climbing because we're identifying the few that are not, but we're doing great, which is a lot higher than the state the state's graduation rate for native students. So, that's a celebration for us. Title Six is a federal program. Yes, it is. I want you to pay attention not to all that's going on here because we don't have time, but the 20,000 multilingual learners that we have in our

057district, it's a huge number, okay? And I want you to go down and look at those three um circles below, I'm going to go into a little bit more depth here, but out of those 20,000, they take a WEDA test that then says to us or tells us, what level of English language learner are you in? 1 through four, 5 through six, and then exiting. And so if you go uh and if you look at I think we're roughly around 57,000 students, 20,000 of them are multilingual learners. And so if you go to the next slide, title three part A is that ESA um act that um basically tells us that we need to serve English language learners. This is the breakdown right here of the six areas that WEDA puts these students in as

058they take that access test. Okay? And so, as you can see, 27% are entering. They're at the basic level of learning English. And then it goes on up. And so we just to to give you an idea of what our educators are going through and schools are going through. Um there there's just such a large span of what they need to be doing with our students right throughout the entire district. This gives a great picture of that. One of that one of these programs that's within the title 3A looks specifically at refugee and newcomer programs. So within that we have our own program where our responsibility is to identify our refugee and newcomer students that enter our district. We work very closely with two outside agencies um the international refugee community and the Catholic community

059services. As they work with families and bring in students they fill out a form that lets us know when one of those students is going to fall within our district. And we have 11 refugee liaison in our department that that are assigned to different schools. And their job as part of our Tumani on the- go program is to receive the information and follow up with the family. Go to the family's home. They make a home visit to each family, provide them the resources that are needed, share with them about how to the school they will attend, how to get there, help them with transportation, what they'll need. They take them to the building. they walk with them or show them the path, show them the busing route, help them get registered um and get enrolled

060into school. Now, it doesn't end there. That's the start. So, then they continue to follow up with this family. Our liaison become a safe person for the family to connect with and to reach out to for their time in Granite really. So, it starts heavily in the beginning and then it's a a check-in process throughout the year um and even into the next school year, but we keep them in our case load and we have relationships established and they continue to follow up and support them in the school building. Um just an idea over there on the right, we have served 612 a combination of our newcomers and refugee students this year from 48 different countries and 25 different languages. So, and then we have other great programs like our student ambassador program at two

061of our high schools um where we have students that are in part of this club that help our newcomer and refugee students and kind of become a buddy for them, showing them around the building and helping them. And and then our summer English program is a little mini tomini program that we run for two two different two-eek sessions in the summer for any students that enter our district from May to early July that can join that and have exposure to our academic system, some vocabulary, some social skills, some Yeah. wonderful program. So we're setting up for that this year and we're excited for them. So title three. Now, I'm going to talk about the rest of the of the 20,000 ML students. That was just a portion of them. We have about 16,000 that are

062uh not the exiting students, but are within our schools that we do need to serve based off what DOJ and the Department of Education is saying, here is what we need to do with them and give them assistance, right? But then also give them access to all curricular and extracurricular programs. We've decided as a department, as a district to do that by building capacity, right? Because we don't have a lot of resources. We don't have enough. We never do and we probably never will. So, how do you do that? You build capacity within the schools. One of the ways we do that is to offer teachers and staff, not just teachers, but administrators, aids, modules, training modules that they can access for free, but the district does pay for a license for a program called

063Elevation. On one side of Elevation, it has these modules, as you can see here, that will allow teachers to get online, go through these modules, and they can earn Midas credit towards a lane change, and they can do it on their own time. um administrators can assign it to them. They can do it as a grade level team. But this is huge for us. The other portion of elevation is it's our data entry uh area to collect data on MLS regarding WEDA and then they also have a strategy section as well as part of this software program. But it is really about building capacity. One of the other ways we do that is we developed an uh granite school district ESL competencybased program that was uh approved by the state. We piloted it in 2023.

064We have all of our lessons and modules on Canvas. We had 63 teachers take it at that point in time. We're just trying to work out the bugs. But then this last year we had 153 teachers. In the past, um, Granite District has had a endorsement program that ran through the college, but only about 62 teachers a year were able to access that. That's not going to cut it. We needed more. As you can see, you represent um, schools where there is a much need for these teachers to have this kind of training. This is free to teachers. Let me tell you what happened this year that was fantastic with Cypress High. They decided as an entire school to take and and really concentrate on on building capacity with ESL strategies. We offered them three

065pathways to Josh and their and their crew over there. Um and they they had 48 teachers that wanted to get on and get their endorsement from the state through our ESL uh competency program that I'm showing you here. They've now have about 25 out of those that have already finished and they'll continue to do it uh because there is no cuto off. The cool part about this program is that it's done in their classroom and the coaches do a coaching cycle with them as they're going through this ESL endorsement. So, it's an whole embedded program that we hope to get and and are ready for two or 300 more folks to get on this as a as a as an option for them to build that capacity. I just want to make a quick comment

