[0:01] I'd like to call Walla Stegna board meeting to order. It is 8.32 a.m. on the 9th of March, 2026. And this is a electronic meeting.

[0:18] I can board members, please state their name and title for the record solid by anyone else with a speaking role in today's meeting.

[0:23] Sarah Vorgh, president, Tony.

[0:26] Kodakurana Fijur.

[0:28] Frank.

[0:29] Frank McKenna, board member.

[0:31] Jeremy.

[0:32] Jeremy Steele, secretary.

[0:34] Anthony.

[0:35] Anthony Steele, CEO.

[0:38] Adam, if you're speaking.

[0:40] Adam Grillock, other CEO.

[0:42] Thank you.

[0:46] Nielsen, with academic west.

[0:48] Hannah.

[0:49] Hannah Jones, academic west.

[0:51] Shantel.

[0:56] No, I think that's everybody.

[0:58] Perfect.

[0:58] Okay.

[0:59] So, the first item is consent items.

[1:01] Do we have any comments about the board meeting minutes from February 2026?

[1:06] No.

[1:07] Okay.

[1:07] I'll make a motion to pass the February 2626 board meeting minutes.

[1:11] Can I have a second, please, Frank?

[1:12] I Frank's second motion?

[1:14] I'll say aye, aye, Sarah and Tony.

[1:17] I like Tony.

[1:18] Jeremy.

[1:19] I Jeremy.

[1:20] Frank.

[1:21] I Frank.

[1:22] Frank.

[1:22] That's unanimous and that's passed. Next item is the throating items. Everyone received a copy of the ratified CEO employment agreements.

[1:31] Was there any comments or queries on that?

[1:35] Yeah, I think there's an error in his. There's a blank spot, and I'm not sure I think she just matched with some Anthony's. I've been able to verify that but reached out to me or from him either.

[1:47] But we might need to take a look at that real quick. I still think we should try to approve them.

[1:52] you know, pinning up.

[1:53] It's heading to the SS.

[1:55] Right.

[1:56] Exactly.

[2:00] Did you want to check over that and we'll move to the next item?

[2:03] Well, we'd like to hear.

[2:05] Yeah, real fast as you can see right off the bat.

[2:07] The sea over there will see an additional,

[2:09] and anybody is striped and of, and then it's blank.

[2:12] Oh, yeah.

[2:13] You should be like a number there.

[2:15] And if you're in the same as mine, yeah.

[2:16] I think it's much different.

[2:18] The entire thing is just like 370.

[2:20] It's much shorter.

[2:21] I think we can just stick with some of this.

[2:23] just now let's match yeah let's just match what the other one says and and then

[2:30] approve a paint based on that yeah yeah I think it's the right amount I think

[2:35] what we have in Anthony's is what it's supposed to be I'm having trouble

[2:39] verifying that I think we'll be able to the can you verify that shantel implant and

[2:44] then put the right a self of them and we'll approve it based on that yeah that was

[2:48] I'm sure that was just my mistake I think what we had is we had the old

[2:52] amount in there. Right. We put the new amount and it just didn't make it in. So yeah,

[2:57] I will change that. My bad worries. I do want to skip over and come back when we know the number

[3:03] or just just for it to. Let's start to approve it with the amendment changes. Okay. Are you comfortable

[3:13] with that? Anthony and Adam. Yeah. Yeah. Make sense. Okay. I'll make a motion to pass the

[3:19] certified CEO employment agreements with the mentioned changes. Can I have a second

[3:24] please Jeremy. I Jeremy second the motion. Only if I would say aye aye Sarah Jeremy.

[3:29] I Jeremy. I Tony. I Tony. Frank. I Frank. That's none of us and that's past. Thanks for

[3:36] spotting that Tony. I didn't see that. The next item is the 2627 school land trust plans

[3:42] we've done this many times. Anthony and Adam did you have just a quick one sentence about

[3:46] Yeah, well it's like three sentences. So we use all of our title one money to pay for all of our

[3:52] parapherstionals and the parapherstionals run hundreds of small group reading interventions for all

[3:59] of our lower grade kids and then we use our land trust money to hire what we call intervention specialists.

[4:05] These are really good teachers that we train to supervise that entire program and so they train

[4:11] the parapherstionals, they supervise the parapherstionals, they set all the schedules and make sure

[4:15] that all those reading interventions are working and that every kid is getting a reading

[4:18] event interventions. It's the same thing we've done for the last few years and it works

[4:22] very well for our kids. Any questions?

[4:26] Nope.

[4:27] Sorry, I don't look in three sentences.

[4:29] No, that looks good.

[4:31] Tony, can I have a motion to pass the land trust?

