13 ADULTS WALK INTO A CONFERENCE...
No joke. A West Valley school district agrees to spend tax payer dollars to send 13 adults to New Orleans next spring... Then cut ties with the conference host.
Every election season, tax payers are bombarded with pleas to vote for school bonds and overrides.
It’s like an exhausted broken record every other year.
The voters are sold a message of “M&O overrides to help support school districts pay for teacher salaries and student programs.”
Overrides allow a district to increase its budget by up to 15% for seven years to support classroom activities like teaching, learning, and operations.
Source: SOSArizona
You kinda feel guilty if you don’t vote to support because “state and federal dollars are not enough to meet students' educational and safety needs.”
As it turns out, those same funds can send governing board members and district admin on fancy trips, too.
On December 6, 2023, Agua Fria Union High School District, [AFUHSD], unanimously approved its “Consent Agenda” - including numerous working vacations - in 25 seconds - without any discussion.
In less than half a minute, they approved picking up the tab for 4 of their own, (Governing Board members Eric Cultum, Vickie Landis, Vice President Gina DeCoste, and President Trey Terry), plus 9 staff from its District Office to fly out to the National School Boards Association Conference.
When? April 2024
Where? ‘Vibrant’ New Orleans
Cost? $26,000 to send 13 adults from one school district
What’s to offer in New Orleans in the spring? The first 12 seconds of the promo video for the conference show a time lapse of partygoers on Bourbon Street.
The big question: Who will pay for 13 “working” vacations to the NSBA conference?
You’re paying for it! These 13 trips - according to district meeting minutes - will be funded by the governing board’s budget and M&O monies - in other words, backed by district taxpayers.
THE KICKER
Ironically, this vote came just after the governing board voted to cut ties with the Arizona School Boards Association, [ASBA], beginning next summer.
The ASBA is a national federation member of the National School Boards Association… the SAME group hosting the New Orleans conference in the spring.
Here’s the district’s meeting agenda language on the discontinuance with ASBA.
The board voted to cut ties with ASBA. Then it voted to go the same organization’s national conference. In that order.
AFUHSD is leaving the Arizona School Boards Association for a competitor, the Arizona School Risk Retention Trust, Inc. (the Trust). It’s, “a non-profit corporation that provides Arizona public school districts and community colleges with property and liability coverages and related services.” LINK
If it’s leaving ASBA, why is the West Valley district going to spend $26,000 to send 13 reps to its national conference?
Why not wait to send the reps to local conferences hosted by its new partner? We confirmed today that the Arizona Trust offers two leadership academies a year. They take place ONLY in Arizona.
And why is the AFUHSD Board President Trey Terry going on the trip if he’s running for Goodyear City Council… the election to be held next fall?
REFUSING TO ANSWER OUR QUESTIONS
Maybe the Agua Fria Union High School District just wants to get in one last hurrah before it switches services? Again, we don’t know. Not one of these district reps will answer our questions:
Senior Officer of Strategic Alliances Megan Griego
Superintendent Mark Yslas
Governing Board Member President Trey Terry (I asked for a response from Terry in an email dated December 14, 2023 and on X.)
New Orleans isn’t the only destination. As it turns out, Agua Fria Union’s High School District has staff attending additional, charming cities in the spring, too.
The December 6, 2023 Consent Agenda included another $19,949.99 to send admin to conferences in Vegas, Miami, Seattle, San Diego, and Carlsbad, California.
According to meeting notes, Agua Fria Union HSD’s SEO of Strategic Alliances, Megan Griego, (considered in the Communications Department), will attend three conferences next spring; NSBA, NSPRA, and the Experimental Marketing Summit.
The district’s Communications Department has 4 employees making a combined salary of $336,483 a year.
Those 3 other employees in district communications, Gabriela Magann, Alexis Moreno, and Alex Morrell, all get to attend NSPRA and the Experimental Marketing Summit.
IMHO: Being professional communicators, it’s unfortunate they can’t send one person and come back to share what they’ve learned with the others.
ATTEMPTS & RECEIPTS
I sent emails to the district COMMS email for a response on December 7, 2023 at 9:35am. I never received a response to that email.
Later that afternoon, I emailed Megan Griego directly. December 8th, she asked me to submit my questions in writing. I did.
Megan Griego and I briefly spoke on the phone December 9th. She set her own deadline of having a response to me by the following Wednesday. In fact, she didn’t offer to get in touch with the Superintendent right away. She told me she didn’t have him on her calendar until the following week.
Seeing she was going to miss the deadline she set, I called her at 4:44pm on December 13th. She told me she was in Flagstaff at, (yet another), a conference and would “get right back” to me. She never did.
I emailed Superintendent Yslas on the morning of December 14th. That call was responded to by a Karen Zamora, (also on the list of admin going to the NSBA conference in New Orleans), who said Mr. Yslas had seen my email, was sick, and would do his best to get back to me. He never did.
It’s nearly two weeks later and the Agua Fria Union High School District refuses to answer why it’s using M&O monies to send 13 adults to one conference by an organization that sent out a letter calling parents domestic terrorists… all while cutting ties with that same organization after the conference.
JEN’S TWO CENTS
One vote. Twenty-five seconds. $45,949.88 in M&O monies for working vacations paid for by taxpayers.
Furthermore, Megan Griego in AFUHSD Communications, who never communicated back to me on this issue, makes almost $160,000 a year as a communicator - according to a district records request.
If I ever performed this poorly in my private sector job, I’m quite sure I would have lost my job. Are tax-payer funded employment positions handled differently?
It’s ironic that one of the seminars at the NSBA conference covers “storytelling”.
The description states, “If school board members do not tell the story of public education in their communities, someone else will…”
Welp. Let me tell the story.
Not only does Griego get tax payer funded trips, out-of-state multiple times a year, she also makes about $100,000 more than the base pay for a teacher in the district with 12 years of experience.
Here’s what teachers make in the Agua Fria Union High School District. I don’t see anything in here about the perks of working vacations to destinations outside Arizona.
In fact, teachers and coaches wanting to travel with teams and students raise their own funds for travel.
This document is in the meeting notes for the same December 6th governing board meeting.
Finally, if you aren’t paying attention to Consent Agendas in your cities and schools districts, now is the time.
Consent Agendas allow for governing boards to approve a series of actions all at once and without public discussion. While any member of a board may request to have an item pulled for discussion, they rarely do.
Board agendas for government meetings are usually posted days in advance of meetings. Look them over. Click into the attachments. Find out what’s happening in your local community. Because once actions are passed, you have very little recourse to reverse them.
It’s legal for Agua Fria Union High School District to not openly discuss payments for trips because the action item was included in its consent agenda on December 6th. If there’s more to this story, AFUHSD won’t communicate it to us. So we have the December 6th meeting to go on. We still welcome an open dialogue to further understand its decision-making process.