066on that because we were at the graduation review today. Mitch was there and Kim and Bob and I and they said they had a 250% increase on the WEDA exit exam. Yeah, we're gonna That was pretty amazing. Thank you for sharing that. And again, but I also want to make it clear though too that those kind of of increases are not just one program. It's not just one idea. It's not just one way. It's a school taking ownership of these kids coming together and using what they have in their school along with some district resources that we've actually given you a paper that goes into a bit more detail of what we're offering networks and schools. And we've been doing that for the last two years with a focus on secondary because secondary's always been

067a place where they just have not received these ESL type services and building capacity. And so we appreciate you um sharing that. I know we're short on time. Go ahead. Uh I guess we can as a Cypress teacher, it's the best professional development that I've ever experienced in my time school district. Thank you. Great. We'll go ahead and finish off here folks because we know we're just a little bit over time. Real quickly, I just want to touch on our professional learning teams. This is how our department divides and conquers to serve all of our schools. So, we have eight specialists in our department and those 11 refugee liaison. So, we have taken all of our schools and divided them into eight teams assigning a specialist and at least one liaison if not two to

068specific groups spec specific teams. Okay? and they're doing a lot of work in those buildings and the paper in front of you is what kind of shows that okay the things that they're doing and support they're giving but the the numbers on the screen are a total of what they have combined the combined eight of them have offered this year so 80 district trainings going to jump down to the PDS and staff trainings 141 they've been in 187 team meetings 138 PLC's and they've given 170 coaching cycles this year to all of the schools within our district that that adds up that total. If you jump to that sheet down below, there's priority one schools. And the the key piece that I think that has done more uh good for for lack of resources, right,

069is that these folks in priority one schools, meaning there's a lot of MLS in it, they spend two to three hours a week inside the school building under the direction of the principal and the leadership team. That's the difference. They're not under our direction. We give them input, but they're under the direction of the team because we want the school to to build with guidance from the specialist. In closing, I just want to talk about a a program, a productive language tool called Flashlight 360, which by the way, we can show you numbers on how this helps kids. It's doing what I'm doing now. It's giving them practice to speak and to write productively. Okay? It's not a plug-in tool that's going to teach kids English. It's a progress monitoring tool that shows teachers where

070a student is in speaking and writing, two of the biggest areas in our district for years that we've been low in. Okay? And and that's we haven't been able to change it. When you give kids practice like this, you give them a picture, they label it, okay? You can see that their writing sample is there. They then get feedback from scorers that give them feedback on how they're doing. Now, teachers are trying. They're doing their best, but sometimes they don't have time to give the student a chance to speak and write. This helps them with that. It also helps them to teach them testing uh uh what am I trying to say? testing uh abilities and just getting on, trying it out, not being afraid. I mean, if if I told you guys to speak

071Spanish right now, you'd be afraid to do that because you haven't had practice. Some of you already do speak Spanish, but that this is what we're talking about. And so, when you put those tools together, this is the kind of results that we're seeing, folks. If you look at the secondary, Joan put to this together. It's a three-year comparison of the WEDA composite scores and the changes in those scores. Look at the blue bar compared to the gray bar of last year as a district in the secondary levels in speaking and writing. And then we also found that this affects listening as well. And so this is what we're talking about. But again, I'm going to tell you, it is about people coming together and using the resources that they feel like in their school

072is going to make a difference. And with that, we'll end. Sorry, we're a couple minutes over. If there's any questions, I don't know that we have time, but you're good. We're clerk, do you have questions? Karen, do you have any Chris? No, just thank you. Julie, looks like you guys are doing an incredible job. Um the ESL endorsement, you're saying that the state is paying for that? No. Uh we we pay for that ourselves. Okay. We've chosen to include that in our budget. We have So it's within our control to continue to do that. Yeah. It it falls within our specialist assignments and they run the Canvas um classes. That's built in your departmental budget. The Focus 360 has been funded one time yeartoyear because the state provides some funding a portion of that. Yeah.

