SCHOOL STAFFS SETTING OUT ACROSS THE U.S.
How many trips are you paying for this year? Yes. YOU. Not for you, necessarily. But for school admin and governing board members? We look at three West Valley districts.
Meeting agendas tell a story about who’s on the move.
Because teachers groups tell us every dollar counts in Arizona schools, we’re taking a look at how your tax dollars are allocated the West Valley. How much of taxpayer funds go directly to the classroom? Security? To teachers and students?
More important, why are so many school representatives traveling out-of-state?
National conferences do offer worthwhile knowledge, expertise, and networking opportunities.
One school district brings experts into its district - while others send staff across the country.
Travel requests can be legally approved in governing board meetings. We find the requests are typically placed on consent agendas - within meeting agendas.
In this report, we compare staff and board member travel requests in 3 West Valley school districts.
Before we start, check out the good news about improving test scores in West Valley high schools. We reported 2022-23 state report cards for these two districts.
BUCKEYE UNION HIGH SCHOOL DISTRICT
In case you missed it, we invited Buckeye Union High School District governing board member Nathan Madden to our podcast last week.
At the 10:50 mark, Madden discusses stewardship in discretionary funding as a school board member. At the 12 minute mark, he explains how the BUHSD staff benefit from knowledgeable educators and experts around the country… by bringing those experts into the district to speak to hundreds of people at a time vs. spending comparable funds to fly a few staff members to locations outside Arizona. Visual examples are included at 12:18.
At its last meeting, travel requests in BUHSD were placed on the consent agenda under item 6.01. Funding is cited as coming from “CTE” and donations. You can review those online.
BUHSD meets again on February 12th (as of this writing, the agenda is not posted). Be sure to watch the meeting in-person or live online as the district does not post meeting videos to YouTube for later viewing as we reported here.
BUHSD budgets are posted here.
Its website shows, “BUHSD is going to be putting together a Budget/Bond Advisory Committee to help us in making decisions on the potential budgetary needs of the district and the potential bond projects that are needed in the district that would require the district to have a bond election in November of 2024.”
AGUA FRIA UNION HIGH SCHOOL DISTRICT
Wednesday, February 7th, the Agua Fria Union High School District governing board voted on consent agenda 6.2 which included an action for out-of-state travel - broken into requests from staff and students.
Start at the 44:28 mark. The consent agenda of 14 items was motioned and passed in 29 seconds.
Consent agendas are portions of a meeting agenda where “non-controversial” topics are lumped together for one vote. Like last night, rarely are the items within the consent agenda discussed.
At closer check, last night’s AFUHSD consent agenda requests under “Staff” included $6,150 in M&O monies to cover expenses for six staff to travel to the Aquarius Casino Resort in Laughlin, NV April 2-5 for the Arizona Association of School Business Officials.
Each of the 6 attendees will drive their personal vehicle.
5 staff request reimbursement of $300 for providing their own transportation.
1 person is requesting $350 for reimbursement for transportation.
(It’s 211 miles from district office to the casino resort. IRS reimbursement is roughly $277 there and back.)
It appears two of these staff members going to Laughlin also will be part of the delegation of 13 flying to New Orleans April 5-8 for the National School Boards Association conference. (That travel was approved in December 2023. We reported on that here.)
A 3rd admin leaves a day after the Laughlin trip to go to Miami on April 6th. (Her travel to Miami for $2,425 was approved in December ‘23.)
If you click into the travel request report for last night and scroll to page 10 - you’ll see a request, (originally omitted from the summary page of staff travel requests and added to a revised summary), for an admin asking to fly to Vegas for $1,850. The request shows M&O funds will be used to pay this expense.
Staff travel requests numbers 2 & 3 on Wednesday’s staff travel summary stated funds are either $0 or covered by ‘Title 1.’ (But the request for the community relations staff shows $625 in registration fees to be paid by the district. No one from the governing board pulled this for clarification.)