[4:37] Oh, you're on mute.

[4:40] Make a motion to pass the land trust.

[4:42] Oh, sorry, 26, 27 school land trust plans.

[4:44] Oh, sorry.

[4:45] I certainly make a motion to pass the 26, 27.

[4:48] Hello?

[4:48] Six, three, seven.

[4:50] Hello?

[4:50] Wyne.

[4:51] Pop them up and copy.

[4:52] I know that, I'll do that.

[4:53] Second, please, Derby.

[4:55] What is your army second yet?

[4:56] I only during this, I, I, I, Sarah, Tony.

[4:59] I join—

[5:00] Frank.

[5:01] Yeah, Frank.

[5:02] Derby.

[5:02] I join me.

[5:03] That's an enemy's in that spot.

[5:05] We've got three, um, one handbook and two policy updates.

[5:09] Um, I requested everyone to read them in advance, um, ones if him or lay, ones parental and

[5:14] post-partum recovery leave and ones that pay time off policy.

[5:18] And to each other, Adam, did you have something to mention about any of those specifically?

[5:22] Yeah, what brings this up is when we, maybe you guys remember this a long time ago, when

[5:27] we initially adopted paid leave, what we wanted to do was do paid maternity paternity leave

[5:34] because no one else in the state was doing that at the time and large percentage of our

[5:38] employees are very young people and mostly young women and they have a lot of babies and it's

[5:42] is a very big selling point for our school

[5:43] and it makes people very loyal to our school

[5:45] because they get that paid leave

[5:46] and they come back and they love that support.

[5:47] But at the time, we were told that that might not be allowed

[5:51] and instead we'd have to just do paid FMLA,

[5:54] which we all thought would maybe just include

[5:56] like people who get like cancer and whatnot.

[5:58] Turns out it's pretty much any reason you can imagine.

[6:01] And we looked at the data,

[6:02] almost a third, well actually exactly a third

[6:04] of all of our leave has been for non-venturity,

[6:08] fraternity things, things that I think

[6:10] those people wouldn't have left work for if we hadn't incentivized them to leave work for.

[6:15] So now that the state has actually a requirement to have just paid maternity paternity leave,

[6:20] we know that's completely allowed. And so we want to go to just paid maternity paternity leave.

[6:26] FMLA will still exist, of course, but it will be unpaid. So people can keep their jobs for 12 weeks,

[6:30] just like they're federally required to have, but leave will only be paid for maternity and

[6:35] paternity leave is what we envision for this. Am I missing anything?

[6:40] Yeah, we also decided to extend it from six weeks to eight weeks, but I didn't get back to

[6:48] plan on Friday afternoon. So the maternity paternity law is a little bit different than just

[6:54] straight number of weeks. It's like split up between like recovery from giving birth and also just

[7:01] like paternity style leave. So that's like adoption style leave. And I would, I don't, I don't,

[7:07] I didn't get a chance to even see what the policy ended up being. It would be sent to you guys. But

[7:10] I don't really want to differentiate between it. So we just wanted to do eight weeks.

[7:14] Okay. Yeah. So I think you could tell us how it's kind of structured. Now as you have,

[7:20] you have the postpartum recovery, like you were saying, that's three weeks for those who have babies.

[7:25] And then you have the parental leave, which is like you were saying, like adoption or for a paternity

[7:31] the tightly situation. And so someone who's having a baby, they get the full three weeks of

[7:38] postpartum and then they also get the parental three. So they get six weeks. Those who are

[7:42] just on the parental leave just get the three weeks. So if you want, maybe what I'm hearing

[7:46] is maybe we just make, if you qualify for postpartum or parental, you get the full eight weeks.

[7:54] Is that kind of what you're saying?

[7:55] Yes, that's a really good idea.

[7:58] Okay, so how it reads now in the packet is not that way.

[8:04] It still has it separated out, but you could still prove the policy and just make it so that

[8:10] whoever qualifies for paid parental or paid post-partum

[8:14] either one gets up to eight weeks.

[8:17] Sounds good.

[8:18] That sounds good.

[8:19] If the board likes that idea, we wanted to further encourage that.

[8:26] I think the state employees also just increased theirs this legislative session to six to nine weeks.

[8:32] I think so.

[8:33] We wanted to increase our paid maternity fraternity leave, but we don't want to pay for these random other things.

[8:39] We have some people who apply for FMLA every year for not terminal type illnesses, but you would imagine FMLAs for it, but for much more minor things.

[8:47] and we don't want to encourage that anymore.

[8:49] Thoughts, questions, ideas?

[8:53] I think that's really important to increase it.