073Flashlight 360. Sorry. Um so we're trying to get I I plan on inviting all of our education interim committee members out to one of our highly impacted schools this fall because there's no additional funding for multil- language learners in the state. So, the one tool we need help with, uh, we have over 20,000 multil- language learners. That is in total more multil- language learners than all the rest of the state combined. And we don't get additional dime more for supports for those students. And these are not dumb kids. These are kids who don't speak English. And it's it behooves everybody in the state to invest uh time and resources to help those kids learn English. That's that's not a granite problem. We need additional support. So, we're going to be showing them the problem first,

074the challenge firsthand. But I I will say, superintendent, that this district has been very helpful and and just supportive of of what we're doing. And that's why people throughout the state are constantly calling us and saying what are you doing? So, so a kudos to what cabinet level has been doing and and we know it's going to continue. So, just to say that we have felt support. It's just tough, you know, it's it's hard. Thank you, Kim. Oh, sorry. Oh, did you have I just want to say thank you for what you're doing. I tested WEDA and by the time they get to high school and have to be do that same test over and over to see the results there is amazing. So, you know what else we're seeing is schools that had 12

075kids exit go to 65 kids exit WEDA. So, folks, you're doing a great job in supporting us. Yeah, we hope it continues to go and we just thank you for the time that you've given us. I will say I I I've gotten on every single time to try to register for that stupid ESL class and I can never get it like the minute it's open. I can't get it. So, it's I'm I applaud that we this is a creative solution to that because it is something that's so frustrating for teachers who want to do it and this allows our granite teachers the access to it. So, thank you. We had two administrators do it last this year as well. I love it. And one uh special ed administrator uh Kyle who who actually took some

076of the strategies and took it to his training with his special ed teacher. So it's a good thing. I love it. I love it. Okay. Thank you so much. Right. We're going to move on to superintendent's tenative budget. We just wanted to get a little bit of a preview. Uh this is not by anything by any means official, but um this is what they've come up with. So take it away, Superintendent Worley. Uh just a real quick shout out to uh Dave and Carly. I asked them to provide you a in light and in view of um kind of just helping our board of education and the general public know how our organization chart works and in uh full view of uh defining what these departments have responsibilities over. I ask them to prepare this

077as well. Um so if you do have questions about any of the that departmental responsibilities just encourage you to reach out to them directly and CC Lesie and I and we're happy to address those questions. So as we do these future presentations, you'll probably get some more white papers just generally defining some responsibilities. And so okay, with respect to that, we have a very brief uh budget uh presentation for you uh this evening. Um you've had an opportunity to look at this and we've had some study sessions to kind of talk about some of the budget challenges. So, I'm not going to spend a tremendous amount of time on that, but uh post negotiations and looking towards uh some strategic opportunities to enhance student outcomes and provide uh necessary supports for uh very dynamic and

078challenging educational environment. I I hereby present doo the 202526 um budget. So, we'll kind of go through that budget building process. Uh Todd's going to chime in on a few things. I'm sure uh he uh does a tremendous job of being very strategic with our budget requests. Um and I would like to point out that we did have a tremendous amount of budget requests. Uh we kind of put it out there to our executive leadership team and directors to tell us what those needs are um as we kind of assess what our challenges are in that changing environment. So, he'll kind of walk us through a little bit of that budget building process and address some of those questions if they come up. Um, we'll go through a brief summary. This will be just a

079small portion of the 2025 26 requests that we did receive. And so, when we talk about having to cut 10 to 2020 20 million in requests, we are filtering down to our greatest and absolute needs um when we think about these things. So, how we prioritize and uh look towards our strategic objectives in line with the the plan that we have in place. Um and obviously we'll be looking at available revenue and what the implications are to our taxpayers. So, uh you want to walk them through this? So, in the uh late fall, right before the holiday break, we uh put out a request for the departments to identify what areas that they see budgetary needs in. We do couch it in terms of the priorities of the board. And so that document goes out

080and they then uh respond uh accordingly. We then over the next several months we'll start to review those, criticize those, support those, analyze those. as we we go through and uh put uh priorities together as to what could fit into a budget for the upcoming school year and what will start to fit within the revenues available as we go through the legislative session. Uh that determination continues all the way up until today. We're again we we're going to show big picture items here and we'll need uh direction from you so that we can finalize the budget. Uh then when we have all that together, if there is a shortfall, if our requests are bigger than the monies that are available through the state and the federal governments, we then have to talk about a property

081tax. And uh that's the scenario that we're in this time for this year. And as we've discussed in some of our previous uh board meetings, we'll we'll be um in some challenging circumstances next year and the following budget year unless we can get some help and assistance in modifying some of that legislation that came through this current year. So, uh with respect to our budget request summary, uh Todd has an excellent uh tool and resource. Every budget request has a form that you're required to fill out. uh it gets tied to the strategic plan and the area of of the strategic priority that it aligns with. Um and we look is that a one-time request or an ongoing request. And so those are broken out into these respective categories of academic, social skills and disposition,

082talent development, operations, and just overall compensation looking at the totals. Um and so uh going on to the next slide there you can see how that uh breaks out in terms of some very specific strategic objectives and I'm not going to spend time on those unless you have uh very specific questions and that we can address. So I'm going to let Todd kind of summarize this last slide for us. And this is just again a recap. I think you're familiar with these numbers. The from the legislative session, we expected about $13.5 million from the WPU increase. We talked about the risk management uh savings in the rate there. Uh we have we anticipate property tax growth. This is about a one half 2% growth. So this is new money. It's not assessed valuation growth. This