Travel request #4 is to allocate $900 in M&O monies to send an admin to speak at a conference in North Carolina. According our records from district agendas, this would be his his 5th trip this school year.
According to consent agendas, the district has 405 travel days approved, (plus the list of people who went to Lincolnshire in November ‘23), this school year.
AFUHSD has pre-approved 85 staff travel days at the tune of $31,757.08 for July 2024 - the start of next school year with trips to Seattle and two conferences in Nashville.
Consent agendas show one administrative official with five trips this school year with another already approved for the beginning of the next school year. That person’s travel adds up to 26 days out-of-state between July 2023 and July 2024.
Remember, this is all out-of-state travel. We do not have information about in-state travel expenses.
School district travel is covered by a variety of funds… many of which come from the M&O fund - taxpayer dollars.
Now to STUDENT travel requests - On last night’s same agenda show their trips will be paid for through booster clubs, club accounts, team fundraisers, parents (also listed as ‘students’), and tax credits. Here’s an example of student trip requests…
To be clear, we have contacted the Agua Fria Union High School District on multiple occasions by email and phone since December 2023 to discuss out-of-state travel expenses and the district’s separation from the Arizona School Boards Association. Last month, we filed records requests to get answers. Today marks the 20th day of “15-20 business days” to answer the records requests. We do not have any answers at this point and have been told our only contact is now legal counsel.
We are reporting on what we’re seeing in agendas. We’re asking all the questions to get clarification. We welcome an open dialog to discuss this topic. If our math adds up correctly, staff travel approvals top $200,000 for this school year alone. (We are waiting to see the number of attendees who went to Lincolnshire, Il in November 2023 to get the final total. And we have not been told the final price tag to send 4 governing board members to New Orleans in April. Once we get those numbers, we’ll report back.)
**BREAKING NEWS*
Minutes before we published this story, we did one last double check of the Agua Fria Union High School District’s meeting schedule. We see the board has a retreat on Saturday morning and will discuss “District Staff and Board Members Attendance at Conferences.“
Agua Fria Union High School District Governing Board Retreat | Saturday, February 10, 2024
Agua Fria Union High School District #216
Meting Location: The Wigwam Resort/The Orchard Room, 300 E. Wigwam Blvd., Litchfield Park, AZ 85340
Doors open at 8:30 a.m. | Meeting begins at 9:00 a.m.
PEORIA UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT
Wow! A new agenda change is already stirring up controversy in PUSD.
The board has new leadership — and a fresh agenda order. Public comment moves from #3 on the agenda all the way down to #9.
“Open Call to the Public allowing individuals to address the governing board on any issue within the jurisdiction of the board. Speakers will only address non-agenda topics under Public Comment, unless an exception is granted by the board president, and will be limited to three minutes per person.”
Ahead of the new public comment period is the consent agenda.
In our last Substack, we discovered governing board member Heather Rooks typically pulls staff travel requests from the consent agenda at regular board meetings to put the actions up for discussion and get board member votes on the record.
The governing board meeting is Thursday, February 8th. (Watch live.) Out-of-state travel requests are on the consent agenda for trips to Las Vegas and Milwaukee. Monies are coming from Results Based Funding (RBF) funds and CTE grant funds.
What we find helpful about PUSD travel requests is that the summary page shows the target goal of the travel. “Strategic Area: Student Success” is listed for both requests. We’ll be watching to see if the items are pulled for discussion.
At last night’s PUSD retreat, the governing board heard incoming superintendent Dr. Somers present an initial transition plan. His official commencement in the district is reportedly April 1, 2024.
ADDITIONAL WEST VALLEY HIGH SCHOOL DISTRICTS & BUDGETS
Deer Valley United Budget
Glendale Union Budget
Tolleson Union Budget
Phoenix Union Budget
Thoughts about how your tax dollars are spent in West Valley schools? Email your comments and tips to jen@news2jb.com.