[8:55] I know as an adopted parent that when you're

[8:59] doing all those processes that takes weeks

[9:01] just to organize and so three weeks would be, like, not much.

[9:06] Yeah, not too much bonding, right?

[9:09] But I think that's nice for it.

[9:11] Yes, exactly, so yeah, that sounds great.

[9:13] and for all types of parents as well, so that sounds great.

[9:19] Yeah. Any other further questions?

[9:24] We've had one that affects the paid parental and prized part of recovery,

[9:28] so I'll just point to that that would include maternal and paternal types of leave for eight weeks.

[9:37] Yeah, postpartum and parental, both either one of the qualifies for up to eight weeks.

[9:41] Okay all right I'll try that. But I make a motion to pass the amended paid FMLA leave policy

[9:47] and employee handbook and the motion to pass the amended paid parental and postpartum recovery

[9:53] leave policy. With an amendment to increase the postpartum and maternal paternal leave for

[10:01] up to eight weeks and the amended donation of paid time off policy. Can I have second please,

[10:08] 20. 20 seconds. I would say aye, aye, Sarah, 20.

[10:14] Aye, Tony.

[10:14] Jeremy.

[10:15] Aye, Jeremy.

[10:16] Frank.

[10:17] Frank.

[10:18] That's unanimous.

[10:19] And it's past.

[10:20] The last item is that we've got April 15th is the next board meeting.

[10:25] Hannah, we talked about that we had something coming up.

[10:28] Was that what was that again?

[10:30] We did have a March 18th board meeting scheduled, so be in nine days.

[10:34] but yeah, it just as needed if we want to get that canceled we can and just put on the April or

[10:43] Yeah, it's up to up to the board. That's what we were planning on doing that. So are we through this one?

[10:48] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Did we have something else that we said was due coming up there or was that all I knew about

[10:54] interest

[10:57] We had the financial RFP but we could just reach out to the vendors and let them know that we can award it in

[11:03] and April. Oh yeah, yeah, let's do that. Okay, so planning for the RP in April. Yeah,

[11:09] I don't think there's anything else than as far as deadlines go.

[11:19] So Sarah, you pass the

[11:21] paint print on postpartum recovery. You might want to make one more motion just to

[11:24] see the policy and we'll just FNLA and donation of paint time off policy. Those are two separate items.

[11:31] No, she said the FNLA one does. So we just need to do the paint time off one. Okay.

[11:35] I read all of them.

[11:37] Oh yeah, did you get any time on that three?

[11:39] If

[11:42] I'm a lay leave policy amended paid parental and postpartum recovery leave

[11:45] and amended donation of paid time off policy.

[11:48] Okay, good job. Good job.

[11:49] I did it all together. I can do it again if anyone thinks I'm done.

[11:53] I just ruined the two, but I want them all done.

[11:55] Yay, get the air.

[11:57] Yeah, I'm pretty sure I just read the whole three.

[12:00] All right, well, if there's no further questions,

[12:04] any further questions first?

[12:05] Yes.

[12:06] But there is going to be a difference in the verveg in the numbers for that for Adam's contract

[12:13] so all they can touch with you on that.

[12:15] So hey, I looked at that and I think what we did is you're talking about paragraph A to

[12:19] it.

[12:20] Yeah.

[12:20] I deleted a number because then we did the two different numbers starting at different dates.

[12:25] So I think I didn't delete the word of, but let's talk after if you think that there's

[12:30] sort of different things there.

[12:31] Cool.

[12:32] Okay.

[12:32] Tell us great then.

[12:33] Okay.

[12:34] Thank you guys, thank you very much.

[12:37] Wait, wait, we need to do a adjourn.

[12:38] Should I sit there?

[12:40] I've been to close the general meeting.

[12:41] I'm sick of this, Jeremy.

[12:43] I, Jeremy, make a motion to close the general meeting at 8.45 a.m.

[12:48] Well, in time say I, I, I, Sarah, Tony.

[12:50] Hi, Tony.

[12:51] Frank.

[12:52] Hi, Frank.

[12:53] Jeremy.

[12:54] I, Jeremy.

[12:55] At unanimous its pass, it is 8.45 a.m.

[13:00] Yeah.

[13:01] Wow.

[13:01] Thanks everyone.

[13:02] Thanks for keeping us in line, Hannah.

[13:07] Yes, yes.

[13:17] Good.

[13:18] Good.

[13:19] Thanks for running the meeting for us.

[13:21] No problem.

[13:21] Good to see you.

[13:23] Yeah, have a good day.

[13:24] You too, bye.

[13:27] Freak.

Wallace Stegner Academy Board of Directors Meeting

Transcript