083is new properties coming online that are generating tax revenues this year that they did not last year. Uh we have some other additional changes within the minimum school program uh that we're capturing as well. Uh this is particularly in the area of what's called uh students at risk funding. So we will expect some funds that will come through that uh particular appropriation. Uh we have savings that come from closing schools and from turnover savings. Uh and those these are become annual events as we've moved forward with the declining enrollments. Uh we have other monies that come. This money in particular has to do with our preschool program as they went and redesigned their tuition and th that cost structure for those who participate in the preschool. Uh we then fill in the blank. This is

084we're looking at about a $14 million tax increase in balancing the budget as it has as it is proposed at this time. We will also be accessing some of our reserve funds. We have about $4.5 million that we'll be using. This is to support the continued pilot of our uh special education program and is also the stop gap monies for our preschool program. Actually, Leslie dropped off a letter. Do you want Do you want to share the good news? No, go for it. It's it's all your work. Well, I have exciting news that the preschool program um received almost four um for $400,000 each year for the next three years. We've been um qualified to receive a portion of the grant, which is great because um once you're accepted in the three years, then you

085can if the legislature adds any additional money, no one else is able to apply for the money for three years. So, now that we're in the door, hopefully we can get some increases in the later years um in the next three years within that budget that we'll be able to increase um the things that we're receiving for that preschool fund. So, that was very exciting news today. It's it's actually really really good news. We've spent the last three years trying to re-qualify for something that we easily qualified before and so hats off to the preschool program staff and their efforts. So, that just got that letter today. So, we're excited. Yeah, I was accosted in the hallway by a very excited Net Barnes because she knows how much we've been we had a study session

086to discuss the funding model and how we were going to proceed. And so, that's obviously been built into this budget. I'm going to come back and talk about this this piece here uh just in in general for the the public's sake. A huge portion of this uh this budget is going towards um a K2 class size reduction. Um that's exciting. Um, I think it's something that's been a long time coming. I was here when class sizes went up uh in the the 2008 budget year with that uh crisis where we had to cut $53 million from our budget. Um, and that's when we had to increase class sizes and we've not had serious discussions about reducing class sizes since that time. And uh we're not going to uh be able to get those numbers down

087just overnight. And it's a significant chunk uh of money to be able to do that. But this is a commitment on our part and the the board's part uh to demonstrate the needs of making sure that those students in particular if there there's plenty of research and data that shows that those students are on track in second and third grade, particularly with reading, um that that is a make orb breakak scenario for many of our students, particularly at risk kids. So, we're very excited to see what the outcome of that particular reduction will be. Um, there's a commitment on the part of this budget that will also uh provide some additional leadership and administrative support in all of our elementary schools and uh balancing that with the need for instructional coaching. um that we're going

088to become a district that is committed to not only a culture of PLC's and collaboration, but a culture of coaching and that everybody in this district gets coached, including the superintendent, and that we're all working to be better and we all recognize that we're not perfect and that we can always improve. And so this demonstrates, this budget demonstrates a commitment on our part to help uh align that focus with our strategic uh priorities and the outcomes that we're hoping to find. So with that, um you can see how that gets broken down in terms of those that funding. I'd like to point out the school safety piece could be much more significant in the future. We don't know what the full implications of HB84 will continue to be. Um we will continue to press our

089our legislators to provide additional funding. Uh that was an unfunded mandate and now we're having to pass that through to taxpayers in order to be able to comply with um new state statutes and and and mandates. You can see uh there's some additional pieces there to help with uh instructional coaching and that class size reduction funding as well. So with respect to that, that's what uh the implications are for an average home valued at $528,000. Um you can see how that's broken out from the various levies that we have uh control over. um that puts us at uh just under $100 on that average home or a roughly 9% uh tax increase, which is no small amount. And so, as we've kind of had to whittle down these requests and these needs, um given that

090our budget started $7 million in the hole to start, um we feel um we knew we were going to have to raise taxes um regardless because of some of these unfunded mandates. Uh but we do feel like some of these other pieces will actually help us move the needle in terms of our strategic goals and outcomes. So with that, are there questions? What gets cut if we don't support that much of a tax hike? I mean, it's easy for you to sit in your chair and say, "Oh, yeah. You know what? But with a hundred bucks each, we we can got we all have to go and answer to to our constituents. That's a hard sell. I do appreciate the slide prior though because I think it puts it in really easy to understand. This

091is the breakdown. But my question to you is obviously we can't cut school safety because that's law. We've got to follow the law. But what else gets cut if we don't want to go that high? I'm I'm just trying to we have plans in case depending on the appetite of of the board in terms of what this tax increase looks like. Um and I will indicate that a large portion of that comes through and the implementation of instructional coaches and administrative supports would be the largest hit portion. We are already uh contractually obligated on our class size reduction. We've hired those teachers. Well, we've placed the majority of those were surplus teachers that we have now retained and now we're posting for some of our one-year contracts as well. So, the employee compensation is built

092in obviously as part of negotiations. We we cannot, as you've indicated, um reduce the scope and the size of that school safety piece. Uh school fees gets thrown in there and that mix as well. So we would look at the the other pieces that are um unfortunately targeted towards instructional improvements and enhances enhancements. So there's portions of our budget that are contractually obligated. They don't necessarily move the needle, right? Uh could we tie a step in lane increase for our valued educators strategically? That's to be competitive and make sure we can retain and attract the highest quality talent. But does that actually change our outcomes? At the end of the day, it would be really difficult to to ascertain that class size reduction. We feel confident with this particular class size reduction, we will see

093um a benefit um to our student outcomes. This instructional coach piece and the other components of the administrative supports are intended to directly impact instructional quality uh manage behaviors and provide support um in our actual classrooms to make sure our outcomes are what we're hoping they will be in line with our strategic goals. Can I ask the breakdown of that instructional coach piece because I'm looking at this and everything else we've we're already on the hook for because the negotiated agreement or law or Yeah, I can't throw it up for you right now. I don't have the No, no, no. I'm just My question is that instructional coaches, how much of that 4.5 million is coaches and how much of it is extra assistant principles? Because to me, admin extra admin in our school that

094I'm not speaking for the board for me and what I've seen it do at one particular school. Having that extra intern at the junior high has really helped turn that around. So I would weigh keeping the admin portion of that over keeping the coach part of that. That's just me. So I'm curious in that breakdown of 4.5 million. How much is coaching and how much is admin? Yeah. Do you want to tell do you have that? We he has our spreadsheet. Yeah. So the instructional coach at every school that $4.4 million or 4.5 that's just the instructional coaches. There's another $1.1 million in there that is for the additional admin so that we have at least a half admin at all of the elementary schools. So, as we look at our boost schools program, which

095we'll have a presentation on um in light of our strategic plan kind of as an update, um they're going we're going to go and provide additional full-time assistance at certain locations uh full-time uh one full FTE of instructional coach in other locations. We're being very strategic about how we're placing them those resources. I want you to think about it in terms of HB84. if if we really truly had to place a certified post-certified police officer in every school across the state, it wouldn't be possible. There's not enough police officers, right? Um and comparably, we don't have enough administrative talent within our pool to be able to immediately flip a switch and provide that resource. So, this is kind of a slow role um over and the goal is to provide those administrative supports and resources

096over a 3 to four year period. Comparably with the instructional coaches pieces, this is a commitment on our part to pay for a half FTE in every school, which will free up a lot of their land trust and TSSA funds for them to fund other things in their schools. So just just for mental math, each million dollars of revenue is would cause a house an average home to increase by $5.80 or call it $6 for now. So that's if if you're doing the mental math that's how that would so this number if you would like to reduce that sorry that number that's what the yeah I mean I listen that we're just placed in a hard position because we see the value of everything you're talking about and we're trying to be lean and mean

097and uh at the same time we're trying to go back to our taxpayers and saying Hey, you know what? It had these recent tax increases over the last whatever years. It's not enough. We need another $100. And And it just gets to be a little bit of a of a hard cell. And while I recognize it's all good. I I see the good in it to be clear. I see the good in it. And I'm I thought you said earlier that 4.5 was for coaches and admin. I thought that's what you said. So that's my my mistake there. But um yeah, I'm just conflicted. This is a hard ask for me to go ask for my taxpayers for a 9% increase in a really tight year where it seems like everything is going up. And

098that's that's hard in my area, particularly for whether you're fixed income retirees or young families trying to put food on the table and keep a roof over the head. I'm just saying that's a hard that's a hard one for me. I have a question on a pro. Do you have any idea how much above this, you know, with our le um how much the difference it's going to cost with our budgeting, the pay as you go added on to. So that is on here. So, so that very first line, the $81 has to do with what superintendent was describing in the what's happening at the schools and the supports that we want to put in place. The second line, the $12 is related directly to the pay as you go. And then we've have a

099third line which is talking about our deferred maintenance and needing to increase the monies that we have to bring our schools up to better conditions. That's the remaining $6. So the the the shifting from the debt levy over to the pay as you go pocket is has been in the past traditionally a no net tax increase. But because we're holding that rate, it is a tax increase. Does that make sense? It's not a direct shift of this amount of money to this amount of money. We're holding that rate. We're freezing that rate as part of that strategic plan. And so it does it is while some a lot of that portion I'm going to let Todd use his head nodding skills to correct me if I'm wrong. Probably a large portion of that is no

100net tax increase. Um but there's still a chunk of it because that rate is frozen. That is a tax increase. It is more revenue to the district as a result of increasing that homeowner's burden. Right. And so with respect to that, we've also added in this deferred maintenance piece. Um each and every one of you, bless your hearts, um have come and asked where something is at on the list. And there's about a $20 million pot uh for our playgrounds, paint, carpet, um any sort of non- major um HVAC systems. And so um we have a bunch of pots of money that those have been budgeted for on an annual basis. and uh our personnel. Um, frankly, Don Adams with his big brain was using um those pots of money to uh pull from this

101pot over here to help with an emergency situation over here. And so sometimes our needs were not being met, not because we weren't trying, we were actually taking care of emergencies, because that $20 million has not changed um in 20 plus years. even though the value of that $20 $20 million has gone down significantly. So, this is a commitment on our budget proposal to increase that by $1 million and slowly build up that deferred maintenance fund so that we can take care of sound systems in schools. we can get on top of some of our playgrounds that are have fill material that's not really inviting for small children um to to take care of uh carpet in places uh that needs attention and still have money for emergencies when they crop up. So in in

102all honesty to Karen's question, the first place we would cut is there because we have survived on that $20 million, but it has not grown with inflation. it has been there and uh we're doing more with less of that money ongoing and there needs to be a concentrated effort at some point. It it blessed Don Adam's heart. He was trying to make that work for so long and uh we really do need to make a strategic investment in those resources to make sure that our schools are lasting as long as we need them to. I'll throw out a caveat just these are estimates. They will change. The assessed valuations aren't due to the tax commission until Friday this week. So once we have the real numbers, this will change. My guess is this is probably

103higher than what it will be, but we'll know better in a few days. Todd tries to be very conservative on these on this front. Is he nodding his head? I hope he's nodding his head. I really feel like the board has been a huge part of the budget making process this year and I have really appreciated um that like the fact that I come here and I know the background discussion of everything that's going on here um makes me feel really confident to vote for it. So I really appreciate the process we've had this year. Um, and I I also wanted to say uh to what you were saying, Karen, I I also think that we need to make sure our voters know and our taxpayers know that, you know, when there's a decrease on

104the state level, you got to make it up somewhere. And that the state is looking at us boards and saying, "You guys need step it up." And so they aren't funding things with the int direct intention that we will increase our property tax. And so it does it puts us in a bind. We we have to respond. And um and so there's there's this dynamic going on too. And I don't mind making sure people are aware of that because they're all voting for both us and for other legislators and they need to understand that dynamic. Can I just add to that because we're having a little side conversation over here that directly relates to this question and uh knowing that how important messaging is. Um we fully anticipate in our our actual budget hearing to

105kind of analyze uh the the reduction in income tax that the state has uh passed over the last few years which on the low end is so at the the lower end of the tax bracket it's about $260. So this is an effort on our part to recapture income tax revenue that was lost as a result of which would have gone into the old education fund uh to ensure that we're holding education harmless and we're still not recapturing that full amount. But that doesn't help somebody on a fixed income. Yeah. So that's and that's what I was just going to say, Julie, is you know, we can educate all we want, but people look at their bottom line, especially when money is tight. And so that's what makes this so delicate and heartbreaking. I I

106hear you on the fixed income, but I think we have to recognize too on the other hand that Utah is still a state that taxes social security. So there is I mean like as to to Todd's point that $200 or $260 number that is part of that in terms of social security. So fixed income yes but social security is taxed at the state level by Utah. I just want to I'm with Karen. It's a tough tough cell. It's a tough year. People are feeling it. I know I'm feeling it in my household, in my family. Um, things are a lot tighter and so it's it's a real tough cell. I know I have personal changes in my life as well that have made it harder. So, I don't want to blame it all on inflation

107and that, but yeah, things are tighter and people are feeling it and they they really want to see um value for their money when we're increasing taxes. So that's a big a big challenge. I'm just, you know, putting out where I'm sitting on this. I also want to ask about the pay as you go portion. You kind of indicated that there's a big chunk of that is not related to a increase. And are you referring to the fact that it's not a percent increase or is that something else? Because this is the reason I'm continually pushing this is because all through this process last year I was under the impression the whole time we were not increasing taxes and I finally realized we were and we're doing that just with semantics with different wording because

108no we weren't raising the rate but we were freezing a rate that was meant to drop and that is an increase right so I'm trying to understand what you mean by there's a portion there that's not I'm going to let Todd tell what I meant. I've been reading his mind. So So with the pay as you go strategy, there are two moving parts. The first part has to do with the debt service from one year to the next. So as the debt service drops from one year to the next, instead of returning those dollars to the taxpayer, if you will, those dollars are retained and continue into the capital levy. So that's the part that we say that there's technically not a tax increase because you paid it last year, you'll pay it again this

109year. It's just a different bucket. So, so that's that part. But in holding the rate flat, we're uh countervening the measure of the certified tax rate. So as a cess valuation goes up, the rate should have dropped. That's the piece that we're holding on to and that's the piece that the legislature requires us to go through a truth and taxation on. So those two pieces together are the $12. That makes sense. Thank you. I I would say from my perspective, it's still an increase because I don't know when I'm looking at somebody is trying to pass a bond, we're going to raise taxes to pay that back. In theory, when that gets paid off, your taxes should drop again. And they're not, right? We keep we're keeping that money. So, to me, that's a still

110an increase. It's the way I would define it. But I would say we agree with you, which is why we've indicated it is an increase on here. Right. So, just clarifying what you had said, though. So, I would define it as an increase on both pieces. I don't want to spend too much time on that. It's a smaller part of the bigger. Could I could I speak to that a little bit more? Cuz I think in previous years when we've only had just this capital levy shift and if there was no um uh rate freeze on that, it would be no net tax increase. We would still call it a tax increase because you just indicated if the bond was paid for that money should go away and we're retaining it. So that is the

111tax increase under the law. that is absolutely a tax increase even if the average taxpayer doesn't see an increase in their taxes. And so just trying to be we're trying to be helpful on that semantics end. Um obviously there's some other pieces there and we're just doing our best to kind of I think we would advertise it as much but in this year it doesn't make sense. So we're giving you a really conservative estimate on what that looks like. Well, and as we've gone, I had a lawmaker ask about this and we sat down with the tax t tax commission and the tax commission even they they confirmed they said no, this is not a tax increase and they they're the ones that said that to this lawmaker. So, I get what you're saying, Kim,

112but if it wasn't taken from that pot over to the other one, it would still we'd still be paying it regardless. And when we voted on it, that's what we voted for. So it's I mean I know it's semantics I feel like at this point, but is it a tax increase? I guess sure, but is it? No, it's not. I think the challenge that it's been discussed here before and I point you've brought up before if I corre if I remember correctly is the further we get away from 2017 people people's memories are short and they go did I remember did I support uh retention of that revenue or not and our data would suggest from our survey and the the bond itself and the information we put out that yeah they did support that

113but I got to tell you if somebody told me I paid a bill for last week Sometimes they'll be like, I don't remember doing that. I never would have done that. Right? Um, so people's memories are shorts and it it's noted, right? I It is hard, you know. We're retired. It's It's hard. But I also see I also see the need. I see um Yeah. And we did have I just have to say my long time on the board. Our capital used to be 17 million when I first got on and so we've got three years in or three million more in in 20 years. Any other thoughts? I for my part I I get it. It's a hard ask of taxpayers when they're already, you know, their budgets are tight. I understand that, but

114I would hope that taxpayers would also understand as their expenses have gone up, so have ours. And how do we do the same thing? How do we offer the same thing without without being able to supplement what we have? We've I mean, almost every I don't know, every municipality, I think last year raised rates or raised their taxes because of this. We're all going through the same thing. And I I would hope that our taxpayers understand that as well that we're trying to be as fiscally responsible. And I love that we have tied this to our strategic plan. Um that you feel good about that this is going to make a a move the needle because that to to me is very important that if we are going to spend money on something that it

115will move the needle. So I appreciate you tying that together. Um and I you know it's hard. I I Julie, I am going to say it in our truth and taxation hearing. I'm going to say it at our budget hearing. This is the these are the things that we have to pay for. We don't have a choice because of what has what the state has passed. These are unfunded mandates and it just adds up. It adds up. So, I hope people understand that. So, um with no further questions, we'll go ahead and move on. Did you have anything else? I would just this is the budget that we will officially adopt. Uh you're not voting on anything tonight, but do you want to speak to our next steps in our process just real quick so

116everybody's aware and the public's aware of how this works? Yep. So we will receive um assess valuation information the end of this week. Certified rates come out on June 8th. Uh so the budget that you will receive will have taken that into account. And so these numbers will on this particular slide will change because this is totally driven by assessed valuations. And so we'll we'll adjust that. But all the other elements that you've seen that we've talked about will be included in that budget and we'll uh present a fully balanced budget from all revenue sources and all program areas. So you will adopt a budget at that point in time and uh that will be implemented on July 1 and then we get to go through truth and taxation in August. That will be on

117August 5th. You've received those that notice and then so don't be late. That will be an enjoyable evening. Um, with respect to that, we uh are working hard to put some of this information together to make sure it's palatable and understandable for our average taxpayer and uh to make sure that the information as complex as our funding system is that people can know and understand how and why we're we're making the decisions that we're making and how we're trying to recapture uh the lost revenue uh that the state has indicated. Um there it it should be noted that there I was at the uh taxpayer association lunchon last week. There is an absolute stated goal by legislative leadership to eliminate the income tax altogether which is our primary source of funding. So however long that

118takes I think we can anticipate and expect continued reductions in income tax rates um and this burden being shifted over to school boards. So that was not said with any sort of um it was very boldly indicated without any hesitation. So it's not something they were trying to hide. I don't think that comes as a great it should not come as a great surprise to any of us that the the state the legislature however you want to characterize it has the intent to move to a no income tax state. Correct. Just as a reminder also um and for those listening, our uh we have a our budget hearing is scheduled for June 17th. Um we don't normally have a a session in a study session in June, but we because of the law and how

119it changed, they want us to have it separate from our business meeting and so that is why we are having it on June 17th. So just a reminder. All right. Thank you. So, just one last item that we have on our agenda is our legislative priorities. Um, we are just going to have a real quick discussion was the the point of this. I asked Julie to kind of help us out with this one. Um, I I recognize that this is not on our our uh board books. I will ask Stacy to put it on when she gets back. She's out of town. And um this didn't happen until Friday night. So that is why we didn't have I Stacy couldn't do it. So um but I did send it to you all in the email.

120This is what Julie forwarded on um to me. And so if you guys have any thoughts or anything, Julie, do you want to give us a summary or just highlights about this? Sure. I'm trying to pull up the priorities. Oh, here we are. Sure. There was there's an effort um um in the So, the the process by which we came to these priorities were that we went to those uh we had the spring regional meetings. Was it spring? Yeah. And uh we asked each school each board to get together and they made lists of things that they thought should be priorities. Um then we took all of those uh priorities that were suggested. We kind of ranked them by how often they were mentioned and the top uh here are basically the top six things.

121I'm I'm not sure that that's exactly accurate that these are the top six. I can't remember but it's close to um sorry. Yes. So these are the six that we'll we'll take to uh next the next thing that's going to happen here is that these will go to the USBA board of directors who will um you know manipulate it and approve something to take to the delegates that same evening. Um, and then we have two delegates here that is uh so sorry. So Connie and I will get to vote on uh the USBA uh on a final thing that we're going to send and then Chris and Clark will vote as our delegates to determine the final vote of who is I mean of what our priorities are. These are the priorities that we send

122to our legislators at the beginning of each well we'll send them to them ASAP as soon as they are approved and we asked them to um uh create legislation that will support these ideas. So we want to establish an education working group. Um, we know that we just heard that the income tax uh looks like there are lots of changes to funding and education and we would like to have a seat at that table. So, that's kind of the first uh thing there. The second thing is uh going to be an interesting this is an interesting strategy that we've got we've written here provide a 2% 2% above inflation and growth on the WPU to provide needed support for special education students. The idea is that instead of just saying we want a 2% on

123the WPU, if we say this is what we're going to spend this on and we stick to it and we determine that in every one of our districts we are spending out of our own budgets at least 2% on on special ed. And so if we can get this 2% that opens up other funding if we need it or it increases special ed funding if we need it. So, it's an idea of directing their thoughts of what we're going to spend that money on. Um, increase the targeted funding for at risk students, which is especially important to our district. Um, uh, we're going to ask them to help us incentivize a culture of attendance. Um, we want to start working on that collaboratively with the legislature. um more effort on the economic stabilization account to

124make sure that um there's funding for that that goes to the LEAs rather than to pet projects of legislators which is was originally kind of implied that that was going to go to LEAs. um that's onetime funds every year and we're going to ask for that to be kind of can we direct that and start getting commitments on that because so far it's been going to pet projects um of legislators and um collaborate on a long-term education funding framework. So, I mean those are the things and if the the question is do you have any feedback that you would like our delegates to take because they'll be voting on behalf of all of us? Is there something that's been missed? Um something you disagree with? What do you think? Anybody have any thoughts? My my

125one my one big one is number one. if we get nothing else done. I think number one is the important one that we need to have an education working group. Um so and I will tell you this that USBA has a and the superintendent we have a meeting with President Schultz and um Speaker Adams. So backwards, excuse me. Yeah. So, we have a meeting with both of them and and we're going to kind of try to facilitate that beginning to happen, but we'll see how it go. Stay tuned. I I just feel like it's frustrating that I I find out that other groups have have these working groups that legislation is passed through first before it ever gets even to interim or anything except for education. and we have the most amount of bills and

126I think we could avoid a lot of these. I don't know. Yeah. A lot a lot of the frustrations that we get if we could if we could funnel that through something that that gives a little bit more feedback up front. I feel like it's I feel like it would be like our law and policy committee. you know, we have I think we have a really good area to discuss it and and get it refined before it ever gets to board meeting and I think it's valuable. So that's just where I'm at with that. So no other thoughts. Fantastic. All right. Thank you. So we have reached the end of our agenda and as we have reached the end of our agenda, I will go ahead and adjurnn us. We stand adjourned.